Should I be foolhardy enough to read and review another James Corbett novel in the future, let me provide context regarding where I am now in that valiant battle. I have just finished The Hound of Death, a mystery-ish thriller published in 1944 by Herbert Jenkins Limited. Mr. Jenkins may well have had a masochistic streak, as he and/or his company released all of Corbett’s print titles on an unsuspecting British public between 1929 and 1950. My first James Corbett reading experience involved his first published book, The Merrivale Mystery, and it was an unforgettable assault on the senses. You can read my review here, or you can track the book down and be buffeted yourself by the author’s complete incompetence in all matters of character, dialogue, prose, and plot. Suffice to say, after The Merrivale Mystery it has taken me more than a year to recover and check in once more with this remarkable author; The Hound of Death is my second timorous visit to Corbett-land.
It is important to note that 15 years and an impressive 30 published titles in between (!) separate the two books. This Hound, it turns out, could almost have been composed by a completely different writer, one who actually understands the rudiments of narrative structure and has a working command of the English language. Unlike The Merrivale Mystery, where 98% of the story seems to take place in the same manor house study and the chapter rhythms repeat with the endless consistency of a Mobius strip, this later story employs varied settings, a plotline that actually builds to a climax, and characters who, while not exactly dimensional, are at least sketched in with enough detail so the reader can tell them apart. The Hound of Death isn’t a great mystery, but it is a functional entry within the genre, and that alone places it leagues above Corbett’s questionable début.
But then, I shouldn’t be too surprised: one would have to actively work at one’s ignorance to keep writing and still maintain the level of ineptness on display at chez Merrivale. I wondered why William F. Deeck, who was so delighted with/repulsed by this author’s skill set, primarily quoted from only four early titles when making his case for (or against) Corbett. I know now that it is likely because the truly so-bad-it’s-good material is delivered early in the author’s career. And that’s understandable, if a little disappointing, since Corbett can be positively inspired when he reaches his unparalleled heights of poor writing.
Here, we start with Detective-Inspector Jimmy Brigg, a “burly man” with “a fighting chin”, “whimsical grey eyes”, and “strong, capable fingers”, surveying the grounds at the greyhound track. He is collecting information from the bookies about Colonel Trevor, a racing regular who recently killed himself with a revolver. A mysterious dog named “Black Shadow” runs and wins a race, and moments later a man collapses and dies. The astute detective notices there is a recent scratch on the dead man’s hand.
A journalist acquaintance of Brigg’s named Cardew (whose Christian name is also Jimmy for some reason) smells a story and sticks to Brigg, who chooses to give the reporter access to the investigation. During the case, Cardew meets the lovely Cora Dainton, the deceased Colonel Trevor’s niece, and soon Cora is menaced by a “Hindu” in a turban, while the gallant Cardew must fend off a bedroom cobra attack by shooting the snake, which was clearly intended for the ingénue. DI Brigg also keeps his whimsical grey eye on a night club singer, an entertainment manager, a spiritualist who owns the black greyhound, and a pair of on-the-lam racetrack gamblers, and by the book’s climactic séance scene (along with three pages of block explanation from Brigg to tie everything up) the detective has caught his criminal and the reporter has acquired a fiancée.
All in all, comprehensible if disposable genre fare, and Corbett’s approach is suitably melodramatic and stereotypical to make it all feel rather artificial. Here and there, I still found examples of the memorable floridness and not-quite-right wording of the maestro’s early works, as with this description:
But then, I shouldn’t be too surprised: one would have to actively work at one’s ignorance to keep writing and still maintain the level of ineptness on display at chez Merrivale. I wondered why William F. Deeck, who was so delighted with/repulsed by this author’s skill set, primarily quoted from only four early titles when making his case for (or against) Corbett. I know now that it is likely because the truly so-bad-it’s-good material is delivered early in the author’s career. And that’s understandable, if a little disappointing, since Corbett can be positively inspired when he reaches his unparalleled heights of poor writing.
Here, we start with Detective-Inspector Jimmy Brigg, a “burly man” with “a fighting chin”, “whimsical grey eyes”, and “strong, capable fingers”, surveying the grounds at the greyhound track. He is collecting information from the bookies about Colonel Trevor, a racing regular who recently killed himself with a revolver. A mysterious dog named “Black Shadow” runs and wins a race, and moments later a man collapses and dies. The astute detective notices there is a recent scratch on the dead man’s hand.
