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Book Review: DEATH IN THE TUNNEL by Miles Burton

2/29/2016

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Humdrum. That is the name attached to a category of books from mystery fiction’s Golden Age where the puzzle is not only foremost but also its only notable feature. It’s a term of derision and dismissal used by genre critic Julian Symons in his 1972 survey Bloody Murder: from the Detective Story to the Crime Novel. Symons notes that Humdrum authors “had some skill in constructing puzzles, nothing more, and [believed] that the detective story properly belonged in the category of riddles and crossword puzzles.” With such an ascetic emphasis, the reverse supposition is that all other literary merits of a legitimate crime “novel” – psychologically layered characters, a penchant for verisimilitude, a real-world resonance of theme and setting – are absent in the Humdrum.

In my opinion, Symons is accurate in his categorization…up to a point. The greatest difficulty I have with the label and definition is that sweeping idea of “nothing more” to interest the reader, “nothing more” of value or skill on display than a puzzle and a formulaic march to a solution. But I can’t fully rush to the defense of the Humdrum authors because, compared with their genre contemporaries who actively used characterization, tone, and themes (such as observations of class differences, social customs, the law and justice) to enhance their stories, the dogmatic Humdrum emphasis on plot can create a superficial or distanced reading experience.

But why should a mystery story be required to carry a Great Idea? Why must it have something to say? Detective stories are almost by definition entertainments, plots constructed by the writer to engage and beguile the reader. Many of the Humdrum authors Symons singles out were extremely successful in their time: Freeman Wills Crofts, whose plots often involve railways and the use of timetables to make and break suspects’ alibis, and Major John Street, who wrote dozens of books under the pseudonyms John Rhode and Miles Burton, were both prolific and popular. Their focus on the puzzle did not limit their contemporary appeal.

It can also be argued that the shift from detective story to crime novel was not entirely a beneficial one. While many authors in later decades would deliver complex and haunting books that used antiheroes, modern crime, and psychology in a compelling way – Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, Nicolas Freeling, and Reginald Hill are all favorites of mine – here in America it feels like the genre has been swallowed up by endless tales of sociopathic serial killers, broken and vulnerable cops, amoral lawyers and as many fights within the justice system as outside of it. Michael Connelly and Jo Nesbo are excellent writers and craftsmen, but I can only visit their fictional worlds occasionally before the many cruelties and injustices within their pages start to weigh as heavily on me as they do on their weary detectives.  


All this to introduce Death in the Tunnel, a 1936 mystery by Miles Burton appearing in April 2016 by The Poisoned Pen Press as part of their marvelous British Library Crime Classics series. It is a story that is proudly, winningly Humdrum. The puzzle starts as a clever variation of the locked-room mystery: upon exiting a tunnel, Sir Wilfred Saxonby is found in a locked train compartment, shot through the chest. A gun with his initials is found inside, and at first the death appears to be a suicide. But the fateful train also made an unscheduled slowing when the engineer saw a red light on the tracks ahead within the tunnel, a light that turned green before the train was forced to brake completely. Both tunnel entrances were observed by crew workers, and no man was seen entering or leaving. It’s enough for Inspector Arnold to begin to investigate, and he soon calls in the more imaginative Desmond Merrion to offer advice.

Treating the death of the wealthy magistrate as suspicious, other clues soon surface: Saxonby is found with his wallet and money still in his pocket, but a family member is certain that the wallet is a duplicate; the dead man had sent his secretary and niece away from the house the day before he took his last trip; and a mystery man named Yates (the name of Saxonby’s solicitor but definitely not that person) had met with Sir Wilfred in secret. Inspector Arnold finds details that consistently lead to an older man named Dredger, but Merrion feels like the man is being framed through impersonation and cunning, and expands his theories to include two culprits instead of one.


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Death in the Tunnel – in England, the title was Dark Is the Tunnel, and one of five Rhode/Burton mysteries published in 1936 alone! – remains an entertaining Golden Age puzzle mystery. Its principal strength is Burton’s ingenious intersecting of motive and crime, and how the clues align to the rather devilish timetable. The murder method is both elaborate and very busy, involving as it does some very precise vehicle choreography and traveling from the criminals to ensure success. Merrion and Arnold hypothesize and reconstruct the villains’ actions throughout the investigation, and that might be considered one weakness of a puzzle-centered Humdrum plotline: while the detectives are in a constant state of discussion, there’s little that occurs in the way of immediate (or suspenseful) action. After all, the murder has already taken place, the culprits long ago abandoning the scene. Even the suspect interviews are muted, as most exist to provide information from third parties about the movements of the unknown murderer on the day in question.


Along with attention to past over present actions, Burton also provides little characterization to make either his leads or his supporting cast memorable and distinct for the reader. The downside is an impression of rather low stakes – if both victim and suspects exist as sketchy, generic character types, little emotion will be invested in the outcome. But such distancing can also be an unacknowledged goal with the puzzle story: the focus remains exclusively on problem and solution, uncluttered by anything as lateral and inessential as meditating on a character’s psyche or the morality of murder. Instead, the pursuit is almost academic. The Humdrum, it seems, is mystery detection in its purest form. With a mystery novel pared down to its core, the Humdrum author succeeds or fails on the strength of his puzzle. And fortunately, Death in the Tunnel is a very strong puzzle indeed. How satisfied you are when you arrive at the story’s destination, I feel, will depend on whether you had expected (and wanted) to ride the Crime Novel Local or the Detective Story Express.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers at The Poisoned Pen Press for offering an advance eBook copy of Death in the Tunnel in exchange for an honest review.


