Category: Martin Edwards

Book Review: MURDER'S A SWINE (1943) by Nap Lombard

10/22/2021

Available in November from Poisoned Pen Press stateside – the reprinted title is already launched in the UK – 1943’s Murder’s a Swine receives a worthy revival. In his introduction, Martin Edwards explains that Swine (U.S. title, The Grinning Pig) is one of two spirited mystery stories produced during the war years by British literary couple Gordon Neil Stewart and Pamela Hansford Johnson. Both this book and Tidy Death (1940), their prior detection thriller published under the name Nap Lombard, feature socialites Andrew and Agnes Kinghof, a bantering couple in the style of Nick and Nora Charles. To their credit, the Kinghofs aren’t quite as besotted with booze and prove more enjoyable company than Craig Rice’s American equivalents, Helene Brandt and Jake Justus.

Indeed, the style and tone of Murder’s a Swine is intelligent and charming, and if the puzzle plot (and especially the means of coercing the killer to confess) falls a little short, the prose and characterization – not to mention an intriguing setting that provides a snapshot of English suburban living in the early days of the war – keep the reader engaged and entertained. Along with an ARP warden, Agnes Kinghof uncovers the body of a man hidden among sandbags in a darkened alley. The victim proves to be an estranged relative of one of the Kinghofs’ neighbors, a kindly woman with a weak heart named Mrs. Sibley. She soon becomes the target of escalating, pig-centered pranks, with a sow’s head appearing in the service lift and another head popping up uninvited at a Punch and Judy show.

Despite the couple’s efforts, the malevolent prankster soon dispatches Mrs. Sibley, and seems to have set his sights on another relation, “Bubbles” Ashton. Andrew and Agnes work to protect the young woman, and the felicitously named Inspector Eggshell also keeps a close watch. It is Andrew’s cousin, the alternately magisterial and misanthropic Lord Whitestone, who resents the pair’s meddling: the man has ties to Scotland Yard and the Home Office and finds Andrew to be a personal irritant. Due to his stubbornness and portly carriage, Agnes has dubbed Lord Whitestone, half affectionately, “Pig”.

The story is decently plotted and well-paced, and the co-authors display an astute eye for narrative detail. The observational humor regarding characters and situations reminded me at times of the humanist tone I love to find in the novels of Gladys Mitchell. Take this example: Lord Whitestone reluctantly accepts an invitation from the Kinghofs for a night out, only to be held captive as an audience member for a charity talent show featuring Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. The authors describe the scene (and Pig’s growing discomfiture) in this amusing and vivid way:

After a few more couplets and a dance, the girls disappeared, only to reappear a few moments later to receive the thunderous applause of their fathers and mothers. When they had disappeared for good, the last three tripping over Bessie Milton, who was trying to get more than her fair share of the reception, a stringy young woman with glasses and pale-blue false teeth announced that Scout Percy Fiddle would give an impersonation of Mae West. This was so embarrassing that Pig took out his season ticket and read it carefully front and back until Percy had bowed his way off the stage.

Stewart and Johnson’s use of their wartime backdrop is also notable, especially as it is used mostly organically. Scenes such as a meeting to discuss residential fire safety precautions and negotiations with a local shopkeeper to purchase rationed meat and dairy are both historically interesting as well as neatly character defining. If the mood generated in Murder’s a Swine falls a little short of Gladys Mitchell’s best evocations of British life during the war – the brooding, dreamlike Sunset over Soho (1943) and the busy, brighter Brazen Tongue (1940) are well worth reading – the suspense of a killer stalking and terrifying women is always at the fore.

I was surprised at how much menace was actually on display; the villain of this story takes more pleasure in terrorizing of his targets than he does moving towards his goal of inheriting a fortune. The Kinghofs conclude early in the story that the criminal is likely a man named Maclagan Steer, a black sheep bearing a grudge against family members he has not seen in decades while exiled abroad. But where the vengeful figure is now, and who he might be impersonating incognito to get closer to his relations, propels the mystery through to a gathering-of-suspects and unmasking-the-killer climax. It’s all very good fun (if a little dark and suspenseful at times), and I am grateful to Martin Edwards, Poisoned Pen Press, and the British Library Crime Classics series for returning this Pig to the page.

Reviews can also be found on my colleagues’ blogs at Beneath the Stains of Time and crossexaminingcrime. I received an advance reading copy from NetGalley in exchange for a forthright review.

