Category: Book Review

Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: LAURELS ARE POISON (1942) - Post #3

9/27/2020

Once more, the Mitchell Mystery Reading Group discusses a section of 1942's Laurels Are Poison. This week we focus on Chapters 10 through 14. Two caveats/apologias: as much of each reader's submission explored the busy and often confusing plotlines in this section, there will be plot-specific spoilers within this post (but no direct reveal of a murderer) and necessary editing or cutting of the offered comments to avoid repetition.

REFERENCES

Why not begin with the title of Chapter 10? The obscure reference sent us all on a brief search, and Chris B can speak for the group. He writes, "'The Flying Flacoris' names a real variety/circus act, a troupe of trapeze artistes that can be found listed in various showbiz posters in the period 1927 to 1938. It is understood to be an elaborate title for the rival rope-ascending gymnasts of this chapter, Laura and Miss Cornflake." Tracy hopes that the allusive and elusive heading "would have been more obvious to readers at the time the book was written."

Readers of the Mrs Bradley series will know that Mitchell enjoys letting her psychoanalyst sleuth refer to infamous figures from actual criminal trials. Constance Kent, the teen who was accused of killing her stepbrother, is mentioned in multiple GM books, and George Joseph Smith, the Brides in the Bath murderer, also appears as a reference (most notably in 1934's Death at the Opera).

Chris calls these additions "deliberately tasteless references to gruesome real-life murder cases that were within the living memory of her first readers." I often wonder about the synergy of sensational crimes and its effect on then-contemporary mystery fiction readers whenever I come across a notation, and Mitchell wasn't alone in this practice. But I never thought of the references as tasteless, but rather as an acknowledgement of a mystery writer's plot inspiration and as a wink to popular true-crime chroniclers of the time, like William Roughhead and Alexander Woollcott, who wrote up other people's tragedies and delivered them in a highly entertaining, compulsively readable format.

But back to Laurels. Chris reports that in Chapter 11, "Mrs Bradley asks her nephew Jonathan to carry an old trunk across the campus for the purpose of comparing two skeletons, [and Jonathan responds] 'Lead on, Patrick Mahon'. This Patrick Mahon was a notorious murderer who in 1924 had killed his girlfriend Emily Kaye, hiding her corpse in a trunk before partially disposing of its dismembered parts. The crime was known as the 'Crumbles Murder', after the Sussex beach near which it was committed."

On a (somewhat?) lighter note, Gladys Mitchell also shows her familiarity with Mark Twain. Joyka shares: "I do like the image of [Laura and her companions] 'parked like Tom Sawyer at the funeral' during their short stint in the gymnasium gallery."

And Chris provides the context for one further illuminating reference. "A stray literary allusion arises in Chapter 14, during Deborah’s Laura-interrupted English lecture, to Richard of Bordeaux by 'Gordon Daviot' (Elizabeth Mackintosh, the Scottish writer better known as 'Josephine Tey'). This was a notably successful 1932 historical play starring the young actor-director John Gielgud." Thanks for connecting the dots, Chris; this is quite an enjoyable nod to a fellow mystery novelist!

RESPONSES

Based on the responses for this section, it appears that Gladys Mitchell is trying the readers' collective patience as incidents accumulate and, as fresh details emerge, others become more mystifying still. Joyka comments, "I have to say that despite all of the clues strewn about in these chapters… it is [still] very confusing to me. The whole plot seems to be going off in various directions. Mrs Bradley has her ideas, the police have theirs, and Laura is hot on the trail, she thinks."

This from Martyn: "In terms of the greater mystery, I find the motives for these crimes and misdemeanors difficult to fathom. Who’s doing them and why? I’ve no idea. There does seem to be a financial (or penury) angle… and the cross-dressing Miss Cornflake appears to be up to her neck in it. But beyond that? All is dark. Fortunately, it’s the characters and the storytelling that keep me hooked."