A journalist acquaintance of Brigg’s named Cardew (whose Christian name is also Jimmy for some reason) smells a story and sticks to Brigg, who chooses to give the reporter access to the investigation. During the case, Cardew meets the lovely Cora Dainton, the deceased Colonel Trevor’s niece, and soon Cora is menaced by a “Hindu” in a turban, while the gallant Cardew must fend off a bedroom cobra attack by shooting the snake, which was clearly intended for the ingénue. DI Brigg also keeps his whimsical grey eye on a night club singer, an entertainment manager, a spiritualist who owns the black greyhound, and a pair of on-the-lam racetrack gamblers, and by the book’s climactic séance scene (along with three pages of block explanation from Brigg to tie everything up) the detective has caught his criminal and the reporter has acquired a fiancée.
All in all, comprehensible if disposable genre fare, and Corbett’s approach is suitably melodramatic and stereotypical to make it all feel rather artificial. Here and there, I still found examples of the memorable floridness and not-quite-right wording of the maestro’s early works, as with this description:
Than the hard-boiled Detective-Inspector Brigg, C.I.D., New Scotland Yard, there was no one more prosaic. And as for Jimmy Cardew, wide-ranging reporter, blessed with both innate and hardly-acquired good horse-sense – his very profession had made him more than ordinarily skeptical. Yet both men experienced at the same time a sudden chill, a dampening, deadening influence that seemed to lay a clammy hand upon them. “Haunted!” said Cardew beneath his breath, and strove to laugh at himself, but his forced mirth made him uneasy. Brigg stopped and looked at him curiously.
“Did you say anything, Jimmy?”
“I did not.” Cardew was terse. “I was thinking, instead.”
“Interesting,” said Inspector Brigg.
I love the perfect absurdity of “hardly-acquired good horse-sense”. There’s also the joy of seeing the author sidestep a criminous detail that would have been worth the research to a lesser (or greater) mystery writer. Here’s how Jimmy Corbett handles it:
The pathologists had got it at last – an obscure Afghan poison with some unholy name that he couldn’t pronounce. A clear case of murder, if ever there was one… The effect of this blasted stuff, if one could read between the lines of the mess of high falutin’ technical language was that it brought about an intense depression in the mind of the victim. First, of course, the poison worked its way into the blood-stream via a scratch on the surface of the skin; then it gradually had an insidious and deadening effect on the nerves.
Oh, those awful, unpronounceable Afghan poisons. Actually, Corbett has graduated from the foundational writing failures evidenced in The Merrivale Mystery to some more subtle advanced composition problems, and that is progress. Notice the “blasted” pathology report filled with “high falutin’ technical language”: Corbett uses a mode called third-person limited omniscient throughout The Hound of Death. This means that the reader is aware of the scene character’s perspective and thoughts, even as the narrative stays away from “I” and remains in the third-person. So it is Brigg’s frustration with the technical aspects of the report, and we view it through his eyes. The only problem is that the author sometimes jumps mid-scene to follow another character, and the abrupt point-of-view change can cause a mild literary whiplash.
In Chapter Ten, for example, we spend three pages looking at the scene as Cardew, who is on the search for Jackson, one of the missing gamblers. Then Cardew meets Jackson and promptly gets punched, and when “the ace London reporter of the Worldwide” drops to the ground, we are suddenly in Jackson’s head, “glanc[ing] down ruefully” and privy to all of Jackson’s thoughts. It’s a bit of a jolt, especially as we have never previously experienced Jackson’s point of view in the story. Conventional narrative rules would suggest ending the scene and starting clean with a new character to avoid this awkward switcheroo.
But who am I to complain? I made it through another JC thriller, betting on The Hound of Death. And if it didn’t exactly win the long shot, it also didn’t stumble spectacularly from the moment it left the starting gate. All in all, not bad for a day at the James Corbett races.
But who am I to complain? I made it through another JC thriller, betting on The Hound of Death. And if it didn’t exactly win the long shot, it also didn’t stumble spectacularly from the moment it left the starting gate. All in all, not bad for a day at the James Corbett races.
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