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Book Review: VINTAGE CRIME (2020) edited by Martin Edwards

6/15/2020

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The new Crime Writers' Association anthology Vintage Crime presents its contents more or less chronologically in order of publication, inviting the reader to look for topical and stylistic patterns as the stories and their authors push through the decades. In his introduction, editor Martin Edwards explains that the collection starts with the Association's founding in 1953 and continues into the early 21st century, "demonstrat[ing] the evolution of the crime short story during the CWA's existence." Upon finishing the anthology and reflecting on exactly what evolution I had witnessed, I suspect there were simply not enough species under the microscope to make any conclusive Darwinian assessments, even with the generous 22 stories featured here.

There is ample evidence to make some unsurprising genre generalizations, though. Once past the Second World War and into the 1950s, writer and reader appetites for clever Golden Age detective puzzles, once voracious, were on the wane. The earliest published story in Vintage Crime, and not coincidentally the one that reflects the foot most firmly on GAD ground, is "Footprint in the Sky" by John Dickson Carr. Another early story, Michael Gilbert's "Money is Honey" also features some old-school clueing, but after the first four entries, there's less interest in the body in the library than the body in the bed, and how the ensuing jealousy or spurning of a lover or spouse will lead to murder or death.

As such, the most elemental change to track in the field of crime fiction as represented by the tales is the transition from the mystery puzzle to the psychological crime story. Whether this change is a welcome or unwanted one depends on the reader, of course. But it is no accident that Story Number Five, "The Woman Who Had Everything" by Celia Fremlin, is all about Getting Inside the Protagonist's Noggin. Quoth the Fremlin:

"He never thought about anything else any more, at home or away: a far cry from those golden holidays in the first years of their marriage, when he'd sit or lie beside her hour after hour, rubbing oil on her brown body, murmuring into her ear nonsense to make her laugh or endearments to make her glow – face down on the hot sand – with secret joy."
Will Maggie's suicide attempt finally bestir husband Rodney's love for her once more? (This is not a spoiler; this is the plot of the story.) Other pieces take a similar approach, such as "Turning Point" by Anthea Fraser, which evokes sympathy for a woman contemplating an affair as escape from a loveless marriage. There's nothing wrong with trying to align the reader emotionally with key characters; not doing so was a valid criticism of much classic mystery fiction, where suspects and detective were pushed around clinically like pieces on a chessboard. But when the crime aspect replaces the mystery aspect, then the writing succeeds or fails based on personal interest instead of puzzle ingenuity. And not every story in Vintage Crime felt satisfying, but here are the ones I (subjectively) single out as most memorable:

"The Nuggy Bar" by Simon Brett – fans of Brett's theater-set Charles Paris series already know of his dry wit and darkly comic view of life and death. Here we have a great satiric send-up involving a middle manager for a cleaning product company and his decision to plan a murder literally by the book – in this case, using a handbook of business precepts meant to shepherd the shaping and launch of a new product.

"The Hand That Feeds Me" by Michael Z. Lewin – a gimmick, but a good one whose brevity doesn't overstay its premise. A stray dog (who narrates) delivers an unconventional justice to avenge the death of a homeless stranger who was kind to him.

"Cold and Deep" by Frances Fyfield – puppies don't fare well at all, but this slow-but-smoldering tale sets up a confrontation between an earnest young woman and her sadistic in-law that builds to a satisfying, haunting climax.

"Interior, with Corpse" by Peter Lovesey – one of only a few post-1950 stories in the mix that gives a nod to sleuthing and detection, and the premise is delicious: a very detailed rendering of a crime scene shows up in an art gallery as part of a deceased painter's collection. The problem is that the picture's setting is recognizably the home of an esteemed retired fighter pilot and the dead woman looks eerily like someone who disappeared from the village decades ago.

And Martin Edwards provides "Melusine", an uncomfortably dystopian tale of a plague ravaging Britain's livestock. As the protagonist kills diseased sheep and cattle in countless numbers, he wonders just how close his wife and his drinking buddy have gotten in his absence.

Other honorable mentions: The H.R.F. Keating story "Inspector Ghote and the Noted British Author" follows his likeable Indian inspector as he contends with an irritating Western celebrity as a guest; "The Egyptian Garden" by Marjorie Eccles sketches a bittersweet friendship between a socialite living in Egypt and her young and bright servant; and Mick Herron provides a 21st-century character twist within "All She Wrote," a 2008 story that subverts expectations but feels more technical than immediate.