And Tracy, a prolific crime fiction blogger from Bitter Tea and Mystery, offers this generous perspective: "It has often been said that Gladys Mitchell's Mrs Bradley mysteries are an acquired taste. I believe that I will grow to love the mysteries in this series, but at this point, reading only my second Mrs Bradley book, I am finding it quite a challenge. I get confused about what is going on, and the forward movement seems to be very leisurely. However, I firmly believe that the joy of reading is in the journey and that everything does not all have to be completely comprehensible. So I am enjoying this new experience."

Tracy's reactions are insightful, and I'm glad that Mitchell's overzealous plotting and eccentric mystery-story logic don't cause her or the other readers to surrender. She also underlines the prime criticism of mystery fans who, after sampling, want nothing to do with the Mrs Bradley series. Readers accustomed to Golden-Age Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers or Nicholas Blake expect a serious approach to fair-play clueing, and justifiably so: the genre entices with just such a promise. With her murder mystery storylines, Gladys Mitchell doesn't "cheat" so much as not confine herself to a puzzle logic, especially when a flight of fancy will result in a dynamic scenario.

The following year's The Worsted Viper will see Mrs Bradley chasing Satanists by boat through the Norfolk Broads, while Death and the Maiden (1947) presents a pair of near-drownings in which motives and specifics remain opaque even after two readings. The conventional fair-play mystery fan will understandably lose patience with such quixotic storytelling and illogical incidents. Personally – and one must speak for oneself, thumbs up or down – Gladys Mitchell delivers delights of characterization, setting, prose, and yes, even plot that allow me to overlook unresolved puzzle points. I still recognize the deficiency, but the journey is what rewards me.

One example of a GM delight? I'm with Martyn, who finds the author's evocative and often humorous turns of phrase – especially as given to her characters – something to celebrate. He writes, "It seems there are three parallel investigations on the go: Mrs Bradley’s, the police’s, and Laura’s. Laura’s has the linguistic verve. I loved her wordplay and her impossibly brilliant analysis of the movements of Mrs Castle’s corsets:

'Can you imagine the cook without them? I bet the murderer gave one goggle-eyed look at the mass of adipose tissue, then took a despairing look at the corsets, decided two into one won’t go, and slung the corsets into the river after the body, never dreaming that they’d fetch up where they did.'

REVELRIES

This week the reading group members also took turns celebrating the fast-developing friendship between Mrs Bradley and Laura Menzies. Martyn states that these chapters show "the evolution of Laura into Mrs Bradley's sidekick." I agree; if Laura had not been so resourceful with her own investigations and as quick-acting as a bodyguard in this first appearance, it would be difficult to believe that she impressed the psychoanalyst enough to be offered a job as secretary and Watson. Martyn adds that "they make a formidable duo, and just as well, as there is a marked increase in danger in this section. Revolvers are employed on more than one occasion."

The dress is 1970s pattern, but 1940s Mrs Croc would likely approve.

But it is the interplay between detective and Kitty Trevelyan, budding cosmetologist, that is most memorable for Joyka. "My absolute favorite moment of the book is Kitty taking Mrs B in hand to get her ready for the dance. When Kitty sees Mrs Bradley decked out in a four year-old orange and blue evening frock, 'her jaw drops, her eyes open wide and she makes an odd gurgling sound.' Mrs Bradley asks, 'Are you ill?' Kitty replies, 'Well, you might call it that.' True to her nature, Mrs B allows Kitty a free hand to work her magic."

Chapter 13, "Harlequinade and Yule Log", provides a charming montage of scenes where the author, sometimes in just a few paragraphs, orients each of the characters in representative activities over the Christmas break. Alice, for example, rejoins her church choir for some carol-singing, much to the relief of a soprano who thought her college friend would now have airs; George asks leave to visit his sergeant-major from the war; and this is how Kitty updates her mother about the goings-on at Athelstan Hall:

'Ghosts, murder, old Dog nearly getting pneumonia, somebody slashing up coats and breaking open trunks and tins of disinfectant, School Prac., all sorts of rumours that the last Warden disappeared at the end of last term, although some only say she was ill, and…'

'What was that about Laura getting pneumonia, dear?' asked her mother, detaching from this welter of rhetoric the one accessible and assimilable fact.

