Category: Golden Age Mystery

Book Review: THE KNIFE (1933) by Herbert Adams

5/22/2022

For fans of detective fiction, The Knife begins promisingly. Over the first fifty pages, Fullock Park houseguest Mark Braddon is party to the theft of Mrs. Rawland’s emeralds and uncovers a blackmail scheme hatched by an unscrupulous foreigner. Braddon resolves the latter by kidnapping the culprit, tying him up, and threatening him with a red-hot branding iron. A little later, when Wilfrid Hatton, King’s Counsel, is found murdered in notably gruesome fashion – stabbed with a decorative dagger through the eye – the sensational death by letter-opener feels a bit like an anticlimax. In author Herbert Adams’s hands, Fullock Park Manor is positively abustle with criminal activity.

This is the third title by Adams that I have tried, and it seems to be a good representation of the writer’s style and sentiments. For as much action and mystery that The Knife’s plot offers the reader, at heart is a love story: Mark Braddon’s growing attraction to Ruth Hatton, despite the woman being courted by millionaire M.P. Roger Malden. The plotting and pacing are engaging, but there is something formulaic at play, even within the genre of mystery fiction with a purposeful infusion of young-lovers romance. Adams’s stories remind me of the enjoyable but forgettable B-movies from Hollywood’s silver screen heyday: a perfectly pleasant way to spend some time, but a couple of clicks removed from better quality, more ambitious fare.

There’s also an aspect of The Knife that is simultaneously admirable and unfortunate. Adams provides a clue to the K.C.’s killer shortly after the body is discovered, one that is seeded with fair-play noblesse. The problem is that it’s one of those clues delivered in a way to make any reader of mystery puzzles pay immediate attention… and then the item is never mentioned again until Braddon realizes its significance at the story’s climax, which is several chapters after the penny drops for the reader. A true mystery fiction literary magician like Agatha Christie or Nicholas Blake would surely have performed a more successful legerdemain, such as first offering a convincing but false explanation of the clue or burying it among other details to disguise its damning relevance. In their encyclopedic Catalogue of Crime, Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor also mention the book’s clueing that allows the reader to “guess the concealed culprit around page 100”.

To his credit, Herbert Adams does provide a colorful group to stock his cast of characters. From the ex-Parisian dancer married to the several-decades-older murder victim to the deceased’s ne’er-do-well gambler cousin and his bitter spinster sister, these are solid if stereotypical characters efficiently used by the author in this melodrama. There is a nice variety here, with Braddon working to solve a mystery in one chapter, engaged in a deadly duel with the criminal near the climax, and rushing to join the object of his affection and declare his love by the story’s end. If Herbert Adams’s stories lack literary weight, they deliver busy, breezy plotlines, lucid writing, and respective dashes of suspense and romance. Which, for this genre, is better than a poke in the eye with a decorative dagger.

The U.S. edition by J.B. Lippincott Company (also 1933) was retitled The Strange Murder of Hatton, K.C. A strange rebranding indeed, since the new moniker lacks the elegant brevity (with its enticing promise of malice) of The Knife and supposes that American readers will recognize the British barrister’s significance of K.C. after the name.

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Book Review: THE CRIME CONDUCTOR (1931) by Philip MacDonald

4/23/2022

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We learn in The Crime Conductor’s mosaic-like first section that impresario Willington Sigsbee has managed a monumental coup: international film sensation and “Prince of a Million Hearts” Lars Kristania will appear in Sigsbee’s new play Harlequin’s Holiday running at his Strand theater. While the (largely female) public celebrates the news, the matinee idol’s casting sends ripples of animosity through the professional theater community.

Which board-treading toes are being stepped on? Several: Paul Vanesco, whom Sigsbee had plucked from the chorus of a revue and groomed for leading-man status, now finds himself unceremoniously unemployed. Oliver Prideaux, war veteran and husband to beautiful actress Anne Massareen, must watch from a distance as Anne becomes the onstage lover of a glamorous film star. Mary Wheelwright, formidable stage actress, no longer has a role in Holiday, her own star overshadowed by the wattage created by Kristania and Massareen. And two theatrical promoters, Montague Locke and Robert Cray, would do almost anything to lure Lars Kristania away from Sigsbee’s production.

