Mini reviews #38

Mystery in the Channel (1931) by Freeman Wills Crofts. Inspector French investigates among the French in this vintage murder mystery. Two bankers are found dead on a steamer going from England to France, and a large amount of money has gone missing. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and was especially entertained by the fact that characters are able to remember very specific details and discuss them at length. For example, a man working behind a till happens to glance at the serial numbers on small bank notes used in a transaction then, later, when the police put out a list of around a million serial numbers that cashiers should be on the lookout for, he instantly realises it’s a match! Very much reality according to FWC, and rather endearing for that.

Fletch (1974) by Gregory McDonald. Before I started reading this highly popular 1970s macho ‘comic’ mystery, I was warned: ‘it hasn’t aged well’. That, it seems, was an understatement. Surely, even in 1974, a roguish hero who establishes his charming roguery by psychologically terrorising his various ex-wives and raping a 15 year-old with substance abuse issues can’t have been unproblematic? I was disgusted by this book. The mystery element is generic and has certainly been done better elsewhere.

 

The Other Woman (2016) by Sandie Jones. A friend on Twitter recommended this novel after a Reddit post recounting real-life parallels to the events Jones describes emerged. It is a powerful, character-driven debut. A light-read domestic noir, The Other Woman marries the Perfect Husband and Mother-in-Law From Hell tropes.

True Crime Story (2021) by Joseph Knox. Presented as a true crime book, I read this novel because there was a whole ‘thing’ about people mistaking it for an actual true crime book and getting angry at the author. Knox, after all, features as a character/narrator and is not presented rosily. Interviews, newspaper reports, emails, and commentaries form the bulk of this narrative, which centres on the disappearance of a student from Manchester University. I’m fascinated by this cultural moment when a lot of especially male writers are including themselves as characters in their novels. And I did not solve this mystery!

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (2022 miniseries, Netflix). I’m surprised this miniseries is as popular as it is because, while I found it very funny, I wouldn’t have expected many people to. It reminds me of when I try to do comedy – the jokes don’t quite land because it always turns out I’m assuming people are equally as obsessed with the topic as I am. But this comedy mystery series, which hits every single trope of the cynical modern domestic noir does it so well that it could almost be an example of that very phenomenon. That said, I don’t know anyone who failed to spot the killer.  It doesn’t matter, though. The comedy is there, and it works.

Four Days’ Wonder by A.A. Milne

It feels needlessly flippant to be discussing detective fiction, especially fun detective fiction, at the present moment. But then again, aren’t scholars like me always banging on about how Golden Age crime writing’s importance lies in its wartime context? Those of us not playing any direct role in the conflicts might find at some times, as have so many readers over history, the need to escape, however briefly.
 
I read Four Days’ Wonder (1933) before we heard about the invasion. At that point, I felt the need to escape something else altogether. Having finally succumbed to COVID-19, at the most inconvenient time – a highly stressful fortnight at work, so I absolutely could not take time off – and with a particularly unpleasant drama playing out on the academic side, I needed some literature of escape. I wanted something light, fun, easily readable, and intelligent. At last, I found the perfect book in my study.
 
A.A. Milne (1882-1956) is of course best known as the author of Winnie the Pooh. Every now and then, someone pops out the fact that he also wrote detective fiction. It nearly always follows the format: “Did you know Milne also wrote one detective novel – and it’s a masterpiece?!” They are referring to The Red House Mystery (1922). I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone acknowledge that he wrote at least two detective novels. The other is Four Days’ Wonder. 
 
When I came across Four Days’ Wonder in a charity shop about a year ago, I picked up it and Two People, which were being sold for the combined total of 50p. I picked it up out of interest because I honestly hadn’t known until then that Milne wrote any books for adults beyond Red House. Now, I enjoyed Red House when I read it yonks ago and have always thought it was more a comedy than a mystery – although apparently that’s not the correct opinion. I also knew that the consensus that it was Milne’s only foray into the genre was wrong, because I read his short story “The Rape of the Sherlock” before even reading Red House. Anyway, I was curious, so I turned to the blurbs. While Two People clearly wasn’t going to be a whodunit but did look fun, Four Days’ Wonder looked much more promising.
 
Nonetheless, the books languished in a TBR mountain until the other week. I opened up Four Days’ Wonder and it turned out to be exactly, and I mean exactly, what I needed.
 
Jenny (Jane) Windell is an eighteen-year-old reader of detective fiction who, one day, stumbles across the dead body of her colourful aunt, actress Jane Latour. After inexplicably cleaning what looks like the murder weapon and losing her monogrammed handkerchief at the scene, she flees and decides, with debatable evidence, that she will be the police’s prime suspect.
 
On the run, Jenny enlists her oldest friend to help her forge various new identities, and finds a handsome artist on a farm near Tunbridge Wells who doesn’t seem to care which name she’s currently using and helps her with equal enthusiasm. All of these characters are wonderfully drawn. Their banter is witty, affectionate, and – considering the period – remarkably alive and inoffensive.  I particularly enjoyed the fantasy worlds Jenny and Nancy, her friend, create and inhabit, and their elaborate secret codes and identities. There is an entire secret code explained clearly at one point and I just ended up wishing I had friends with whom I could be that creative.
 
From the cocksure Inspector Marigold to the conveniently shared initial ‘J’ affecting half the characters, the novel gently lampoons many of the traditions of the then-contemporary adventure mystery story. Of course, Arthur Conan Doyle is namechecked, and so too are Freeman Wills Crofts and – with the irreverence that marks this book as firmly middlebrow – Edgar Wallace.
 
While Jenny is the protagonist, having the adventures and ultimately solving the mystery, what happens to her is mostly happenstance. But the characters are all linked by another one: an exquisite creation. Archibald Fenton is a novelist, who is much lauded as a writer, but as a person is absolutely inadequate. Pompous, self-absorbed, under the generally unevidenced belief that he is irresistible to women, and more concerned with his image than his art, every second with him was a pleasure because I knew the author gets it. My work has put me into close contact with a lot of writers, especially crime writers, most of whom are incredibly lovely but there are egos. And I’d better say no more than that.
 
I did not want Four Days’ Wonder to end. But it had to and, at just over 200 pages, its length is just right. The solution to the mystery might disappoint some and, if this were a Freeman Wills Crofts, I would be a bit miffed, but I powered through it brimming with pleasure and satisfaction, and closed the book with a big smile on my face.
 
You probably do need to be a dedicated Golden Age mystery fan to enjoy Four Days’ Wonder. By that, I mean you probably need to be a serious reader, who recognises the habits of writers beyond the big names. This may not be one for casual readers or fans of the genre in other media. 
 
But if you are a hard-reading genre enthusiast whose heart needs lightening, I cannot recommend Four Days’ Wonder enough. A.A. indeed.