Chris did not enjoy the "pointlessly digressive interlude" – it is accurate to say that the sequence of scenes does not advance the plot – while Tracy calls the Oxfordshire excursion "lovely" and adds, "This is just one small event within the larger story, but it is one the best pictures of a family Christmas that I have run across in mystery fiction." Nick Fuller often refers to Gladys Mitchell's prose as "lucid" and, for me, connected with that is an ability to evoke distinct settings and characters with just a few sentences and well-chosen details. We don't need to know how George, Kitty, and Alice spend their holidays (and we don't get more than these brief glimpses; i.e., they do not overstay their welcome on the page), but Mitchell's decision to do so makes her created world that much more vibrant.

REALITIES

Which brings us to a theme running through this post: the fictional indulgences that the writer engages in contrasted with the realities of life as we know it. (Or at least the delivery of genre expectations.) This bridging of fact and fiction must to some extent be recognized and honored – especially in mystery stories – or else we would have locked-room teleportation and unconvincing coincidences galore, with no one likely satisfied. I want to use the hoary phrase "suspension of disbelief" here, but I also think this ties back to the question of why a person reads a Gladys Mitchell mystery, if he or she chooses to read one at all. What are they looking for in the experience?

There is stylization, or a sense of unreality, that can be highly rewarding for the reader. Martyn comments that "the courtship of Deborah and Jonathan is pure drawing room comedy." He also argued, persuasively, that the constant entrances, exits, and near misses around the crime scene in The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (1929) are a knowing attempt at simulating stage farce.

At the same time, criticism can be directed at authorial oversights that intrude on that suspension of disbelief. The absence of logic – again, not a Mitchell rarity – pulled Chris out of the story when it came to details surrounding Miss Cornflake's identity. Certain behaviours "suggest to Laura that Miss Cornflake is in fact a Secondary School teacher, and therefore almost by definition already qualified ('certificated'), which means that she has no legitimate reason to be studying at Cartaret at all. Mrs Bradley’s subsequent enquiries at the Senior (i.e. Secondary) School in Betchdale confirm that all teachers there are certificated, and this is the school at which Miss Cornflake claimed, in her filed application to Cartaret, to have been teaching."

Chris continues: "The strange thing is that Laura, without any of the evidence concerning that application, detects the anomaly, while [Cartaret College Principal] Miss de Mugne has failed to notice anything odd in such an application, not even the glaringly bogus breakfast-cereal surname. The Principal seems indeed to have acted unprofessionally in admitting Miss Cornflake solely on the strength of an application letter, without seeking any reference from her supposed employer. We must also believe that in faking her CV, Miss Cornflake could somehow be confident that her claims would never be checked out."

There is also a fact-against-fiction dissonance in the story's geography, as Chris explained to me in his notes for the previous post. He writes, "I’m less than convinced by the topography of the setting. We are suddenly told in Chapter 9 that there’s a small public park next to the Carteret hockey-field. But why would anyone lay out a public park on out-of-town moorland? Who would use it? This is one of those cases (Death at the Opera is another) in which Gladys Mitchell gets so deeply immersed in the intrigues of an institution that she forgets to create a credible environment for it."

The criticisms are completely valid, and they likely frustrate other readers as well. I speak only for myself when I state honestly that such lapses in logic or assaults on pragmatic reality never occurred to me, although they are there on the page for all to see. And joyously, knowing the flaws exist doesn't hamper my enjoyment of a book like Laurels Are Poison. And that is due, I expect, to not how I read Gladys Mitchell's stories but why I read them.

Next week we look at the final four chapters – a slim 40 pages by my count! Thanks to all who have contributed and to all who are reading along with us.