Perhaps it is not a surprise when the impresario is found dead in his bathtub in the early hours of a house party. What concerns Colonel Anthony Gethryn, who accompanies Inspector Merridew of the Metropolitan Police, are the little details: why are the dead man’s clothes stacked in an illogical order for undressing? Why are no bath towels in reach? And what about that shirt collar with its stud hole still closed? Gethryn quickly shifts his hypothesis from accident to murder, and soon Merridew identifies a suspect: rejected playwright (and “Indian hemp” addict) Lovell Fox broke into Willington Sigsbee’s home earlier that evening, hoping to settle a personal score with the man. But the theory preferred by the police – that an addled Fox, high on hashish, killed Sigsbee in a rage and then covered his tracks and wandered the grounds – doesn’t satisfy Gethryn, so he searches elsewhere to find the murderer.

To me, Philip MacDonald’s stories are enjoyable and energetic, and 1931’s The Crime Conductor, if not a top-tier Golden Age detective story, has much to recommend. The author is attuned to the mystery genre’s structures and tropes and often shows a keen interest to incorporate the elements of thriller and suspense. Conductor operates mostly as a fair-play puzzle story, but its structure is experimental and its climax builds to a confrontation where a decoy brings the murderer out of hiding so he or she can kill again.

How does MacDonald experiment with his narrative here? Book One is named “Elemental” and (until the country house murder) introduces its characters and plot threads in fragmented, impressionistic bits and pieces: we overhear a pub conversation here, read a breathless newspaper announcement there, then witness a quarrel between husband and wife shortly thereafter. Book Two, “Documental”, lets us read the at-times-chatty letters Gethryn writes to his own wife to update her on the progress of the case. I admire the author’s playfulness through his amateur detective’s personality, although the determined effort to play with structure feels strained at times. Parts of these letters recreate scenes through stageplay dialogue, complete with parenthetical actor business and slow curtains to end, while suspect lists with running commentary are also present. Book Three, in which the snare is set and the killer is caught, adopts the apt Latin phrase “Quod Erat Demonstrandum”.

Those in pursuit of a baffling puzzle will likely identify the murderer after a second death occurs, when an unfortunate victim is found at the base of an elevator shaft. It’s not so much the clueing that gives it away for me as how MacDonald directs his cast of characters, and what happens when one suspect appears onstage notably more than others. Still, this production is agreeable if uneven, and the novelist (and occasional playwright) works actively to make sure his audience is engaged and entertained.

As Nick Fuller notes, Philip MacDonald published nine mysteries in the years 1931 and 1932; such furious output surely results in some stories being more successful than others and some storylines getting a short shrift. Nick sees potential in The Crime Conductor but believes the solution falls short of fair-play, and I can certainly see the validity of the criticism. Bill Deeck and Mike Grost feel the same way, while Kate at crossexaminingcrime was also disappointed with the book. She finds particularly unsatisfying the information given to the reader “at secondhand”; I felt similarly. And over at The Invisible Event, JJ provides an astute assessment of the singular mix of entertainment and tedium on display in the book. Curtis Evans of The Passing Tramp concisely sums up the experimental author as "someone restless with the form and trying to do new things, but they didn't always work". Agreed, and that restlessness is often what makes MacDonald's thrillers and mysteries stand apart from the crowd, even if some are not fully successful.

Interestingly, the American first edition I accessed through my university’s interlibrary loan shows a copyright of 1931 and a library catalog received date of 10-12-31 (purchased at a cost of $1.70). That would date this Doubleday, Doran & Co. edition before the UK Collins edition, which John Curran identifies as a February 1932 release in The Hooded Gunman, his delightful and comprehensive illustrated history of the Collins Crime Club series. Curran also reveals that Philip MacDonald continues his experimentation with form in his next book, published two months after The Crime Conductor. In The Maze (1932), MacDonald presents his tale of murder in the form of “two floor plans, a verbatim transcript of the Coroner’s Inquest, a covering letter with the solution, and an Appendix.”

