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Book Review: THE Z MURDERS (1932) by J. Jefferson Farjeon

2/28/2021

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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.
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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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Book Review: MYSTERY IN WHITE (1937) by J. Jefferson Farjeon

4/30/2016

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The marvelous term used to describe the genre of classic British mystery stories -- the kind made famous by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers -- is cosy. There are a number of reasons why the word is apt as both adjective and noun: cosy mysteries are comfortable reading experiences, their plots focused on puzzles and alibis while quite deliberately keeping the unsavory elements of overt sex and violence at bay; their settings are often equally comfortable, with well-off guests staying at spacious and well-staffed manor houses in the countryside; and even though there is a murderer in the vicinity, a certainty that justice will prevail and a moral balance will be restored keeps the narrative motoring along without the slightest threat of a jolt to either reader or characters.

It is a great joy, then, to discover Mystery in White by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, first published in 1937. The author has great fun using the conventions of the cosy to bend and extend the genre in rewarding ways. This approach also raised personal expectations for the book as a whole, and these fell a little short by the end, when such early-chapter promises of tone and setting were never quite realized. Mystery in White (and its relatively unknown author) first came to my attention with its reprinting by The Poisoned Pen Press as part of its delightful British Library Crime Classics series, and then at the recommendation of fellow mystery enthusiast F.J. de Kermadec. It is worth both the new edition and the praise, although it is for me a mystery whose journey is more engaging than its eventual arrival.

Farjeon subverts expectations right away by beginning in a snowbound train where a murder may have taken place in an adjoining compartment. Before any details are provided, however, a party of passengers (led by a plucky and socially appealing brother and sister pair) decides to leave the train, trekking through the snow on foot to find the next station. Quickly becoming lost, the group discovers a very comfortable country house that is both well-provisioned and abruptly empty. Fires roar enticingly in the hearth, but a kitchen knife lies on the floor and a pot of water for tea has boiled dry on the stove. With one traveler consumed by an overpowering fever and another -- a young lady who keeps a diary and may be psychic -- recovering from a twisted ankle, bedrooms are commandeered and food eaten despite the fact that a host is nowhere to be found. At this point, shades of stories from Goldilocks to the fate of the Mary Celeste jostled pleasantly in my unconscious.

Several incidents keep the unexpected houseguests busy and engaged, and Farjeon's plotting has a similar effect on the reader. A rough-mannered Cockney calling himself Smith, an earlier escapee from the ill-fated train, appears and disappears, adding to the general menace of the situation. David Carrington, brother to Lydia, tracks footprints outside and uncovers a bloody hammer and a suspiciously shaped mound in the waist-high snow. Sensitive diarist Jessie feels increasingly uneasy about remaining in a stranger's house and bed. (This episode rather fancifully reminded me of Medea and the possibility of poisoned bedsheets!) All the while, quiet but observant Mr. Maltby, a psychical researcher, collects information and considers what secrets the looming portrait of the absent head of the house might conceal.


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I can greatly appreciate a mischievous approach to structure that allows the police to appear only in the penultimate chapter, as Farjeon uses here. (Their solution is not wholly correct.) The consistent frisson that occurs between the idyllic setting and the claustrophobic, undefined menace of the situation is fascinating, and for most of the book is nicely sustained. (Jessie describes in her diary her first impression of the place: "Oak beams, log fires, old-fashioned beds and snow -- it's what you want every year but never get except on Christmas cards.")

It is largely the disappointment of not quite delivering on the potential of the premise that makes Mystery in White less than a complete success. While the eerie tone contributes greatly, there is not much mystery surrounding the characters as Farjeon presents them. No one, it turns out, is hiding a secret or has an ulterior motive, the train murder and the manor mystery aren't really related, and the real villains of the piece remain largely off-stage.

2It feels like an opportunity missed, as the main characters become reduced to the passive spectators they were first defined to be, accidental visitors who stumbled upon criminal doings that only involve them through propinquity. Beyond some uninteresting budding romances between David, Jessie, Lydia, and the feverish Mr. Thomson, the ill-fated group of characters never has cause to interact emotionally with one another, and Farjeon never encourages the need for (or interest in) casting mutual suspicion.

This gentle satire reminded me of Gladys Mitchell's sharp send-up of the cosy tradition, her lively 1932 tale The Saltmarsh Murders. The difference is that Mitchell provides both an acerbic commentary on the conventions of cosy elements and an intriguing mystery puzzle that fulfills the expectations of the genre. Farjeon, in contrast, shows the promise of the former but delivers by the end a story that is less than the sum of its very intriguing individual parts. Well worth reading for classic detection fans, Mystery in White provides an original, offbeat book that's suitable in any weather.

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