Classic Mysteries

"The Angel"

As regular readers of this blog know, I'm asked from time to time for recommendations of new books by contemporary authors that might fit the description of a "classic" mystery. I think I have a good recommendation this time about a brand-new historical mystery that fits firmly within the traditional form while dealing with a fascinating case of "what if" involving one of the world's most popular authors of classic fiction.  Mystery writer M.J. Trow, who writes several different mystery series, has put Grand and Batchelor, his two fictional Victorian "private enquiry agents" to work solving the apparent murder of Charles Dickens. Yes, that Charles Dickens. The book, published this week by the Crème de la Crime imprint of Severn House, is called The Angel, and the publisher has provided an e-book version for review. It is the subject of this week's Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

First, a few facts: Dickens died on June 9, 1870, after suffering a stroke. At the time, he had been working on his unfinished mystery novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens had what - for Victorian times - might be called an interesting private life, with a number of potential liaisons and mistresses.The English public loved his books, and he remains one of the giants of 19th century English literature.

The central – and fictional – characters in The Angel are two so-called “private enquiry agents,” one American named Matthew Grand, the other an Englishman named James Batchelor. The two men are partners in their firm, investigating together much as a modern “private eye” team might work.

In The Angel, after the sudden death of Charles Dickens, found dead in his so-called chalet, or summer house, Grand and Batchelor are approached by a man named George Sala, in real-life, a biographer and close friend of Dickens. Sala tells the investigators that he believes Dickens did not die of a stroke, as the doctors had announced – instead, says Sala, he was undoubtedly murdered. He wants Grand and Batchelor to find out who committed the murder – and how and why, for that matter.

And away they go – and we go along for the ride. There is a very large cast of characters, most of whom are based on real people: the people who knew Dickens and worked with him, his publishers at Chapman and Hall, his wife Catherine, his rather extensive collection of mistresses, the “Inspector Field” who often took Dickens on his night-time tours of the dreadful slums and criminal dens of 19^th-century London, and so on. Almost all of the major characters and many of the minor ones are as real as the pages of history. Of course, some of the events and most of the conversations are fiction, but there are very fine dividing lines here between the reality that we know from biographies of Dickens and his own writings, and the events created by M.J. Trow. This is one case where the usual author’s disclaimer in the book about resemblances is truly significant: “Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.”

I found The Angel to be a very entertaining story, a blend of standard traditional mystery tropes (including clues shared with readers) and a classic subject - the murder of a highly respected and much-admired author. If you enjoy historical mysteries, let me recommend this one to you.

 

From the Vault: "Killer Dolphin"

Ngaio Marsh is regarded by many readers as being one of the Golden Age "Mystery Queens," whose books helped to popularize the genre. It's worth noting, however, that many of her books were, in fact, written and published long after the end of the Golden Age (if you accept the general guidelines saying the age roughly coincided with the years between the two world wars of the twentieth century). One of my favorites, reviewed during the first weeks of the Classic Mysteries podcast more than nine years ago, was Killer Dolphin, which was published in 1967. Here's a slightly edited version of my review:

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A very theatrical murder – in more ways than one – and the theft of a priceless Shakespearean relic form the centerpiece of Killer Dolphin, by Ngaio Marsh.

Welcome to Classic Mysteries, a program of reviews of fine mystery novels worth reading and rereading. I’m Les Blatt.

Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealander, with a long and distinguished reputation in her home country for her work as a producer and director in the theater, particularly for her outstanding productions of Shakespearean plays. Outside New Zealand, however, she is far better known as one of the outstanding mystery authors of the 20^th century.

Between 1934 and 1982, she wrote 32 novels and a number of short stories featuring Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn. Most of the novels are set in England, although in a few of them Alleyn does his detecting in New Zealand. More than a few of her novels have a theatrical background reflecting her professional and personal passion for the theater.

