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Book Review: X v. REX (1933) by Philip MacDonald (as Martin Porlock)

10/4/2019

Philip MacDonald, the author who wrote X v. Rex under the pseudonym Martin Porlock, holds some interesting ground in the field of classic mystery fiction. A number of his books incorporate elements of suspense and fit a thriller style, but their plots also pay tribute to – and work within – the genres of crime and detection. It’s a neat assemblage of working parts, and in books like this one, The Noose (1930), and The List of Adrian Messenger (1960), fans of conventional mystery stories will likely find much to appreciate.

X v. Rex is especially notable because, had the author chosen to take a slightly different approach to the story, this tale of an unknown killer systematically targeting London’s policemen could have been presented as a first-rate classically structured whodunit.

The question of who still remains; X stays an unknown even as MacDonald offers up clues to motive and means through intermittent diary entries. But ultimately the murderer’s identity is secondary to the fate of the characters affected by his vendetta: there is Sir Hector Frensham, an embattled police commissioner, his ingénue daughter Jane, and her fiancé Sir Christopher Vayle, upon whom early suspicion is cast due to a drunken altercation with a patrol officer. So rather than a traditional whodunit with a pool of citizen suspects and a search for a motive, the book instead centers on the literal and existential threat of an outside force creating chaos by literally attacking the values of civilized society.

Academic categorizing aside, X v. Rex (published as The Mystery of the Dead Police in the U.S.) is a very entertaining, fast-moving read. The police attacks are varied and deliberate (and not a little frightening in their violence), and MacDonald creates a nightmare mood with his scenes of authority surprised, compromised, and made victim. (I can recall few Golden Age mysteries that involve the murder of a single policeman, much less the killing of a cumulative squad.) With the rule of authority subverted, the reader readily sympathizes with Sir Hector’s helplessness while trying to combat an unpredictable, malevolent force. Enter Nicholas Revel, an enigmatic man who provides a (forged) alibi for Jane’s boyfriend and surprises Sir Hector, first by correctly describing what the police have done to date in its attempts to capture X, and then by suggesting exactly what they should do to make a successful apprehension. But we are not sure how trustworthy Mr. Revel might be, or whether his interest in the case is altruistic or strikes a little too close to home.

MacDonald’s prose is at times a bit ornate – for Jane Frensham’s introduction, he devotes several lines of text to describe her youthful vivaciousness, for example – but such detail is appealing and vivid in a cinematic sense. He is a writer who experiments with structure and allows otherwise incidental characters and actions to brush up against the throughline of the plot, and I rather enjoyed these singular digressions. One such moment: a governess and her two charges, coming back from the race grounds, briefly cross paths with a mounted policeman who, a few pages later, will cross paths with the murderer. The author allows the family to exit stage left with this amusing run of lines:

"Haven't you seen enough horses for today?" said Miss Rooksby, for the three had just returned from Olympia.
"No!" said Philip stoutly.
"Well, I have," said Miss Rooksby and laughed and hailed a taxi, which presently bore the three of them up the hill and out of this story.

Happily, X v. Rex was brought to my attention by Martin Edwards: The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, his excellent analysis of detective fiction by its genre themes, collects this title under the chapter “Multiplying Murders.” Given Philip MacDonald's penchant for visual descriptions and framing his scenes in smart tableaux, it is not a surprise to learn that the author also had a career as a screenwriter. A very interesting mystery-thriller hybrid from detective fiction's Golden Age.

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Book Review: KNOCK, MURDERER, KNOCK! (1938) by Harriet Rutland

9/30/2019

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Let me begin this review on the highest point possible by praising the publishers and individuals responsible for bringing titles of neglected and forgotten authors from mystery's Golden Age to new readers. Smaller publishers, like the now defunct House of Stratus or Rue Morgue Press, through their many GAD reprints allowed fans to discover mystery authors of the 1920s and '30s whose books are costly to purchase today in their original editions. Lately, bigger entities like Hachette (with their Murder Room series) and HarperCollins (via Detective Club Crime Classics) have gotten in on the literary renaissance.

Enthusiastic independent publisher Dean Street Press is in a class by itself, having released dozens of intriguing GAD e-book titles that might otherwise be lost to time and memory.

While a few of its represented authors may be passingly familiar to fans of mystery fiction – like E.R. Punshon with his Bobby Owen detective series or Christopher Bush and his sleuth Ludovic Travers – most are largely unknown authors just awaiting (re)discovery. Brian Flynn (several new Flynn titles arrive as US e-book editions on October 7), Moray Dalton, Molly Thynne, Robin Forsythe, and Ianthe Jerrold are just a few authors Dean Street Press has recently championed.