Mini reviews #37 - Death on the Nile special

In honour of the newly (and finally) released movie, I thought I’d offer a special double-length set of mini-reviews, dealing with ten incarnations of the classic murder mystery. Others exist but one has to draw the line somewhere!

 

Death on the Nile (1937) by Agatha Christie. An iconic mystery novel for a reason, but not a perfect one, Death on the Nile is a passionate and ingenious tale of love, fame, and the end of opulence. Set aboard a Nile steamer, it concerns a wealthy socialite, famous purely for being beautiful and inheriting her father’s new money, murdered on her honeymoon. The prime suspect Jacqueline de Bellefort, the excellently-drawn ex-best-friend whose fiancée the late Linnet Ridgeway married. But Jacqueline has a very dramatic alibi: she was sedated and monitored after shooting someone else. Hercule Poirot, enjoying ‘the little vacation,’ learns that a holiday is never a holiday and gets to grips with the lengthy list of suspects, all of whom have something to hide. It is escapism at its best, even if some of the logic doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I’d recommend checking out the relevant episode of the All About Agatha podcast for a breakdown of the plot holes – because, honestly, I never notice them when I’m reading this book: I just enjoy it too much. An unusual feature of Death on the Nile is that every single character – from the great Christie ‘types’ like the snobbish Miss Van Schuyler to the very minor players who never appear in the films like Mr Fanthorpe – is brilliantly and engagingly depicted. You feel like you’ve met them all. And I can’t go without mentioning Mrs. Otterbourne, the tragic bestselling author of slushy romances whose books no one reads and who insists that she’s being censored. She is rather relevant in this day and age. I believe that she is a comic self-portrait; not of Christie as she became but of Christie as she might have become had she kept writing in her original derivative genre. Thank goodness she turned to crime.

 

Murder on the Nile (1944) by Agatha Christie. Christie’s stage adaptation famously replaces Hercule Poirot with a new character, the worldly Canon Pennyfather (is this the same Canon Pennyfather who will go on to play an unwitting role in the odd goings on At Bertram’s Hotel? Probably not, but it’s fun to imagine). Although the author claimed that Poirot as a character was too bombastic for the stage, it’s highly likely that she didn’t like certain actors claiming ownership of the role and therefore of her creation. Francis L. Sullivan, who had played Poirot a couple of times, starred in the first production of Murder on the Nile. The action takes place on the deck of the Lotus (the Karnak in the novel) and the heavily reduced cast of characters contains amalgamations of those in the book. Ultimately, although Christie recognized correctly the dramatic potential of her own work, I’m not sure this is quite the exploitation of that potential that it could be. For a Christie play, the dialogue is surprisingly flat and unfortunately one or two moments have not aged at all well.

 

‘Hercule Poirot: Rendezvous with Death’ (1945), Mutual Radio Broadcasting. Starring Harold Huber, the Hercule Poirot radio series is typical of the craze for such shows on the American radio waves in the 1940s. Only a handful of episodes survive, as far as we know, and ‘Rendezvous with Death’ is a real curio because it’s the only one we have directly based on a published text – although several of the lost ones were. The scriptwriter does a very good job condensing one key element of Christie’s complex plot into less than half an hour. It was first broadcast on 12^th July 1945 and exploits the novel’s drama for its own purposes admirably. There really are so few characters that it’s easy to spot the murderer, so it’s maybe more of a howdunit than a whodunit. But it works. Compared to the lamentably rushed 30-minute episode of Suspense! based on The ABC Murders, it comes out easily on top.

 

Death on the Nile (1978), directed by John Guillermin. Peter Ustinov's first and best outing as the eccentric Belgian detective, with a super-starry supporting cast. The scenery is beautiful, Ustinov is entertaining, with his own spin on the character, and the other players have delicious fun hamming up their roles. I feel like a whole generation of homosexuals needs to be told about this film, in which Angela Lansbury plays a drunk and Bette Davis and Maggie Smith have a waspish double act. [Review originally appeared in ‘Mini reviews #9’ in November 2017]

 

Death on the Nile (1996) by Paul Lamond Games. There are a fair few Agatha Christie jigsaws around, with the following format: read a booklet containing a heavily condensed version of the story, up to the point of ‘whodunit’, assemble a jigsaw containing a visual clue, then check you’ve got the answer right by reading the solution in either a sealed envelope or mirror writing at the back of the booklet. Death on the Nile was one of the first. What is interesting is that, inevitably, the puzzle is reduced to just a couple of scenes and there aren’t really many characters or possibilities – although in my edition (the first, from the 1990s), you’re given a deluxe list of suspects and motives from the novel, most of which don’t appear in the booklet at all! As always, the jigsaw aspect is enjoyable; anyone who knows the story fairly well can guess what the visual clue will be, especially when it becomes clear that the image centres on the victim’s cabin.

 

Death on the Nile (1997), BBC Radio 4. Michael Bakewell’s five-part dramatization is the most faithful to the novel’s intricacies and also – perhaps surprisingly – the best paced.  Its episodic nature means there’s always something interesting happening. John Moffatt plays Poirot true to excellent form, and Enyd Williams directs with customary pleasant lightness. There is a definite mix of acting styles here, from the highly accomplished Donald Sinden and Rosemary Leach, to the enjoyable work of the standard Radio 4 players, to one very questionable performance. The only real cock-up is when Linnet Doyle, who has been speaking with an English accent, is referred to as ‘the American lady’. But, overall, a hugely enjoyable adaptation, as we expect in this fabulous series of BBC radio dramas.

 

Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Death on the Nile (2004), directed by Andy Wilson. I remember the day this was broadcast on ITV – 12^thApril 2004. I was fourteen and very, very, very excited. I was a little disappointed, although I’ve grown to like it more over time. Kevin Elyot’s take on the novel is consciously trying to be different to and darker than the 1978 film, but I’m not convinced that anything really underscores that darkness. It does make the most of the Shakespearean heights of passion, and the futility of love in the story and the direction is really superb. A pre-Hollywood Emily Blunt pops up as the doomed Linnet, and there is sufficient scene stealing from Frances de la Tour. But ultimately the pacing is a problem, with a great deal of action and plot crammed into the last 20 minutes.

 

Agatha Christie: Death on the Nile (2008) by Dreamcatcher. An ‘i-spy’ hidden object game, of the typical format: cheaply made scenes where you click on prescribed items and clues among a lot of clutter. The story unfolds passively. It’s perfectly diverting, exactly like any other game of this kind. There are a few Christies in this series, including 4.50 from Paddington, Peril at End House, and Dead Man’s Folly.

