Just last year a handsome and beguiling coffee table book was released. The Hooded Gunman, assembled by John Curran, collects and presents dustjacket covers and blurbs from every title published through the Collins Crime Club imprint, from its inaugural year of 1930 to the 1990s. It is a wonderful reference book full of striking images and enticing comments on the many books and authors represented within the Crime Club's catalog. And for readers and fans of classic detective fiction like me, it is also a dangerous tome, as it introduces me to one new author after another, enticing me with beautiful and mysterious cover art and seducing me with tantalizing plot descriptions. As someone who has more than enough mystery books waiting to be read on my bookshelves and stored up on my Kindle, I hardly need to race off to collect another dozen series from another hundred writers, all new to me. I also, alas, have a rather limited expense account, and by definition the Crime Club titles of the 1930s and '40s are highly collectible and increasingly rare.
But of course this complaint is not wholly ingenuous. It is very exciting to sample newly discovered authors, even those initially published 80 years ago and only new to me. (But still: J.V. Turner? Hulbert Footner?) And so The Hooded Gunman has brought to my attention the first of likely many, many new-to-me authors whose titles and output sound intriguing. I start at the beginning of the alphabet with Herbert Adams, a Golden Age-era crime writer with more than 50 books to his credit, and A Word of Six Letters (1936) from the genre's halcyon decade. To be honest, it was the breathless Lippincott American edition title that intrigued me as I ordered Murder Without Risk! through my college's interlibrary loan. (We Yanks are not known for being subtle; just look at our current president.)
The plot: Family members gather to celebrate the 70th birthday of irascible patriarch Bartholomew "Barty" Blount. There have been rumors of a new will, and the assorted relations are restless. After downing a few toasts, Barty mounts his horse and takes his afternoon ride through the woods. But the horse returns with no rider, and a search uncovers both the dead man and a mysterious woman in a cottage, whom Blount visited and who was the last person to see him alive. As the story continues and suspicions grow – it turns out the patriarch was drugged with the sleeping draught sulphonal prior to his fatal ride – the reader's sympathy aligns with Ella Chilcott, the inheritor of the vast portion of Blount's estate, and Bruce Dickson, an earnest young doctor in love with the young lady. But someone in the family is still determined to inherit, even if it means others will need to be eliminated.
Based on some perceptive reviews from other readers (see the links below), A Word of Six Letters seems to be a nicely representative example of Adams's work, both in quality and in theme and structure. (There are some casual mentions of golf playing here, but Adams enjoyed the sport so much that several of his books, such as The Golf House Murder (1933) and The Nineteenth Hole Mystery (1939) feature the game front and center.) The author has a penchant – and, I would argue, a talent – for weaving a thread of romance into his plotlines. The young lovers in danger here, Ella and Bruce, are likeable and practical, and the ingénu doctor serves as the nominal detective. While the author doesn't have Bruce Dickson actively searching out clues, he is nonetheless given a driving motivation to uncover the killer and keep his beloved Ella safe.
Based on some perceptive reviews from other readers (see the links below), A Word of Six Letters seems to be a nicely representative example of Adams's work, both in quality and in theme and structure. (There are some casual mentions of golf playing here, but Adams enjoyed the sport so much that several of his books, such as The Golf House Murder (1933) and The Nineteenth Hole Mystery (1939) feature the game front and center.) The author has a penchant – and, I would argue, a talent – for weaving a thread of romance into his plotlines. The young lovers in danger here, Ella and Bruce, are likeable and practical, and the ingénu doctor serves as the nominal detective. While the author doesn't have Bruce Dickson actively searching out clues, he is nonetheless given a driving motivation to uncover the killer and keep his beloved Ella safe.
The lack of a central detective and the staging of incidents instead of the deliberate interviewing of suspects and accumulation of evidence are notable, aligning this story (and, it appears, Adams's others) more closely to a whodunit-thriller hybrid than to a challenge-to-the-reader puzzle. Starting with a simple genre storyline, Herbert Adams spins a narrative that is nicely paced and populated with engaging, if hardly original, characters. There is a straightforward simplicity to the prose and dialogue that I found agreeable, and the crossword motif alluded to by the UK title and dustjacket appears in the book not as a typical clue to the murderer's identity but as a shared bond between Dickson and Isabel Aird, an ailing niece confined to the Blount estate.
If there is the slightly stale air of melodrama to the tale, it is faint and fleeting. For me, the familiar arc carries the easy comfort of a favorite sweater. Trajectory and outcome are never really in doubt; the villain will be revealed and punished while the lovers will be united, their bond stronger for their struggles. Still, there is both a market and an appetite for such comfort writing. Herbert Adams may never reach the lasting legacy of a true genre innovator like Agatha Christie, but his stories are still very enjoyable and satisfying in their simplicity, and were well worth the seven shillings and sixpence to those original, lucky members of the Collins Crime Club.
You can find other reviews of Herbert Adams mysteries around the 'Net:
JF Norris explores The Secret of Bogey House (1924) at Pretty Sinister Books
Aidan interrogates The Chief Witness (1940) at Mysteries Ahoy
TomCat reads The Writing on the Wall (1945) at Beneath the Stains of Time
and Curtis Evans swings for Death on the First Tee (1957) at The Passing Tramp
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