The detective novels of Harriet Rutland, the pen name of British writer Olive Shimwell, are also available again to readers via Dean Street. 1938's Knock, Murderer, Knock was the first of her three mystery titles, and in summary it's a doozy: a serial murderer runs loose at Presteignton Hydro, a health spa on the Devon coast. The killer's preferred method: a steel knitting needle stabbed into the back of the head. There are a lot of suspects (and victims) to choose from, many of them eccentric and/or disagreeable. Gossiping and passing judgment are favored pastimes of the mostly aged residents, while the younger staff bide their time in repressed romances and recognizing the general dissatisfaction with their station in life.

When a young woman guest who has stirred up minor scandal at the spa (through her modern dress, her public reading of passages from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and her attentions toward another resident) is found dead, Inspector Palk investigates and soon arrests his main suspect. But then another death occurs, and another, and it is not until a strange amateur criminologist named Mr. Winkley arrives that Palk is able to see the pattern and identify the true culprit.

Knock, Murderer, Knock was chosen this month for perusal by the Reading the Detectives group over at Goodreads, and I thought it would be a great time to be introduced to this author. In retrospect, I am very grateful for the group's multiple opinions, because if I had read it alone I would have felt like a notable outlier. Knock, Murderer, Knock comes highly recommended from such trusted GAD critics as Curtis Evans and J.F. Norris; Evans writes in his preface that Rutland could be considered an “heir presumptive” to such Queens of Crime heavyweights as Christie and Sayers.

It is rare when I find it a challenge to push through a Golden Age mystery story, but multiple times the urge to quit reading was strong. The first five chapters were particularly rough going, as a large cast of characters weaves in and out of the narrative, with no central person or event coming into focus. Worse, they are unlikable, petty people, and worse yet, Rutland uses her third person omniscient perspective to make arch, judgmental comments on her creations.

Further, the characters don’t behave in any realistic way under their circumstances; I can suspend disbelief mightily to enjoy the often fantastical genre of detective fiction, but Knock exhibits unsatisfying story details that speak to the novice status of its author. Examples: there are multiple violent deaths at a guest spa – including two families who lose a child – and everyone passively chooses to remain there? (There is also no real discussion between staff of leaving or shuttering the facility, or of being shut down.) A killer claims a third victim in an identical attack, and the reader learns that the first suspect is still being held after all this time? (Time is also surreally unbelievable if you look too closely at the timetable of a secret engagement and marriage between two Knock characters.)

And while I greatly enjoyed learning from the Goodreads group about the lethal potential of period metal knitting and tatting needles, none of us there could comprehend the handle that Rutland claims the murderer uses to drive in the weapon. Part of the problem is that in the dénouement she makes poor Inspector Palk describe the object using different mechanics, one on top of another: it apparently acts as a retractable-coil toilet roll, or a screwdriver base, or a holed luggage handle, take your pick.

Such criticisms would be far easier to forgive if I had felt like my stay at Presteignton Hydro had provided some satisfaction or rejuvenation by the end. Instead, it was not unlike a camp vacation gone sour, being surrounded by disagreeable guests, checking one’s watch frequently, and losing faith in the events manager to deliver a competent itinerary. For the record, of the Goodreads thread respondents five people enjoyed it, four did not (adding myself would make five), and two readers noted a mix of appealing and off-putting elements. You can also check out Kate's cautiously positive review over at crossexaminingcrime. It is a certainty I will be back to read more books from authors represented by Dean Street Press… just not any more from this one.

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Book Review: THE WHISPER IN THE GLOOM (1954) by Nicholas Blake

9/22/2019

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My last reading experience with the 1954 suspense story The Whisper in the Gloom was about 15 years ago. At that time, I was in the process of reading all 16 of Cecil Day-Lewis's Nigel Strangeways mysteries that he wrote under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake. Back then, Whisper struck me as a well-intentioned but rather unremarkable boys-and-secret agents yarn, with a story that tested the reader's patience to make it to the end. I remembered it as not bad, just not nearly as good as the many Strangeways whodunit? mysteries that came before it.

A revisit and a determined vow to accept the book on its own genre and era terms did not move the opinion needle much.

It also wasn't quite the listless experience I had feared, although it's hard not to feel like the plotline loses some adult energy with its focus on a group of resourceful London boys: Golden Age puzzle plotting is replaced with children's adventure moments (albeit matter-of-life-and-death ones), and amateur detective Nigel Strangeways is more or less relegated to bystander and Concerned Citizen.

Brainy 12-year old Bert Hale is excited to test his motorized toy boat, an assembled and upgraded recent invention, in the round pond of Kensington Gardens. A larger drama unfolds in the park, however, and a man dying from a sudden stab wound grabs the boat and conceals a hastily scrawled message on a piece of paper in its hull. Because of this, Bert and his friend Foxy are soon drawn into a conspiracy. The man's killers, fearing that the paper might carry an incriminating clue to a future crime, set out to retrieve the message and silence Bert before their plans are exposed.