With such variety, it's a good bet that readers will find something, or a number of somethings, to like here. As the car commercials say, actual mileage may vary. Vintage Crime will be released in the U.S. on August 11 by Flame Tree Press. I received an advanced reading copy of this title via NetGalley in order to provide an honest review.
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Book Review: DEATH IN CAPTIVITY (1952) by Michael Gilbert

3/12/2020

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Michael Gilbert is in that group of celebrated classic crime authors whose names I have known for decades, but of whose books I have inexplicably not read more than one or two. (R. Austin Freeman, Michael Innes, Ellery Queen, and Margaret Millar also belong to that unjustly neglected group.) So when Reading the Detectives over at Goodreads chose as one of its March reads Death in Captivity, Gilbert's 1952 novel of murder occurring within a prisoner-of-war camp, I was grateful for the opportunity to be (re)introduced to the author and his straightforward style of storytelling.

Northern Italy, 1943: a camp holding Allied officers runs on routine, while in other parts of the world the war rages on. A mix of British, Scottish, and American military men cook, fraternize, play rugby, and even rehearse for a tongue-in-cheek production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Although the armed sentries and the Carabinieri largely leave their prisoners alone, the men also recognize that Fascist campo leader Captain Benucci could be a dangerous and deadly adversary if provoked. So it falls to Colonel Baird, acting in concert with the other imprisoned commanders and some hand-picked officers, to make sure that their plans for an escape tunnel beneath the large iron stove of Hut C are carried out quickly, quietly, and undetected.

But the project encounters one very messy obstacle: the body of Cyriakos Coutoulos, an unpopular soldier and suspected informant, is discovered at the tunnel's end, buried in sand from a structure collapse. Reluctant to bring the escape tunnel to their Italian captors' attention – but knowing that Coutoulos must be found soon and in similar circumstances to avoid complications – the dead man is secretly transferred to another hut where a second tunnel had been started and aborted. When Captain Benucci focuses his suspicions on Captain Roger Byfold as the killer, it falls to Henry "Cuckoo" Goyles to assume the role of amateur detective under very nontraditional circumstances.

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Part locked-room mystery, part wartime escape drama, Death in Captivity is a thoroughly enjoyable tale, nicely plotted and smartly paced. In his informative introduction to the British Library Crime Classics edition, author Martin Edwards reminds us that Michael Gilbert was himself a prisoner of war, and that the author dedicates this book to two fellow escapees with whom he traversed the Italian countryside towards the front line.

There are a number of surprises to be found in the story, not least of which is the unusual and unique setting for this murder mystery.


A captured officer camp surely holds amenities and carries a sense of laissez-faire not afforded to troop prisoners; it took me a few chapters to acclimate to the relative independence and limited supervision of our group of heroes. But that liberty is needed narratively for the men to execute long-term escape plans, and such afforded respect is in keeping with the uncertainty of the situation. The fortunes of war may change, and those in power will need to plead mercy before their one-time captives. It is also likely true-to-life, as the author had first-hand experience of the Italian camp at Fontanellato. 

My sole criticism is that the cast of characters has a largely physical and ideological sameness. Some officers are older, some younger, and nationalities and ranks differ, but they are cut from the same sober-minded, stiff-upper-lip cloth, and none really stand out as individual personalities. Still, the situation alone encourages more than enough sympathy for the prisoners' plight, and we find ourselves rooting for the mild but mindful Goyles to arrive at light at the end of the tunnel, both literally and figuratively, by finding freedom and solving the mystery. The officers may be allowed certain amenities, but their efforts to escape and survive are clearly a matter of life and death. 

Also published as The Danger Within, it looks like I come late to the review party! You can find astute critiques of Death in Captivity from TomCat at Beneath the Stains of Time, Tracy at Bitter Tea and Mystery, Sergio at Tipping My Fedora, Kate at crossexaminingcrime, and The Puzzle Doctor at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel.

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Mitchell Mystery Reading Group: DEAD MEN'S MORRIS (1936) - Post #2

12/22/2019

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This second group discussion of Gladys Mitchell's Dead Men's Morris is posting a little late, as I bounce back from a bout of food poisoning. (Not from Oxfordshire boar, but likely from Wensleydale cheese.) It is just Martyn Hobbs, Joyka, and me covering the second section of the book, Figure 2: Shotover Simith, Chapters 7 through 12.
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Instead of organizing the conversation loosely by topic, I will let each reader have their own section, and I will throw in my own observations where they are suitable. All of us have found much to discuss and highlight in Gladys Mitchell's prose, so this installment will feature quite a few direct quotes from the lively text.

 Joyka, who confides that she "could write pages on this book," begins with a reference to the previous week's note on the narrative following the form of a Morris dance. "I am grateful to Martyn for pointing out the interplay between the story and the dance. I was feeling the movement in the story but had not made the connection. It is interesting to see almost every interaction happens between pairs: Carey and Mrs. B, Fay and Jenny, Tombley and Simith, Tombley and Fay, Priest and Lender, Mrs. Ditch and Mrs. B. There are very few group scenes in this book."
 
