Richard Temperley arrives at London’s Euston Station in the “cold grey hour… the tail-end of a tired blackness.” Looking for a place to spend the pre-dawn hours before the city awakens, he chooses the smoking lounge of a nearby hotel on a porter’s advice. The choice is fateful on two counts: there he will first glimpse a lovely young woman, and there a fellow train passenger will be shot in an armchair, with a strange metal “Z” found beside him. Detective-Inspector James interviews Temperley, who was dozing before the fire at the time of the murder, and Temperley finds in the room – and decides not to tell the police about – the mystery woman’s abandoned handbag. Instead, he visits her address, and the chase across England begins: Temperley in search of Sylvia Wynne, who seems frightened and may be involved; and D-I James in search of them both. Also en route is a criminal with a chilling plan and a collection of metal Zeds to distribute.
I found The Z Murders to be great, outsize fun, but puzzle purists should note that we are now in breathless thriller territory rather than keeping to the manicured lawns of ratiocinative mystery fiction. Farjeon backloads his plot points so the reader understands the situation only in the book’s final third. There are no clues to gather, as the killer’s motivation and Sylvia’s role in the affair aren’t really seeded ahead of the reveal. That didn’t matter to me, since the journey itself is lively (deadly?) and the author manages to keep the reader, with Temperley as the P.O.V. proxy, uncertain of where the dangers lie and of whom to trust. There are elements here that compare favorably with John Buchan’s chase narrative in The 39 Steps as well as another letter-centric crime spree title, X v. Rex by Philip MacDonald (writing as Martin Porlock).
One has to admire J. Jefferson Farjeon’s full-hearted effort to make The Z Murders appealing to his contemporary readership by offering something for everyone. The protagonist’s actions place chivalry above all as Temperley tries to rescue the Damsel from the Danger that stalks her. (The burgeoning romance between the two is as inevitable as the villain’s comeuppance.) The antagonist, when revealed, is a convincing caricature of Evil personified, with a backstory of pain and criminality that leaves him irredeemable and deadly. In this entity, whose physique is an extension of his hatred for mankind, Farjeon presages some of the more flamboyant henchmen one finds within the James Bond franchise.
So there’s young-couple romance, snarling villainy, a well-compressed race against time to prevent more murders, and a world where (at least for a time) we are not sure where the next deadly peril may arise. In his introduction to the British Library Crime Classics reprint edition, Martin Edwards writes (not dismissively) that “the plotting is melodramatic, and the portrayal of the principal villain lurid, while there are regular cliff-hangers similar to those in the Paul Temple stories of Francis Durbridge.” About those cliff-hangers: the author generates some very effective suspense scenes, with one of the best occurring midway through the tale. While Richard and Sylvia have enlisted a comically reluctant cab driver to bring them to the next destination, the killer has forced a more unscrupulous cabbie to make the same journey. The confrontation between the two men in that second car – and especially the driver’s dawning realization of his fare’s identity and how much danger he is in – builds to an unnerving climax that resonates through the following chapters.
One has to admire J. Jefferson Farjeon’s full-hearted effort to make The Z Murders appealing to his contemporary readership by offering something for everyone. The protagonist’s actions place chivalry above all as Temperley tries to rescue the Damsel from the Danger that stalks her. (The burgeoning romance between the two is as inevitable as the villain’s comeuppance.) The antagonist, when revealed, is a convincing caricature of Evil personified, with a backstory of pain and criminality that leaves him irredeemable and deadly. In this entity, whose physique is an extension of his hatred for mankind, Farjeon presages some of the more flamboyant henchmen one finds within the James Bond franchise.
So there’s young-couple romance, snarling villainy, a well-compressed race against time to prevent more murders, and a world where (at least for a time) we are not sure where the next deadly peril may arise. In his introduction to the British Library Crime Classics reprint edition, Martin Edwards writes (not dismissively) that “the plotting is melodramatic, and the portrayal of the principal villain lurid, while there are regular cliff-hangers similar to those in the Paul Temple stories of Francis Durbridge.” About those cliff-hangers: the author generates some very effective suspense scenes, with one of the best occurring midway through the tale. While Richard and Sylvia have enlisted a comically reluctant cab driver to bring them to the next destination, the killer has forced a more unscrupulous cabbie to make the same journey. The confrontation between the two men in that second car – and especially the driver’s dawning realization of his fare’s identity and how much danger he is in – builds to an unnerving climax that resonates through the following chapters.
For me, The Z Murders proved an exciting and entertaining early example of the serial killer thriller plotline. There is the caveat for the mystery-minded that it is not whodunnit? but whathappensnext?, and readers interested in that second type of storyline will have much to chase after here. Other reviews are found at my colleagues’ sites Classic Mysteries, crossexaminingcrime, Pretty Sinister Books, and In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.
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