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: LAURELS ARE POISON (1942) - Post #2

9/20/2020

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Welcome to the second installment of the group reading of Gladys Mitchell's Laurels Are Poison.

THE STORY

While all of the readers write about enjoying elements of the book, the mystery plotline in Chapters Six to Nine takes a backseat to characterization and dialogue. Certainly incidents and events occur, but the initial puzzle that brought Mrs Bradley to the college – to surreptitiously investigate the disappearance of the previous warden (or housemistress) of Athelstan Hall – seems to be overtaken by continuing pranks and the death of a staff member.

Chris B notes: "It’s becoming clearer at this stage that the imaginative and emotional heart of the novel is the bonding of the Three Musketeers [students Laura Menzies, Alice Boorman, and Kitty Trevelyan] through shared trials and teasing banter. The murder-mystery side of the story seems perfunctory and rather slow to develop: no proper corpse until the end of Chapter Eight, and it’s that of a mere bit-part character."

Tracy K relates this part of the plotline: "After an incident with a ghost at Athelstan Hall (actually loud, disturbing noises in the middle of the night), Cook and Mrs. Bradley have a disagreement, and Cook is sacked." She echoes Chris's critique of a slowed-down story. "For several chapters, it seems like many unpleasant events are happening but there is no forward movement on the actual case. Maybe Mrs. Bradley had a plan, but it was not clear to this reader. At this point, I was ready for some action. "

It's a fair assessment, and for as lively as characterization and dialogue (and the steady busyness of incidents and events) are in Laurels, I have never been gripped by its plot the way I have with some other Mrs Bradley books. It's not that the crimes are merely academic; I think it has to do with Mrs Bradley knowing how to proceed while the reader essentially needs to ride the river and trust its current, as Laura does.

Tracy concludes that "It takes until nearly halfway through the book before there is a suspicious death. Usually I am perfectly fine with a crime novel that takes a long time to set up the situation, but this time I was getting impatient. We know that Mrs. Bradley has been hired by the school to investigate Miss Murchan's disappearance and that the school has kept that incident quiet. Mrs. Bradley thinks that all the malicious pranks are meant to get rid of her. But why? and who [is behind them]?"

Indeed, those 'rags' do inspire interest and speculation in this section. Joyka comments that "spilling creosote deliberately is a messy stunt for sure, but cutting the hair of a student who is sleeping while recovering from surgery argues a more pathological tormentor." And that "proper corpse" Chris mentioned earlier takes the form of Mrs. Castle, an insolent cook whose body turns up down river from the college. Joyka mentions an intriguing, related anachronism: "Why would Cook have taken her corsets off before going into the river? Or did she?"

THE SERVANTS

While Chris B is not able to say much about the lightly sketched character of Cook – he laments that "It’s a pity that Cook isn’t made more interesting before getting drowned" – he provides these excellent observations about the author's use of working-class characters in her mysteries:

"Gladys Mitchell’s cast of servant-class characters often throws up surprises. Clearly she doesn’t want to be limited to the stock English types, so her Cockney chauffeur is given demanding intellectual interests (Nietzsche and Freud, in other novels), while an international array of servant characters is brought in, beginning with Henri and Célestine. The unexpected Japanese valet in The Devil at Saxon Wall is another example.

"In Laurels the surprise is Lulu [a maid], who seems rather too obviously to have been parachuted in straight from Gone with the Wind (is there a Mitchell-clan in-joke here?). Her evidently stereotyped portrayal sets up a further surprise, though: after the night of the spooky noises, Mrs Bradley sends her away on the grounds that black Americans are well known to be terrified of ghosts; but when she returns, Lulu turns out to be proudly untroubled by superstition of any kind, and the otherwise infallible sleuth is proved wrong."

