Classic Mysteries

From the Vault: "The Daughter of Time"

There is an old proverb which tells us that "truth is the daughter of time." Perhaps so. But when it comes to historical truth, it can be very difficult to pin down the details of the historical facts we think we know. Mystery author Josephine Tey tackled one of those enduring mysteries in her book, The Daughter of Time. It is one of my favorite mysteries - even though the "truths" revealed in the book remain the subject of considerable argument. It was one of the first books reviewed on my podcast. Here's what I had to say more than nine years ago, edited somewhat:

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Do you remember Richard the Third, the fifteenth century King of England portrayed as a vicious, evil murderer by Shakespeare? The original “evil uncle,” who had his two nephews murdered in the Tower of London, so that he could usurp the throne? His story is the stuff of nightmares.

Or is it?

What if Richard didn’t commit those murders?

Who did? And why? What really happened to the princes in the tower?

Could Richard III have been framed?

Those are the questions addressed in one of the most delightful mystery novels ever written –  The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey.

The Daughter of Time defies all attempts to categorize it. It is a historical novel – but it is set in the present. A detective sets out to solve a murder – that happened 450 years earlier. And the reader is treated to some truly beautiful writing.

Here’s the basic premise of the book: our detective, Alan Grant, is hospital-bound and bed-ridden – and desperately bored. Josephine Tey’s opening paragraph will undoubtedly strike a familiar note to anyone who has ever been trapped in a hospital bed. Here’s how the book begins:

Grant lay on his high white cot and stared at the ceiling. Stared at it with loathing. He knew by heart every last minute crack on its nice clean surface. He had made maps of the ceiling and gone exploring on them; rivers, islands, and continents. He had made guessing games of it and discovered hidden objects; faces, birds and fishes. He had made mathematical calculations of it and rediscovered his childhood; theorems, angles, and triangles. There was practically nothing else he could do but look at it. He hated the sight of it.

In an attempt to get his mind out of this rut, an actress friend brings him some portraits of people involved in historical mysteries. One of the portraits fascinates Grant. It is the face of an apparently sensitive, troubled man. Grant is stunned to discover that it is a portrait of Richard III – for the face does not look like the kind one might expect to belong to a vicious murderer. Yes, Grant is aware that it is impossible to say by looking at a person’s face that the person would not commit a murder. But he is intrigued by what he sees. Here is how the author describes Grant’s position:

It was, as he had said, not possible to put faces into any kind of category, but it was possible to characterize individual faces. In a reprint of a famous trial, for instance, where photographs of the principal actors in the case were displayed for the public’s interest, there was never any doubt as to which was the accused and which the judge.

Grant begins to look more closely at what history says about Richard III. And the closer he looks, the more research he does, the more wildly improbable it seems to him that Richard could ever have done the things which Shakespeare – and, before him, Sir Thomas More – claimed that Richard had done.

Grant sets out as a policeman to try to solve the puzzle. Aided by an American researcher, and by documents and books from the British Museum, he pursues the facts in the case, looking for contemporary records of witnesses, trying to answer the questions that any investigator needs to have answered in order to solve a crime.

In the course of his investigation, he comes across a great many examples of how history can be falsified – and often is. Facts we all think we know may really be fictions – and don’t we see that happening today as well.

The conclusions which Grant reaches have been reached by other historians over the years, but their findings have often been ignored. That Shakespearian image of Richard as monster and murderer is too powerful.

And it is worth noting – as another character in the book does – quoting again:

“It’s an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you. They don’t want to have their ideas upset. It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it. So they reject it and refuse to think about it. If they were merely indifferent it would be natural and understandable. But it is much stronger than that, much more positive. They are annoyed. Very odd, isn’t it?”

It’s important to emphasize that The Daughter of Time is no dry history lesson. The sophisticated writing, the touches of humor, the fascinating characters both of the contemporary investigators and of the historical actors – these all combine beautifully in a most extraordinary book.

The Daughter of  Time was published in 1951, and it was Josephine Tey’s next-to-last mystery. In fact, she only wrote a half-dozen or so in the course of her career. None fits any convenient formula and all are worth reading. But The Daughter of Time really is an amazing novel. I note with approval that the New York Times called it “one of the best mysteries of all time.” Obviously, I agree.

