Category: Martin Edwards

Book Review: THE CHRISTMAS CARD CRIME AND OTHER STORIES (2018) Edited by Martin Edwards

11/17/2019

While this enjoyable anthology was released to UK readers in 2018, the Poisoned Pen Press is making The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories available to American classic mystery fans this holiday season. Curator and series editor Martin Edwards has been delivering consistently wonderful collections of forgotten or overlooked short stories for the British Library Crime Classics imprint, and this entry proves an engaging addition. As a veteran reader of Golden Age Detective fiction and its authors, I think the most entertaining aspect of each anthology is the way that established and unknown writers alike shine when given their place, side by side, in the themed gallery.

In fact, two writers whose work I know only passingly proved the most impressive to me here. Ronald Knox, a founding member of The Detection Club and, eventually, a Catholic priest, delivers "The Motive", a twisty, cerebral tale related by a clever defense counsel as an after-hours anecdote. Stripped almost to the abstract, the barrister's story of a would-be murderer's quixotic behavior keeps changing in its perspective with new information, and although its logic and dénouement may be ultimately unrealistic, it nevertheless captures and holds the reader's attention.

Cyril Hare, a mystery novelist and lawyer himself, contributes "Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech", a bruise-black comic story about an amoral businessman who tries to identify and dispatch at a family Christmas party whichever relative is blackmailing him. I've read two of Hare's mystery novels, Tenant for Death and Suicide Excepted, and this stinging short piece reminds me that I must return to his output and read more.

The eleven stories in the anthology are arranged chronologically, which also allows us to see how styles and storylines change through the decades. Baroness Orczy begins the collection with "A Christmas Tragedy", where Lady Molly of the Yard investigates the murder of Major Ceely on Christmas Eve. The story is told by Lady Molly's admiring maid Mary, as she watches her employer gather evidence to prove a hot-tempered suitor's innocence. The tale carries a fun mix of trailblazing and traditional gender expectations, and receives extra points for including this rather surprising sentence: "It is a far cry from a Christmas Eve party to a series of cattle-maiming outrages, yet I am forced to mention these now…"

The title story by Donald Stuart is agreeable and full of incident: there's a snowbound train from Paddington, a girl passenger in jeopardy, and a murdered man with a torn Christmas card in his hand. Dramatist Trevor Lowe investigates, and his Scotland Yard friend Inspector Shadgold serves as his Watson. The mystery is not especially complicated (and the murderer falls into the most elementary trap imaginable) but "The Christmas Card Crime" is well-paced and cinematic, if slight.

John Dickson Carr, writing as Carter Dickson, provides a successful winter ghost story and a completely superfluous locked-room mystery, but the latter is what his reputation is built upon. In "Blind Man's Hood", a woman is found alone in her house with her throat cut and her lower torso badly burned. It's an alarming image that evokes genuine bafflement, which is why the "solution" lands even less satisfactorily than it would otherwise have done. The ghost revenge thread that provides the climax, however, is both compelling and eerie.

It was nice to read a short story by John Bude, as I come fresh from my first Bude mystery novel experience with 1936's The Sussex Downs Murder. "Pattern of Revenge", collected here, actually benefits from its smaller, tighter canvas. In this brief tale, a man on his deathbed confesses to murder and to framing his rival in love. E.C.R. Lorac tips her hand with her story's title "A Bit of Wire-Pulling", which concerns how an assassin could shoot a man through a snow-frosted window and then vanish. (To be fair, as Martin Edwards informs us, the story's title when first published in The Evening Standard was the less clue-pointed "Death at the Bridge Table".)

The other stories here are uniformly good. Selwyn Jepson relates "By the Sword", exploring an ancestral curse about the way the men in a family will die; it proves true literally for the victim and more figuratively for the murderer. "Crime at Lark Cottage" by John Bingham is a moody and suspenseful story of a woman (with a young daughter) waiting for her escaped convict husband to return. And genre critic and modern crime writer Julian Symons is represented by "'Twixt the Cup and the Lip", a tale about a multi-person plan to steal loaned jewels on display at a department store. Its tone and fragmented character perspective while the robbery is occurring reminded me greatly of Donald Westlake's crime stories yet to come, and the ending moment will find its spiritual kin within the Walter Matthau movie The Taking of Pelham One Two Three released nine years later.