One of them – and a favorite of mine – is the novel Killer Dolphin. That was the American title; the British title, a bit less sensational perhaps, was Death at the Dolphin. It is a strange story. A young playwright visits the bombed-out shell of the Dolphin Theater, a casualty of the German bombing of London during World War Two. The young man accidentally falls through a hole in the stage into a pit filled with water. His life is saved by the intervention of a mysterious man, who turns out to be a fabulously rich businessman. The businessman ultimately buys the Dolphin and hires the playwright to help restore it and to write a play for its reopening. If that seems like unusual behavior, you’re quite right – but there are very good reasons for it, which will not be revealed until the very end of the novel.

There is another thread here: the businessman reveals that he is in possession of a child’s glove – one which apparently was made by Shakespeare’s father for Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, whose early death was one of the great tragedies in the playwright’s life. It is, of course, enormously valuable – not just for its monetary worth, but also as an inspiration for our young author, who decides to use the glove as the centerpiece of his play for the reopening of the Dolphin.

But there is a great deal more going on here. The theatrical company assembled to produce the play has more than its share of internal jealousies and disputes. Soon, there is a murder, another member of the cast is badly injured and the priceless glove is stolen.

Enter our detective, Roderick Alleyn, a detective whom I admire wholeheartedly. Over the years and the course of 32 novels, Alleyn ages quite gracefully and grows in rank and wisdom. He is a man with a deep appreciation of art and culture, a “gentleman,” in the British sense of that term. His wife, whom he meets, courts and marries over the course of several novels, is a noted and talented painter – for Marsh was also deeply interested in the fine arts.

Unlike many other fictional detectives of the Golden Age, Alleyn was a Scotland Yard man, with all the resources of the official police services at his disposal. Alleyn and his assistants begin to investigate the crime or crimes. Marsh generally does provide readers with the same clues seen by Alleyn – but she is less fanatical about producing a fair play puzzle for the reader than some other period authors. That’s all right. A great deal of Killer Dolphin – the actions and the motives – are rooted in her characters, who are, for the most part, rounded and believable, not just two-dimensional cutouts. Marsh puts her knowledge of theater, and theatrical tradition, to work here shaping a mystery (more than one, actually) that grows out of the very credible behavior of a troupe of actors and backstage people, not to mention the mysterious businessman who becomes so deeply involved in the story.

Her writing is delicious, and she often throws in a phrase or two that will delight and entice the reader. For example, in describing a party held in the theater for the actors and others involved with this show, she says:

“When he returned to the foyer it was to find that the party had attained its apogee. Its component bodies had almost all reached points farthest removed from their normal behaviour. Everybody was now obliged to scream if he or she wished to be heard and almost everybody would have been glad to sit down.”

That’s a fine description – I have been at an awful lot of gatherings precisely like that, and I suspect that you quite probably have as well.

Or the arrival of Alleyn at the theater after the murder and theft have been discovered. Marsh says:

“The constable had opened the pass-door in the main entrance and now admitted Superintendent Alleyn in the nearest he ever got to a filthy temper.”

Or a few pages later, Alleyn remarks that the press is “in full lurk” outside the theater – a marvelous way to describe it, some 40 years before celebrity journalism’s pursuit of Paris Hilton.

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Killer Dolphin is a well written, carefully crafted novel that just happens to be a tightly constructed mystery as well. The theatrical background is fascinating, the murder and other unpleasantries are well conceived and the characters are memorable. The book is in print, from Felony & Mayhem Press, and ought to be readily available through your favorite mystery book dealer.

If you would like to listen to the original podcast, click here.

Next week, The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett.

"Murder in Piccadilly"

Take a young aristocrat, not excessively bright, currently living on a very small allowance but who expects to inherit a substantial fortune when the current head of the family dies. Add a mercenary young lady, loved by the young aristocrat, who makes it clear that she will not marry a poor man. Mix in an unscrupulous interloper. The result, perhaps inevitably, is Murder in Piccadilly. The 1936 Golden Age novel by Charles Kingston is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Murder in Piccadilly is another in the British Library Crime Classics series, published in the U.S. by Poisoned Pen Press, who made a copy available to me for this review. It's a combination of an "inverted crime story" and a Golden Age thriller. We get to see how the crime is conceived and carried out and then watch the cat-and-mouse game as detectives hunt for the evidence needed to show what really happened.