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GLADYS MITCHELL Celebrated at 2021 Bodies from the Library Conference

5/19/2021

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Howdunit (2020), ed. Martin Edwards

On Saturday, May 15, scholars, authors, and fans of Golden Age Detective fiction attended the annual Bodies from the Library conference. As the Covid pandemic threw everyone a global plot twist last year, the 2020 event planned to take place at the British Library in London was canceled and this year’s celebration was an entirely virtual affair. While it was surely not the same experience as the in-person conference would have been, the online version had one excellent silver lining: a landlocked American like me could attend without the challenge of navigating some formidable springtime travel, schedule, and income hurdles. (In short, if it had only been an in-person event, I would have surely needed to sit it out.)

The same gratitude for an online conference was shared by other attendees as well, based on the feedback provided by many international voices at the end of the day. Sincere thanks and congratulations to the organizers and tech (‘tec?) supervisors for a smooth and lively affair. It was immense fun to see and hear from all of the learned participants and enthusiastic fans, and the topics could not have been better chosen or more intriguing.

First, Martin Edwards, Alison Joseph, and Kate Ellis shared insights on the newly published Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by the Detection Club. Next, Martin and Christine Poulson discussed the criminous stage, screen, and book contributions of identical twin brothers Peter and Anthony Shaffer. Kate Jackson and The Puzzle Doctor explored the books of Brian Flynn, a GAD author once more in the spotlight thanks to the reprinting efforts of PD and Dean Street Press. Mark Green looked at the ease of readability among the prose of the four Crime Queens. Jim Noy shared a delightful classification of detective types “from Holmes to Hammer” and Curtis Evans (who will soon be publishing a comprehensive book on the subject) provided an overview of authors Rickie Webb and Hugh Wheeler, the driving forces behind the American pseudonyms of Patrick Quentin and Q. Patrick.

Whew. That’s a lot of fascinating GAD ground that was covered.

But wait; there’s more. As the creator of a tribute site for the sui generis, prolific mystery author Gladys Mitchell, I was particularly excited about the topic scheduled for 3.15 pip emma, British Summer Time. Moira Redmond from Clothes in Books and author L.C. Tyler were to provide an overview of “The Great Gladys” and her work, and their spirited discussion was delightful. While they rightly forewarned prospective new readers of some of GM’s elements that might disappoint or alienate – such as arbitrary killers or obscure motives revealed at a story’s solution – L.C. and Moira spent much of their time making the case for this highly original author and her strikingly strange psychoanalyst detective.

I found myself nodding in agreement (within my little webcam box) as the presenters made their case for Gladys Mitchell: her amazingly rendered and meticulous evocation of place; her fascination with British history, folklore, and the occult; her unforgettable creation Mrs Beatrice Lestrange Bradley, with her reptilian leer, raven-black hair, and claw-like grip of iron; the surprisingly progressive thematic ideas on display in a genre that is traditionally conservative; and the astounding variety of styles and stories that the author delivered, especially in her first two decades of published mystery fiction. Judging from the chat comments, it appears that several neophyte GM readers were tantalized by the conversation and planned to give Miss Mitchell a try.

Moira Redmond has posted a blog entry at Clothes in Books campaigning for The Great Gladys once more, and recommends 1941’s When Last I Died, which is also my favorite Mrs Bradley title of the 66 books in the series. And as Moira argues, “we strongly encourage people to give her a chance and stick with the books with their weird plots, strange motives, and strange plot turns. Mrs Bradley is worth it!”

Who am I do disagree?

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Book Review: MORTMAIN HALL (2020) by Martin Edwards

9/6/2020

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Writer Colin Watson coined the delightful phrase Mayhem Parva to describe a cosy mystery story featuring the contrasting but familiar combination of unexpected death and genteel rural English village life. It is logical, then, that genre scholar and prolific mystery fiction author Martin Edwards should contribute his own pairings of death-knell noun and residential location, first with 2018's Gallows Court, and now with Mortmain Hall. Both books are largely set in 1930s London rather than in a sleepy Midlands hamlet, so the evocation of a more urban address within each title is only fitting.