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Book Review: MURDER AT THE 'VARSITY (1933) by Q. Patrick

2/21/2022

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Perhaps better known by its American title Murder at Cambridge, 1933’s Murder at the ‘Varsity is the third mystery novel to be published under the Q. Patrick name. It is a breezy and enjoyable fair-play affair, even as its central puzzle – who shot exaggeratedly Teutonic student Julius Baumann in his room and made it look like suicide? – is not especially confounding. Curtis Evans at The Passing Tramp has sorted out the authorship of the many books written as Q. Patrick, Patrick Quentin, and Jonathan Stagge and marks ‘Varsity as a solo effort by Rickie Webb when he was between writing partners. (Webb wrote the first two with Martha Mott Kelley and would write the next entry, S.S. Murder, with Mary Louise White [Aswell].)

So it seems fitting that this story is narrated by Hilary Fenton, an American male who observes the British college environment with an outsider’s delight akin to an anthropologist. I suspect that Webb was more at home in England than his protagonist here: while the author was born in Somerset and moved to the United States when he was twenty-five, the fictional Fenton is a Yankee abroad. The book boasts a four-page glossary that defines “some of the local colloquialisms and other quasi-technical terms” to bring the uninitiated up to speed. A gyp, we learn from this addendum (although it is also clear in context), is “a male college servant assigned to take care of a certain set of rooms or the rooms on one particular staircase”. And in this story, there is a lot going on in those rooms and on those staircases.

But it is in an ordinary lecture hall that young Fenton first spots his romantic ideal, Camilla Lathrop. He spends the early chapters learning her identity and stage managing another encounter. Fenton also spots her – or thinks he spots her – on the landing outside Baumann’s room on the stormy night of the murder, and it is from a muddled sense of chivalry that Fenton hides evidence that might point to her at the crime scene. He launches his own amateur investigation, all in the name of clearing Camilla, and a second murder at the college builds to a tea party with the Don where one cup is laced with strychnine.

I found the style and pacing of Murder at the ‘Varsity agreeable, although other readers might describe Hilary Fenton’s conversational, even chatty narration and the wooing of his inamorata as elements that detract in a mystery tale. The story is decently paced, and if the college setting (despite its definitions) is not quite as engagingly built as the ant’s-nest world found in the previous year’s Murder at the Women’s City Club, it is a more cohesive experience than the Q. Patrick debut title, Cottage Sinister.

The glossary also informs me that ‘Varsity is “simply an abbreviation of the word University” that has “no athletic or other sinister significance”. This is useful to know, especially when reading a book with an uncertain word in the very title, such as Obelists or Furlong.

Creating greater cognitive dissonance for a reader, perhaps, are the sometimes surprising illustrations of characters that might accompany a Golden Age mystery story. I discovered that the U.S. edition by Farrar & Rinehart features this tableau of its cast, an artist’s rendering that was at odds with the characters as I had imagined them. In quarter profile, the exuberant Hilary Fenton looks like a middle-aged village doctor, while rugged athlete Stuart Somerville reminds me of a young Brian Dennehy. To credit the tableau, I will add that there is an implicit clue to the killer in the caricatures, if only you know where to look.

Murder at Cambridge ('rah 'rah 'Varsity) is available in the UK through Ostara Publishing and available as an eBook in the U.S. through Mysterious Press/Open Road Media.

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Book Review: VEGETABLE DUCK (1944) by John Rhode

2/8/2022

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Of the 80+ books I managed to read last year, the majority were from authors of classic detective fiction and five of them were penned by the prolific Cecil John Charles Street. Under the pseudonyms of John Rhode and Miles Burton, Street wrote (or, in the later half of his career, dictated) about 140 mysteries, and I find myself returning every couple months to try another title on this lengthy and impressive list. Why do I keep traveling these Rhodes, covering these Miles? What’s the attraction with this particular Street?

With 1944’s Vegetable Duck, generally acclaimed as one of the author’s greatest successes, I am reminded again about the supreme comfortability generated when I read a story featuring Dr. Lancelot Priestley or Inspector Jimmy Waghorn. First, the writing is clear and forthright; Street’s prose stays away from any clutter, whether literary or introspective, that may slow the storytelling.