 

Mystery Match Village X Death on the Nile (2021) by Outplay Entertainment. Mystery Match is one of those ubiquitous mobile phone games where you play Candy Crush-style levels between rounds of a hidden-object crime story. By some coup, the developers were able to get permission from Agatha Christie Limited to include a Death on the Nile themed ‘special event’ – that is, a game within the game where you do the same thing on a more basic level (it essentially co-opts their seasonal ‘awards scheme’ where you play special rounds that encourage you to buy virtual bling with real money). Remarkably, they have endeavoured to tell the whole story of Death on the Nile – although their source is clearly the 2004 screen adaptation, not the novel – and the result is perfectly playable but a bit … weird. It really is evidence that Agatha Christie’s genius lay far beyond plotting: while the plot is intact, the characters and dialogue are frankly nauseating.  It all feels cheap and silly and like one of 30-episodes-per-week daytime TV mysteries.

 

Death on the Nile (2022), directed by Kenneth Branagh. Branagh is back in what I suspect will be his last brush with Poirot. I’d like there to be more. But this film has been especially beleaguered, not just by the COVID-19 pandemic but also by some very problematic cast members. However, it’s out now and doing moderately well. I really enjoyed this film, and preferred it to Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express. Unlike in that offering, the starry cast gets fair screen time. While Branagh still takes up more screen time than he would if he wasn’t the director (surely young Poirot in flashbacks should have been played by a younger actor?), he doesn’t hog his scenes. It helps that the first hour is spelt ratchetting up the drama before the first inevitable murder. That is of course a feature of the book, too, which has led to criticism over pacing. However, this film doesn’t fall into the trap that both the 1978 and the 2004 versions did: the pace feels beautifully controlled, and the third murder, which feels superfluous in the older films, makes sense here. Branagh and screenwriter Michael Green have made several changes to the book and this is a much lusher, sexier version of the story. As in the stage version, several characters have been amalgamated and some have been completely rewritten, this time to make it more diverse and glamorous – which I think is a very good thing for a big screen film in 2022. It is not something Agatha Christie would have written. But I think it works. And the audience when I dragged my poor spouse to see it was generally younger than us, which was a first. They came for the stars, and clearly enjoyed it.

 

 

Who Killed Robert Prentice? by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links

Another mystery dossier by Dennis Wheatley and J.G. Links – you get the physical clues and sift through them to solve the crime – Who Killed Robert Prentice (1937) is huge fun as

always.

Reading as I did the bound printed 1980s edition, I unfortunately missed out on some of the clues/experience (scented paper!) but it was nonetheless a great afternoon diversion. The solution to the mystery bears a striking resemblance to that in an early Agatha Christie novel but (is this heresy?) I think it’s done better here.

Wheatley, it turns out, is not averse to self-promotion. Whenever a newspaper clipping appears, on the back or in the corner is some form of advertisement for his work, and there’s even an “interview with a local writer” that is basically his CV followed by “Mr Wheatly thought it unwise to comment on the case”!

It was interesting to learn from these materials, though, that “arranged by J.G. Links” means that Links comes up with the stories and decides on the clues, and Wheatley just writes them up.

The Conjure-Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher

Subtitled “A Harlam Mystery”, The Conjure-Man Dies was first published in 1932, just two years before its author’s early death. It is the first example of a detective novel with an African American author, and explores in a unique way the black American experience in the early 1930s. The detective is Perry Dart, one of the ten black police detectives in Harlam, who is called to investigate the murder of a conjure-man (fortune teller and witch doctor), N’Gana Frimbo, who appears at one point to have brought himself back from the dead. In his investigation, he is assisted by the capable Dr John Archer and constantly has to deal with two over-enthusiastic young men, Bubber Brown and Jinx Jenkins who provide a great deal of comic relief.

It’s a complex and character-driven mystery with plenty of surreal-but-illuminating moments, which tell audiences about traditions they may not be familiar with in the format of a popular puzzle entertainment. The crime itself is sufficiently theatrical to delight the most seasoned mystery reader. And, perhaps uniquely in golden age crime novels, all the characters are black.

Fisher once said in an interview that Harlem “itself is mystery – outsiders know nothing of Harlem life as it really is … what goes on behind the scenes and beneath the dark skins of Harlem folk – fiction has not found much of that yet. And much of it is perfectly in tune with the best of the mystery tradition – variety, color, mysticism, superstition, malice and violence.” This understanding, and the wish to communicate, are why The Conjure-Man Dies worked at the time as both a novel and a popular entertainment and why it still works on both counts.

This was not the author’s first novel – that was The Walls of Jericho (1928) – but it was his first, and sadly last, murder mystery. He also wrote a short story featuring Dart and Archer, “John Archer’s Nose”, which is included in the edition I have. This 2017 reprint is part of the Collins Detective Club vintage-style hardback series, and is a treat – although the book has never been published by Collins before.

The edition also reprints a 1971 introduction by Stanley Ellin which is, if anything, more of its time than the actual novel. Ellin acknowledges the writers who inspired Fisher’s foray into detective fiction – notably SS Van Dine and Dashiell Hammett – and concludes that while Van Dine may have influenced plotting decisions, the majority of influence goes to Hammett, something demonstrated by the fine and nuanced characterisation. I’d suggest that Van Dine and the Golden Age are much bigger influences here, as both the plot and the light-but-thorough approach to character, the clever balance of comedy and pathos, are hallmarks of both a broad education in the puzzle form and Rudolph Fisher’s own skill.

Mortmain Hall by Martin Edwards

I was very excited to get a hold of Martin Edwards’ Mortmain Hall (2020), the sequel to his highly successful Gallows Court, and his second novel featuring amateur criminologist Rachel Savernake and journalist Jacob Flint. The novel was originally sent to me because I was supposed to be interviewing Martin as part of the Golden Age of Crime conference at the University of Chester earlier this month, but unfortunately the national situation has disrupted this and so many other events.

Nonetheless, missing out on the event should not deprive one of associated pleasures, so I dug into this book with eager anticipation, and I was not disappointed. Indeed, I don’t think it is actually possible for Martin Edwards to disappoint: he is the authority on Golden Age crime fiction in addition to being a justly garlanded mystery novelist in his own right – and he’s one of those rare and wonderful people who writes to a consistently high standard while consistently embracing and celebrating the fact that they are working in genre fiction. A brilliantly escapist novel in the Golden Age vein, with a healthy body count, Mortmain Hall contains enough contemporary suspense to keep readers of all stripes interested.

Set in 1930, the action starts with a funeral. One of the attendees is a man who’s supposed to be dead. When Rachel Savernake tells him he’s in danger of dying a second time, he ignores her and boards a train. Then he falls from that train to his death. From this premise, we plunge into a murky world of justice miscarried and high-level conspiracies as the myth of the ‘respectable, middle-class murder’ comes under scrutiny.