In Murder in Piccadilly, we are introduced to a young man named Bobbie Cheldon, an aristocrat who is definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Although young Bobbie is nearly penniless right now, he stands to inherit a rather large fortune when he succeeds to his rightful position as the titular head of his family. Unfortunately, his miserly uncle, Massy Cheldon, is the current family head, and looks quite likely to remain as such for at least a couple of decades to come. Now young Bobbie has fallen in love with a night club dancer named Nancy Curzon, who has made it VERY clear that she will not marry someone who is penniless. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, Bobbie meets up with a highly unscrupulous character named Nosey Ruslin who – like Nancy – sees the potential for increasing his own wealth through Bobbie if only something were to happen to Massy Cheldon. And Nosey is never one to let a little thing like an untimely death stand between him and – he hopes – thousands of pounds a year.

All of which will, of course, lead to murder - a stabbing amid the rush-hour crowd at the Piccadilly underground station, with a thousand potential witnesses, NONE of whom can swear to what they have seen, or who might have committed the crime. Most frustrating, indeed, for Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Wake, who observes, "Somebody’s discovered the art of getting away with a murder, and I didn’t think anyone knew it except myself.”

It’s a fascinating and lively story. To be honest, in a book filled with distinctive characters, there are very few likely to draw much sympathy from the reader. But the author does a very nice job of roping us in and engaging us in the search for a wily killer – and there are some interesting and unexpected twists as we near the end of the chase. It's recommended.

From the Vault: "Necklace and Calabash"

We open the Classic Mysteries vault this week to travel back in time nearly 1400 years, to the seventh century and ancient Imperial China of the T'ang Dynasty. That world is carefully reconstructed for us in a series of classic historical mysteries by the Dutch author Hans Van Gulik, whose detective is based on a real historical figure - Judge Dee, a village magistrate (and later, an official in the imperial court), who lived from 630AD to 700. Among Van Gulik's mysteries, my favorite is a book called Necklace and Calabash. Here's an edited version of my podcast review:

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Robert Hans Van Gulik was a Dutch diplomat and a serious student of oriental languages and literature. During World War II, Van Gulik translated a classic and ancient Chinese mystery, called Dee Goong An, which recounted some fictional cases solved by Judge Dee, a real magistrate who lived during the T'ang Dynasty, during the seventh century. He published the English translation as The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee.

Encouraged by the success of this book, Van Gulik decided to write a series of new stories featuring Judge Dee. Eventually, there were sixteen novels. Most followed a traditional Chinese format, combining three cases into a single interwoven mystery. Van Gulik deliberately wrote his mysteries as if he were writing during the Ming Era, nearly a millennium after the T'ang Dynasty. But, particularly to western eyes, he offers a fascinating picture of what life might have been like in ancient China.

Necklace and Calabash was the next-to-last of the Judge Dee books to appear, but the events described in it are set in the middle of the Judge’s career, when he was a village magistrate in the fictional district of Poo-Yang. While returning home to his district, the Judge makes a stop in the small village of Rivertown. The town is very close to the Water Palace, the summer residence of the emperor’s favorite daughter, the Third Princess.

Judge Dee hopes for a chance to relax and do some fishing. But he is quickly pressed into service, first by Rivertown’s military administrators, and soon by the Third Princess herself. A valuable necklace has been stolen, and it appears that the theft is somehow part of a large and malevolent conspiracy.

On the way to solving the mystery, Judge Dee also finds himself drawn into two other cases – the murder of the cashier at a local inn, and the apparent elopement of the innkeeper’s wife. Again, many traditional Chinese detective stories are put together this way, with the detective solving three mysteries simultaneously.

But, to my mind, Necklace and Calabash – unlike some of the other Judge Dee stories – does a particularly good job at interweaving the three mysteries. And I think that for western readers, Necklace and Calabash will appear much closer to the kind of mystery fiction we are used to seeing.

