Category: Book Review

Book Review: THE BEAST MUST DIE (1938) by Nicholas Blake

6/11/2019

I'm working my way through Nicholas Blake's Nigel Strangeways mystery series after having first read the books nearly 20 years ago. But this month, when I came to the excellent 1938 entry The Beast Must Die, I was reluctant to revisit it. Two reasons for this: the central premise is so vividly designed and presented that I still felt familiar with the story after all these years; and I had such a good experience the first time around that I didn't want to try it again merely to find diminishing returns.

Happily, this Beast holds up and well warrants a second look. And for mystery fans who haven't yet read the suspenseful, twisty novel, there's even more to enjoy.

A plot summary with too many specifics might telegraph or ruin some surprises, so I will limit myself to the story's inciting incident and early developments: we learn through his diary entries that mystery writer Frank Cairnes plans to identify and murder the hit-and-run motorist who killed his young son. This motivation may not be fully moral but it is sympathetic, and it doesn't take Cairnes long (especially as he happens to encounter a convenient after-the-fact eyewitness) to come up with a prime suspect, a boorish and petty garage owner named George Rattery.

It is when Cairnes insinuates himself into Rattery's circle and begins the game of cat and mouse that The Beast Must Die becomes an irresistible, page-turning tale of suspense. A murder occurs – we have been witness to Cairnes' inner thoughts and deadly plans throughout the diary's narrative – but not in the way that intended killer or intended victim expect. Nigel Strangeways is brought into the dramatic affair, and he finds a number of well-drawn characters to view as suspects, including Rattery's dour, manipulative mother, his ex-mistress who has begun to fall for Frank Cairnes, and even Rattery's bullied and emotionally fragile teenage son.

I admire author Blake/Day-Lewis's skill here to shift and blend many distinct elements of the crime story, from traditional whodunit and detection to Shakespeare-inspired cold revenge tale to a human-sized moment of modern-day tragedy. The various tones not only fit together well but also keep the story propelling forward with a what's-next urgency that later Blake novels often don't deliver. Blake's early titles are filled with clue- and character-generated attention to detail, and it is clear that he is taking seriously the challenge of crafting a satisfying fair-play mystery. Like many good writers with a similar pedigree, he may be traveling in a popular genre but he's not taking a condescending view. The moods, brooding natural settings, and pathos that are generated (interestingly, both at the beginning and very end of the story) prove highly effective, and hint at Day-Lewis’s talents as a poet who is attentive to imagery, structure, and specifics.

Even if one still finds some flaws in this Beast – there are a couple expedient coincidences for one thing, and the murderer’s rationale that inspires the commission of that crime at that moment could be viewed as either bold or foolhardy – it is still a very engaging read. Other reviews of the book can be found from Kate at crossexaminingcrime (also a reread for her, and equally good the second time around), Nick at The Grandest Game in the World, and The Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

0 Comments

DEATH BY SUGGESTION (2018) ed. Donald K. Hartman

5/12/2019

0 Comments

For crime and mystery writers at the end of the 19th century, hypnotism must have been a thoroughly tantalizing subject for strange and shocking story ideas and plotlines. The still-new quasi-science by definition featured a person in power influencing another to act or think a particular way, even potentially acting against his or her will. Could tales of unscrupulous mesmerists inciting spellbound victims to steal and kill against their conscious nature be far behind?

It turns out, hypnotism stories of vengeance, crime, and tragic outcomes became a cottage industry in the literary world of the 1880s through the 1910s. In Death by Suggestion, a new anthology from Themes & Settings in Fiction Press, editor Donald K. Hartman assembles an impressive collection of 22 tales from that era dealing with the theme.

It appears to have been a great amount of curating (mostly from magazines and digests of the day), and I'm always very happy to see such efforts to archive and present period writing that would otherwise be forgotten. Hartman's introductory description is fair: he writes that "You will find here stories that are preposterous; some that are slightly plausible; a few of them may make you shiver; and a couple may even make you laugh; but hopefully, you will find them all entertaining."

One question I had before reading was whether the assembled stories, focused on so narrow a subject and following an anticipated narrative, would feel repetitive when collected and read in a group. The answer is Yes and No; there is some welcome variety in the use of hypnotism within the plots, as well as differing tones and thematic goals. That's all to the good. Still, I chose to read only a few pieces each week, in between other books and activities, as the turn-of-the-century writing style and the often superficial characterizations were overwhelming when sampled en masse.

