The Noble Duke of York

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

— English children’s nursery rhyme

After my disastrous experience reading Louise Penny’s Still Life, I decided to return to the Golden Age of detective fiction: back when good plots were more important than overwriting a story with an obvious conclusion. And what better way to contrast the two experiences than to go to one of the “Humdrums”: authors with such a bad reputation that you’d think they were unable to entertain so much as a drunken fish. But I’ve challenged this point of view many times on my blog, and I will do it again. So I decided to go back to a reliable favourite: Henry Wade.

Henry Wade was the pseudonym of Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher. I’ve said it before, but because his real name is so damn awesome I decided to say it again anyways. He’s perhaps best known for his series character of Inspector Poole, but he also wrote the fantastic inverted mystery novel Heir Presumptive, one of the best books I’ve ever read, regardless of genre. But today I decided to return to Inspector Poole, in Wade’s third book, The Duke of York’s Steps.

All that glisters is not gold

I have somewhat mixed feelings about Henry Wade’s Gold Was Our Grave. It is a 1954 novel, written under the Wade pseudonym by Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher. It’s the third book I’ve read by Wade, and although in general it’s a solid read, it is somewhat problematic at the same time. It has elements of a police procedural (for which Wade hardly gets enough credit) but it’s a genuine mystery at the same time.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning (an excellent place to start, I find). Hector Berrenton is a financier, who years ago was involved in a scandal involving the San Podino gold fields, when a Mexican engineer fabricated a fictional reserve of gold, tricking the company involved into asking for investments… only to ruin many people who had invested in good faith. It resulted in the prosecution of Berrenton and two others, who were accused of knowing the gold field was fake and supressing the information, selling out before the bottom dropped out and making some nice profit out of the whole deal. However, due to lack of evidence, the trio was acquitted…

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.