An eccentric woman, with a taste for the ‘depraved, exotic’ side of life invites a select party of people who have been accused and acquitted of murder to her decaying country house. Before the party starts, and while it is taking place, the murders keep coming. Night-clubbing, birdwatching, dining, playing cricket, strolling along the clifftop, or visiting a lion enclosure… none of these activities will end well for this excellently drawn and thoroughly unpleasant cast of characters.

There are definite touches of the Gothic here – especially the denouement in the crumbling Mortmain Hall as a storm rages and a villain is unmasked in a manner familiar to readers of Arthur Conan Doyle. There is also a nice nod to the Christie back catalogue, most notably Cards on the Table, which is one of my favourites. There are consistent moments of gentle humour and some great insight into true crime which – without wanting to give too much away – blends seamlessly with fiction. I also enjoyed educational asides, including a reflection on the cadaver of James Hogg, an elderly murderer from the early nineteenth century, whose body was flayed after hanging and attached to a cross to settle an artistic debate about the crucifixion of Christ.

One really nice feature of the book comes as the very end in the form of a ‘cluefinder.’ A cluefinder is a list of clues with page references as they appeared in the preceding text. As the author explains in a Facebook video, the cluefinder was a device to enhance the game-playing aspect of Golden Age crime fiction, and to drive home an element of fair play. It was a popular feature from the late 1920s and was used by such luminaries as J.J. Connington, Freeman Wills Crofts, Elspeth Huxley, Rupert Penny, John Dickson Carr, C. Daly King, and Edmund Crispin, but fizzled out fairly quickly. As someone totally unfamiliar with cluefinders, I’m very grateful for its return in 2020, and think a revival of interest is definitely in order.

  

If this summary sounds chaotic, that’s misleading, because the whole thing is as neat, polished, and readable as you could ask for. It is a vibrant and complete journey into the escapist world of Golden Age crime fiction with a contemporary edge that enhances rather than labours the enjoyment. I am already looking forward to the next in the series!

Murder Off Miami by Dennis Wheatley

You might remember that I reviewed the Usborne Mystery Files a couple of years ago. Around that time, I acquired two 1980s ‘facsimile’ editions of Dennis Wheatley’s 1930s interactive murder mysteries, including Murder Off Miami (1936). The concept here is that you go through the physical evidence of a crime and solve the mystery yourself. While original readers had the actual artefacts to play with, the 1986 editions are photocopies, bound in book form.

I thought that lockdown would be a pretty decent time to pull one of these out and give it a go. And on a day I should have been settling down in Chester to lay the ground for our now-postponed Golden Age of Crime conference, my spirits were low. So, I’ve just spent an enjoyable afternoon in the company of Detective Officer Kettering and a shady set of suspects, one of whom committed a murder aboard the Golden Gull Yacht, just off Miami, in 1936.

The story is pretty straightforward: a wealthy businessman has apparently committed suicide, having jumped out of his cabin window on the world’s strangest holiday cruise, at which he is a guest of his arch-nemesis in soap manufacturing. Among his fellow passengers, nearly all of whom had a motive for bumping him off, we find a litany of colourful characters including a dowager battleaxe, a forgetful bishop with a secret past, an Italian nobleman who’s not on the level, and a double-dealing Japanese government official.

This is good, escapist fun at its purest. It’s also very, very golden agey. 1936 has always felt like the archetypical golden age year, for some reason – most of the TV series Agatha Christie’s Poirot reset the action of its diverse source material to that year, and it kind of fits that Murder Off Miami was published and set in that year. We have a nice collection of photographs, handwriting samples, witness reports, and telegrams to sift through – and it is of course all contemporary 1936 stuff which is rather thrilling.

For me, the saddest part was having to break the seal on the solution. If it was a new book, it wouldn’t be a problem, but since even this reissue is older than I am, it felt rather sacrilegious. And then I was a tiny bit disappointed that, as each and every clue was explained, I’d got them all – so it was almost as if I didn’t need to check. Except that it gave me the most wonderful, childish glow of pleasure to have missed nothing. Given how much I talk about the puzzle aspect on this blog, I’m starting to think I’ve been too quick to dismiss it in the past. Sometimes, it’s absolutely the heart and fun of the thing.

This game-cum-book gets a hearty recommendation from me, especially in these times when we need to escape. I think I’ll try The Malinsay Massacre (1938) tomorrow.

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

Several years ago, I read Georgette Heyer’s A Blunt Instrument and found it highly entertaining for all the wrong reasons. It struck me as everything detractors claim the Golden Age was: snobbish, dashed off, poorly written and proofed (even in a twenty-first century reissue), and ephemeral. I identified the murderer on page 2, found the humour funny only insofar as it was alarmingly antiquated even at the time it was written, and laughed for about ten minutes at a statement along the lines of: ‘The deceased made no response, because he was dead.’

Several of you have told me to give Heyer another chance, and I do in fact own copies of four more of her crime novels. Of these, I selected Footsteps in the Dark (1932), purely because I have a recent edition and am happier giving away new books than old books after reading them. As you can imagine, then, I came to the book with low expectations. I enjoyed the book more than I expected to. I do keep a reading journal — notwithstanding a well-known writer recently published a scathing critique of all their friends’ habits, wherein the idea of journalling one’s reading habits was roundly dismissed with ableist language — and in that journal I ended up giving the book a rating of 4 out of 6 (the 1-6 rating is preprinted; I don’t understand it but it works).

The plot can be summarised as The Hound of the Baskervilles meets Scooby Doo. A group of bright young things moves into a converted priory, which all the simple (of course they’re simple) locals avoid like the plague because it is haunted by the ghost of a ‘mad Monk’. Upon arrival, the new inhabitants start to notice apparently poltergeist activity, unearth secret passages and priest holes, and even get assaulted with a flying human skeleton. They even see the monk! Eventually - although not until p. 208 - there is a murder. The tale concludes with a damsel-in-distress scenario in an underground lair, and with the ghost himself being literally unmasked.

Heyer’s comedy is 90% ‘haha, look at how stupid the working class people are’, 9% ‘haha, look at how stupid foreigners [or, as servants call them, “furrinors”] are’, and 1% situational/slapstick/good. There is an entertaining scene in which the clueless residents decide to conduct a seance of sorts, only to have it interrupted by a policeman; the sitters and the sergeant exchange dialogue t cross purposes to great comic effect. Unintentional comedy comes in what I now think of as typical Heyer style: ‘the two men were accosted by a gentleman in clerical attire, who was buying stamps. He introduced himself as the Vicar’.

One thing that Heyer does well is educate modern readers about the workings of the upper classes — unlike Sayers, she wasn’t writing aspirationally but reflecting her own reality — and especially the prejudices within them. The thing that really struck me here, though, was the presence of a vacuum cleaner salesman. I had no idea that electric vacuum cleaners were around before the Second World War! So, I ended up doing some Googling and found out that they’d been around since the late nineteenth century. As with any rabbit hole, there are some fascinating stories in the history of vacuum cleaners and a good place to start is the Wikipedia page.

