Category: Golden Age Mystery

Book Review: THE MURDERER OF SLEEP (1932) by Milward Kennedy

9/11/2021

Despite its soporific name, newcomer Grant Nicholson quickly learns that the riverside village of Sleep is awash in criminal cause and effect. Someone has bludgeoned Lady Thomas at the hotel with a poker and stolen her jewels, while the strangled body of inoffensive Parson Treatt reclines under a tree beside the towpath. As the newest arrival, suspicion falls on Nicholson, who has his own reasons for investigating the crime spree. Yet another jewel robbery and another outdoor murder (this of an unfortunately placed passing tramp) keep Inspector Marsh busy, and he faces his share of recalcitrant suspects, including the exasperated Colonel Jethro, the aristocratic Tynan family, and the shifty Richard Shurt, all visiting Sleep for the summer. The most uncommunicative of all is Mr. Cannon, a stroke victim unable to move or speak and perpetually pushed around in a wheelchair by a surly servant named Gubbidge. It is this frozen man who may prove a key witness to solving Sleep’s mysteries.

The Murderer of Sleep is a vast improvement over Milward Kennedy’s domestic whodunit from two years before, 1930’s Half-Mast Murder. Where that earlier story revolved around a wearying timetable of people in and out of a summer house and featured the reveal of a rather arbitrary culprit, the plot of Sleep unspools well and makes effective use of its suspects and its setting. The author also uses a lighter touch here that brightly satirizes the detective fiction genre. Take, for example, this charming extended analysis given by Colonel Jethro’s stepdaughter in an early chapter, as she muses on how the great sleuths of the age (manipulated by their creators, Kennedy’s Detection Club colleagues) would go about finding the Colonel’s missing tobacco pouch:

“The only way is to begin at the beginning and work backwards.”

That, after all, she said to herself, was the accepted method in the detective novels her stepfather devoured so eagerly… Father Brown no doubt would have reflected that you buy tobacco for a pouch just as much as you buy a pouch for tobacco, and then he would have concluded that if you could not find the tobacco in your pouch it might be because the pouch was in your tobacco… Well, then there were Roger Sheringham and Lord Peter Wimsey; but they would both want a little help from Scotland Yard, even if, at the end, they were going to show that Scotland Yard was all wrong. No, they would not do; their flippancy would drive her stepfather demented. And so would Poirot: the Colonel had no use for foreigners – particularly Belgians. And Superintendent Wilson would be wise but dull. And Inspector French – well, this would be a case after his own heart; the pouch seemed to have a dreadnought alibi – but it might baffle even French. She shook her head; it was clearly a case for one of her stepfather’s fellow Colonels. How splendid if they could both be employed: for while Gethryn telephoned to “someone in London” to secure (but keep to himself) the vital clue, good old Gore could potter about until someone – the deaf mute in this case – thoughtfully came and told him the solution.

She pulled herself together; this would never do.

The story, with its many incidents and occurrences, is engaging and admirably unconvoluted. I wish the cast had included more rustic villagers and fewer vacationing nobles and military men – the lively local servants tend to steal the scenes they are in, and Kennedy obviously took delight in crafting the words and actions of these colorful supporting characters. The police are used well here, and Grant Nicholson is given the catbird seat as an amateur (or, perhaps more accurately, visiting) sleuth who can also reap the benefits of a confidential relationship with Scotland Yard.

Taken in all, The Murderer of Sleep is an entertaining example of mystery fiction from the genre’s Golden Age, from its crime-enticing title to its explanation-fueled confrontation between detective and murderer in the penultimate chapter. I’m glad I awoke and tried another Milward Kennedy novel; this is a good one.

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Book Review: ROBBERY WITH VIOLENCE (1957) by John Rhode

8/23/2021

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At first, it was a bank theft with no violence at all. Overnight, someone removed nearly £ 9,000 from a locked holding room of a bank in the town of Fendyke using no force and leaving no clues. Suspicion fell on the staff, but no single worker had all of the keys to access the room and the safe at one time. The violence came months later: one rainy night, police discover the body and motorcycle of a widely disliked businessman named Edgar Chelmsford in a ditch. The petrol line on the cycle had been smashed loose and the spilled gasoline had rather surprisingly caught fire. The victim had apparently received a blow to the head that had stunned him. Superintendent Jimmy Waghorn is called in to investigate both crimes. Are the two incidents linked, and if so, what was the chain of cause and effect that led to murder?

First, the good news. This late-period John Rhode title incorporates an agreeable and rather faultless (from a logical puzzle standpoint) minor mystery. There are no loose ends, and the psychology driving motives and mea culpas, both for the theft and the murder, is straightforward and effective. As with nearly all of the many mysteries produced by Cecil John Charles Street over more than three decades (including his miles of Miles Burton books), Robbery with Violence is an easy and enjoyable read. It is certainly not one of Street’s strongest books, but it has an admirable clarity and cleanness in its plotting and prose.