In many of the other Judge Dee stories, the Judge is assisted by a retinue of regular characters who serve as his assistants. In Necklace and Calabash, he is operating on his own, away from his home, without his regulars. This gives Van Gulik the chance to bring in some other characters. In particular, we are given a Taoist monk, Master Gourd, first encountered by the judge at the beginning of the novel, who will play a very major role in the story – even, at one point, saving the judge’s life. When we first meet him, he appears to mistake Judge Dee for a doctor. So, when the Judge asks him about the calabash strapped to the saddle of his donkey, the old man answers:

“’Emptiness, sir. Just emptiness. More valuable than any potion you might carry in yours, Doctor! No offence meant, of course. Emptiness is more important than fullness. You may choose the finest clay for making a beautiful jar, but without its emptiness that jar would be of no use. And however ornate you make a door or window, without their emptiness they could not be used.’ He drove his donkey on with a click of his tongue, then added, as an afterthought, ‘They call me Master Gourd.’”

There are other characters who also stand out. There is Fern, the innkeeper’s niece, who also helps Judge Dee with his investigations. There is the local military commander, an army captain who has worked with Judge Dee before. And there is the Third Princess herself. When she is first mentioned, Judge Dee observes,

“She was the Emperor’s favourite daughter, said to be exceedingly beautiful. The Emperor granted her every wish, but apparently she was not the spoilt palace-doll one might expect, but a very intelligent, level-headed young woman who took a deep interest in the arts and sciences. Various prominent young courtiers had been mentioned as future imperial sons-in-law, but the Emperor had always postponed a decision.”

Judge Dee’s observations will prove to be quite accurate.

There is not very much of a “fair play” puzzle in this mystery. We are told that in the traditional Chinese detective story, the question of “who done it” is less important than we are used to. However, the mysteries in this story are fairly intricate and well thought out, and there are elements which will puzzle and delight. It’s worth noting that in traditional Chinese stories, there is often a heavy supernatural element. While there is some of that present in Necklace and Calabash, it is hardly overwhelming, and the supernatural plays only a very small role in the ultimate solution.

There is plenty of action here – enough, certainly, to tire out the Judge – and the writing overall is quite good. Necklace and Calabash has always been my favorite among the Judge Dee stories. For a mystery with a fairly gruesome plot, it is pretty upbeat – much more so than some of Van Gulik’s other books.

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Van Gulik's books have remained in print and I strongly recommend the whole series in general - and Necklace and Calabash in particular. If you want to listen to the original podcast, you may do so by clicking here.

Next week: Killer Dolphin, by Ngaio Marsh.

"The Warrielaw Jewel"

Looking for a pretty sure recipe for disaster? How about this one? Start with an old Scottish family, the Warrielaws, living in and near Edinburgh - a family still quite prominent, but definitely running out of cash. Add a healthy dose of hatred, for most of the family members hate and despise their relatives, even the ones they're living with. Maybe especially the ones they're living with. Add the family mansion and estate, which is literally falling apart, as there is little or no money for repairs. Mix in a strong-minded family chief - a female, I should add - who is determined to do everything her own way, whether her relatives like it or not. And don't forget a fabulous and famous jewel, by far the most valuable thing they own - or at least that they own until the family head sells it, probably to Americans.

Like that mix? Then you'll probably want to find out what happens when that rather potent brew of hatred mixed with contempt and just a touch of greed reaches the boiling point. You'll find it in The Warrielaw Jewel, by Winifred Peck. It's a classic Golden Age of Detective Fiction book, written by an author better known for so-called literary fiction than for mysteries, and it's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

The Warrielaw Jewel was written in 1933, but its narrator, Betty Morrison, the wife of the Warrielaw family's legal advisor, explains that she is writing about her memories of events that took place some 20 years earlier, on the eve of what we now call the First World War:

This story of mine is now I suppose historical. My own children apply the term to that period, so far away from modern youth, when King Edward VII lived, and skirts were long and motors few, and the term Victorian was not yet a reproach…Edinburgh was not in those days a city, but a fortuitous collection of clans. Beneath a society always charming and interesting on the surface, and delightful to strangers, lurked a history of old hatreds, family quarrels, feuds as old as the Black Douglas.