In terms of mystery, my prejudice blinded me completely. After my experience with A Blunt Instrument, I was so convinced that Heyer was not up to crafting puzzles that I didn’t give it much attention at all beside spotting a red herring and fixing on one suspicious non-suspect with the arrogance of certainty (for reasons explained below). The actual murderer was a character I’d almost forgotten by the time they were unmasked. All in all, a much more interesting read than A Blunt Instrument. I will try Heyer again, and I will not be throwing Footsteps in the Dark away just yet.

META MATTERS

The plot owes a great deal to Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles — even down to talk of ‘luminous paint’. This is why, when a slight, nervy butterfly-collector called Mr Titmarsh appeared on the scene, I was convinced that I’d solved the case. My belief was bolstered when his some-time companion issued a cryptic warning to one of our protagonists to ‘get out, as fast as you can’. But, as mentioned, I was wrong. Apologies, Mr Titmarsh.

The crime revolves around a printing press and a book in the British Library, which tells the ancient legends of the house and is being used to control present events. When a plucky pair of bright young things are captured in a secret lair, they pass the time by playing inconsequential games — very redolent for interwar readers of inferior detective fiction.

Mini reviews #24

Northanger Abbey (1817) by Jane Austen. Arguably the first metatextual detective novel, Austen’s witty satire is ostensibly a romance story centred on the young, headstrong Catherine Morland, whose ‘unimproving’ appetite for gothic adventure novels (specifically Udolpho) leads her to view her suitor’s family with intense and amusing suspicion. Most of the ingredients of playful twentieth century crime fiction are pre-empted here, and I’d hold Northanger Abbey, rather than Emma, up as Austen’s work-of-greatest-influence on the mystery genre. Remarkably, it was also her first completed novel, although it was published after her death.

Grey Mask (1928) by Patricia Wentworth. A super-fun mystery introducing the elderly spinster PI Maud Silver, although she barely appears in this one. The plot is beautifully far-fetched and entertainingly told, centring around  troubled bright young things stumbling onto a conspiracy of masked men and women who are trying to manipulate inheritance law. Not for the last time, Wentworth manages to pre-empt Agatha Christie’s next plot (in this case, that of 1929’s The Seven Dials Mystery) remarkably.

Rough Justice (2016) by Adam Croft. This short novel is fast-paced with enough hooks and pithy cynicism to keep you hooked. It will appeal to fans of modern crime thrillers without alienating traditionalists who value engaging plots.

Shedunnit (2018-present) hosted by Caroline Crampton. This exciting feminist podcast focusses on key issues in Golden Age crime fiction. Every other week, Crampton is joined by experts to discuss such matters as the Thompson-Bywaters case, the role of food, and queer codes and characters. If you find yourself with half an hour to spare, check it out. If you don’t find yourself with half an hour to spare, try to make the time, because it’s very, very worth it.

The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama: Murderous Texts (2019) edited by Caroline Blythe and Alison Jack. I’m thrilled and humbled to have a chapter on Agatha Christie’s later fiction in this stunning volume from T&T Clark. Considering the little-discussed but widely-acknowledged links between crime fiction and the Bible, Blythe’s and Jack’s edited collection features a whole range of essays from across biblical and literary studies. An essential volume for anyone interested in the interplay between popular fiction and religion.

The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr

So many of my friends love John Dickson Carr that, although it wasn’t conscious, the fact that I haven’t read a single one of his novels until now cannot be a coincidence. Among my Golden Age friends, he receives nothing but fulsome praise. But I think the reason I haven’t read him until now is that he is universally praised for his puzzles. Carr was, of course, the master of the locked room mystery.

While most of my friends who love the Golden Age do so because they love the puzzles, working out whodunnit is rarely the impetus or major take-home for me. I adore Agatha Christie because her social, psychological commentary is second to none, and the puzzles themselves are woven into that commentary in a way that other authors are yet to emulate. That’s why I can reread a Christie twenty times, not in spite of knowing the outcome but because of it. Carr has always had such a good press for his puzzles that I was afraid there wouldn’t be anything else to the books.

Well, I am honoured to be writing a chapter for the Routledge Companion to Crime Fiction, on self-referentiality and meta-fiction, and what did I think of when that remit was given to me? The infamous ‘locked room lecture’ in The Hollow Man (1935, known in the US under its original title, The Three Coffins). It is, in Malcah Effron’s words, ‘the benchmark for metatextuality in crime fiction’: Gideon Fell, the detective, acknowledges that he is among ‘characters in fiction’ and gives a detailed outline of every possible permeation of the locked-room mystery. He cites examples from literature, including A.A. Milne’s The Red House Mysteryand some of his own cases. So, although I’ve cited this passage several times, I felt that, really, I ought to read the book. And, as chance would have it, it’s widely considered one of Carr’s best.

Upstairs in a pub, Professor Grimaud is entertaining friends when a strange man enters the room and announces that he knows men who have risen from the grave. He then threatens Grimaud with the wrath of his mysterious brother, and disappears. A short while later, Grimaud is found dead in his locked, sealed study. At the same time, Grimaud’s visitor is shot dead in the middle of a street – and witnesses swear he was killed by a ghost.

The book has a very good puzzle. I was completely stumped but, once everything had been explained, totally satisfied. As an intellectual exercise, The Hollow Man is up there with the best of Christie. Also like Christie, Carr creates some wonderfully grotesque characters and scenarios in an elegantly streamlined plot.

However – and this is where I part company with so many of my friends – I was disappointed that each element remained separate. The setting is great. The puzzles are great. The characters are great. But none of them fit together. There is a very real sense in which the ‘goblin-like’ male secretary with the ‘large and loose mouth’, about whom ‘[y]ou would have diagnosed a Physics BSc with Socialist platform tendencies’, didn’t have to appear in this story specifically. The victim didn’thaveto die in his study – simply in a locked room. Remember that Hercule Poirot solved his first case because his obsessive neatness led him to straighten out objects on a mantelpiece; Gideon Fell’s eccentricities, however, are all window-dressing, and I never got the sense that I was enjoying a novel– rather, I was enjoying a story– as I read.

The upshot is that I found The Hollow Man extremely enjoyable, and now that I’ve jumped aboard the JDC Express, I’m not jumping off. Nonetheless, in a sense, my opinion has not changed: perhaps the puzzle isn’t everything in this book, but it is certainly the dominant feature – which is absolutely fine, and brilliantly done in this case – but not what I personally devour crime fiction for.