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Book Review: TREACHERY IN BORDEAUX by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noel Balen

2/12/2016

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There is certainly potential in a series about a detective specializing in crimes among the vintners of France, and that is what attracted me to the first book in Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noel Balen’s series Le sang de la vigne (Blood of the Vine). Perhaps later stories – the series has more than a dozen entries – develop the characterization and plotting to a winning extent, but Book 1, Treachery in Bordeaux, is very much a glass-half-empty affair.
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In this volume we are introduced to Benjamin Cooker, a middle-aged wine expert, author, and consultant, who is meticulous in his historical research and knowledgeable in the country’s winemaking processes and regions. He interviews and hires an earnest young man named Virgile Lanssien, the only candidate we are introduced to, who carries out his requests of tasks and errands. He also has a wife who cooks delicious food and a pair of married friends whose “company was always pleasant.” Much of Benjamin’s time is taken up with antiques shopping, revising his manuscript, and falling asleep with a cigar and glass of wine.

Benjamin is called to the chateau of a close friend in distress: a bacterial infection has been found in some of the storage tanks, and the wine has become undrinkable. As the premises are kept in excellent order, contamination through neglect or poor hygiene is not likely. Well before the winemaker detective appears to, the reader suspects that the Brettanomyces infection in the tanks may be the effect of sabotage. Benjamin also searches for the third panel of a panoramic painting triptych of the Pessac winemaking region. Through the convenience of a bit of found information by the faithful Virgile, Benjamin Cooker delivers motive and means of the crime and accuses the one character the authors have provided as the book’s sole suspect.

Is it fair to blame a mellow Merlot if it fails to live up to the expectations held for a bold and spicy Grenache? After all, chacun à son gout. Yet Treachery in Bordeaux left me unsatisfied, and here’s why:

1) The varietal doesn’t deliver on its crop. The American series label reads “The Winemaker Detective”, and it was the “detective” part that made me choose the story, with “winemaker” an intriguing addition to a familiar genre. But just as I do not read Nero Wolfe mysteries for tips on horticulture or Hercule Poirot crime stories to learn more about Belgian heritage, my foremost hope here was to find a compelling mystery foremost, with the vineyards of Bordeaux providing an engaging backdrop. The writers know the wine business and write convincingly on the scientific and economic sides of the profession. The mystery construction and development, at least in terms of successful genre conventions, is another matter.

2) The plot continually shortchanges its yield. Treachery in Bordeaux can best be described as a procedural mystery, meaning that it is structured to report developments of a crime investigation instead of following a detective who actively collects clues, interviews suspects, and solves the puzzle through deduction – the classical whodunit. While procedurals can be fascinating constructions of “what happens next?” – read just about anything that Georges Simenon or Nicolas Freeling has written as an example – it is the approach to plotting by Alaux and Balen that left me continually disappointed. For one thing, the reader is certainly ahead of the detective in suspecting sabotage; rather than listen to the wine alchemist discuss at length the nature and treatment of a Brett infection, I want to see Benjamin Cooker begin to look for suspects. (He does this eventually, farming out the task to an ex-government acquaintance.)

Also, the only truly engaging character in this short book, an elderly recluse with sharp, angry views on the suburbanization of Pessac’s countryside, dies after his one brief scene. For a moment, the story becomes interesting again: did the man know too much? Was his death a murder? But such a theory is dismissed by the authors as soon as the reader starts to consider the possibilities, and we are back to the relatively boring case of the infected tanks. That case, by the way, is concluded abruptly and anticlimactically through Virgile’s perusal of documents on the culprit’s computer, which is even less interesting than if he had found a signed confession reading “I dood it.”

3) The wine itself lacks character. Perhaps future entries improve on this, but the first book tells us that the characters here are interesting and worth following, even when their actions and dialogue repeatedly fail to deliver. There’s a great amount of narrative telling here, with no follow-through: the story notes that Cooker’s scientific colleague “had certainly been disappointed by the thoughtlessness of men” and that his wife “was bright, pragmatic, and unpretentious.” Okay, but neither character is given any personality in speech or action to make such an impression.

The winemaker detective himself, we are told, has a personality that makes him both loved and hated in his profession, and raised to the point of a celebrity. He is presented as knowledgeable of his craft, surely, but beyond that Benjamin Cooker is such an unremarkable and passive man that it’s hard to care about him solving crimes on the page. Assistant Virgile is respectful, polite, capable, and generates absolutely no interest or friction. (Imagine if Cooker hired an assistant who constantly poked and challenged him; no more drowsy nights in the chair for him! No more featureless expository scenes for the reader!) Wife, friends, and co-workers here are so blandly drawn in their bourgeois sameness that I cannot recall them just a few days after encountering them in print. Only Ferdinand Tenotier, the angry old man who has a reason for being passionate and colorful, comes alive as a character. I would wish that this intriguing person take over as the real detective of the series, except that he suffers the book’s only death, and his demise is not even part of the central plot. Monsieur Tenotier, you have truly died in vain.