That description quite aptly fits the members of the Warrielaw family. There’s Jessica, who has legal authority over the estate. There’s Jessica’s rather weak sister Mary, and their niece, Rhoda, who is a business woman, and Rhoda’s young ward, Alison, and another niece named Cora and a nephew, Neil. I’ll stop before you start drowning in a sea of names here, but suffice it to say that each of them detests at least one or two of the other family members.

And then there’s the fabulous Warrielaw jewel, a tremendously valuable stone. Jessica – who, as I said, acts as the head of the family – wants to sell the jewel. The other family members do not, but Jessica has legal control and is determined to sell it and turn over the proceeds to her nephew Neil – a prospect which horrifies the rest of the family.

But then the Warrielaw jewel disappears. And so does at least one of the family members. And it doesn’t take long for the petty grievances to escalate into murder.

The Warrielaw Jewel is one of just two mysteries that Winifred Peck wrote during the course of a long writing career, one spent mostly writing literary fiction. But it's good enough, and unusual enough, to warrant being brought back into print - and, in fact, the Dean Street Press has just reissued the book (and sent me an e-book version for this review). This edition features an introduction from mystery historian Martin Edwards with more information about the author and her career. It's worth your time and effort.

 

From the Vault: "Lament for a Maker"

Another of my all-time favorite mysteries, beautifully written by Michael Innes, the third in his series of novels featuring Scotland Yard's John Appleby. Here's a slightly edited version of my original podcast review from 2007.

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In a remote castle, deep in the Scottish highlands, strange things are happening. The laird of the castle, widely detested as a miser,  roams the hallways of his castle, reciting a 500-year old Scottish poem, while plotting…what? The laird will soon die – but was it suicide, or accident, or murder? There, in a nutshell, you have the central problem of the novel Lament for a Maker, by Michael Innes.

To tell the story of the strange death of the laird of Erchany castle, Ranald Guthrie, Innes uses a series of narrators, each of whom reveals a portion of the story. The result is a narrative written in a variety of styles, which peels away the mysteries of the events in the novel very much like peeling the layers of an onion. Just when you (and the characters) think you finally understand what has really happened, there will be a plot twist that will take your breath away.

The events, surely, have a Gothic flavor about them. In addition to our early glimpses of the laird, stalking through the halls of his freezing castle, reciting verses from William Dunbar’s early 16^th century poem, "Lament for the Makers,” we are shown the very odd composition of the household at the castle. In addition to the laird, we have his ward, a young woman whose presence there will only be fully explained when we reach the end of the novel. We have his two main servants, the apparently villainous butler, Hardcastle, and his wife. There is also what was called in those days a sub-normal lad who takes care of the manual chores outside the castle. And there are the rats – legions of rats, and they will play a very significant role in the story as well.

As I say, it sounds rather like the stock characters of a Gothic novel, but there is a great deal going on here that will not be fully understood until the end of the book. The various narrators will explain the action – and do so in some of the best prose you are likely to encounter in any mystery.  It is to Michael Innes’s credit that he provides each narrator with a different and appropriate voice. From the Scottish shoemaker Ewan Bell, whose narratives will open and close the book, you will get Scottish dialect – and a familiarity with some Scottish vocabulary will be helpful here; think Robert Louis Stevenson and Kidnapped. From an English traveler who happens on the scene, you get a flippant commentary on the events he observes. From the detective, John Appleby, you get a more clinical view of the investigation. And so on.