Next, the puzzle and its attendant questions – whodunit, how, and why – drive the plot with few, if any, detours or cul-de-sacs. Additionally but importantly, the crimes on display fully meet the spirit of classic detective fiction: they are usually curious and colorful, and the death of a character (and that character’s personality) is considered and dispassionate enough that the dispatching can be viewed as part of the puzzle and not as a grievous loss to humanity. In short, the Rhode and Burton stories are often extremely pleasing examples of the genre, comfortable and competent and very easy to process and enjoy.

There is another admirable asset on display in Vegetable Duck that kept this reader engaged and turning the pages. As mentioned, the inciting puzzle at the start of the story is specific and central: how was Letty Fransham fatally poisoned during dinner, and who is responsible? But the author quickly provides multiple related mysteries, equally intriguing, that will help answer these questions and that need to be investigated on their own merits. And Street weaves his principal and supporting puzzle threads masterfully throughout the tale. Who provided a mysterious phone message that called husband Charles Fransham away just before dinner was served? What connection might the country shooting death of Mrs. Fransham’s brother years earlier (with fellow hunter Charles a prime suspect) have to the poisoning? And who has been sending crude letters to Charles promising revenge for the brother’s death? Could it mean that it was Charles and not his wife who was the intended victim?

All of these tangential mysteries pop up in the book’s first chapters, with more taking shape as the story continues and another murder is committed. The most celebrated aspect of Vegetable Duck is the clever method employed to saturate a marrow with digitalis, but its brilliance in revelation is dulled somewhat because the enigma is not teased or solved through reader-collected clues. Instead, it’s presented as a show-and-tell demonstration by Dr. Priestley in Chapter 12, and thus takes on the quality of a lecture instead of an intellectual question for the reader to pursue. The many other clues that line Duck’s garden path –from a belated letter in the post that might have rescued Letty Fransham from her deadly dinner to a disguised visitor to that Mundesley Mansions flat days earlier – are relevant and fair-play, and their contributions give the plot a satisfying and propulsive fullness.

What’s more, Street incorporates elements of one of the most perplexing true-crime stories ever told, the 1931 murder of Julia Wallace in her home. According to his testimony, a phone call from a stranger arranging an after-hours business meeting with William Herbert Wallace led him on a fruitless search for an address that didn’t exist. Upon returning home, he recruited a neighbor to help him with a front door that would not open. They found Julia Wallace dead by the hearth, her head battered and lying on her husband’s raincoat. The case seems to turn on the strange summons that got William out of the apartment: if the call was genuine, who would have arranged this? Or was the message – taken down the day before by a fellow member at Wallace’s chess club and given to him – from Wallace himself, setting up an alibi so he could commit murder? That alluringly mysterious phone call clearly intrigued the author; he used the concept here and in his later novel The Telephone Call (1948).

And if you are not from the United Kingdom and wonder about the book’s curious name and this era-specific recipe (and even what a marrow is), I am happy to share my findings. It turns out that vegetable duck need not contain duck; it is instead the filling and baking of minced meat inside a hollowed-out marrow. A marrow is similar to a zucchini, but larger with stripes and a thicker skin. Get yourself a lovely Churchyard Salad courtesy of Malcom Torrie to accompany, and John Rhode’s Vegetable Duck will surely be satisfying, if lethal. In the U.S., Dodd, Mead & Company published the book under the rather generic and not very apposite title Too Many Suspects as part of their Red Badge Mystery series a year later.

TomCat reminds me that botanical shenanigans can also be found in The Man Who Grew Tomatoes by Gladys Mitchell in his Duck review at Beneath the Stains of Time. Other blogs that have sampled this John Rhode dish include The Grandest Game in the World, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Martin Edwards’ Crime Writing Blog, The Passing Tramp, and Pretty Sinister Books.

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Book Review: THE KNIFE (1933) by Herbert Adams

Book Review: THE CRIME CONDUCTOR (1931) by Philip MacDonald

Book Review: MURDER AT THE 'VARSITY (1933) by Q. Patrick

Book Review: VEGETABLE DUCK (1944) by John Rhode

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