Treachery in Bordeaux is included in The Winemaker Detective Omnibus, which I received from its publisher Le French Book via NetGalley to provide a candid review.
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Book Review: SERPENTS IN EDEN edited by Martin Edwards

2/5/2016

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It is a great pleasure when a fan is able to discover a new and not-yet-read story from mystery fiction’s Golden Age (roughly the first half of the 20th century). The print and e-book publication of Serpents in Eden: Countryside Crimes, an anthology of lesser-known stories by some of the era’s most talented writers, is the latest release from The Poisoned Pen Press and the British Library Crime Classics series, allowing readers everywhere to discover these stories anew.

Serpents in Eden is edited by Martin Edwards, a prolific writer and mystery literature historian, and he appears to be the perfect candidate for the job. Edwards shows clear love for and knowledge of his field, and every story in the collection highlights those crimes and misdemeanors that can take place in an otherwise idyllic and deceptively safe country setting. This simple thematic link – and a natural one, both literally and figuratively, for a genre that has long found menace and shadows in rural isolation, from the Gothic secrets of Jane Eyre to Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventure “The Copper Beeches” – lets the stories resonate and speak to one another in appealing (and cumulatively sinister) ways.


At least three authors take advantage of their settings to deliver brief, vividly comic sketches of their country characters. Margery Allingham’s group of Essex farmers discussing the prospect of foul play and sabotage at a gardening competition are full of life and truly of the soil; her 1942 story “A Proper Mystery,” which was previously uncollected, incorporates wonderful, concise local color. Leo Bruce uses his short tale to present the unadorned and earthly – and very likable – Sergeant Beef, who would never be comfortable in a Metropolitan crime squad but who is more than capable of recognizing a “Clue in the Mustard.” And my favorite author Gladys Mitchell (see my tribute website at www.gladysmitchell.com) delivers a short study of a rivalry among Morris dancers in “Our Pageant,” the concluding story in the collection.

Other authors wisely make their idyllic surroundings an essential part of the mystery. H.C. Bailey, an underrated Golden Age author and creator of Reggie Fortune, sets “The Long Barrow” in Dorsetshire, where an archaeologist and his secretary may or may not be up to something more deadly than excavating ancient burial sites. R. Austin Freeman’s story “The Naturalist at Law” is especially intriguing as an example of early forensic research as Dr. Thorndyke investigates a drowning in a ditch. And with “The Fad of a Fisherman,” G.K. Chesterton presents a tale – not featuring Father Brown, but up to that philosopher’s clever paradoxical standards – of a government official found dead beside a country stream.

E.C. Bentley spins a curiously comical story of fraud committed at a vicarage in “The Genuine Tabard.” Anthony Berkeley Cox’s “Direct Evidence” is intriguing both for the author’s winking tone towards the genre – one character notes, for example, that it is “quite unthinkable that the brother of a girl who could play tennis like that should have committed a murder” – and when contrasted with an alternate version of this story. (“Double Bluff,” with a different murderer and outcome, appears in the Cox collection The Avenging Chance and Other Stories published by Crippen & Landru.) And Arthur Conan Doyle has a story here, “The Black Doctor,” which was written during his Sherlock Holmes years but does not feature the master detective. The events focus on the trial of a man accused of murdering a dark-skinned physician raised in the Argentine Republic but now practicing medicine in a quiet English village. The absence of Holmes doesn’t hurt the story, but a revelation that strains credibility is a bit more damaging. The approach is very explanatory and testamentary, as befits the late Victorian literary style, but the story still engages.

Another pleasure with a collection like this is the potential for discovering writers previously unknown to one. There were four here whom I had not read before, and I don’t think I will be actively seeking out their work, even though the samples here are competent. Best in show is Ethel Lina White’s melodrama “The Scarecrow,” concerning an escaped psychopath and an isolated farmhouse: the plot moves along and, like any good thriller writer, she knows which details to provide and which to hold back. Less memorable are “The Gylston Slander” by Herbert Jenkins (a successful publisher in his day job) and “Murder by Proxy” by M. McDonnell Bodkin, a story which suffers from an over-obvious murderer and a questionable alibi method. And Leonora Wodehouse, step-daughter of Plum, contributes “Inquest,” a well-written and somber story about the poisoning of a patriarch, the judicial investigation that follows, and a chance encounter on a train with two of the drama’s participants years later.

If you’re a fan of classic detective mysteries, you will thoroughly enjoy Serpents in Eden. Reading these unfamiliar stories written by some of the most creative minds of the era is like sampling the delights of an assorted box of chocolates, some lighter and sweeter, some darker and sharper, but all good. Just don’t trust the chocolates if it is Mr. Anthony Berkeley Cox who passes them to you.

Serpents in Eden: Countryside Crimes is available on March 1, 2016. An advance copy was obtained from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley for creating a written review.


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