JASON HALF : writer
  • Home
  • Full-length Plays
    • The Community Play
    • Kate and Comet
    • Sundial
    • Tulip Brothers
  • Short Plays
    • Among the Oats
    • Holly and Mr. Ivy
    • Locked Room Misery
  • Screenplays
    • The Ballad of Faith Divine
    • My Advice
    • Finders
  • Fiction
  • Blog

Book Review: MURDER AFTER CHRISTMAS (1944) by Rupert Latimer

1/10/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
Let me start with the good: it is always a pleasure to celebrate the efforts of Martin Edwards and the British Library Crime Classics series. For years, Edwards and the imprint have been unearthing, securing, and presenting several unjustly neglected, long out of print titles from mystery fiction’s Golden Age of Detection. (Poisoned Pen Press has made several of these UK books available to U.S. readers, as well as spotlighting classic American mystery authors in their own Library of Congress Crime Classics series.) So it is wonderful to see a book like 1944’s high-spirited holiday whodunit Murder after Christmas returning to print after being unavailable for decades.

We learn from Edwards’ useful introduction that Rupert Latimer was the pseudonym of Algernon Vernon Mills, an occasional stage actor who was plagued with health problems stemming from a childhood illness. Mills would die in 1953, less than a decade after the publication of Murder after Christmas, but retained a cheery perspective in those years that informed his wryly comic prose style.

In Christmas, Frank and Rhoda Redpath await the yuletide arrival of Rhoda’s rich and eccentric stepfather, Sir Willoughby Keene-Cotton, dubbed more ironically than affectionately “Uncle Willie”. The couple exchange winking ideas about how best to dispose of their relation to gain an inheritance, and as often happens in this type of story, Frank and Rhoda soon find themselves hosting other guests and relatives that could stand in the way of obtaining Uncle Willie’s legacy. When the designated victim finally meets his end – his body is found outside in the snow, lying beside a snowman that contained a box of chocolate as part of a holiday scavenger hunt – it is up to Superintendent Culley to interview the suspects, sort through the colorful clues, and make sense of it all.

I sincerely wish I had responded more favorably to Latimer’s prose, plotting, and characters. Other reviewers seem to have done so, from Kate at crossexaminingcrime, who enjoyed the book’s humour and characterizations, to Sarah over at On: Yorkshire Magazine, who found the book “charming and delightful”. My disappointment stems from the author’s handling of the genre’s three crucial elements: I found the prose forced and overwritten, the puzzle’s late-chapter twist telegraphed from the start, and the characters and investigation wearying over time.

And yet it shouldn’t be so. Latimer has worked hard to adopt a buoyant, comic worldview that should be inviting, not off-putting. And it’s very possible that this prose engages some readers; it just doesn’t cast the same spell over me. Instead, I find myself wading through the words, encountering phrases that often require a cerebral translation before I’m able to form a picture. Often it feels like the author is constructing his sentences and shaping his tableaux in an effort to display his very determined wit. Consider the passage below; to me, it feels too calculated and puckish to truly bring these characters to life.

The Coultards arrived first of all, with their two horrid little boys; then came the Howard Wortleys, with Esther Hobbs and three well-washed, adolescent evacuees. Rhoda tried to stir up these preliminary guests to be going on with, but they weren’t immediately mixable. The Coultards accepted the Wortleys as equals, but the Wortleys weren’t able to place the Coultards at all, having merely been told that he was a schoolmaster, which gave him no social status at all. Mrs. Coultard, well-dressed, stout, and cheery, bustled about helping Rhoda and calling her my dear (but in Scotch, which told one nothing), while Mr. Coultard referred to Frank and Howard as Sir (but in a cherubic and public-school sort of way, which told one even less).
Paragraph after paragraph, page after page – Murder after Christmas runs 350 pages, by the way – and this sheer volume of determined description becomes a weight. The author also never passes up an abstract adverb/adjective combination and often follows it with another dependent clause, adding ponderously to the sentence. Used sparingly, the indulgence wouldn’t add up to much, but as nearly every other dialogue line featured this addendum of overwriting, it became defeating for me. I give you one exhausting example: on a single page within Chapter 16, characters do not speak without having “explained firmly”, “ejaculated prefatorially”, “wheedled hastily, averting another gust of laughter”, and “appended cautiously, reviewing the episode and finding it mellowed with time; then hoiking his thoughts sternly back to present realities”.

