JASON HALF : writer
  • Home
  • Full-length Plays
    • The Community Play
    • Kate and Comet
    • Sundial
    • Tulip Brothers
  • Short Plays
    • Among the Oats
    • Holly and Mr. Ivy
    • Locked Room Misery
  • Screenplays
    • The Ballad of Faith Divine
    • My Advice
    • Finders
  • Fiction
  • Blog

Book Review: MURDER IN ABSENCE (1954) by Miles Burton

11/1/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
One of the most curiously structured crime stories in the voluminous John Rhode/Miles Burton canon, 1954’s Murder in Absence spends its first half investigating the death of an unlucky estate agent in the market town of Hembury and its second half onboard a freighter helmed and staffed by Norwegians in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Inspector Arnold looks into the strange circumstances of the murder of Rufus Jones, a realtor who disappears for several days. Eventually, his body is found in a storage building on one of the available properties. Jones’s automobile is found abandoned on farmland away from the building where his body was discovered, but the car’s interior appears to have been the scene of a mighty struggle. Arnold strongly suspects Tom White, Jones’s cousin and business partner, who has motive and opportunity for dispatching his relative.

And then, starting in Chapter 10, we leave the inspector to his suspicion and his procedure and instead board The Ballerina, a commercial freighter that also accepts a limited number of tourist passengers to accompany the crew on their business voyage. Desmond Merrion and his wife Mavis find themselves well suited to the unfussy arrangements, and plan to travel for six weeks while High Eldersham Hall undergoes renovations. Dozens of pages go by with no apparent mystery in sight, although the reader knows enough to keep an eye on Mr. Jasper Wilberton, an outspoken older man who has his nephew, Horace Bewdley, in tow. What we know that Merrion does not is that Mr. Wilberton had called on H. Jones and Son Estate Agents the day that Rufus Jones went missing.

The mystery story connecting the two sections is interesting but not exceptional, and as sometimes happens in the Miles Burton books, two things occur: poor Inspector Arnold becomes focused on a single, incorrect suspect and finds it hard to look past him; and the reader is denied an important piece of information (here, the relationship between killer and victim and the motive for murder) until it is revealed near the end of the book. Somehow, such withholding of details, which muddies the fair-play waters, never really frustrates me when I read a mystery story by the prolific Cecil John Charles Street. I think it is because Street always practices forthright, clear-eyed procedural storytelling, and that style is compulsively readable even if it lacks surprise or filigree. (There is a reason why he is identified as a writer belonging to the “humdrum” school of detective fiction.)

But the mystery plot is not the most memorable and, yes, surprising part of Murder in Absence. That honor goes to the author’s detailed and affectionate evocation of the Merrions’ cruise experience aboard that Greece-bound freighter. Street doesn’t merely offer up general details; rather, there are dozens of observations about life aboard a working cargo ship for both passengers and crew that the author delivers with a reporter-like authenticity.

The specifics are quirky and fascinating and must surely have been collected from real life. Merrion’s mischievous tricking of a Norwegian waiter into believing the ship is three miles out from shore so drinks can be ordered; the pulley system used – and the accompanying clamor – when cargo is swung from the dock to the loading bay; even the descriptions of the rocky Greek islands and the novelty of the on-ship smorgasbord are presented with a knowing, experiential touch. I found these passages a delight, largely because it felt like Street was taking pleasure to share his own recent adventures. In his biography and genre study Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery, scholar Curtis Evans writes that Murder in Absence “draws on the peripatetic John and Eileen Street’s practical knowledge of realtors and freighters to provide a convincing and original Miles Burton tale”. Such well-observed specifics definitely make Absence one of Street’s most evocative stories, and an enjoyable one at that.