At center, both books feature force of nature Rachel Savernake and Jacob Flint, the newspaper journalist who is pulled into her orbit. In Gallows Court, Jacob worked to figure out whether Rachel was responsible, directly or otherwise, in the deaths of some prominent, powerful men who (until then) had likely gotten away with murder. In Mortmain Hall, it is true crime writer Leonora Dobell who has her eye on candidates who might have cheated the gallows. She is so intrigued, in fact, that she invites the group of suspects to her fatefully-named manor house, where more murders do in fact occur. But by then, three-quarters through the book, there has been a steady accumulation of bodies dispatched a variety of ways, and one of the principal questions becomes how the busy run of violence past and present is connected.

I always appreciate an author who experiments with structure, one who is not content to merely deliver the same type of story again and again. (I am, after all, a great champion of Gladys Mitchell, who showed remarkable variety in tone and tale in her work from her first two decades.) Here Martin Edwards approaches his plot and progression differently than the way he built Gallows Court. For one thing, there is a more deliberate incorporation of the Golden Age of Detection elements that the author knows so well. This mystery more closely resembles the genre structure we are familiar with: one initial murder (whose victim Rachel speaks with right before his death) followed by others, a loose group of suspects, a trail of clues both obvious and oblique, and a gathering-of-suspects stormy-night climax where the detective accuses individuals of minor crimes before revealing who committed the major one. Where Gallows Court felt like a galloping thriller with mysteries to be solved, Mortmain Hall reverses the emphasis, so much so that Edwards provides an enjoyable end-of-book tool called a Cluefinder, a list of details and accompanying page numbers to show how evidence from prose dialogue and description could lead a perceptive reader to the solution.

I enjoyed too Mortmain's main character from a plot-driving sense, the enigmatic, masculine, and mischievous Leonora Dobell. She is the figure who contrives to put the cat among the pigeons, and she also adds Rachel Savernake to her list of unpunished killers. Leonora publishes her crime reporting under a male pseudonym – this is still 1930s London – and Edwards explores the gay demimonde of the time and place, as well as the sense of shame and fear should the secret come out and ruin reputations. There is, too, a cataclysm at the climax where nature steps in to deliver justice and destruction like something out of Edgar Allan Poe, and I find great satisfaction in such a conspiracy of elements and author.

When the storm clouds clear, though, Mortmain Hall for me is less engaging than its predecessor. This has to do with the roles Edwards' two series characters are assigned here. While Rachel speaks with the story's initial victim, a man in hiding who returns not quite incognito to attend his mother's funeral and in so doing speeds along his own, it is reporter Jacob (and Rachel's faithful family servant Trueman) who does the leg work and much of the surmising. It is also Jacob who, around the story's halfway point, gets framed for murder and must work his way out of the derelict room that houses him and a corpse. This he does, and it came as a surprise that it was Rachel and not Jacob who assumes the role of end-of-book detective, tracing the many paths and crossroads that provide the answers to Who, How, and Why for crimes ancient and recent. For Rachel Savernake here seems largely a reactive figure until that moment. This is because the burning enigma that drives the reader's fascination in Gallows Court – is she a murderer, and if so, is she justified? – is answered in that story and consequently the character's persona is on a very low flame in this book.

Due partly to this, which makes the involvement of both Savernake and Flint in this case academic and impersonal rather than emotional and of high stakes to each, the crime plot and secondary characters of Mortmain Hall felt more distanced and less urgent for me. Even Jacob escapes that crime-scene bedsit within a dozen pages, so any chance of a recurring personal danger is minimized and pressure is no longer on him as it would be were he still a Person of Interest by the police. The irony is, had this been a standalone tale, or had I read this book before Gallows Court, I would not be aware of two strong characters from a previous story looking from the outside in and thus undercutting their potential. Granted, it is because the author put this duo through its paces so well in their first adventure that the characters' once-removed positions here seem lacking.

The above criticisms are (obviously) my subjective thoughts on narrative structure and character activation. Let me note that there is much I enjoyed while visiting Mortmain Hall, including the author's typically taut and energetic pacing and an abundance of primary and secondary mysteries to be solved. These elements should keep, and have kept, many detective fiction fans and amateur and professional reviewers enthralled: see Kate at crossexaminingcrime, The Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, and the starred review from Publishers Weekly. And JJ at The Invisible Event has a podcast where he and Edwards discuss the book and the author's many influences and achievements.