I get it, you say (and rightly so). You don’t like his writing style. It’s not to your taste. So what else? As Martin Edwards and other reviewers note, Latimer’s references to British country life during wartime give the story a welcome angle of interest and lend an authentic anchor to an otherwise fantastical plotline. As a reader, though, it was frustrating to be able to guess the “twist” element and the underlying motive for the actions creating the “twist” almost as soon as poor Uncle Willie’s body is discovered. I claim no special perspicacity at all; indeed, I’m easily bamboozled by these things. But the author leads us there with the book’s title and then underlines the concept by having his characters discuss a certain pertinent issue again and again. At least Rupert Latimer cannot be accused of hiding clues or sidestepping fair play.

Such an early but strong suspicion of the solution meant that I felt consistently ahead of the ruminating Superintendent Culley, who pushes through 100 additional pages before arriving at the same conclusion. It gave me time to ponder another weakness in this lengthy mystery story: after Uncle Willie’s demise, Latimer never complicates his plot by adding another victim to the roster, thus injecting some energy into an otherwise flagging story. There is the offstage death of another relative – by natural causes or foul play? – and I did enjoy some of the singular clues, such as mince pies sown into a seat cushion and the disappearance of a detective novel called… Murder after Christmas. The story has potential, and at half its length and stripped of its jungle of prose it would be a fun seasonal read. Like those mince pies, I think it’s ultimately a matter of taste.

I received an advance reading copy of Murder after Christmas from NetGalley in exchange for an honest (perhaps too honest) review.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    BLOG

    Lots of book reviews and discussion of classic and contemporary mystery fiction. I welcome comments and continuing conversation.

    Subscribe below to receive updates!

    Subscribe

    Categories

    All
    19th Century Novels
    Andrew Garve
    Anne Morice
    Anthologies
    Anthony Boucher
    Appalachian Authors
    Bill James
    Book Review
    Catherine Dilts
    C. Daly King
    Craig Rice
    David Goodis
    E.C.R. Lorac / Carol Carnac
    Erle Stanley Gardner
    E.R. Punshon
    Freeman Wills Crofts
    French Authors
    George Bellairs
    George Milner
    Gladys Mitchell
    Golden Age Mystery
    Gregory McDonald
    Hardboiled Detectives
    Helen McCloy
    Helen Simpson
    Henry Wade
    Herbert Adams
    Hugh Austin
    James Corbett
    J. Jefferson Farjeon
    John Bude
    John Rhode/Miles Burton
    Leo Bruce
    Maj Sjowall / Per Wahloo
    Margery Allingham
    Martin Edwards
    Michael Gilbert
    Michael Innes
    Mignon G. Eberhart
    Milward Kennedy
    Mitchell Mystery Reading Group
    New Fiction
    New Mystery
    Nicholas Blake
    Nicolas Freeling
    Noir
    Philip MacDonald
    Play Review
    Q. Patrick / Patrick Quentin
    Rex Stout
    Richard Hull
    Ross MacDonald
    Russian Authors
    Science Fiction
    Vernon Loder
    Vladimir Nabokov
    William L. DeAndrea
    Winifred Blazey
    Writing

    Mystery Fiction Sites
    -- all recommended ! --
    Ahsweetmysteryblog
    The Art of Words
    Beneath the Stains of Time
    Bitter Tea and Mystery
    Catherine Dilts - author
    Countdown John's Christie Journal
    Classic Mysteries
    Clothes in Books
    ​A Crime is Afoot
    Crossexaminingcrime
    Gladys Mitchell Tribute
    Grandest Game in the World
    Happiness Is a Book
    In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel
    The Invisible Event
    Martin Edwards' Crime Writing Blog
    Murder at the Manse
    Mysteries Ahoy!
    Noirish
    The Passing Tramp
    Past Offences
    Pretty Sinister Books
    Tipping My Fedora
    To the Manor Born
    Witness to the Crime
    

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    September 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    January 2024
    August 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    RSS Feed

Unless otherwise stated, all text content on this site is
​copyright Jason Half, 2024.