But let me get to the stories, of which a number proved intriguing and entertaining. Certainly there are recurring themes here, a principal one being a male hypnotist jealously working to bring about the ruin of a romantic rival (and sometimes ruining the woman in the process). The villain of Julian Hawthorne's "The Irishman's Story" is Dr. Gramery, a mesmerist with "brilliant eyes" – they nearly all have brilliant eyes – who is particularly cruel in seeking his revenge. J.E. Muddock's story "The Crime of the Rue Auber" offers another amoral antihero, where a man hypnotizes his wife to kill his mistress's husband in a kind of two-birds-with-one-stone auto-suggestion. Similarly, "The Playwright's Story" by Willard Douglas Coxey follows a scribe who uncovers an affair between his actress wife and her stage partner, and hypnotizes the man to strangle his wife onstage.

Men aren't the only people to wield deadly power here. The woman with the mesmerizing eyes and the dark, fearsome beauty often manages to kill a succession of men in these stories, either to receive life insurance money (as with "Philip Darrell's Wife" by B.L. Farjeon) or simply to destroy males like a black widow spider (see the entry from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "John Barrington Cowles"). A variation on the latter, and one of the best stories in the collection, is Erckmann-Chatrian's atmospheric "Suggested Suicide," which is unique because the male witness watching a witch-like woman control and kill lodgers staying at an inn learns the rules of hypnotism so he can turn the spell on the caster.

The other stories that were most notable to me were those that managed to use the subject in an unexpected way. Two engrossing pieces explored the toll that hypnotic power may take on user and subject: Hugh Conway's "Paul Vargas: A Mystery" features a mesmeric man who transfers illness from a woman to himself, eventually becoming paralyzed and deathly ill as a result; and Charles Fleming Embree's "A Higher Hypnotism" finds its hypnotist paralyzed as he tries to physically control (as if through real-time telepathy) his subject.

There are two short sketches by Ambrose Bierce included here, and one is the most comical story in the group, simply called "The Hypnotist." A mischievous narrator finds creative ways to bump off those he dislikes, convincing a prison warden that he is an ostrich, who then swallows "a great quantity of indigestible articles mostly of wood and metal", and making his scheming parents believe they are warring broncos.

A few stories went even farther afield (with enjoyable results), such as "The Harmony of Horror" by Havelock Ettrick, a slight but brisk adventure involving a kidnapped concert pianist, a shadowy society, and a deadly piano chord; and "Hypnotism with a Vengeance" by Ichor, a sort of Jonah and the Whale retelling with a spellbound ship's mate remaining unconscious during his fantastic ordeal.

Death by Suggestion makes for fun reading and provides an interesting look at how popular culture was translating the exoticism and dangers of hypnotism in the late 19th century. I'm grateful to Mr. Hartman for providing me with a copy of the book in exchange for this (hopefully clear-eyed) review.

0 Comments

MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #4

5/4/2019

3 Comments

It has been an interesting – and, for some readers, frustrating – journey through 1937's Come Away, Death for those completing April's Mitchell Mystery Reading Group event. This final, belated post examines the last five chapters in particular, where a body is finally discovered (more accurately, a head), an investigation begun and concluded, and a murderer confronted. It's a very unusual structure for a classic murder mystery, but as I remarked in the previous post, I suspect Gladys Mitchell was more interested in generating atmosphere and intrigue than in delivering a schematically presented puzzle plot. As such, this novel reads more like fatalistic Greek tragedy and less as a conventional whodunit.

And that's fine with me, and it also appealed to Martyn Hobbs, who references some wonderful text examples supporting this idea. Namely, Come Away, Death shows Mrs Bradley as an instrument of justice in the classical sense but not at all concerned with the machinery of modern law, which lacks the nuance to deliver an appropriate fate to the person who rids the world of a blackmailer and sadist.

Martyn writes, "There’s never any question of her bringing the murderer to court. And the idea of the law, British or Greek, seems on holiday with our cast of characters. Greece is another country, a sort of Shakespearean Forest of Arden where normal service no longer applies. And as we have felt before, the actions of the present day appear so mean and tawdry compared with the tragic misdeeds and suffering of the past. Marie Hopkinson says near the end,

"Athens isn’t like London… And what’s more, one doesn’t feel the same here about these things – murder, and being suspected of it, and regarding it as something belonging to the Sunday papers, and so on. One remembers all the old stories – one sees things as Homer saw them, and as Aeschylus and Euripides and darling Aristophanes saw them – and they seem – death seems – trivial compared with – I don’t know how to put it – great things looming, and slaves’ lives meaning nothing, and fate hovering – great wings, great mountains, great, clean, sweeping skies."