Chris adds: "There’s a parallel here to an earlier moment (Chapter Four) when Laura assumes that the athlete Alice will not recognise a literary allusion to George Eliot (to Aunt Glegg of The Mill on the Floss), but in fact Alice does read books, and knowledgeably disputes the relevance of the allusion. The lesson both times seems to be that even the most perceptive characters, up to and including Mrs Bradley and Laura, can be blinded by their assumptions."

THE STUDENTS

All of the readers noticed the strengthening bonds between the women students and, in particular, between Laura and Mrs Bradley. Joyka writes, "I think it is in these chapters that Laura and Mrs Bradley cement their lifelong friendship. Mrs B recognizes in Laura not a troublemaker like other school leaders but a unique, creative thinker. She is well aware of Laura’s tendency to jump into things before looking (the river swimming episode comes to mind [where Laura looks for clues by recreating Cook's downstream trajectory]) but Mrs B knows Laura has an intuitive sense of what is right and wrong. And Laura has christened Mrs B 'Mrs. Crocodile' or 'Mrs Croc', which she uses with love, not derision. She says, 'I like the old girl. I don’t care who hears me say so.' Later, Mrs Bradley returns the compliment, 'I like that child. She is intelligent.'"

Martyn Hobbs also notes the growing friendship, with Mrs Bradley appreciating Laura's "adventurous spirit and 'thirst for knowledge' and her linguistic gifts." Martyn goes on to note that in Chapter Eight, "Skirling and Groans," we learn that:

When Monday dawned, students in various degrees of anxiety and nervousness arose (many of them before the rising bell had rung in various Halls) and began to put ready the impedimenta (Laura’s carefully-chosen collective noun, much appreciated by Mrs Bradley when she heard it) for the day.

Tracy says that she "especially enjoyed Laura's detective work following the discovery of the dead body, very resourceful and intrepid. And Kitty is one of my favorite characters. She has no real interest in teaching and would prefer to be a hairdresser. Down to earth and straightforward." I would agree that Kitty's personal motivations make a delightful contrast to her peers: as her true interests are not connected with her success as a teacher in training, Mitchell gives her a situational liberty that delivers some of the book's best comedy. This scene, where Kitty is observed in front of a classroom, is a marvelous example:

'So you see,' said Kitty, 'all you do – Hey, you, in the back row, stop pulling that girl's hair! No, dash it, you weren't doing up her slide. You were pulling her hair; I saw you. Oh, don't argue. You listen to me. Oh, hullo, Miss Topas. Take a seat, won't you… Now, you perishers – that is children – Look here, this is the point. No, not the decimal point, haddock! The point of my remarks. In other words, what I'm saying. Oh, all right, if you won't listen, you won't. Sit up, and we'll do some Pence Table. Don't know it? Don't know Pence Table? How does your father make out his betting slips, then? Come on, all of you. Twelve pence are one shilling. Eighteen Pence are half a dollar. No, I'm wrong at that.'

She got the class laughing. Then she rolled her eyes at Miss Topas and went back to multiplying decimals. Miss Topas gave her an average mark, prayed inaudibly for her soul, and passed out, highly appreciative, but, she feared, wrong-headedly so, of Kitty's capabilities as an instructor.

Joyka was also appreciative of the detective's (and her author's) playful worldview. "I love Mrs Bradley’s quirky sense of humor. After catching Kitty, who went out of bounds to buy treats for tea, Mrs Bradley decides she needs to see fair play during the sharing out so she invites herself to tea and eats two doughnuts and two-pennyworth of crisps which the others have paid for." It's another amusing detail in a book filled with moments of friendship and negotiation among women.

THE SPEECH

For these chapters, Martyn looked largely at language and word choice, and I am happy to share his observations here. Writes Martyn:

"A word on chapter headings. Some are clear but colourful ('High Jinks with a Tin-opener,' 'Revenge upon Goldilocks'), others are obscure ('Evidence of the Submerged Tenth'). This latter I long misread as the case of the submerged teeth. Now that could have made some sense, [but] actually, it was her corset, not her dentures, that had gone missing, which the wonderful Laura Menzies retrieves from the reeds. But the submerged ‘tenth’? That might refer to 'the supposed fraction of the population permanently living in poverty', a term used by the Salvationist William Booth (1890). Is there a financial motive behind all these shenanigans (a sort of rags to riches mystery)?"

