The mysteries of Herbert Adams, whose writing spans a career from the mid-1920s to the late 1950s, fall into that comfortable category of the unremarkable but generally enjoyable cosy. In effect, he was a genre manufacturer, and one whose titles – or, admittedly, at least the two I have tried so far – are easy to read, fun in the moment, yet rather forgettable. Fellow “humdrum” colleagues Cecil John Charles Street (writing under the John Rhode and Miles Burton names) and Freeman Wills Crofts have fared better over the years, in part because their stories focus on the puzzle and the detection process. Adams’s tales occupy that space incorporating detective fiction, thriller, and burgeoning love story between a pair of innocents, all mingled together and not aging particularly well. Added to this, there is not a lot of surprise to be offered through dazzling deduction or bold narrative experimentation; the risks and rewards generated by the works of Anthony Berkeley or Philip MacDonald are a world removed from the predictable one that Adams’s detective Roger Bennion inhabits.
Such criticism and unflattering comparison may make one conclude that I am anti-Adams. But I am not at all; it is simply difficult to be passionately pro-. The Chief Witness from 1940 is my second sampled book from this author (after 1936’s A Word of Six Letters), and I will likely go on to read more. Like dozens of other Golden Age writers who busily published mystery fiction for decades and are largely forgotten today, Herbert Adams’s flaw is likely that his stories aren’t distinctive enough to be memorable. They have decent plots and pacing, the characters are agreeably drawn, and there is a dispassionate investment generated in the reader to see how everything shakes out. But it is damning with faint praise, I fear. I enjoyed The Chief Witness; the problem is that I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as my last Agatha Christie or Rex Stout, or even as much as my last Crofts or Rhode story.
Witness has an intriguing set-up: two brothers die on the same evening, almost at the same time, in their respective homes. Both appear to have shot themselves with a revolver, and both are in rooms where a smashed timepiece hints at the time of death. As Roger Bennion follows Inspector Goff around on his investigation, he learns that the details don’t quite add up for a double suicide verdict. Each man has a possible enemy or two who would like to see either Alexander or Frederick Curtis dispatched, but no one appears to have a strong enough motive for killing both brothers. And if murder, then why the choice for one hand to dispatch both men on the same night, a move calculated to arouse suspicion?
Bennion (and the reader) soon discovers that there are male suspects who might be unscrupulous enough to kill and female ones who are emotionally tied to the victims. To his credit, Adams excels at presenting sympathetic, larger-than-life female characters that evoke a response in the reader. One example is Margot Watney, a commanding young woman whose argumentative attitude masks a vulnerable fear that her fiancé, Wilfrid Mounsey, may be arrested for the crimes. Another beguiling woman is Alexander Curtis’s wife, Helen, who was never legally married and is now fighting with her stepdaughter Delia for control of the estate. While these women characters will never be confused for fully rendered creations, they do resonate in the book to a much greater degree than their male counterparts, who are heroically dull or villainously melodramatic as called for.
Such criticism and unflattering comparison may make one conclude that I am anti-Adams. But I am not at all; it is simply difficult to be passionately pro-. The Chief Witness from 1940 is my second sampled book from this author (after 1936’s A Word of Six Letters), and I will likely go on to read more. Like dozens of other Golden Age writers who busily published mystery fiction for decades and are largely forgotten today, Herbert Adams’s flaw is likely that his stories aren’t distinctive enough to be memorable. They have decent plots and pacing, the characters are agreeably drawn, and there is a dispassionate investment generated in the reader to see how everything shakes out. But it is damning with faint praise, I fear. I enjoyed The Chief Witness; the problem is that I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as my last Agatha Christie or Rex Stout, or even as much as my last Crofts or Rhode story.
Witness has an intriguing set-up: two brothers die on the same evening, almost at the same time, in their respective homes. Both appear to have shot themselves with a revolver, and both are in rooms where a smashed timepiece hints at the time of death. As Roger Bennion follows Inspector Goff around on his investigation, he learns that the details don’t quite add up for a double suicide verdict. Each man has a possible enemy or two who would like to see either Alexander or Frederick Curtis dispatched, but no one appears to have a strong enough motive for killing both brothers. And if murder, then why the choice for one hand to dispatch both men on the same night, a move calculated to arouse suspicion?
Bennion (and the reader) soon discovers that there are male suspects who might be unscrupulous enough to kill and female ones who are emotionally tied to the victims. To his credit, Adams excels at presenting sympathetic, larger-than-life female characters that evoke a response in the reader. One example is Margot Watney, a commanding young woman whose argumentative attitude masks a vulnerable fear that her fiancé, Wilfrid Mounsey, may be arrested for the crimes. Another beguiling woman is Alexander Curtis’s wife, Helen, who was never legally married and is now fighting with her stepdaughter Delia for control of the estate. While these women characters will never be confused for fully rendered creations, they do resonate in the book to a much greater degree than their male counterparts, who are heroically dull or villainously melodramatic as called for.
The climax here is also well done: it’s a serviceable if clichéd mix of menace to the detective and braggadocio from the killer. It involves a naked Bennion tied to a wheelchair, forced to listen to the Auric-Goldfinger-explains-all speech from the villain, and then thrown unconscious into a lake. While there is no uncertainty of the story’s ultimate outcome – perhaps another reason why Adams’s books feel predictable and prosaic to modern readers – the scene is engaging in the moment and kept me turning pages. The Chief Witness is also just enjoyable enough (but, sadly, only just) to make me return to the author in the future… although I’m in no great hurry. I shall try next one of his many mysteries involving golf and bodies on the links; they are reputed to be entertaining and readable, and with Herbert Adams, that is what one can reasonably expect.
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