I return to that parched and inhospitable landscape of Hellenic ruins that the author renders with such sensory description, and I again feel great admiration for Gladys Mitchell's literary intent with this novel. It's not an enjoyable book in terms of light-reading detective fiction, but it is a fascinating and full one. After the discovery of decapitated vipers (originally kept, when alive, in a locked strongbox), Mrs Bradley searches for and finds the original container, which now carries the photographer Armstrong's head.

Martyn remarks that "after the much-delayed arrival of the murder victim, his actual identification is quite perfunctory. No fanfares for Mrs Bradley or any show of horror or hysteria; it is all very dry and matter-of-fact. If anything, we’re given more information about the condition of the box than about her horrific discovery":

She rewarded the husbandman, carried away her treasure trove, and, away from all observation, opened the lid, for the lock had been broken off and the lid lifted easily. Inside the box was the putrefying head of Armstrong. She pushed the box in among some bushes, wrapped up the head in a large coloured handkerchief which she had been wearing as a turban, and walked out on the road which led to Selçuk.

The scene – and especially the detective's strange quasi-forensic decision to poke and bury the gruesome evidence – made an impression on reader Catherine Dilts: "While I was not surprised Armstrong became the murder victim, I was utterly horrified that Mrs. Bradley played with his head, and then left it in a hole. She is remarkably calm, even while noting the hideous odor and appearance of Armstrong. Perhaps that is due to her reptilian nature?"

The decapitated snakes and the indifferent disposal of a human head were not the only moments which highlight the savagery of the setting. The sight of Ronald Dick hanging from the bent branch of a young tree, his feet just touching the ground, is a ghoulish, merciless image. Martyn adds that the rental by Sir Rudri Hopkinson of dangerous, half-starved village dogs delivers an additional element of "horror and revulsion. Shaggy, snarling, half-wild but wholly savage, they are ‘black as the hounds of hell’. Dick, insisting that they must be humane, had fed the beasts on pieces of rotting meat. Guessing that Dick may have been the assassin, I imagined that he was gorging them on Armstrong’s dismembered remains…"

Joyka noted that the strangely menacing, rather atypical tone of this story (when compared to the other Mrs Bradley mysteries) made her fear for the elderly investigator in this instance. She writes, "I was really worried when I first read this book that Mrs Bradley was going to be the next victim. She will just not leave Armstrong’s “slaying” alone. And despite the fact that everyone in the group is willing to tell any amount of lies to mislead her – except for the small boys – she does solve the mystery."

Mitchell allows Mrs Bradley to transition from passive observer to active theorist and interviewer in the final three chapters, and I enjoyed the change. It can be legitimately argued by critics that she sometimes doesn't approach fair-play puzzle plotting as her contemporaries do; indeed, she often seems more interested in character, situation, and mood than in carefully clued and alibied scenarios. But this difference in perspective and intent is largely why I respond to Gladys Mitchell's stories far more than those from other GAD authors. I would argue that, in her strongest works, Mitchell can generate great interest and mystification in her plotting and clueing. Chapters 19 and 20 here have an energy and clarity that I found extremely satisfying.

Others take a different view. Martyn, who otherwise greatly enjoyed Come Away, Death, did not like the late-chapter change in the old lady, perhaps due to a genre obligation: "There’s the vague sense of Gladys Mitchell going through the necessary motions when she describes Mrs Bradley’s investigation and solving of the mystery. Having been treated with subtlety throughout the story, Mrs B now begins to ‘cackle’ again. And again. In fact, her cackling gets out of hand, breaking out from page to page."

Joyka, who notes that the author revisits a few of these characters in 1971's Lament for Leto, was surprised to find that this group was chosen for a sequel. "Most of the characters are weak-willed and/or self-centered. Even her schoolmate Marie Hopkinson does not trust Mrs B with the truth."

Come Away, Death may be the first Mitchell title to end with the hint of a supernatural occurrence. (From memory, 1978's Wraiths and Changelings and the 1967 Malcolm Torrie title Late and Cold feature similarly ambiguous events.)

From Martyn: "It seems that there was indeed a miracle at Epidaurus, and Aesculapius, god of healing, was in fact the white figure who haunted the maze. Yet in spite of everything and all his endeavours, Sir Rudri never saw him. Megan says ‘there’s death in that’, but Mrs Bradley contradicts her. ‘Not death,’ she says, ‘but only a summing-up of life.’ What is that summing up of life? If not death, is it that all we strive to achieve in life ends inevitably in frustration and defeat? Or are our endeavours lost by simple mischance, by accident, by something as banal as looking the wrong way?"