I can also say without reservation that I look forward to the next Flint/Savernake story! Mortmain Hall has already been available to lucky UK readers, and will be released to US mystery fans via the great Poisoned Pen Press on September 22. I received an advanced reading copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Book Review: SMALLBONE DECEASED (1950) by Michael Gilbert

6/21/2020

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The most celebrated of Michael Gilbert's mysteries, and deservedly so, 1950's Smallbone Deceased offers a wonderful ant's-nest look into a firm of solicitors who find an unwanted corpse among the office paperwork. Specifically, the body of Marcus Smallbone is discovered stuffed into an air-tight deed box, and it is left to Inspector Hazlerigg to determine not only who killed and hid the trustee but also when the murder took place. Fortunately, the Inspector has an ally on the inside: Henry Bohun, a newly hired lawyer with enough autonomy and intelligence to follow his own paths of investigation. It is an effective pairing, a nice balance of official policing and amateur sleuthing with both figures thoughtful and intuitive; it creates a respectful equality that doesn't usually occur in the pages of mystery fiction, where the amateur so often shows the professional the error of his ways.

Featured in his fun genre overview The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, GAD historian Martin Edwards writes that Smallbone Deceased is "packed with incidental pleasures," and I completely agree. There is much to enjoy in this well-plotted story, and Gilbert proves to be very adept at wry characterization. Told through an understatedly humorous third-person narration, the author sketches his cast of partners and secretaries with singular and observant details. We meet the rotund, approachable Mr. Craine; the petty, dyspeptic and insecure Mr. Birley; Mr. Horniman Junior, reluctantly assuming the mantle he inherited from his beloved father, Mr. Horniman Senior; pleased-with-himself office wit John Cove; and the four secretaries, Misses Bellbas, Cornel, Mildmay, and Chittering, each with their respective strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, the underpinning psychology of these characters feels truthful – part of what an actor would call his or her character's "given circumstances" – from Bob Horniman's antipathy to follow in his father's celebrated footsteps to one lonely secretary's dalliance with an office employee.

The mystery at heart is a good one, smartly clued and one that becomes more immediate and intricate when a second after-hours murder occurs. There are only two minor points that briefly pulled me out of the story. (Do note that neither point detracts too much from an otherwise highly satisfying reading experience.)

A 1930s vintage deed box, perfect for storing papers or a very tiny person: measurements of this one are 18.5" width and 10.2" height

First, for a tale that builds its world so realistically, the set-piece of the novel is an office deed box so large that a small adult body can be contorted and pushed inside. It is also, we are told, one that can be hermetically sealed. I don't doubt that Michael Gilbert, a solicitor himself, knows whereof he writes, but surely an office box of that size (and one that a secretary at one point is said to move and use as a stepladder) would resemble at best a small trunk or, if elongated with multiples stacked upright, the drawers of a morgue. That's a lot of space for a lone client's paperwork storage. Still, as the vaudevillians have said and as I have written before regarding implausible details in mystery fiction: you buy the premise, you buy the bit.

The second niggling detail only arrives at the mystery's solution. While Barzun and Taylor, in their Catalogue of Crime, praise the "two splendid murders" and assert that "the motives are good," I would humbly submit that one motive is good – with a hiding-in-plain-sight clue that is quite masterful – while the other came as a surprise, almost to the point of being an explanatory afterthought. It invited me to return to what I knew about that character (in a story that handles character psychology so efficiently and successfully) to see if I might have arrived at the motive before it was stated. And the verdict was… kind of, but not really. It presumes a rationale for murder where one generally wouldn't be, and Gilbert seems to be aware of this: he even has his amateur detective Henry Bohun state that "the real reason, the inner reason for [the crime] I don't suppose we shall ever know."

If you have not yet read Smallbone Deceased, don't let my magnification of the sole two sticking points (for me) deter you from sampling a wonderful workplace mystery. Characterization, tone, and plot support one another to create an excellent reading experience. And if you want a second, third, or fourth opinion, you need only look to my colleagues for their reactions: visit Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery, J.F. Norris at Pretty Sinister Books, Les at Classic Mysteries, Kate at crossexaminingcrime, Nick Fuller at The Grandest Game in the World, and Martin Edwards' Crime Writing Blog.

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Book Review: MURDER'S A SWINE (1943) by Nap Lombard

GLADYS MITCHELL Celebrated at 2021 Bodies from the Library Conference

Book Review: MORTMAIN HALL (2020) by Martin Edwards

Book Review: SMALLBONE DECEASED (1950) by Michael Gilbert

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