Mini reviews #20

Verdict of Twelve (1940) by Raymond Postgate. An excellent psychological mystery, with two strands: the puzzle of a child's murder, and an exploration of the private lives of the twelve jurors at his aunt's trial. The very first juror we meet has gleefully gotten away with murder in the past, making the whole thing an interesting take on the justice system at an increasingly frantic point in British history. The book is also worth reading for Postgate's ironic self-portrait in the figure of a self-important socialist intellectual, and for his thinly-veiled depiction of his brother-in-law, G.D.H. Cole, as a monstrous gay academic, Dr Holmes. Notwithstanding the presence of three distinct Edwards, it's an engaging and memorable novel.

The Secret Vanguard (1940) by Michael Innes. Unpopularity, I really enjoy Innes' adventure novels. They are so escapist: undeniable page-turners which draw you into a fantasy Britain in which everyone is wonderfully well-read and erudite. The Secret Vanguard is a kind of cross between a detective-mystery and an adventure thriller. There are vaguely-defined German spies and mad scientists who mostly swan around inhabiting John Buchan via the Romantic poets. And Inspector Appleby plays a big role but is, as usual, quite forgettable. The really memorable part is the protagonist, Sheila Grant. Described in the blurb to my edition as 'a most attractive heroine,' she is one of the more interesting, believable, and funny lead figures I've come across in earnest fiction of the late 1930s/early 1940s. I could have done without her love interest, Dick, who doesn't do much but, by virtue of his name alone, leads to some unintentionally hilarious passages.

The Hound of the D'urbervilles (2011) by Kim Newman. Sherlock Holmes's nemesis Professor Moriarty and his own sidekick Colonel Sebastian Moran take the lead in this extravagance of seedy Victoriana. Will appeal to fans of Neil Gaiman, Tape Five, etc.

The Husband's Secret (2012) by Liane Moriarty. The mixed reviews for this book baffled me initially, until I saw the original book cover and realised that many people had expected it to be a love story. Also, being published in 2012, it was slightly ahead of the 'husband' craze in crime thrillers.  That's my best guess: the narrative itself is utterly compelling and praiseworthy.  Our starting point is a relatively normal Australian wife discovering an envelope, addressed by her husband to her, 'to be opened in the event of my death.' The husband is still alive -- can she resist? What follows is a labyrinthine and very human psychological thriller following three sets of people whose lives and deaths intersect. I can't wait to read more by Moriarty.

Holmes Entangled (2018) by Gordon McAlpine. Gloriously accessible Sherlockian postmodernism. During the Second World War, Jorge Luis Borges visits a private detective with what he claims is a manuscript written by Sherlock Holmes himself. Holmes, we learn, was a well-known detective, occassionally helped by a 'middling scribbler' called Arthur Conan Doyle (who has pretty much gone mad, after becoming obsessed with fairies and speaking to the dead). The manuscript reveals Holmes' investigation of claims by Doyle that he was visited  during a seance by the spirit of the still-living Prime Minister. Cracking the case also involves solving the murder of Edgar Allen Poe. The solution lies in poststructuralism and quantum physics. Oh, and Holmes comes up with Schroedinger's cat all by himself.

Black Burying by Henry Carstairs

I enjoy Henry Carstairs’ mystery novels immensely, although I wouldn’t recommend them to many people. This is because, objectively, there’s not much to recommend them: they feel longer than they are, and are filled with rambling descriptions and internal dialogue. The investigations go round in circles, although the problems are generally very simple, and none of the characters are particularly interesting. Black Burying (1945) is Carstairs’ third novel to feature Lydford Long, and in this there is not even a dead body until the end of Chapter 15! An additional frustration is that several characters have similar names: Inspector Girdley, Sergeant Godfrey, Mr Gilchrist (who looks like Girdley), Sir Arnold Chevely, Mr Chatterton… I can’t imagine many people in the twenty-first century would bother with a book like this, and I can see why Carstairs remains out of print. However, there’s a certain wonderful escapism in spending time with Lydford Long.

Long (or Lyfdford, in the narrative) is a painfully shy man who wants nothing more in life than to be left alone and to sketch. His full-time job seems to be ‘amateur sleuth’ in that wherever he goes, someone dies and he sets around to solving each case without any prompting. In this book, he is helped by his some-time companion, a young boy called Phillip Bradley who puts some things together but mostly pops up to say ‘Gosh!’ And ‘Smashing!’, and by a dog called Spot. I laughed out loud when, in the second chapter, Lydford decided that he was bored so was going to see ‘his boy-friend’. My favourite thing about Lydford, though, is that he talks to himself. About 50% of the dialogue in Black Burying is Lydford working out the case with himself, alone.

Before summarising the plot, I’m going to quote the blurb because I find it loquacious:

Another absorbing mystery in which Lydford Long figures as investigator. When a party of people, of whom he chances to be one, goes for an autumn afternoon’s innocent picnic on the Downs, and one of the party disappears suddenly, completely and mysteriously, what then?

I bet this was written by the author. It just sounds so boring — and as if, midway through the sentence, he gave up. And there’s a sense throughout the novel that the author would rather not be writing a murder mystery. I know nothing about the author but, because he was writing during the war and everyone talks like an Edwardian, and because the obligatory meta-moments all reference Sherlock Holmes rather than anyone more modern, I’d guess he was elderly. The books stopped in the mid-1950s. The name Henry Carstairs sounds so much like a character in one of these novels that I presume it’s a pseudonym. Lydford is clearly a self-portrait because the workings of a shy mind are about the only thing in the book that are palpably authentic; also the author takes care to remind us that Lydford is tall and handsome, which is not uncommon when someone creates a fictional alter-ego on the sly.

So, Lydford is on holiday, staying in a country with people he doesn’t particularly like. Nearby are a little village and several nature walks. On one of this walks, another holiday-goer, Inspector Girdley, vanishes and several chapters later a body turns up. Without any prompting, for no apparent reason, and to nobody’s surprise, Lydford immediately sets about drawing diagrams and interviewing suspects in order to solve the mystery. Luckily for him, Philip, his ‘little invalid boy’ companion in a previous case (Drifting Death) is ‘spending his summer holiday, solitary, on an adjacent farm’, so Lydford and Philip happily pal up to solve the case.

While the set up is ridiculous and the writing is lazy — Carstairs is blatantly trying to fill space when he recounts a whole phone conversation over four pages that could be summarised in two lines (“Hallo! Is that Paget? Lydford here”, “Hello, this is Paget, who’s speaking please? Lydford, is that you?”, “Yes, it’s me,” and so on) — I was never bored reading. I don’t know why, exactly. Part of it is Lydford himself, who is such an excellent portrait of a shy man with a lot of unwanted attention on him. He is furious that solving the previous two cases in the series have given him a kind of notoriety, and he doesn’t like all the young women casting appreciative glances at him: he just wants to paint and sketch. He has no time for sex: ‘all girls were mysteries, and perhaps the only thing to do was to let it go at that.’ Yes, I really want to know about the author now.