However, two criticisms can be leveled at this title, and perhaps at much of the author’s 1950s output in general; both elements threaten to reduce the reader’s satisfaction with the story. First, we learn from Curtis Evans in his immersive overview volume Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery (2012) that, by the late 1940s, Street was narrating the texts of his books into a Dictaphone, which a secretary would then type out. As one can imagine, this verbal approach changes the prose structure, and Robbery with Violence is filled with character monologues that spill on for paragraph after paragraph and page after page. Actual dialogue – a back-and-forth of questions and answers between detective and suspect or witness – is supplanted by a speech where the character inevitably covers all the relevant information with no prompting.

Added to this, the later Rhode/Burton books have a dogged devotion to formula that can make the proceedings feel uninspired. Street was dismissively classified by critic Anthony Boucher as a “Humdrum” detective fiction writer, a craftsman only interested in replicating a story from a genre template (here, a crime, a police investigation, and interviews and clues that lead to a solution) with no greater literary aspirations. It is admittedly difficult not to view the author’s prolific oeuvre as a “cranking out” of books, especially in the later years. Curtis Evans offers this quote from Barzun & Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime regarding a 1947 Rhode title:

"Rhode now goes about his plots like a contractor; the deliberate laying out of equipment on ground carefully surveyed generates a powerful tediousness."

There is one more criticism to level at poor Mr. Street and his rather myopic Superintendent, and it is one that readers may understandably find hard to forgive. I still contend that Robbery with Violence is an enjoyable read, BUT it is a mystery that most readers will be able to solve the moment enough information becomes available. (And the author does play fair and present all the straw with which to make the bricks, as usual.)

Golden Age detective fiction fans far more astute than I will have no problem identifying culprit(s) and intuiting motives and means for both crimes long before Jimmy Waghorn manages it. (Most of it came together for me as early as Chapter Five.) It doesn’t help that the policeman spends many middle chapters building a case against a suspect with a motive and little else to tie him to the murder. Even the sedentary Dr. Priestley, who does nothing here but sits after dinner with eyes closed and drops hints that Waghorn misinterprets or ignores, seems a little exasperated. It is never good when the reader is waiting for the detective to catch up, and this too is not unique in the Street canon. One can sympathize with the author trying to lead us up the garden path, but doing so means his detective can’t be blind to obvious questions and details the reader is tracking all along.

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Book Review: THE MARTINEAU MURDERS (1953) by Richard Hull

8/13/2021

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In many ways, The Martineau Murders (1953) is a fitting final book to end accountant-turned-author Richard Hull’s output of crime stories. It features all of the author’s hallmarks: a misanthropic male antihero battling rustics in a village that gives him no end of grief; a darkly humorous tone bolstered by a plot with ironic turns and characters with sarcastic perspectives; and the prospect of murder undertaken without sufficient attention to the complications and the consequences of such actions. It also displays some of Hull’s less satisfying traits as a writer, including an ending that feels not quite worth the journey. (Martineau treads similar ground to the author’s first and most celebrated story, 1934’s The Murder of My Aunt, but comparisons unfortunately show the strength of the first to the detriment of the last.)

Convinced he is dying, Mr. Martineau decides to settle some imagined scores among the villagers of Underfield. Through diary entries, the reader learns that the once-prosperous squire has set his sights on Dwyer, a wealthy neighbor who has bought the family hall and property at a fair price, but with whom Martineau regularly argues about the upkeep of the water stream and the footbridge. There is also a gossipy man named Bowen whom Mr. M deems worthy of dispatch. As for the others in the village, they are irritants – from fluttery Miss Jefferson, who has a cough that especially displeases Martineau, to Mrs. Venner, who is particularly reluctant to sell the squire a custard tart – but for now escape a judgment of death.

But Martineau’s plans don’t go off as expected, largely because of the scattershot approach to setting his traps. Sabotaging the footbridge, tampering with automobile brakes, and growing a questionable batch of salmonella bacteria all yield results, but in each case either the intended victim escapes unscathed or an innocent party is injured or dies. Through these misfortunes, Martineau shows no remorse and great self-regard. By the time events and coincidence provide a strange sort of justice, Mr. Martineau may be past the point to appreciate the irony of it all.

I appreciated the simple cause-and-effect momentum of this book, especially since propulsive plotting is sometimes missing from Richard Hull’s stories. (Books like Last First [1947] and Invitation to an Inquest [1950] trap the reader in a languor that makes one yearn for a speedy conclusion.) Martineau’s narration and scheming move things along, and if the outcome is fairly obvious – the antihero is just too conceited and his execution too sloppy for his efforts to truly succeed – the journey is a darkly enjoyable one. It is also appealing that many of the characters we see through Martineau’s eyes are genuinely aggravating, whether it is the condescending and pompous Dr. Ritson or the selectively deaf groundsman Ashard, who has been secretly selling the squire’s surplus produce and eggs for a profit.