That couples comment nicely introduces an element I have been tracking and ruminating on since I started Dead Men's Morris. For me, this book is sometimes quite patience-testing in its approach to the detective story template, in that we are nearly always once removed from any moment of primary importance. This, of course, is traditional to any mystery puzzle, where the murder has already occurred and the sleuth must by necessity interview suspects and witnesses and try to recreate the past to understand what happened.
 
But Mitchell sometimes delivers stories that can feel like the theories and conjecture are dealt out too quickly to carry weight. The reader tries to keep track of all of the potential combinations and their merits, but the discussions remain between Mrs. Bradley and the person in whom she is confiding (often her nephew Carey here). The result can be quite fatiguing, especially as a particular theory is sometimes not followed up with a present action or exchange with the person under suspicion.

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To this point, Dead Men's Morris still indulges in this limitation while succeeding as well as any book can do that puts dialogic theorizing in place of genuine, in-the-present suspense and plot advancement. Chapter 11 is particularly good, a twisty (if tiring) bout of theorizing about character movements and nocturnal pairings. For other examples where Gladys Mitchell uses this talk-it-all-out approach, see Death and the Maiden or the final chapter of Brazen Tongue. Her books from the 1960s on also incorporate two-person character conversations about past action to drive the plot far more often than any present action narrative scenes. (Mitchell can write marvelously in the moment as well, however: The Saltmarsh Murders, The Rising of the Moon, and Laurels Are Poison are just three examples where scenes of incident propel the present and exchanges are not relegated to discussions of the past.)

Joyka offers an intriguing hypothesis when she contrasts Mrs. Bradley's nephew Carey with the psycho-analyst's barrister son Ferdinand Lestrange. "I believe that Mitchell created Ferdinand and he turned into an intellectual stuffed shirt – no fun at all. Mrs. Bradley needed a more likeable, human relative. His mother admires Ferdinand’s brains and his cleverness but no way could one imagine this interaction with her son:
Mrs. Bradley, with a veil tied under her chin to keep her hat on, and fur-lined gloves on her hands, sat patiently in the sidecar...
“Garsington!” screamed Mrs. Bradley, above the noise of the engine. “Garsington ho!” bellowed Carey, as he turned the corner and slightly opened the throttle.

Also from Joyka: "Mrs. Ditch is my favorite after Mrs. Bradley. Her speeches are pure gold. I wonder if GM didn’t know someone who actually did talk like this. A few of my favorites in this section:
“I don’t thenk at all,” said Mrs. Ditch, eyeing him calmly. “Tes a bad ’abit, and shouldn’t be encouraged en nobody. Ef us didn’t thenk, us wouldn’t make oursen miserable. That’s what I ben sayen to our dad.”
and
“Our Lender... trapsen and trollopsen over the country...”
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Mrs. Bradley does some trapsen too (if not necessarily trollepsen) as she visits a psychologist colleague and a forensics analyst in London. The latter meeting is singularly notable because Mitchell stages it at The Detection Club, the real-life gathering place for many of England's most famous authors. Martin Edwards has assembled a fascinating and informative history of The Detection Club in his book The Golden Age of Murder. Here are the references within Dead Men's Morris, taken from Chapter 9:

"Blood," said the analyst, two days later. He had met Mrs. Bradley, by appointment, at the Detection Club, of which she had been made an honorary member, and they sat in armchairs in the larger of the rooms which overlooked the street.
The brief scene continues with the analyst confirming that the blood in the soil under old Simith's body was likely pig's blood, and Mrs. Bradley explains that the local inspector in charge of the case "came to a series of popular lectures I gave at the Oxford City Y.M.C.A. a year or two ago, and we get on famously together. I teach him the art of knife-throwing and explain Lombroso's theories, and tell him why most of them are discountenanced to-day." Then, with the meeting over,
They descended the dark and ancient staircase past the haunts of industry, pleasure and mystery which made up the remainder of the house and, turning into Shaftsbury Avenue, were soon at the entrance to Piccadilly Tube station, where they parted.
Joyka finds one interview moment particularly "ridiculous":  Mrs. Bradley talks with Jenny while the healthy young woman is taking a bath. "She wanted a private talk, I understand that, but surely this is way beyond normal behavior for this decade." It certainly seems an unusual choice, especially as there is nothing psychologically beneficial to the setting, such as advantageous use of power and vulnerability. Jenny here is just as amiable and guileless as Carey, and the interview could easily have waited (or have been set elsewhere). And while there is no inference in the text, either of adverb, description, or dialogue, to turn the scene sexual or voyeuristic, neither is it completely innocent, particularly when factoring in the author's probable sexual orientation. A male detective interviewing a male suspect as he showers, in the 1930s or today, would have the same strange frisson, however innocently the scene was presented.
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Joyka: "The murder puzzle is a good one in Dead Men’s Morris. The use of the boars is unique as far as I know and creates an interesting conundrum: could someone who doesn’t handle boars have committed this murder? Interestingly, GM uses a boar at Carey’s farm again to kill in a later book" [in 1981's The Death-Cap Dancers, which features Carey's daughter Hermione Lestrange in her own outdoor adventure]. 

