They Love Not Poison

When I picked up No Friendly Drop by Henry Wade, I was at first expecting the “drop” to be a fall from a building— perhaps it would be an elevator murder if we were lucky. But as it turns out, I forgot a line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (despite having acted in the play) where Juliet refers to “no friendly drop” having been left for her by Romeo. That’s right, this is a novel involving a poisoning, and it’s a really good one.

Henry Wade was the pseudonym of Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher. That’s right: he had two titles and 3 names (four if you count the hyphenated name as two). But don’t let that mislead you. If you’re expecting Henry Wade’s detective novels to have a sleuth à la Lord Peter Wimsey running around, making pedantic comments and a general nuisance of themselves, you’re entirely wrong.

No, his detective is Inspector John Poole, one of the most likeable police detectives I’ve ever come across. He has a college education, but he doesn’t go off into irrelevant asides about the limits of translating The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám into Swahili. He does have a romantic interest in this novel, but it’s delightfully subdued, producing extremely memorable moments of banter.

The Anomaly of the Pilfered Painting

Though I’ve been looking at various Crime Kings lately, I would now like to do something that can be best described through the words of John Cleese: “And now for something completely different.” Thus, I would like to take a look at a short story entitled The Play of Light and Shadow, written by fellow mystery aficionado and JDCarr forum member Barry Ergang. I first read this story when I was trying to write an impossible crime story of my own (which I still work on, on an off-and-on basis), and remembered highly enjoying it. Revisiting it after all this time, I was delighted to discover that it held up just as well on a re-read.

The Play of Light and Shadow is narrated by Dr. Alan Driscoll, a university professor on sabbatical. Tired of the monotony of departmental politics, he gets an interim job as bartender, where he meets private eye Darnell, and discovers in him a fellow lover of literature.

Enter Dr. Thorndyke

The inanimate things around us have each of them a song to sing to us if we are but ready with attentive ears.

— Dr. John Thorndyke, “The Echo of a Mutiny” (collected in The Signing Bone)

And thus we have returned to R. Austin Freeman. I launched this series of reviews last week with Freeman’s own The Eye of Osiris, devoted to various Crime Kings: male authors who wrote in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction and towards whom time has been extremely unkind. Freeman is an excellent case in point. At one point in time, he was a highly respected author, even earning praise from Raymond Chandler (no mean feat, that). Flash forward to the publication of Bloody Murder in 1972, and what does Julian Symons write about Freeman? “Reading a Freeman story is very much like chewing on dry straw.” And he hasn’t fared much better today, which just puzzles me. My confusion increased after reading The Singing Bone, a collection of short stories originally published in 1911, in which Freeman invented what is known as the “inverted detective story”—a technique that the television show Columbo excelled at. I was expecting an interesting experiment but not much more. But once again, Freeman surprised me and smashed the ball out of the park.

Trial and Error

As I said when I reviewed R. Austin Freman’s The Eye of Osiris, I intend to take a look at various Crime Kings from the Golden Age of Detection—male authors to whom time has been unkind. The females have done a bit better—Agatha Christie is still in print, and you can regularly find stuff on a bookstore’s shelves by Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. But Anthony Berkeley Cox’s case is a truly tragic one. Berkeley was in his time an extremely prolific author and the founder of The Detection Club in 1928. He wrote under the names Anthony Berkeley and Francis Iles. DeAndrea argues in Encyclopedia Mysteriosa that:

… It was as Francis Iles that he made his greatest contribution to the genre, writing novels not of detection but of criminal procedure. His belief was that the mystery story was transforming into a “puzzle of character”, and he did his best to lead the way. Malice Aforethought (1931) is told from the point of view of a weasely doctor who intends to murder his wife and does so. In Before the Fact (1932), Iles pulls off the even more remarkable trick of chronicling the events leading up to a murder from the point of view of the neurotic young wife who is the intended victim. With the ending altered and the name changed to Suspicion, this became a classic Alfred Hitchcock film.