But the irritable, vain narrator at the story’s center is perhaps the most consistent element within the author’s oeuvre. Richard Hull seems to be fascinated by egotistical, petty males with an axe to grind, people who quickly find fault with others and are often driven to murderous distraction. Indeed, Hull’s best work seems to contain this archetype, from the dandy trying to kill his sainted Aunt to the dyspeptic copy writer in Murder Isn’t Easy (1936) to the curmudgeon-as-victim in Excellent Intentions (1938). Hull’s most meta-literary incarnation is Richard Sampson, the lawyer squirming under pressure in 1940’s wonderfully twisty My Own Murderer: here, the author mischievously gives the hopeful killer his own name.

Hull should also be celebrated for consistently experimenting with style and structure. He often employed an enticing gimmick with his stories: The Murderers of Monty (1937) tackles homicide by incorporated partnership; Last First delivers the last chapter first; A Matter of Nerves (1950) is a first-person narrative from the killer’s point of view where the culprit’s identity is only revealed at the end. With fourteen other books to consider and contrast against, The Martineau Murders is an enjoyable but slight story, one that was delivered more effectively by Richard Hull nearly two decades before.

Genre scholar and mystery writer Martin Edwards has frequently championed Richard Hull’s witty and playful stories. You can find Martin’s review of The Martineau Murders here.

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Book Review: STATELY HOMICIDE (1953) by George Milner

8/6/2021

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John Curran reports in The Hooded Gunman: an Illustrated History of Collins Crime Club that George Hardinge was an editor for the series, working at Collins in the 1950s and into the ‘60s. Using the pseudonym George Milner, Hardinge would publish six crime novels in his lifetime; 1953’s Stately Homicide is the first, and introduces private detective Ronald Anglesea, a character who only appears here and in the following year’s Shark among Herrings. The three Milner books I have read to date – the late novel A Bloody Scandal (1985) is the third, and that is a reworking of his earlier suspense story A Leave-taking (1966) – are readable and sporadically clever, although they are occasionally a lumpy mix of strengths and weaknesses.

In Stately Homicide, Anglesea is called to Tranby Castle by the Marchioness and asked to discover who was responsible for sending a telegram with deadly mechanical directions to Sir Richard’s racing team at the Barcelona Grand Prix. Before he can solve that mystery, a more immediate tragedy occurs: Lady Tranby is found dead in her bedroom, impaled by a family sword with the phrase Vengeance Is Mine written in lipstick on the wall. The detective believes that the victim’s husband, Henry, and family members Peter, Anne, and Jimmy all know more than they are willing to confess, and it is this knowledge that allows the pressure to build to a climax where another life is very nearly be taken.

For a mystery series editor, the author seems to struggle here with pacing; plotting is on stronger ground and the murder, occurring a third of the way through the story, at least offers a memorable visual tableau. But the plot within the first 60 pages of Stately Homicide meanders more than it should. We are introduced to the characters who will become the murder suspects, but they don’t really achieve definition (or interest) until that crime occurs. Milner’s prose may be humorous and gently satirical, but the book feels padded. I could have done without, for example, a quartet of doggerel verses Anglesea delivers to celebrate his love interest’s toes as she sways barefooted in a hammock. Other narrative digressions are more welcome, as when the author winks at the archetypes found within the mystery fiction genre:

It is a constant wonder to me how private detection survives as a profession. Some faint anomaly, discrepancy or suspicion may lead to the employment of a private detective and – Bang! Within the hour one of the employer’s nearest and dearest has gone to join his Maker in circumstances which are freakish, grotesque, bloody and much-publicised. As the sack of the city follows the admission of a spy, to employ a private detective is to invite sudden death. I was once commissioned to check a clause relating to jewellery in a marriage settlement, and I hadn’t even unfolded the document before the sound of gunfire broke out all over the house. A detective is a catalyst.

There is an amusing creation, Inspector Hammer of the Yard, who steals his scenes with his blunt barrage of questions during suspect interviews and his certainty of the scenario until the amateur sleuth Anglesea prods him in another direction. The solution is engaging but one of those that requires a few people involved to make some rather unbelievable choices due to their definitions of honor and virtue.

Still, it is arguably fair-play, with snippets of overheard dinner conversation, some persistent lawn maintenance, and a reference to “The Duchess of Kingston” enough for Ronald Anglesea to penetrate the family secret. Manor house parties certainly appealed to the author; this book and the next one let Milner’s detective play the outsider, moving among the aristocracy and enjoying his host’s hospitality while he dissects the dysfunction he finds among the many rooms of these stately homes.

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Book Review: THE MURDERER OF SLEEP (1932) by Milward Kennedy

Book Review: ROBBERY WITH VIOLENCE (1957) by John Rhode

Book Review: THE MARTINEAU MURDERS (1953) by Richard Hull

Book Review: STATELY HOMICIDE (1953) by George Milner

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