As moderator and fellow reader, I am also uncertain what the 'tenth' refers to, although I had not thought of it before in terms of social class labelling! (Very nice detective work, Martyn.) When I had read Laurels previously, I had presumed the 'tenth' might be a British student designation for Laura – although earlier we learn of First-Year and Second-Year student rankings at the college. The athletic ingénue also submerges, and then emerges, with the evidentiary undergarment. If anyone else has a theory about the context of 'the submerged tenth', please feel free to share.

Martyn provides this optimistic observation: "Some of the chapter headings only become clear further on into the story. Those 'promiscuous vessels' of Chapter Four were, in fact, the missing chamber pots, as Mrs Bradley explains in Chapter Six. Up to then I had imagined that that had somehow alluded to the naughty antics of the 'weaker vessels' (women).

But back to Laura: Martyn notes that she is an influence on many. "'Come on my right side, for this ear is deaf' says Deborah to Miss Topas. Then she adds, apologetically, 'Shades of Laura Menzies.' That too is a citation from Julius Caesar. And, of course, a ghost is going to turn up at Athelstan Hall, just as Caesar’s ghost entered before the Battle of Philippi…"

And Joyka recognizes the author's wonderful synthesis of characterization and dialogue (and dialect), working in tandem. Joyka writes: "Another thing I love about Gladys Mitchell is her ability to describe the essence of a character in just a few sentences. The Ditch family is a reoccurring favorite of mine. They may be rural but they are not unintelligent, backwards people. Their comments are based on observations of the world in which they have lived for centuries. Here is Our Walt commenting on Miss Topas and her young man as they study their books and maps: "I say, our young Mam, do ee thenk their brains, like, ul stand et? Tis like so much witchcraft to I."

With readers wondering what witchcraft will come next – and with Martyn curious as to what the Flying Flacoris of Chapter Ten's title might be – visit us next week as we continue our discussion of Laurels Are Poison!

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Book Review: MORTMAIN HALL (2020) by Martin Edwards

9/6/2020

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Writer Colin Watson coined the delightful phrase Mayhem Parva to describe a cosy mystery story featuring the contrasting but familiar combination of unexpected death and genteel rural English village life. It is logical, then, that genre scholar and prolific mystery fiction author Martin Edwards should contribute his own pairings of death-knell noun and residential location, first with 2018's Gallows Court, and now with Mortmain Hall. Both books are largely set in 1930s London rather than in a sleepy Midlands hamlet, so the evocation of a more urban address within each title is only fitting.

At center, both books feature force of nature Rachel Savernake and Jacob Flint, the newspaper journalist who is pulled into her orbit. In Gallows Court, Jacob worked to figure out whether Rachel was responsible, directly or otherwise, in the deaths of some prominent, powerful men who (until then) had likely gotten away with murder. In Mortmain Hall, it is true crime writer Leonora Dobell who has her eye on candidates who might have cheated the gallows. She is so intrigued, in fact, that she invites the group of suspects to her fatefully-named manor house, where more murders do in fact occur. But by then, three-quarters through the book, there has been a steady accumulation of bodies dispatched a variety of ways, and one of the principal questions becomes how the busy run of violence past and present is connected.