I will be looking at a Berkeley title instead of an Iles- I will review Malice Aforethought some other time. But I have a question: how is it that an author so talented goes from having a novel adapted by Alfred Hitchcock to the quagmire of obscurity? Berkeley was a grandmaster and deserves better recognition than he has gotten. Thankfully, The Langtail Press has reprinted a slew of books by Anthony Berkeley. If you haven’t read Berkeley, I definitely recommend checking him out… and the book Top Storey Murder (which TLP hasn’t gotten around to reprinting, though I hope they do) is a solid example of his work.

Murder Most Dull

A recent review of Anthony Wynne’s The Green Knife by fellow blogger extraordinaire TomCat (who also goes by the alias LastCenturyDetective) seems to have stirred up interest in this long-neglected GAD-era author. “Anthony Wynne” was the pseudonym of physician Robert McNair Wilson, who seems to have obsessed himself with impossible crimes of all sorts, though he never achieved the status of authors like John Dickson Carr or Clayton Rawson. And his book The Toll House Murder shows all too clearly why that is so.

The Toll House Murder begins promisingly, as we learn of the murder of Sir Andrew Burke, the wealthy man in charge of a famous shipping company. The circumstances are bizarre— Sir Andrew walks into a toll house to ask the man in charge to let him through. He re-enters his car and passes through the toll, but after a couple of hundred yards, the car swerves and tips over. As a result, the doors jam and have to be forced open. Sir Andrew is lying inside, stabbed through the heart— but there is no knife in the car, no other passenger, and no footprints anywhere in the snow around the car!

Slaughterers Slip Up

Murderers make mistakes! … I should just think so! So many devise ingenious schemes to mislead the police and to avert suspicion from themselves: real brainy schemes which ought to succeed. And then they go and spoil them by some tiny oversight which gives the whole thing away, so that their guilt stands out a mile. It’s like a man who fits up an elaborate electrical system in his house: lights, fires, heaters; every conceivable gadget and convenience, and then spoils it all by forgetting to switch on the current.

—     Inspector French, The Case of the Lower Flat (collected in Murderers Make Mistakes

Freeman Wills Crofts is another one of “The Humdrums”, men whose books are too often scorned by critics, although they had quite a following in their day and have been rather influential in the genre.  Crofts seems to have had quite an obsession with seemingly perfect alibis and the way they are broken. Raymond Chandler called him “the soundest builder of them all when he doesn’t get too fancy”. Now, I disagree with Chandler on many points about the genre but he actually has a very good point there, which I will go further into as I take a look at Murderers Make Mistakes.

Murderers Make Mistakes is an interesting short story collection by Freeman Wills Crofts. These stories were originally radio plays, and the book makes no attempt to disguise it. It glories in the fact, giving you the original episodes and their broadcast dates. Eighteen radio plays from Chief Inspector French’s Cases (broadcast between 1943 and 1945) were converted into story form with varied degrees of success. In addition, five cases from Here’s Wishing You Well Again were converted into Inspector French short stories (the original detective being the coroner, Dr. Cataret). There are 23 stories in this collection, and I’m lazy, so once again, I won’t go through each story individually, but give you an idea of the collection as a whole.

Eye spy with my little eye...

Richard Austin Freeman, creator of Dr. Thorndyke

R. Austin Freeman is one of a group of writers that have collectively been labelled “The Humdrums”. They include prolific authors like John Rhode, Freeman Wills Crofts, and JJ Connington. Time has not been kind to them, as their books have become scarcer and scarcer to find. Often the price tags attached are ridiculous. These authors are often scorned by critics, and have an unfair reputation as writers so dull they couldn’t entertain a drunken fish. (I used this description in my review of John Rhode’s Death on Sunday, but it could easily apply to the “Humdrums” in general.) They actually had quite a following in their day. Raymond Chandler, for instance, surprisingly confessed that he enjoyed R. Austin Freeman’s work:

'This man Austin Freeman is a wonderful performer. He has no equal in his genre, and he is also a much better writer than you might think, if you were superficially inclined, because in spite of the immense leisure of his writing, he accomplishes an even suspense which is quite unexpected ... There is even a gaslight charm about his Victorian love affairs, and those wonderful walks across London ...'

This comes as something of a surprise from the same person who damned authors like Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. And yet, it is somewhat understandable when you consider the painstaking scientific realism Freeman achieves through Dr. John Thorndyke’s investigations. (And boy, we sure know that Raymond really had a thing for realism...)