The set-up is a familiar one to most readers of crime fiction, a variation of the innocent man who knows too much plotline. There is also little mystery about the direction in which the syndicate's criminal plans might lie; Blake maps out the intersection of boyish enthusiasm and adult international espionage right from the book's first page.

A newspaper sheet wrapped itself round Bert's leg. He rubbed his eyes, into which the wind had puffed some dust, and stamping the newspaper flat, read the headlines: SOVIET DELEGATION HERE TOMORROW - IS IT PEACE?

Despite the rather unsurprising plot and its inevitable sequences of events, Blake creates a supporting cast of characters that is nicely drawn and given some room to breathe. An old woman, skirting senility, becomes Bert's unpredictable caretaker when he is kidnapped; one of the assassins, we learn, is known as The Quack, a former surgeon from the U.S. whose drug dependency has made him a useful and dedicated instrument of death among criminal circles; and Bert's best friend, the resourceful Foxy, is nicely delineated as his own street-smart character, one with a raft of siblings and a stake in the family business, where he sells market wares from a barrow. The villains of the piece, including the charismatic and cruel aristocrat Alec Grey, also manufacture a defined menace that elevates them slightly above the predictable roles they play within the melodrama.

The Whisper in the Gloom is also the book where readers are introduced to sculptor artist Claire Massenger, Nigel Strangeways' attractive new girlfriend. One interesting detail is that Nigel chooses not to reveal to Claire his penchant for detection and relationship with Superintendent Blount, although these secrets prove impossible to keep after he is coshed on the head. Other than being the recipient of a physical attack, Strangeways isn't given much to do here, as most of the orchestrations originate from the police, the criminals, or the boys Bert and Foxy. There is a neat turn with the dying message – for why would the man write Bert Hale's name and age on the paper? – and a well-staged burning house rescue that precedes and betters the familiar find-and-stop-the-assassin climax of the final chapter.

The Whisper in the Gloom may lack the charm and fair-play quality of earlier Strangeways mysteries – this is a tale that unfolds and announces rather than challenges and confounds – but it is a decent suspense story with bouts of action and a couple satisfying set pieces. As a screenplay, this would adapt very neatly to a visual medium; Blake is aware of his pacing and works to keep the plot moving and the pot boiling. It's just that he managed it better 15 years earlier, with 1939's solid spy entry, The Smiler with the Knife.

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Book Review: THE MERRIVALE MYSTERY (1929) by James Corbett

9/8/2019

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British author James Corbett, I have learned, was a moderately popular crime fiction and thriller writer in his time, and his books were a staple of subscription library lists in the 1930s and '40s. It also appears that his début title, 1929's breathless and remarkable The Merrivale Mystery, is a fair example of the quality of work he would produce over the next two decades. And that quality is striking indeed, a mix of overheated prose, cardboard characters, and an ineptitude of plotting that will leave the discerning reader delighted, bemused, or in agony. Or possibly a combination of the three.

Full disclosure: I knew what I was getting into with this author. Corbett's reputation and infamy precede him, as Bill Pronzini singles out The Merrivale Mystery as an "alternative" crime classic in his 1987 study of bad genre writing, Son of Gun in Cheek. Even better, the late Bill Deeck has given the world The Complete Deeck on Corbett (2003), where he amusingly analyzes a number of Corbett's titles. The site Mystery*file has a couple wry reviews from Deeck on this singular author, including a very funny look at a very peculiar supernatural thriller called The Vampire of the Skies.

As I have always had an affinity for the earnest but incompetent genre story, likely in part from an adolescence spent absorbing the wonderfully terrible movies featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, I wanted to try James Corbett. I was not disappointed, which is to say that I was thoroughly expecting disappointment in the conventional sense. But what makes this author's work so notably bad? I can't state it any more succinctly and accurately as Mr. Deeck does here, so I offer this quote:

There are certain types of readers to whom Corbett will not appeal. He should be avoided by those who like fine writing; by those who appreciate good description; by those who enjoy characterization and who think it helpful to be able to tell the characters apart; by those who do not appreciate non sequiturs or the almost-right word; by those who think real clues are essential in a mystery; by those who want detection and fair play; and by those who expect a writer to remember what he has written just a page before.