The late-period Miles Burton editions are quite difficult to find. While the books Street wrote in the 1950s under his John Rhode pseudonym saw print in both Great Britain and the United States, the Burton stories were only published through the Collins Crime Club in the UK. I am grateful, then, for the wonderful library collective over at Internet Archive, which allows free digital lending of hundreds of mystery and crime books that might otherwise prove challenging and cost prohibitive to track down and read. The information page tells me that the Archive’s full-text scan of Murder in Absence was added in August, and such active curating is very exciting indeed.

Perhaps predictably, Internet Archive now must defend the legality of its online book loan practice in a lawsuit brought by four litigious, notably for-profit publishing companies. As the website claims to own a copy of every digitized book and has a clear electronic lending policy – upon checkout, users get access to the text for a limited time and never own a downloaded or printable copy during or after use – I don’t see how the Archive’s program differs from other e-lenders like Hoopla and OverDrive or from the beloved patron borrow-and-return traditions of our brick-and-mortar libraries. Until Internet Archive can no longer offer this wonderful service (and I hope that day never comes), I am excited to fully explore its growing online catalog of crime and mystery novels from previous eras.

0 Comments

Book Review: VEGETABLE DUCK (1944) by John Rhode

2/8/2022

0 Comments

 
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?
Picture
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).

Picture
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.

0 Comments

Book Review: INVISIBLE WEAPONS (1938) by John Rhode

10/12/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Invisible Weapons offers two crimes for the price of one: in the book’s first half, Inspector Jimmy Waghorn investigates the murder of Robert Fransham, a man found dead from a blow to the head in his brother-in-law’s home. The entrance to the washroom where Fransham’s body is found just happened to be under surveillance by a trustworthy constable at the time of his death, while the sole window leading outside was watched by the man’s chauffeur. The second half concerns the death by carbon dioxide poisoning of Sir Godfrey Branstock. In the latter case, the coroner reaches a verdict of accidental death due to a leak of sewer gas in Sir Godfrey’s wine cellar. In the former case, Waghorn and his superior, Superintendent Hanslet, focus on the one man with a clear motive: Fransham’s brother-in-law, Dr. Thornborough.
 
Are the two deaths related? Dr. Priestley seems to think so. If so, how was Robert Fransham struck down when he was alone in a room? And where is the weapon? Consensus from bloggers and readers place Invisible Weapons as a solid but unremarkable entry from author Cecil John Charles Street’s more than 140 detective stories published under the names John Rhode and Miles Burton. I would agree with that assessment: it is a breezy, fast read, aided by the two-for-one structure and a good representative title to show the author’s interest in plot and investigatory procedure with minimal interest in character development or complicated motives. It is also one of the few John Rhode titles currently in print, thanks to the recent publication of this book and three others by HarperCollins, who have resurrected the Collins Crime Club imprint.
 
As workaday as this genre story is, Street provides a few spots of enjoyable character development, such as the presence of Alfie Prince, a mentally deficient tramp who goes door to door asking for cigarettes and gets angry when denied his pleasure. I also appreciated the spirited speech of a neighbor named Willingdon, which shows that the author can infuse characterization through dialogue when he chooses to. (Much more often, Jimmy Waghorn will ask a question or two of a person and receive straightforward paragraphs in reply that read like a dispassionate witness statement.)
 
As reviewers have noted, it is the remarkable obtuseness of the police – and their complete failure to connect the dots without Dr. Priestley’s help – that strains credulity the most here. Hanslet in particular is fixated on Dr. Thornborough for Fransham’s murder, an unshakeable belief built principally on the fact that the suspect is the only one with an apparent motive: Fransham was about to change his will, and the doctor had recently fallen upon financial hardship. To his credit, Waghorn stops short of arresting Thornborough because he feels evidence is lacking. No one involved questions why a man would invite a near-estranged relative to his own home and then murder him under mysterious circumstances when an accident away from the estate would have generated far less suspicion and achieved a better effect.
 