Carstairs also turns some wonderful phrases when he wants to. At one point, he describes ‘a little man with darting eyes’ thus: ‘Everything about him was little except his obvious sense of grievance.’ Servants and locals do not get such sophisticated descriptions, however, and they speak in a painful-to-read vernacular. And I learnt some slang. ‘You have put your finger in the mustard!’ one character exclaims when another stumbles upon a hitherto-elusive truth.

There are eleven Lydford Long mysteries and so far I’ve read three. I have one more ready to read and will try to source the others, although I wouldn’t recommend these unless you’re a proper twentieth-century detective fiction geek.

Murder on the Second Floor by Frank Vosper

Most Agatha Christie fans know of Frank Vosper (1899-1937) as the colourful character who adapted 'Philomel Cottage' into the Suspicion-esque play, and later movie(s), Love From a Stranger (from an original draft by Christie herself, which not many people know). Really, really keen Agatha Christie fans know that his sister Margery adapted the story 'Accident' as a one-act play, Tea for Three, in the 1930s. But did you know that he also wrote several detective stories and a novel?

Murder on the Second Floor (1929) was probably Vosper's most successful play before  Love From a Stranger. It ran in London and on Broadway and has been filmed a few times, although I've not seen any of these. What I do have is Vosper's own novelisation of the play. I'm not sure when it was published, but the edition I have, from the Daily Express Fiction Library, must have been printed in 1938 because it refers to the author's sad death the previous year. He fell from an ocean liner, the SS Paris, although the foreword in my edition identifies this as the SS Normandie. As Martin Edwards points out on his own recent post on this novel (pure coincidence, I promise!), he talks about Vosper's death in The Golden Age of Murder.

This is a short novel, at 190 small pages with very large text. I opened it up, not knowing what to expect (in fact, I had thought I was buying the play script). The opening paragraph is promising enough:

Meet Sylvia Armitage. She is the heroine of this story. Sylvia is not reclining gracefully in a hammock, attired in a simple gown of flowered muslin, beneath a cherry-laden tree in a quaint, old-world garden. Neither is she sitting on a table, swinging her long, slim, graceful legs, with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in a long holder in the other, saying shocking things about biological urges to a horrified aunt. She is not even in a notorious night-club in New York, standing on a table attired in less than half a bathing-dress, with a gentleman's silk hat at a rakish angle on her wicked little head, drinking her own health -- in such liberal potations as must seriously impair it -- surrounded by fifty intoxicated lovers in paper hats, carrying a dozen balloons apiece. No; at the risk of opening our story in a drab and disappointing manner, the truth must be told. Sylvia Armitage is washing-up.

Aha! I thought. Here we have an errant wit. Alas, the paragraph continues, and Vosper so thoroughly milks this clever device that one wonders if the whole idea is to bolster the word count. I'd guess this was a promotional tie-in for the 1932 movie, and such hastily written 'novels' were -- and remain -- a popular gimmick.

Soon, we are introduced to other characters including a suspicious Indian student who may or may not be a dope smuggler and a maid with 'an inferiority complex' who speaks more impossibly like a maid than any maid in the history of ever. This Lucy 'knew her place [...] and her place, poor little soul, seemed such a dull, obscure sort of place as scarcely to be worth knowing at all.' You get the idea.

Sylvia's love interest takes the form of a 'high-brow' playwright, Hugh, who 'looks down on' other people, especially the authors of thrillers. This snobbery dissolves when, at some point during the action, Hugh resolves to write a low-brow murder mystery play.

Once we've got to know these characters, we are introduced to some sinister goings on, involving affairs, an unwanted pregnancy, and drug smuggling, and before long the man at the centre of the whole thing is murdered.  With appropriate comic interludes, the body count mounts, and then a final double-twist makes us see the whole thing in a new, lighter light.

I wasn't sure the comedy or the tension work as well with Vosper's slapdash prose style as I'm sure they do on the stage. Notwithstanding occasional flowery passages, Vosper seems to have taken a similar approach to novelising his own script as Charles Osborne took when he turned three Christie plays into novels. That is to say, he's put the dialogue in speech marks and the stage directions into the past tense and sat back, thinking 'job done'. Job not done. One scene in which a suspect returns from church surreptitiously, trying not to be seen because she has forgotten her false teeth, must be riotous acted out. In prose, it's just bizarre.

There is also a moment quite early on when Vosper tries -- and, to my mind, manifestly, hilariously, fails -- to make a poignant and emotional point out of a rendition of the song 'How do you feel when you marry your ideal?' (you know, the one with the chorus of 'Ever so goosey, goosey, goosey, gooooosey.') 'How does one feel when one marries one's ideal?' Sylvia sighs, wistfully. 'Does he exist. Now if  only Hugh...' Similarly entertaining is the description of the corpse, with more melodrama than a day with my family.  The blood spurts from the victim's neck 'like finest threads of hardened sealing-wax, or the "feelers" of a lobster.'

To solve the mystery -- something I forgot to attempt -- just look for the least likely suspect and you can't go wrong. At the end of the novel, for various reasons I shan't go into here, everyone agrees that the story would make a marvellous play.

Maybe it would. Maybe it did. It did not, however, make a marvellous novel. That said, I'm delighted to have come across this and I got a great deal of pleasure from reading it. Just not the kind of pleasure the author intended.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Party time! It's my 100th review!

This special post concerns an acknowledged classic of crime and detective fiction. Agatha Christie's sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was published in 1926. The first book under a new contract with Collins -- who still publish her work today -- the legendary twist in this novel, combined with a good publicity campaign and an unfortunate media sensation around the author, launched her into genre-writing stardom. Her light has not yet dimmed.

* SPOILER KLAXON *

It's impossible to discuss The Murder of Roger Ackroyd without discussing the twist, for reasons that will become apparent. Okay, so: the narrator did it. I've lectured on this novel a few times, and I always begin my lectures with those four words. They serve as evidence that students need to do the advance reading before each class, and also set the stage for any careful consideration of the text and its contribution to crime writing.

Laura Thompson has written that 'Roger Ackroyd is all genre: not an atom of authorial personality comes between the writing and the reader.' As I argue in my book, Queering Agatha Christie, there is something very significant in the fact that it reads this way: up until the final revelation, the book is supremely conventional. It is, in fact, a more stereotypical Agatha Christie book than anything else she ever wrote. The setting is a country house, the victim in a nouveau riche type ('more impossibly like a country squire than any real country squire'), the suspects are stock figures, and the narrator is -- well, a country doctor. So, not only is he a doctor, like Holmes's Watson, but he is a country doctor; he's a local, reassuring, and reliable presence in every sense.