I always appreciate an author who experiments with structure, one who is not content to merely deliver the same type of story again and again. (I am, after all, a great champion of Gladys Mitchell, who showed remarkable variety in tone and tale in her work from her first two decades.) Here Martin Edwards approaches his plot and progression differently than the way he built Gallows Court. For one thing, there is a more deliberate incorporation of the Golden Age of Detection elements that the author knows so well. This mystery more closely resembles the genre structure we are familiar with: one initial murder (whose victim Rachel speaks with right before his death) followed by others, a loose group of suspects, a trail of clues both obvious and oblique, and a gathering-of-suspects stormy-night climax where the detective accuses individuals of minor crimes before revealing who committed the major one. Where Gallows Court felt like a galloping thriller with mysteries to be solved, Mortmain Hall reverses the emphasis, so much so that Edwards provides an enjoyable end-of-book tool called a Cluefinder, a list of details and accompanying page numbers to show how evidence from prose dialogue and description could lead a perceptive reader to the solution.

I enjoyed too Mortmain's main character from a plot-driving sense, the enigmatic, masculine, and mischievous Leonora Dobell. She is the figure who contrives to put the cat among the pigeons, and she also adds Rachel Savernake to her list of unpunished killers. Leonora publishes her crime reporting under a male pseudonym – this is still 1930s London – and Edwards explores the gay demimonde of the time and place, as well as the sense of shame and fear should the secret come out and ruin reputations. There is, too, a cataclysm at the climax where nature steps in to deliver justice and destruction like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, and I find great satisfaction in such a conspiracy of elements and author.

When the storm clouds clear, though, Mortmain Hall for me is less engaging than its predecessor. This has to do with the roles Edwards' two series characters are assigned here. While Rachel speaks with the story's initial victim, a man in hiding who returns not quite incognito to attend his mother's funeral and in so doing speeds along his own, it is reporter Jacob (and Rachel's faithful family servant Trueman) who does the leg work and much of the surmising. It is also Jacob who, around the story's halfway point, gets framed for murder and must work his way out of the derelict room that houses him and a corpse. This he does, and it came as a surprise that it was Rachel and not Jacob who assumes the role of end-of-book detective, tracing the many paths and crossroads that provide the answers to Who, How, and Why for crimes ancient and recent. For Rachel Savernake here seems largely a reactive figure until that moment. This is because the burning enigma that drives the reader's fascination in Gallows Court – is she a murderer, and if so, is she justified? – is answered in that story and consequently the character's persona is on a very low flame in this book.

Due partly to this, which makes the involvement of both Savernake and Flint in this case academic and impersonal rather than emotional and of high stakes to each, the crime plot and secondary characters of Mortmain Hall felt more distanced and less urgent for me. Even Jacob escapes that crime-scene bedsit within a dozen pages, so any chance of a recurring personal danger is minimized and pressure is no longer on him as it would be were he still a Person of Interest by the police. The irony is, had this been a standalone tale, or had I read this book before Gallows Court, I would not be aware of two strong characters from a previous story looking from the outside in and thus undercutting their potential. Granted, it is because the author put this duo through its paces so well in their first adventure that the characters' once-removed positions here seem lacking.

The above criticisms are (obviously) my subjective thoughts on narrative structure and character activation. Let me note that there is much I enjoyed while visiting Mortmain Hall, including the author's typically taut and energetic pacing and an abundance of primary and secondary mysteries to be solved. These elements should keep, and have kept, many detective fiction fans and amateur and professional reviewers enthralled: see Kate at crossexaminingcrime, The Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, and the starred review from Publishers Weekly. And JJ at The Invisible Event has a podcast where he and Edwards discuss the book and the author's many influences and achievements.

I can also say without reservation that I look forward to the next Flint/Savernake story! Mortmain Hall has already been available to lucky UK readers, and will be released to US mystery fans via the great Poisoned Pen Press on September 22. I received an advanced reading copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: LAST FIRST (1947) by Richard Hull

7/26/2020

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Dedicated to those who habitually read the last chapter first.

So states the dedication of 1947's Last First, perhaps the author's boldest experiment in narrative order, where one reads the last chapter first and then spends the rest of the book watching the story build to that moment. It is a gimmick, all right, especially as the mystery genre is often all about the final chapter, with its revelations of who, how, and why crimes have been committed. To provide this information at the very top is innovative, to say the least, with many traps attendant.