Throughout, Innes uses language (and Dunbar's powerful poem) to captivate you and draw you into his story. Near the beginning of Ewan Bell's narrative, he is describing the reaction in the village of Kinkaid when the news comes down from the remote castle that the laird has died in very strange circumstances. We have been told that Guthrie was “near” – that is, a miser, apparently pathological, a man who scoured the local scarecrows to see if anyone might have left a penny in the scarecrows’ pockets – and the laird’s servant Hardcastle is widely considered to be as bad or worse. Here is what Ewan Bell has to say:

“When the word got round Kinkeig that Guthrie had done himself a fatal mischief, there were many that were right glad and a few that were sorry. The many were glad, hoping surely for a better laird. But the few with a spark of imagination were sorry, for to them, the pity came that Guthrie had not thought to take the coarse creature Hardcastle with him, to do his pinching and screwing for him when he was set-up – as syne he’d be sure to be – among the propertied souls in hell."

You’ll find a fair amount of humor like that – sometimes a very dark humor – in the telling of the story. Each narrator approaches it a little differently, and most manage to find at least a little humor to relieve the situation. For instance, that English traveler, who is stranded near the castle when his car breaks down, describes Mrs. Hardcastle this way:

“And isn’t she a beauty? No doubt, Hardcastle, who can’t be more than fifty, took her for the sake of her old-age pension – or perhaps she made a little fortune as the Bearded Lady in a circus. If these appear brutal remarks, think of a fine gentleman-like Renaissance poet having a good go at describing a witch; that will serve for the rest.”

As you read the book, you will be rather grateful for these humorous asides, for there is little to laugh at in the central mystery itself. As with any such "impossible crime" novel, you must be willing to suspend disbelief – to avoid saying, “that couldn’t possibly have happened.” It’s fiction, after all, and we make allowances. But the action is fast and furious. The case is “solved” – in fact, it is solved several times over – but each solution in turn is destroyed by further revelations, and the ultimate unraveling of the story is deeply shocking and poignant, even as it is satisfying. 

Of all the Michael Innes novels, I have always preferred the ones featuring Appleby, although I do think that some of the later books are more than a little forced. Innes had the sense to allow Appleby to grow and mature from novel to novel; he is a young Scotland Yard detective inspector in Lament for a Maker, while, by the end of his career, he had retired from his position in charge of Scotland Yard’s criminal division.

But I don’t think Innes ever quite matched the intensity or brilliance of Lament for a Maker. The use of the different narrators, reflecting different viewpoints and interests, is extremely effective. The story moves along and carries us with it to a largely unexpected and extremely satisfying conclusion. I cannot urge you strongly enough to get and read this book.

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If you would like to hear the original podcast review, you may listen by clicking here.

Next week: Necklace and Calabash, a Judge Dee mystery by Robert Van Gulik.

"Cue for Murder"

Nobody - including the theater critic reviewing the performance - could have expected what happened during the opening night performance. Here's what that reviewer wrote:

The sensational discovery of a murdered man on the stage of the Royalty Theatre last night interrupted Sam Milhau's production of Fedora starring Wanda Morley, at the end of the first act. If such an incredible event had occurred in the action of the play, the writer would have condemned it unhesitatingly as a stale theatrical contrivance - a piece of pure ham, mechanical and impossible...Suffice it to say that the impossible did happen last night at the Royalty."

The murder actually was committed on stage, in front of the opening night audience - yet nobody saw what happened. Nobody admitted to having any idea of the dead man's identity, or where he came from. Psychiatrist Basil Willing had very few clues to help him find the truth in Helen McCloy's 1942 classic, Cue for Murder. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

I find myself becoming addicted to the first-rate mysteries written by the American author, Helen McCloy. She manages to create a tense atmosphere in her books, and her plots are quite complex, but she also is quite willing to play mind games with her readers. She opens Cue for Murder - her very first sentence, in fact - by saying, "“The murder mystery at the Royalty Theatre was solved through the agency of a house fly and a canary.” Be advised that she means that literally - and it will prove to be the conclusive evidence needed by Dr. Willing.