Next, we hear from Martyn, who shares some of his favorite literary moments. His comments this week are largely in celebration of Gladys Mitchell's wit, which, he writes, "is intelligent, playful, bountiful and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny." I quite agree – it's certainly one of the qualities that most endears me to her work. Martyn recognizes the voice of P.G. Wodehouse in Carey's reply, "If I heard pigs in trouble, I should hasten pigwards without a second thought. The whole thing is unhealthy and morbid, and strictly on the lines of the so-called maternal instinct…"

The author's descriptions of her elderly sleuth continue to be worthy of study. Martyn: "The saurian Mrs. Bradley is often compared to a boa constrictor, but these allusions become increasingly elaborate. 'Mrs. Bradley… [was] eyeing him with the maternal anxiety of a boa-constrictor which watches its young attempting to devour their first donkey.' The visual absurdity of the image is a joy. She can even include two beasts in one sentence, '…looking like a benevolent alligator and then suddenly screeching like a slightly demented macaw.'"

Martyn notes Mitchell's empathy for children and animals alike through her descriptive imagery. "Describing Nero’s discontent at the presence of humans, 'his ears were cocked like those of a suspicious, unfriendly dog, and even his tufted tail lacked that air of roguery inseparable from the appendages of pigs in general.'" Also worth honouring is the author's "artistry in depicting all registers of speech, in this case, the disintegration of grammatical laws in the sergeant’s laborious attempts at logic":

"Well, you onderstand, I can’t say in words what I mean (…) As I tell ee, u knows her work, and if us didn’t, Sir Selby do, too and all, don’t him?"
Martyn notes that Mrs. Bradley's quotation of "Proceed, moon," to her nephew is from A Midsummer Night's Dream ("and just to say, there are an awful lot of strange goings on and the misadventures of mismatched lovers in GM’s Midwinter Night's drama"). He also points to Mitchell's skill at pastiche, as the reader is treated to some "very modern verse" in the form of a pig-centric poem:
…The fat-stock prices, Oxford-on-Cam pronounced.
(Strattford-atte-Bow, quoth Chaucer)
Fie, for shame!
Hoodoo, or Voodoo – same?
Shame, same; same shame as
Eve’s.
Significant form? What else?
Squirms matter? All her dugs?

"There’s more than a hint of Pound’s Cantos here," observes Martyn of the satiric poem, "or even Samuel Beckett’s Whoroscope (1930)." To me, the fact that Gladys Mitchell includes such amusing digressions and has faith that her readers will also enjoy the joke sets her apart from her genre writing contemporaries who never chose to break convention or experiment with content. Of course, the opposite case can be made that such additions create only frustrating distractions for the puzzle-minded reader… but I have never been solely a puzzle-minded reader, as GM has never been a solely puzzle-minded writer.
Mitchell even provides those turns of phrase that make us groan, notes Martyn: a pig farmer with "piggish" eyes; the inspector declaring the case "a rare old dance." But he also points out the author's "brilliant evocation of the wintry Oxfordshire landscape, brooding, dark, low and damp." One example:
The woods were the colour of woodsmoke, and had almost the same dense obscurity… a line of trees, a thin straggle of windblown trunks and leafless arms, stood up on the crest of a ridge like ragged clouds in the wake of a windblown storm... a scarecrow brood with menace in their very shapelessness.
Martyn: "And after all the indirections, the endless discussions and possible explanations, suddenly, at the end of this section, there is a moment of real peril – with the secret tunnel inexplicably close, Carey trapped underground, and Mrs Bradley alone. The mood changes again, but for just that moment, the threat of physical danger was a welcome intrusion." This is an uncommon instance of present action rather than past-events discussion in Dead Men's Morris, to recall my earlier criticism. The good news is that the third and final section delivers a notably sharp in-the-moment finale, if memory serves.

The post for Figure 3: Parson's Pleasure will be delivered on or about December 30. I look forward to finishing the dance!

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

11/17/2019

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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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