But that's not what Richard Hull has actually attempted here.

Let me start at the beginning rather than jump in at the critical climax. Last First follows a small group of visitors at the Portray Hotel, a fishing and hiking retreat in the hills of Scotland. A gruff businessman named Appleyard arrives with his young secretary in tow, a flirty woman named Rosemary Mordaunt. The sole feminine presence within this masculine bastion soon stirs up conflict, and the disagreeable Communist Weston, poetry-spouting Romantic Bourn, and athletic and quiet Fielden are soon all very aware of the pigeon among the cats (or vice versa). The long-time resident and unofficial hotel mascot known as The Admiral also notes the tension and wonders whether the strain will spoil the week's planned fly-fishing excursions. It is The Admiral who will become a (rather slight) amateur detective when Appleyard's body is found on a rock with his head in the waters of the river Deren.

One of accountant-turned-writer Richard Hull's genre strengths is his continued interest in trying new storytelling approaches and set-ups: his celebrated debut novel, 1934's The Murder of My Aunt, is an inverted tale where the hopeful murderer documents his attempts in diary form (which we are reading); the flawed but amusing The Murderers of Monty (1937) hinges on violence drafted and agreed to by a limited partnership committee; and the highly enjoyable My Own Murderer (1940) has us rooting for an amoral lawyer who tries to frame his criminal client. Hull's output is inconsistent, but nearly all his stories show some curiosity about how expectations of the detective fiction format can be subverted and challenged.

So it is with Last First, a book that I found not wholly successful but intriguing in parts. How does the author manage that tricky "last chapter first" gimmick? If all is truly revealed from the beginning, i.e., if the identity of the murderer, the explanation of the crime, and the fate of the guilty party are all announced before the story even starts, then there is no suspense and little reason to read the detective story, as the reader can no longer play the game. To avoid this, Hull paints a climax where the characters are not positively identified. A man is atop a bluff, holding a gun, while three figures below walk across the rocks and grasses that trace the winding waters of Ben Deren. Rosemary Mordaunt, the only person not referred to by a nickname – everyone else is "Bongo" or "Greggy" or "Hoots", a childish naming habit of the flirtatious secretary – joins the man with a gun. Soon, the gun is fired, but is it to "warn off" a man below from stepping away from the path and into a dangerous bog or for a more sinister reason?

So we have a rather disorienting final scene first, followed by the story told chronologically to get the characters to this moment. The striking Scottish setting is agreeable and I was willing to let the story unwind – or more precisely meander – in order to complete the circle. The drama that unfolds at Portray Hotel and environs, however, is not especially believable or engaging, unfortunately. As I have felt with some other Hull novels, such as A Matter of Nerves and Invitation to an Inquest (both 1950), some of the scenes in Last First have a sort of page-filling, time-marking quality, and they are scenes that prove mostly unnecessary to the greater plot and are built upon chattery dialogue that doesn’t offer much in the way of clues or even characterization. I notice that Hull's last six books, including this one, have a tendency to wrap up at exactly 192 pages; it makes me wonder if he was writing to a strict word count, which in turn makes me suspect that those desultory conversations that pad the middle of these stories help to serve that purpose.

Still, Last First has moments of interest, although I have to wonder what a truly brilliant mystery fiction plotter might have done with the challenge of telling a detective story with the last chapter presented as the start of the narrative. (Note that the challenge would lie in tackling a true fair-play whodunit this way; a thriller tale where climax is offered up first seems a lot easier to craft, and in fact that's partly what Hull leans on here.) One wonders what Agatha Christie or Nicholas Blake might have done with the conceit. As for Richard Hull, he makes an attractive fly-cast, but falls short of hooking a fish of any substance this time around.

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: LAURELS ARE POISON (1942) - Post #3

Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: LAURELS ARE POISON (1942) - Post #2

Book Review: MORTMAIN HALL (2020) by Martin Edwards

Book Review: LAST FIRST (1947) by Richard Hull

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