Cue for Murder works on many different levels. It takes readers backstage (and on stage) at the chaotic opening night of a major Broadway show. The action is set at the time of America’s entrance into World War Two, and there are preparations being made to black out New York City if enemy bombers attack. Dr. Willing, now working with the wartime FBI as both psychiatrist and investigator, is a detective in the mold of R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke – he’s a man of science, and brings a scientist’s precision to his investigations. The plot is very fair about providing clues to the mystery here – in fact, I was able to anticipate some of the book’s twists. But that’s not a complaint – not at all. Helen McCloy wrote with both style and wit, and I think readers will very much enjoy Cue for Murder. At the moment, it's available as an e-book from Orion/Murder Room - I'm not sure how much longer Orion will be supporting the Murder Room label, however, so if you want it, now's the time to get it!

From the Vault: "The Nine Tailors"

When I am asked - as happens with some regularity - which of Dorothy L. Sayers's novels about Lord Peter Wimsey is my favorite, I never hesitate to answer: it is The Nine Tailors. First published in 1934, it features a beautifully tied-together mystery plot combining a whodunit with an even more powerful howdunit and fully-realized characters, all set against a background of bell-ringing. It was the very first book that I reviewed on the Classic Mysteries podcast. Here's a slightly edited version of what I said at the time:

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The body of an unknown man is discovered in an English churchyard. How did he die? And who killed him? This is the central mystery in one of the finest mystery novels ever written, Dorothy Sayers’s The Nine Tailors.

The phrase, "the nine tailors,” has nothing to do with the making of clothes. The word “tailors” here is a corruption of “tellers.” It refers to the nine teller strokes sounded by a church bell to mark the death of a man.

The Nine Tailors is very much a book about bell-ringing – in particular the form of the art, so well-developed in England, known as “change ringing.” In change ringing, the object is not to play a tune on the bells, as is done with a carillon. Instead, it is to ring the “changes,” sounding the bells one after another in a constantly changing, but mathematically predictable order.

And the bells of the church in Sayers’ setting, the town of Fenchurch St. Paul, are central characters in the book, with individual personalities and their own individual names. So before I tell you more about the mystery, let’s talk about Sayers as a writer.

As with many of the English writers of the Golden Age, Sayers use of language is nothing short of breathtaking. She assumed that her readers were intelligent, educated people – which could lead to some irritating traits, such as her habit of assuming that references to Shakespearean or Jonsonian verse, for example, would be instantly recognized without having to be identified further for the reader. But in The Nine Tailors, her writing is particularly beautiful and moving.

Let me quote one of my favorite passages, from quite early in the book. The bells of the church are about to be sounded in a special "peal" on New Years Eve – it will take nine hours for the eight bell ringers to ring this peal, beginning with a midnight service in the church to mark the new year. Listen to Sayers's descriptions of the bells ringing out, listen to her name the eight bells, as the great deep voice of the tenor bell, Tailor Paul, leads the way. Here is what she wrote:

The eight men advanced to their stations, and Hezekiah consulted his watch.

Time, he said.

He spat upon his hands, grasped the sallie of Tailor Paul, and gently swung the great bell over the balance.

Toll-toll-toll; and a pause; toll-toll-toll; and a pause; toll-toll-toll; the nine tailors, or teller-strokes, that mark the passing of a man. The year is dead; toll him out with twelve strokes more, one for every passing month. Then silence. Then, from the faint, sweet tubular chimes of the clock overhead, the four quarters and the twelve strokes of midnight. The ringers grasped their ropes.

Go!

The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes.

Every bell in her place, striking tuneably, hunting up, hunting down, dodging, snapping, laying her blows behind, making her thirds and fourths, working down to lead the dance again. Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes, and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvers of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells – little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity and old Batty Thomas, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, and up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul.

[That struck me, when I recorded this nearly ten years ago, as a fairly amazing and moving piece of writing. My opinion hasn't changed.] That is quite typical of the kind of writing Sayers could produce. She was one of the first women ever to earn a degree from Oxford University. Her novels, featuring her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, are mysteries, but they are most literate mysteries.

And the mystery here is a very good one. Wimsey, his car having broken down in the snow, stranding him in Fenchurch St. Paul, takes part in that great bell ringing extravaganza on New Years Eve. Some months later, he is called back to Fenchurch St. Paul: the body of an unknown man has turned up buried in someone else’s grave. The man must have been murdered, probably around the new year – but he appears to be unknown to anyone, and even an autopsy yields no indication of how he died. Wimsey sets out to discover how – and who – and why.