If you're looking for a great sampling of holiday-themed mystery stories from the start of the 20th century into the 1960s, look no further. I received an advance reading copy of the Poisoned Pen Press edition through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: X v. REX (1933) by Philip MacDonald (as Martin Porlock)

10/4/2019

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Philip MacDonald, the author who wrote X v. Rex under the pseudonym Martin Porlock, holds some interesting ground in the field of classic mystery fiction. A number of his books incorporate elements of suspense and fit a thriller style, but their plots also pay tribute to – and work within – the genres of crime and detection. It’s a neat assemblage of working parts, and in books like this one, The Noose (1930), and The List of Adrian Messenger (1960), fans of conventional mystery stories will likely find much to appreciate.

X v. Rex is especially notable because, had the author chosen to take a slightly different approach to the story, this tale of an unknown killer systematically targeting London’s policemen could have been presented as a first-rate classically structured whodunit.

The question of who still remains; X stays an unknown even as MacDonald offers up clues to motive and means through intermittent diary entries. But ultimately the murderer’s identity is secondary to the fate of the characters affected by his vendetta: there is Sir Hector Frensham, an embattled police commissioner, his ingénue daughter Jane, and her fiancé Sir Christopher Vayle, upon whom early suspicion is cast due to a drunken altercation with a patrol officer. So rather than a traditional whodunit with a pool of citizen suspects and a search for a motive, the book instead centers on the literal and existential threat of an outside force creating chaos by literally attacking the values of civilized society.

Academic categorizing aside, X v. Rex (published as The Mystery of the Dead Police in the U.S.) is a very entertaining, fast-moving read. The police attacks are varied and deliberate (and not a little frightening in their violence), and MacDonald creates a nightmare mood with his scenes of authority surprised, compromised, and made victim. (I can recall few Golden Age mysteries that involve the murder of a single policeman, much less the killing of a cumulative squad.) With the rule of authority subverted, the reader readily sympathizes with Sir Hector’s helplessness while trying to combat an unpredictable, malevolent force. Enter Nicholas Revel, an enigmatic man who provides a (forged) alibi for Jane’s boyfriend and surprises Sir Hector, first by correctly describing what the police have done to date in its attempts to capture X, and then by suggesting exactly what they should do to make a successful apprehension. But we are not sure how trustworthy Mr. Revel might be, or whether his interest in the case is altruistic or strikes a little too close to home.

MacDonald’s prose is at times a bit ornate – for Jane Frensham’s introduction, he devotes several lines of text to describe her youthful vivaciousness, for example – but such detail is appealing and vivid in a cinematic sense. He is a writer who experiments with structure and allows otherwise incidental characters and actions to brush up against the throughline of the plot, and I rather enjoyed these singular digressions. One such moment: a governess and her two charges, coming back from the race grounds, briefly cross paths with a mounted policeman who, a few pages later, will cross paths with the murderer. The author allows the family to exit stage left with this amusing run of lines:

"Haven't you seen enough horses for today?" said Miss Rooksby, for the three had just returned from Olympia.
"No!" said Philip stoutly.
"Well, I have," said Miss Rooksby and laughed and hailed a taxi, which presently bore the three of them up the hill and out of this story.

Happily, X v. Rex was brought to my attention by Martin Edwards: The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, his excellent analysis of detective fiction by its genre themes, collects this title under the chapter “Multiplying Murders.” Given Philip MacDonald's penchant for visual descriptions and framing his scenes in smart tableaux, it is not a surprise to learn that the author also had a career as a screenwriter. A very interesting mystery-thriller hybrid from detective fiction's Golden Age.

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Book Review: GALLOWS COURT (2018) by Martin Edwards

9/2/2019

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One of the biggest surprises for the reader of the highly enjoyable Gallows Court is the discovery that prolific author Martin Edwards has delivered a thriller instead of the classically clued mystery story that might be expected. I have no complaints, since the plot gallops along and there are more than enough puzzles to work out regarding hidden motives and lurking dangers. But because Edwards is a leading scholar of Golden Age Detective fiction – his thoroughly researched history of The Detection Club, The Golden Age of Murder (2015), is a delightful and formidable achievement – and because of the story's plum setting of 1930 London, I had expected a whodunit in the Christie cosy tradition. Instead, Gallows Court fuses the immediacy and intrigue of a John Buchan thriller with a 21st century tolerance (and thirst?) for grimmer, grittier stakes in both politics and crime drama.