The plot: Hercule Poirot has retired to grow vegetable marrows (nothing unique here -- Sherlock Holmes retired to keep bees). However, when his old friend Roger Ackroyd is murdered, he is forced to investigate. The body is discovered by Dr James Sheppard, our narrator, who follows Poirot around until Poirot gathers together all the suspects.

In the final chapters, the profound conventionality ends. Poirot reprimands the suspects, tells them he knows the truth, and dismisses them. Then he takes Sheppard aside, and explains in private the truth of the matter: only one person could have committed the crime. 'In fact -- Dr Sheppard.' He then hints to Sheppard that the best thing to do in the context is to commit suicide. The truth, says Poirot, should not be revealed, for the sake of the murderer's devoted spinster sister. Sheppard goes home and writes an 'apologia' to the reader, gloating over his cleverness, and explaining that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was intended as a chronicle 'of Poirot's great failure.' On the verge of suicide, he leaves us.

Thank you to Chris Chan for pointing out
this cartoon's source: the New York Times. 

All throughout the novel, there are references to genre fiction, especially to Sherlock Holmes. Sheppard frequently tells the reader he is 'playing Watson to Poirot's Sherlock', and Poirot even compares him to Hastings. Although early reviews of Ackroyd tended to be glowing ('[few detective novels] provide greater analytical stimulation', wrote the New York Times critic), a light-hearted charge of foul play -- dismissed by Dorothy L Sayers as sour eggs over readers' having been successfully 'bamboozled' -- is often elevated by modern critics to the status of national outrage. To read contemporary scholarship on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, you'd think that daily life ground to a stop when the Watsonian figure was proved to have 'dunnit'. However, these commentators are reading too literally on two levels.

First, they are not appreciating the great fun and artifice that characterised the writing and reading of detective fiction in the late 1920s. Second, they are wrong about the murderer's identity. Yes, the Watson figure never 'dunnit' -- and let me tell you why!

Sheppard is an unreliable narrator. We know this -- he gloats about it in the final chapter, referring back to the preceding text and to the act of writing itself; the trick that he -- and therefore the author -- has played. In chapter 4, Christie glosses over the murder without so much as a paragraph break:

the letters were brought in at twenty minutes to nine.  It was just on ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread.  I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone.

And gloating over the fairness of the mystery, the narrator of course refers back to this in chapter 27: 'supposing I had put a row of stars after the first sentence!' he says.  'Would someone then have wondered exactly what  happened in those blank ten minutes?'

When Sheppard says he has been 'playing Watson' he is misleading us again. He might be playing the part, but Poirot never joins in. Poirot never actually tells our narrator anything he wouldn't make public knowledge. The person he confides in -- the person he treats as a sidekick -- the person he shows affection for at the end of the book -- is James Sheppard's gossipy sister, Caroline. So, is it a foul? No, it's ingenious.

As most Christie fans know, Christie loved the character of Caroline, and eventually elevated her to detective status, creating Miss Marple in a set of short stories in 1928. Marple, an elderly spinster who relies on gossip to find out clues, is a direct literary descendent of Caroline -- and Christie felt so strongly about the original's narrative function that she objected when a playwright tried to turn her into a sexy love interest for Poirot, called Caryl. Christie knew exactly what she was doing.

Gossip is the key to everything in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. My favourite scene fills a chapter, which is entitled 'A Game of Mah Jong'. It's absolutely one of the best and most ingenious scenes in the history of twentieth century crime fiction. The chapter is almost entirely made up of dialogue between four game-players. The Sheppards are, of course, among them. As the play their hands, they discuss the murder and the various suspects. Clues emerge, but so do psychological insights, both through the gossip and through the greed or restraint that characterises each player's contribution to the game. To my mind, this scene is much more elegant, concise, and interesting in execution than any variation of the 'Let's all look at the crime board and conveniently summarise the case' scene that occurs half way through most books and dramas.

'I'm a common, vulgar little thief!'

Poirot processes the gossip with a kind of popularised version of Freudian psychoanalysis. He has a surprisingly powerful speech in Chapter 17 about the corrupting power of money, and the socially-constructed nature of 'moral fibre'. In a 1926 context, the book is not quite as old-fashioned as it first appears, even before we get the 'twist'. Awareness that the world imagined -- the familiar, formulaic crime novel territory -- is a false one is spread throughout the book. One of Sheppard's tricks involves using a dictaphone to fake the time of death. So, after he's been killed, Roger Ackroyd is heard through the study door saying 'the calls on my purse have been so frequent of late...'

Of all the characters, it is only Thoroughly Modern Hercule who realises that nobody actually speaks like that; that what people heard was the recorded voice of Ackroyd reciting a letter.  What is so marvellous about this is that the novel doesn't just twist the old conventions and any nostalgia we might associate with the crime fiction genre. It tells us that (a) we can trust no one, however reassuring their presence might be, (b) tradition is artifice and conservatism simply doesn't work in real life, and, devastatingly, (c) we are no judges of the world we live in.


It is great that Roger Ackroyd is acknowledged as a classic and innovative crime novel. It's wonderful that it's taught at schools and universities, that it's used by narratologists discussing concealment and creative writers discussing revelation. However, as a novel, it is so much more than a stock puzzle with a shock solution. It is a stylised, self-referential tour de force.

Mini reviews #12

Death in a White Tie (1938) by Ngaio Marsh. Blackmail, debutantes, and dying social niceties abound in this golden-age mystery with more than a touch of the self-parodic. Although one of the least substantial Roderick Alleyn novels, I think it’s one of the best. Marsh is at her best when she’s writing like a wasp sampling sugar.

Knots and Crosses (1987) by Ian Rankin. The first Rebus novel, which was, apparently, never meant to spawn a series. The idea of a divorced alcoholic detective, unable to recreate his former glories while all the time the world around him needs fixing is old and hackneyed now, but it was probably fresh when Rankin wrote this. And, the way he writes, it still feels fresh.

Agatha Christie: The Grand Tour (2012), edited by Mathew Prichard. I’m conflicted about this beautiful book. It is, undeniably, a lovely thing to behold. The format is simple: a collection of Agatha Christie’s letters, written to her mother during her 1922 world tour with her first husband. As a Christie enthusiast, I love the insights into my favourite writer’s early professional life. As a human being, I feel a bit dodgy dipping into her personal – and definitely not professional – correspondence.

Death Comes to Pemberley (2013) by P.D. James. An almost unspeakably dull mystery sequel to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and, it turns out, James’s final book. I have very little good to say about this, except that the author’s love and affection for her source shines through on most pages.

Detecting Wimsey: Papers on Dorothy L. Sayers (2017) by Nancy-Lou Patterson. A collection of old (mostly 1970s/1980s) essays on Sayers and her detective, previously published in specialist journals and edited by Patterson’s students. While there is nothing ‘new’ in the scholarship, it provides a fascinating glimpse of how crime fiction studies used to be – and, by proxy, how far the field has come.