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Goodness, it’s been a while since my last Anthony Berkeley review. In fact, I think my last one was Before the Fact, a book that he’d written as Francis Iles. It gets plenty of praise from critics such as Julian Symons, but I honestly could not see any of the subtle characterization or intricately-constructed suspense that they praised, and the ending was just flat-out stupid. And this was back in 2011! What on earth happened? I remember thinking of Berkeley as one of my favourite authors, and I wasn’t consciously avoiding his work… And so, to remedy the situation, I decided to read Berkeley’s other famous Francis Iles thriller, Malice Aforethought.

Malice Aforethought begins with a practically perfect opening paragraph: “It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter. Murder is a serious business. The slightest slip may be disastrous. Dr. Bickleigh had no intention of risking disaster.” That’s more or less all you need to know about the plot; this inverted detective-story shows you why Dr. Bickleigh decided to murder his wife, how he set about doing so (it’s an ingenious plot), and how he attempted to thwart off the resulting police investigation. The book is more of a thriller, as the reader wonders whether Dr. Bickleigh will get away with his crime.

Retrial

My Lord, members of the jury, the great Internet public, we are gathered here today to re-examine the case against one Gilbert Adair, author of The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, a crime against humanity posing as postmodern literature. When he was placed on trial on the first day of November in the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven, the evidence was overwhelmingly against him. But in the meantime, influential bloggers such as Sergio from Tipping My Fedora pressed the case in Adair’s favour and demanded that it be re-examined. And so we bring the late Gilbert Adair back to trial to examine A Closed Book, a 1999 novel that Sergio regards highly enough to put on his “Top 100 Books” list.

…Okay, I’ve established a connection to my previous Gilbert Adair review, so I think I’ll stop the fake trial here. My original review was a very angry rant written as though I were putting Gilbert Adair on trial for crimes against humanity. He died about a month after I published the review, and I have not changed a word of that review: it stands as an example of just how furious a bad book can make me. However, it seems like putting him on trial all over again would probably be in bad taste… especially since A Closed Book is actually pretty good.

Trial by Stupidity

I love the stuff written by Anthony Berkeley, and was looking forward to reacquainting myself with his work. I decided to go with something written under his Francis Iles pseudonym: Before the Fact, which was adapted into the Hitchcock film Suspicion. However, I hesitate to call Before the Fact a mystery at all, since the only mystery is just how stupid the heroine is.

Lina McLaidlaw marries Johnnie Aysgarth, despite the warnings from her family, particularly her father, who says the Aysgarth clan is rotten stock. But Lina believes she can rehabilitate little Johnnie— he’s her little child and she so desperately wants what’s best for him. Of course, unknown to her, Johnnie is a murderer, something we find out in the very first paragraph of the book. And at first, Before the Fact is an excellent portrayal of an insecure woman desperately clinging to a love affair, no matter how unhealthy and unwise it is for her. That lasts about eight chapters.