Jacob Flint, an underdog reporter for The Clarion, is beguiled by a mysterious woman. Rachel Savernake has apparently been a part of the machinations that brought two wealthy murderers to justice, men who killed and disposed of women who were no longer of value to them. One burning question, however, is just what Rachel's role may be: is she a detective or an avenging demon? The daughter of a rich, severe, and (if the rumors are true) insane judge, Rachel Savernake might have a longer game to play, and one that could very likely use and dispose of Jacob the journalist like a pawn in a chess match. As more deaths occur and some violent attacks are made on Jacob Flint and his allies, the vulnerable reporter needs to discover who Rachel Savernake is and what her dangerous endgame might be.

With Gallows Court, the author has constructed an engrossing genre hybrid that makes the most of the narrative elements that keep mystery and suspense fiction humming along. An atmosphere of genuine menace builds as amateur detective proxy Flint travels deeper into the trap and those around him begin to meet brutal fates that he just narrowly avoids. Edwards populates his novel with many smartly sketched supporting characters, and, like Jacob, the reader must decide who can be trusted and who might turn deadly. The narrative is interlaced with diary entries from Juliet Brentano, a captive on Judge Savernake's isolated island, and she accuses Rachel Savernake of killing her parents (no spoiler; we read this passage before Rachel appears). It's a masterful setup, and one that keeps the reader guessing about whether the enigmatic Rachel will prove to be a sympathetic heroine or a loathsome villain… or even a combination of the two.

While the book is great, fast-paced fun and has much to recommend, I personally found the intriguing opening and first half of Gallows Court more engaging than its end chapters, after much has been revealed (I was ahead of a few of the twists) and the resolution is left to attend to the various plot threads. The observation is actually a credit to Martin Edwards, who delivered such a propulsive Act One and engrossing Act Two that one can forgive a little restlessness before the falling of the final curtain. I would have also enjoyed watching Jacob Flint actively put together the pieces that he has been astutely collecting on his own; instead he gets an assist from a deceased fellow detective (via a Dictaphone recording) who has already done the heavy lifting. But these are minor quibbles, and Gallows Court has many dark pleasures to discover for mystery fans who don't mind a walk down the wilder streets and alleys of 1930s London.

I am happy to report that the amazing Poisoned Pen Press will be releasing Gallows Court on September 17, 2019 for American eBook and print audiences. I received an advance reading copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My UK peers have already had a year to enjoy this tale, and you can find their positive prior reviews on their sites, from Kate at crossexaminingcrime, Sarah at CrimePieces, and The Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

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Book Review: FOREIGN BODIES (2018) edited by Martin Edwards

3/28/2018

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Two years in the making, the international crime short story collection Foreign Bodies from British Library Crime Classics (U.K) and Poisoned Pen Press (U.S.) answers an intriguing question: what do Golden Age mystery tales from other countries look like? Many of us are familiar with contemporary cultural crime stories, whether they are brooding Scandinavian thrillers or French urban police procedurals or gritty espionage accounts with spies trotting the globe. I, for one, was particularly interested to explore examples of mystery stories from the first half of the 20th century by non-British, non-American authors.

It turns out, as curator and editor Martin Edwards notes in his informative introduction, that those familiar Golden Age mystery stories from England had a far-flung effect on writers around the world. And this influence is helpful—there is no denying the appeal of an impossible crime or locked room story—but it is also potentially limiting, because it suggests that authors with access to unique settings sometimes ignore them to instead meet and copy the expectations of the genre.

Full credit should be given to Edwards, who worked with translators and publishers such as Josh Pachter and John Pugmire to locate and select these stories and present them to English language readers, some translated especially for this anthology. There are fifteen stories in all, with the most successful for me being the ones that incorporate observations and themes from the author’s home country and cultural philosophy.

Take the collection’s first and oldest entry, “The Swedish Match” (1884), a slyly sardonic story by Anton Chekhov. The plotline is comfortably familiar, with the irritable examining magistrate Tchubikov and his hypothesizing assistant Dyukovsky looking into the disappearance of a retired guardsman. There is a mystery, an investigation, multiple exchanges between two detectives who have differing perspectives (one is old, cantankerous, and prone to surface generalities; the other is young, nimble, and inclined to wild surmises), and finally a resolution. But the comic characterization, the ironic solution, and the very human view of these ordinary people bumbling about and making mistakes is in perfect harmony with Chekhov’s more celebrated playwriting and the worldview he fosters. The story also feels ahead of its time, as it both celebrates and punctures the traditional mystery tropes which, at the turn of the century, were still being shaped and solidified.