The story is beautifully and ingeniously developed, and the bells again play a major part in it. There is some humor – and some tragedy as well. Not for Sayers the pure puzzle mystery – there were always fully-realized, rounded characters in her novels, and while we enjoy their triumphs, we share their hurts as well.

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From time to time, I meet other readers of mysteries who don't care for The Nine Tailors. I mention this as a matter of fairness to you; I hope you will get - and enjoy - this book, but in honesty, it may not be everyone's cup of tea. It certainly is mine. The puzzle - the murder of that unknown man, and how it was done - is brilliantly told. I can't recommend it highly enough.

 If you want to listen to the original podcast, you may do so by clicking here.

Next week: Lament for a Maker, by Michael Innes.

"Dead Water"

You might say that the story began with a miracle - that is, if you are willing to believe that a young boy was cured of a badly disfiguring case of warts through bathing his hands in a stream. Of course, you'd have to believe the story young Wally told about a lady dressed in green who told him to wash his hands at the spring, and then go home and simply believe that he would be cured - and it would happen. While the doctor said such apparently random cures did happen sometimes and, in fact, were well-documented, he couldn’t really explain them. But there were some who saw a miracle at work and believed in the Green Lady. And there were others who saw in that same inexplicable healing a chance to build a huge commercial enterprise around the waters of the spring. And when the owner of the land decided to shut down the commercial enterprise...well, it's probably not a surprise that events would lead inevitably to murder. The full story is told in Dead Water, by Ngaio Marsh, and it's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the full review by clicking here.

The book opens with the story of Wally’s cure from his disfiguring warts. And we learn the reaction of many of the people living on a small island connected to the village of Portcarrow where the healing spring is located. There are skeptics, and a few opportunists – and one woman who is convinced that what happened was truly miraculous. She is Elspeth Cost, a woman who would have been described in an earlier time as a spinster of"a certain age," by which was meant a woman prone to fixations on religious beliefs, coupled with a fair amount of sexual ambivalence. Miss Cost runs a shop with all sorts of pretty awful items sold as memorabilia. She makes the entire area into a sort of shrine to the supposed curative powers of the water. She is organizing a big (and truly dreadful) festival for the second anniversary of Wally’s cure. In fact, Miss Cost is the only true believer behind the commercialization of these so-called miracle cures – and, as such, the most likely to be affected by Miss Emily Pride.

Miss Pride is the new owner of the island, having just inherited it, and horrified at what it has become. She announces to the islanders that she intends to shut down the commercial operation. The festival will be allowed to continue (as it’s too late to stop people from coming to Portcarrow to attend it) but it will be the last one. Commercial turnstiles (blocking the way to the spring and requiring visitors to pay for their pilgrimages) will be removed, and so forth.

For her pains, Miss Pride begins receiving death threats. Fortunately, she has confided her intentions – and the threats – to her old pupil, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, who is not at all happy with Miss Pride’s insistence on doing things her own way.

Naturally, Miss Pride and Miss Cost clash immediately and violently over those plans – and it is worth pointing out that there are other frictions and confrontations involved among a surprisingly large cast. And, very soon, there is a murder – though there is considerable question about whether the murderer killed the intended victim. And Inspector Alleyn, who is on the scene in Portcarrow to keep an eye on his old teacher, Miss Pride, finds himself in charge of a particularly nasty case.

 Ngaio Marsh is widely considered to be one of the so-called “crime queens” of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. She began writing in the 1930s, and she continued all the way into the early 1980s. Dead Water, written in the 1960s, is certainly well past the end of that Golden Age, but Marsh really did a lot of her best writing in those middle years, and Dead Water has a lot to recommend it.

Scheduling Note

FYI, tomorrow's Classic Mysteries podcast and blog post will be published this afternoon, a day early, before the advent of the Jewish New Year holiday at sundown. I wish all of my visitors a year of health, happiness and peace, and thank you for your continuing support over the years.