I'm grateful to all the readers who shared their thoughts on this mystery based on the Mysteries of Eleusis, including JF Norris and Nick Fuller (who says astute readers should be able to guess the murderer early if they have been paying attention to the literary clues). I hope to announce another Mitchell Mystery Reading Group event before the year is out. Next time around, it will be a Mrs Bradley title first published in the 1940s, and there are a lot of great options to choose from! All best wishes, intrepid travelers --- Jason H.

3 Comments

MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #2

4/14/2019

0 Comments

As we explore Chapters Six through Ten of Gladys Mitchell's 1937 crime story Come Away, Death, our contemporary travelers in the reading group have lots of ground to cover. The dark clouds of Greek tragedy, simmering tensions between the characters, and Mrs. Bradley's relationship to reptiles are all points of interest…

ON GREEK TRAGEDY (AND WELSH MARTYRDOM)

Nick Fuller, who provided so much great information to me last time about the Mysteries of Eleusis and the Demeter/Persephone myth, calls our attention to the doomed figures in the House of Atreus:

"The gods ordered Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to summon a wind to bring the Greek fleet to Troy. (In some versions, Artemis rescues the girl at the last moment, and brings her to her temple in Tauris.) When Agamemnon returned from the Trojan Wars 10 years later, his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon in his bathtub. To avenge his father, their son Orestes then killed his mother and her lover, with the help of his sister Elektra and his friend Pylades... Mitchell refers to Aeschylus's Oresteia - Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers (Choephori), and The Eumenides; Mrs Bradley mistakes Megan on the battlements for Clytemnestra watching for the beacons at the start of Agamemnon."

Martyn Hobbs noticed Gladys Mitchell's winking juxtaposition of the tragedies found in the ancient and current worlds. He observes: "While the threat of murder hangs over Sir Rudri’s motley crew, there is a contrast between the rather petty enmities of the moderns and the tragic passions of the ancients, whose ruins they tread among:

"The legends of the Atrides hung brooding over the heavy, broken walls of the Lion Gate, and round the unguarded graves. The dark passion of Clytemnestra, the anguish of young Orestes, made heavy the lowering atmosphere, soaked beyond bearing already, with the heat of the dead air before a storm.

Sir Rudri was not [Mrs Bradley's] only source of anxiety. The little boys, bored, and tired… had been by turns listless and tiresome. Alexander Currie had been severely attacked by flies… Armstrong, too, was a perpetual menace… and Gelert had given up any attempt at cheerfulness…"

And, while far removed from the time and setting of Hellenic mythology, JF Norris of Pretty Sinister Books informs us of the Welsh inspiration for one of Mitchell's more intriguing character names. JF says that the following is "taken verbatim from the English inscription (it's also in Welsh) on a monument in Beddgelert in Wales":

"In the 13th century, Llywelyn, prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert "the faithful hound" who was unaccountably absent. On Llywelyn's return, the truant, stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince, alarmed, hastened to find his son, and saw the infant's cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged the sword into the hound's side thinking it had killed his heir. The dog's dying yell was answered by a child's cry. Llywelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed but nearby lay the body of a mighty wolf which Gelert had slain. The prince, filled with remorse, is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here. The spot is called Beddgelert."

JF concludes that "Mitchell's hotheaded Gelert is aptly named – quick to throw a punch, but always as a means to defend and protect just like his namesake." I add that knowing this background also makes clearer the author's descriptive choice of Gelert as like a lean and angular greyhound!

ON STORY SATISFACTION

Having delved into some historical background, what do readers make of this section? We approach the novel's midway point but, despite Cathleen's premonitions of death, some bitter professional rivalry, and occasional knife fights, we have yet to claim a murder victim. Examining the initial chapters, this delayed approach to a detective story was frustrating to some. I was heartened, then, to see JF's opening remark for the current section: "It’s picking up in intrigue and gaining my interest. There is actual crime in this crime novel!"

Tellingly, Gladys Mitchell's choice to focus on character friction and conjure an uncomfortable, even hostile setting in this 1937 Mrs. Bradley story is exactly in keeping with her historical and contemporary fiction novels she wrote in this decade under the pseudonym Stephen Hockaby. In my opinion, the Hockaby books are some of her most accomplished works, and they share many of the elements found in Come Away, Death. In the Hockaby stories, death, violence, and character conflict are treated as everyday and natural occurrences. There is something similar at work here: the characters are at the mercy of the land and the fates; animals such as vipers (and, later, hyenas and savage dogs) are mere extensions of the arid and inhospitable landscape; and murder, when it does occur, is a necessity of the world order rather than an obscene sacrilege against it, as most moral Golden Age mysteries present the act.