Some proposed secondary theories are also head-scratching and unconvincing, yet Superintendent Hanslet accepts them as possible, no grain of salt needed. One example: because tramp Alfie (or at least his singular coat) was seen in the neighborhood of Adderminster shortly before the murder, one speculative idea is that Dr. Thornborough managed to get Alfie to kill for him. The doctor, knowing that Alfie’s mental stability sometimes caused blackouts and memory loss, would be safe as he could trust his assassin to promptly forget his role. Hanslet is astute enough to consider variations and scenarios like that one, but logic and common sense are given only to amateur criminologist Priestley. 

Picture
​Perhaps it is for this reason that Dr. Priestley, with secretary Harold Merefield in tow, spends some of the later pages visiting the houses and poking around the washrooms and cellars himself. As the police view has calcified into stubborn dogma, the doctor’s rare outing is needed so he can gather additional facts that will explain the strange circumstances of each man’s death.
 
This is also one of those tales where quite a bit of luck and coincidence needs to go the murderer’s way, from the trajectory of the weapon to a rented truck sitting in a garage on the premises and conveniently overlooked for days after the crime. Perhaps that all comes with the territory of mystery fiction; it’s a pleasant enough garden path up which to walk. Just don’t look too closely at the reality of the details, either of the criminal’s fragile plan or of the policeman’s remarkable ignorance.
 
In part because of the modern reprinting, many reviews of Invisible Weapons can be found online. Among the learned bloggers spilling some virtual ink: TomCat at Beneath the Stains of Crime; Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel; Nick at The Grandest Game in the World; Martin Edwards at his Crime Writing Blog; and JJ and Aidan offer a detailed, spoiler-stuffed discussion at The Invisible Event.  

0 Comments

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

8/23/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
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.) 
Picture
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.

0 Comments
<<Previous

    BLOG

    Lots of book reviews and discussion of classic and contemporary mystery fiction. I welcome comments and continuing conversation.

    Subscribe below to receive updates!

    Subscribe

    Categories

    All
    19th Century Novels
    Andrew Garve
    Anne Morice
    Anthologies
    Anthony Boucher
    Appalachian Authors
    Bill James
    Book Review
    Catherine Dilts
    C. Daly King
    Craig Rice
    David Goodis
    E.C.R. Lorac / Carol Carnac
    Erle Stanley Gardner
    E.R. Punshon
    Freeman Wills Crofts
    French Authors
    George Bellairs
    George Milner
    Gladys Mitchell
    Golden Age Mystery
    Gregory McDonald
    Hardboiled Detectives
    Helen McCloy
    Henry Wade
    Herbert Adams
    Hugh Austin
    James Corbett
    J. Jefferson Farjeon
    John Bude
    John Rhode/Miles Burton
    Leo Bruce
    Maj Sjowall / Per Wahloo
    Margery Allingham
    Martin Edwards
    Michael Gilbert
    Michael Innes
    Mignon G. Eberhart
    Milward Kennedy
    Mitchell Mystery Reading Group
    New Fiction
    New Mystery
    Nicholas Blake
    Nicolas Freeling
    Noir
    Philip MacDonald
    Play Review
    Q. Patrick / Patrick Quentin
    Rex Stout
    Richard Hull
    Ross MacDonald
    Russian Authors
    Science Fiction
    Vernon Loder
    Vladimir Nabokov
    William L. DeAndrea
    Winifred Blazey
    Writing

    Mystery Fiction Sites
    -- all recommended ! --
    Ahsweetmysteryblog
    Beneath the Stains of Time
    Bitter Tea and Mystery
    Catherine Dilts - author
    Countdown John's Christie Journal
    Classic Mysteries
    Clothes in Books
    ​A Crime is Afoot
    Crossexaminingcrime
    Gladys Mitchell Tribute
    Grandest Game in the World
    In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel
    The Invisible Event
    Martin Edwards' Crime Writing Blog
    Mysteries Ahoy!
    Noirish
    The Passing Tramp
    Past Offences
    Pretty Sinister Books
    Tipping My Fedora
    

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    RSS Feed

Unless otherwise stated, all text content on this site is
​copyright Jason Half, 2023.