Deeck covers all the bases when it comes to Corbett's shortcomings, and in The Merrivale Mystery these failures are on abundant display. If it were merely lackluster prose or poor plotting, the work could be dismissed and forgotten about. But it takes a special kind of zeal for an aspiring artiste to deliver something that isn't just poor but spectacularly, gloriously unsuccessful; think Ed Wood or the woman who tried to restore a faded Renaissance painting by giving its saint a smiley face. With Corbett, one gets the impression that he's the perfect inexperienced amateur, someone who recognizes the general elements of mystery fiction that create excitement – sensational murders, a brilliant detective, belligerent suspects – but hasn't really thought about how it's all going to work. Accusing Corbett of a lack of talent is too easy; when it comes to mangling plot, characterization, and the English language, he is positively inspired.

Here we have brilliant detective Victor Serge, brought in to investigate the murder of Sir Philip Merrivale of Merrivale Hall. The reader is reminded repeatedly that Serge is "famous", "brilliant", and "an agent of Justice", and perhaps we should be reminded of this, since the great man doesn't really do anything to prove his reputation. Certainly he will solve the mystery (after two more murders occur in exactly the same fashion, with a family member alone in the library killed by a revolver shot to the head through an open terrace door), but his methods of deduction are head-scratchingly incomplete. As Bill Deeck writes, it's tempting to just quote the entire Corbett book and be done with it, but here is one passage that shows the unintentionally comical prose which courses through the entire novel. The author has provided his detective with a sort-of Watson, a credulous and rather ineffective novelist (!) named Ralph Moreton:

Moreton, fascinated by the scene, made no effort to speak, but his brain surged with a thousand ideas. He still watched every movement, saw Serge's wonderful instruments pass over the body, the magnetic lens and gleaming microscope, the powerful hand-torch and measuring tape. During the inspection, Moreton knew he was watching a genius. He saw it in the systematic method of the examination, in every movement of those limbs, in every flash from Serge's eye.

Corbett has a penchant for exclamation points, both in dialogue and in prose, and I found myself wondering how characters might deliver a punctuated statement that otherwise would have warranted a humble period. Apparently, he is also a writer not to turn down a question mark; here we find this interrogative run in a chapter titled, "Bancroft Blunders!" [sic]

"The words were pregnant with meaning, and Serge noted them carefully. What was the pact between these two? Why did they comprehend each other so thoroughly? Were they in league? Was Sybil the helpless agent of this evil genius? Was this helpless, spine-stricken invalid a devil incarnate? Were all these horrible things emanating from his brain?"

Vampire of the Skies (1932)

The characters are certainly poorly drawn and alternately melodramatic and wooden, but the sparkling jewel of ineptness is surely the plotting and narrative structure that the enthusiastic Corbett offers up. Apparently, amateur detective Serge has complete run of the murder scene, and the police let him take over the library so he can literally question the suspects while standing over Sir Philip's uncovered body. (By the way, based on the timeline of when the body was found, the dead man still had not been removed after 12 hours of police investigation…) I was struck early on by the fact that three successive chapters have exactly the same arc: a suspect arrives, doesn't really answer Serge's questions, doesn't acknowledge the dead body on the floor, warns that Serge will never discover the baffling mystery of Merrivale Hall, and then accuses another family member of the crime. Serge starts the next chapter with this new suspect, and the cycle repeats itself.

SPOILER, IF YOU CARE: There's later-chapter talk of a ".449 bullet" that never amounts to anything, and when a gun is found there's no interest in fingerprints: "He held it in one hand." Finally, there's the slap-in-the-face reveal of the murderer, who turns out to be a character who has not been introduced before! The amazing thing about this bit of decidedly unfair play is that the details could have easily been set up and clued so the killer's identity wouldn't feel like a completely arbitrary surprise, although maybe that was what Corbett wanted to do.

(End of Spoiler.) So, if you pick up a James Corbett mystery, this is what you're in for. Me? I find it amusing, in moderation. And you have to admire a neophyte mystery writer who lets his detective dismiss three carousing half-brothers as suspects (more through caprice than any deductive logic) by stating, "They are eliminated from the mystery zone."

I must quote the genius Victor Serge one more time as he evokes the brooding mood of Merrivale Hall as only he (and his creator James Corbett) can do:

"I advanced another step, but it led to a wilderness of suspicion, intrigue, and hate. It is a horrible undergrowth of hate, Bancroft, and the hate emanates from the walls itself!"

I laughed three times while typing those two sentences, and that's pretty darn impressive. Here's the coda: As far as I know, after The Merrivale Mystery, detective Victor Serge never appeared in print again. James Corbett would go on to publish 42 more novels.

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Book Review: X v. REX (1933) by Philip MacDonald (as Martin Porlock)

Book Review: KNOCK, MURDERER, KNOCK! (1938) by Harriet Rutland

Book Review: THE WHISPER IN THE GLOOM (1954) by Nicholas Blake

Book Review: THE MERRIVALE MYSTERY (1929) by James Corbett

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