From Nick: "The Mycenae section is stifling and oppressive. The attempted sacrifice is one of my favourite scenes in Mitchell; Mrs Bradley, "like some ancient prophetess", menaces Sir Rudri "with her hideous, leering lips". Mitchell often hints that Mrs Bradley is more than mortal. She's compared here to the Pythoness of Delphi; in other books, she's a witch (Tom Brown's Body), or the crone aspect of the Triple Goddess (The Whispering Knights)."

Our previous group of chapters ended with an act of violence against Armstrong, the photographer with blackmailing tendencies, and now, at the end of Chapter 10, there is another moment of impromptu violence, this one involving a knife fight between Gelert and an angry Greek man. Given that pattern, one can reasonably expect Chapter 15 not to end happily…

Speaking of which, JF is tracking the foreground villain's misfortunes: "I was delighted to watch Armstrong the vile sadist, way too vain and handsome for his own good, get beaten up by both Ian and Gelert. Nothing more I like than to see bullies get a taste of their own medicine." He adds, "I peg Armstrong to be the murder victim. He certainly seems destined for a cruel Fate if not a cruel murder."

Another interesting detail is that Gladys Mitchell has purposely varied the size of her chapters here. (In most of her mysteries they are fairly uniform.) Martyn observes that "a formal pattern is suggested by the lengths of the chapters. Up to now, they have been long and leisurely, subdivided into numbered sections. Now, suddenly, in this tenth chapter, it is all over after just four pages. The preceding chapter also stretched to only six. Glancing ahead (without reading!), Chapter 11 reaches up to nine, Chapter 12 makes it to five at a pinch, Chapter 13 hardly gets to page 3, while Chapter 14 recovers to achieve a more familiar extent. Does this compression portend an acceleration of action, of significant events, of that long-awaited crime?"

More from Martyn: "The symmetry of the groups of five chapters and the succession of brief chapters suggest GM is playing with the structure of her tale. It reminded me (vaguely, because I read it long ago in the last century) of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones where the central chapters of his huge novel cover the shortest periods of time in his narrative – the opening and closing chapters extend over years but at the heart of the book they cover only hours. I may be wrong on the precise timings, but the pattern is definitely there."

ON THE SNAKES AND THE SLEUTH

JF gives us a thoughtful text analysis and ties the book's slippery snake imagery into a neat bow. "I’m very taken with the snake motif running throughout," writes JF, "and it started on Page One: the ship that brings Mrs. Bradley to the shores of Greece is the Medusa. There is a section back in Chapter 4 where she talks about her affinity with the reptile world and how she is often likened to a lizard. When she shows concern for the snakes Sir Rudri brought for his odd rituals, noting that they should be exercised, he asks if she is afraid of snakes and she replies: 'I am almost the incarnation of one' and goes on to describe herself as 'definitely reptilian', 'sometimes saurian', but at least 'one or the other'. First time I’ve ever read the words from Mrs. Bradley's own mouth rather than being described as such by others."

He continues, "Later, when Mrs. Bradley is talking to Alexander Currie, Mitchell writes that 'she grinned disarmingly at him, as a cobra might possibly grin before it struck.' The section where all the snakes decide to curl up in bed with many members of the group as they try to seek warmth is one of the more surreal moments. Mrs. Bradley even puts her hand on the snake in her bed as if it’s her companion! I wish there was more of this in the book. This is what I read Gladys Mitchell for – the eerie touches, the bizarre moments, the nearly supernatural events that defy logic."

Martyn adds on: "The short early morning scene with the boys and the snakes makes me feel that GM could have written some great adventure stories for children. Incidentally, Mrs Bradley displays perfect (and fitting) sangfroid in her dealings with the serpents, entering with one coiled about her skinny arm – they even share a similar grin."

My note to Martyn's children story mention: she did write some entertaining, if not too remarkable, adventure stories with young readers in mind. The closest in spirit with the boys of this book may be 1940's The Three Fingerprints, where a trio of curious lads finds themselves investigating Nazi spies and avoiding an alligator in the course of their travels!

Next week we look at Chapters 11 through 15. Fewer pages but closer to that inevitable murder...

0 Comments

<<Previous

Forward>>

Book Review: THE BEAST MUST DIE (1938) by Nicholas Blake

DEATH BY SUGGESTION (2018) ed. Donald K. Hartman

MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #4

MITCHELL MYSTERY READING GROUP - Come Away, Death - Post #2

BLOG

Categories

Archives