But is this all this “scientific realism” a positive point or a negative point about Freeman’s work? I think it’s a bit of both, as evidenced by his 1911 novel The Eye of Osiris. But to discuss why, I suppose I’d better start by describing the plot.

Bloody Murder

“He liked his John Dickson Carr,” said Julie, standing in front of the books. “He’s got at least forty here. The other writer he collected has a similar name in a way—Carter Dickson. I wonder if there’s a connection.”

—     Julie Hargreaves while examining the victim’s books, Bloodhounds

My introduction to Peter Lovesey’s work was far from the best— I read and was disappointed by Mad Hatter’s Holiday. The second Lovesey I read was far more encouraging— Rough Cider was written remarkably well, with a colourful setting and excellent characters that fuelled my interest in the book. Although I highly enjoyed it, it didn’t quite convert me into a fan— but when I opened Bloodhounds, I had high expectations. After 120 pages, I could safely say that I was now a fan of Peter Lovesey.

Bloodhounds is a delightful book from start to finish. It’s a marvellous tip of the hat to the Golden Age mysteries I admire so much, and in particular to my favourite author, John Dickson Carr. Lovesey creates a group of characters who are mystery enthusiasts— they call themselves the Bloodhounds and they meet once a week to discuss mysteries. They are an unusual and very mixed lot— some, like Rupert, like “crime noir”; others, like Milo, enjoy classical puzzles. Through these characters, Lovesey gets a lot of talk about mysteries going, bringing up some decent points but also getting across a sense that the author enjoys mysteries too. You’ll find none of Julian Symons’ general air of condescension here.

Live from New York: Murder!

The last time I read a book by William DeAndrea, I walked away disappointed. Cronus was highly unlike the other DeAndreas I’ve read— it was a paranoia-fuelled and painfully average Cold War thriller. It was wonderful, then, to return to Matt Cobb, DeAndrea’s main series character. Killed in the Act was the second Matt Cobb mystery, right after the Edgar -winning Killed in the Ratings. Cobb is a fusion between the classic GAD investigator and the hardboiled, private eye: he speaks in the hardboiled voice, but he’s not a private detective by trade, and in fact, he seems to suffer from a severe case of J. B. Fletcher Syndrome.

Matt Cobb is Vice-President of Special Projects at The Network, a major television broadcaster like NBC or CBS. His job is basically to handle tricky situations and make sure The Network comes out of it with a squeaky-clean reputation. The way he speaks reminds me uncannily of Archie Goodwin—like Archie, he speaks with the voice of the private eye without the negative qualities. Yes, he can make sarcastic comments in his head, but he doesn’t make it a governing staple of his life to be rude to everyone he meets, and this quality makes him a likeable character, the kind of guy you want to win in the end.

The good ol' curling game...

I suspect that Louise Penny has joined the likes of William DeAndrea and Bill Pronzini (and possibly Peter Lovesey) as modern/recent authors who have done an excellent job keeping mysteries alive and breathing. In June, I read her book The Murder Stone a clever book with a good impossible crime which was neatly executed overall. I compared Penny to Agatha Christie, pointing out it was a modern-day country house mystery, complete with an eccentric family ruled by a domineering matriarch. After a very good introduction to the author’s books, I eagerly picked up the second book in her Armand Gamache series: Dead Cold (a.k.a. A Fatal Grace).

Once again, Louise Penny does an excellent job putting the Canadian spirit onto the page. It’s excellently done, this time through the sport of curling. I’m not a curler myself, and I don’t follow the sport (which makes golf look like an extreme sport), although I have great respect for curlers themselves. Louise Penny obviously likes the sport a lot, and through her descriptions, the game seems to come alive. It’s all done very well, and is in many ways part of the plot— descriptions of snow-covered landscapes are lovely, but snowdrifts can complicate the investigation process, no? But she balances everything nicely: the characterization, the Canadiana, and the plot play off each other very well, and it never seems overdone. For instance, a group of people sit down to watch a hockey game. (Hey, it’s Canada!) Canadian’ passion for hockey is often the source of jokes, the scene here feels very authentic, right down to die-hard fans screaming the goalie should be traded when he’s having a rough night.