In contrast, consider the later story “The Venom of the Tarantula,” written by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay and set in his native Nepal. The plot: a hedonistic old man under medical surveillance manages to regularly smuggle spider venom into his room to use as a dangerous narcotic. Assistant Ajit describes this mystery to his friend, the brilliant detective Byomkesh Bakshi, hoping that the puzzle will take Bakshi’s mind off of a consuming forgery case. Despite the exotic contraband at its center, “Venom” feels the most English of all the collected stories, which is beat-for-beat a detective story in the tradition of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures. (The solution also recalls one of G.K. Chesterton’s most famous Father Brown tales.) If setting and Indian ensemble were replaced with Anglo-Saxon counterparts, the tone and characterization would lose nothing in translation because there is nothing unique to lose.

Personally, the best examples of genre fiction being enhanced by the social and geographical perspectives of their authors are found in the two stories from Japan. Martin Edwards introduces Koga Saburo’s atmospheric and entertaining tale “The Spider” (1930) as “a pleasing fusion of elements from macabre fiction and the classic detective puzzle.” Death occurs in an odd, silo-shaped laboratory where Professor Tsujikawa houses hundreds of specimens of exotic arachnids, some of them very lethal. The murder method—which isn’t a spider bite, enjoyably—is memorable and connects (for me) with the Japanese virtues of order and balance, especially when the murderer’s motive is revenge or righting a perceived wrong. The first-person narrative from a Poe-esque observer of the horrors adds a layer of personal-yet-objective reporting to an otherwise Gothic story.

Arguably the most successful tale in the collection is provided by Keikichi Osaka. “The Cold Night’s Clearing” (1936) is a haunting piece where we discover the circumstances that turned a secluded, snow-surrounded home into the scene of a violent murder-kidnapping. The author creates a foreboding sense of tragedy, and a senseless act of murder starts to reveal a logic that is both rooted in the Japanese notion of honor and a sadly inevitable cause-and-effect fatalism for the people involved. Tone, action, and setting all synthesize to deliver an intelligently mournful work of short fiction that transcends any potential genre limitations.

Inevitably, a few of the stories here fall short in premise or execution. “Murder à la Carte” by Jean-Toussaint Samat finds a narrator musing (vaguely) on lethal combinations of non-poisonous foods, although such murderous menus would be more likely to deliver indigestion instead of death, and “The Lipstick and the Teacup” by Dutch writer Havank turns on a clue so simplistic that it could have been rejected by boy detective Encyclopedia Brown.

Luckily, there are short, caustic entries to reward the omnivorous reader: Maurice Level's 1920 conte cruel “The Kennel” finds hounds baying outside while a cuckolded husband decides what to do with his wife's lover, whom he discovers in their bedroom. Flemish author John Flanders contributes “Kippers”, a story with a Roald Dahl-type sting where a sudden shipwreck turns the tables on a bullying member of a crew. Also highly enjoyable are Pierre Véry's “The Mystery of the Green Room”, which pays clever homage to Gaston Leroux's landmark novel The Mystery of the Yellow Room, and Maurice LeBlanc's 1923 story “Footprints in the Snow”, a colorful detective tale featuring an apparent murder occurring around a deep well.

Martin Edwards and his partners in international crime are to be commended for gathering and sharing these intriguing, relatively unknown stories from around the world. Even while a few authors lean a bit too heavily on the familiar British mystery fiction that clearly inspired them and mute the originality of their own settings and cultures, there is much here to enjoy, explore, and celebrate. An eBook reading edition of Foreign Bodies was provided by Poisoned Pen Press through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: THE CHRISTMAS CARD CRIME AND OTHER STORIES (2018) Edited by Martin Edwards

Book Review: X v. REX (1933) by Philip MacDonald (as Martin Porlock)

Book Review: GALLOWS COURT (2018) by Martin Edwards

Book Review: FOREIGN BODIES (2018) edited by Martin Edwards

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