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To listen to the original podcast review, please click here.

Next week: The Final Deduction, by Rex Stout.

"Farewell, My Lovely"

Philip Marlowe certainly seemed to have a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. His curiosity about a man he just happened to see while walking down the street got him involved with -and in - several murders, the theft of a valuable jade necklace, several cops (all corrupt to some degree), hints of blackmail, considerable physical danger, and entanglements with a number of women. The "how" and "why" of it all may be found in Raymond Chandler's second novel, Farewell, My Lovely, first published in 1929. 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.

For an author who really created only a handful of novels and a somewhat larger handful of short stories, Raymond Chandler exerted - and continues to exert - enormous influence on the American Private Eye detective story. Chandler's stories are generally quite gloomy - noir, in today's vocabulary of mystery elements - and certainly hard-boiled. That's certainly true of Farewell, My Lovely. What redeems them - for me, at least - is Chandler's extraordinary writing, especially his gift for very dark humor. If his characters live their lives down those "mean streets" that Chandler discussed in his essay on The Simple Art of Murder, then his heroes, at least, do so with few illusions.

The story begins almost accidentally. Marlowe has been looking – unsuccessfully – for a missing barber – a case he’s about ready to give up on. As he leaves the barber shop, his eye is caught by a very big man, walking down the street – as Marlowe describes him, “He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck.” Marlowe goes on to describe the way the man is dressed and concludes, “he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.” 

Curious, he sees the man enter what he calls a "dine and dice joint" called Florian’s. Marlowe follows him, just to see what will happen. What happens is a murder – and let me stop here for a moment to warn readers that we’re dealing with the kind of racial attitudes you might find in far too many places in the days before World War II. The murder of a black man is treated pretty lightly by most of the down-and-outers in Farewell, My Lovely; it’s clearly stated, for example, that police aren’t too likely to follow up the murder of a black victim. It can be unsettling to a 21st-century reader – but it’s really only a small part of the story.

At any rate, Marlowe is practically a witness to the murder – and here’s where the story starts to get complicated. Marlowe will be asked to find out what happened to a dancer named Velma – it seems that man whom Marlowe followed has just gotten out of prison and is looking for his old flame. Then, there’s another job for our detective, involving the theft and recovery of a valuable piece of jade jewelry – and that leads to more murders. There’s a phony medium, a kidnapping operation involving a private drug hospital, some tense moments on board a sea-going gambling casino, and – as the blurb on my copy of the book says – "more corruption than your average graveyard."

It's a grim read - or it would be if it weren't for Chandler's bitter but often very funny humor. It’s fair to say that many (if not most) of the American "private eye" books of the 20^th century and even on into today follow the same basic paths that Chandler and his characters walked in Farewell, My Lovely and his other books. If you haven't read it - I suggest you do so.

From the Vault: "Christmas at Candleshoe"

Because we are only a few days away from Christmas, I'd like to wish a very merry one to those who celebrate it. In fact, I'd like to offer, as a holiday gift, my review of a fine and funny thriller by Michael Innes, a 1953 book called Christmas at Candleshoe which I recommend strongly to you. Of course, it's probably not the Christmas you expect... 

Here's a slightly edited version of my review from nine years ago, brought back From the Vault for your enjoyment:

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I have a very unusual kind of Christmas mystery for you today. It’s set in a crumbling old English manor house. So far so good. But wait. First of all, there’s no murder – barely. But there is a damsel in distress – who happens to be in her nineties. There are some children, who will risk a great deal to protect her. A couple of Americans who may or may not be on their side. Some nefarious and largely unseen people set to make a determined assault on the house. Oh, and it’s set on a mid-summer evening. An odd Christmas story indeed – it’s Christmas at Candleshoe, by Michael Innes.

The Christmas, in this case, is not the holiday – it is the artist, Gerard Christmas, a seventeenth-century carver, as he is described, a designer of funeral monuments, holder of the position “carver to the navy,” and so forth. Really – I’m not making him up; he was a real person.

Candleshoe, however, is not real – it is the crumbling manor house I mentioned earlier, and the setting for a perfectly delightful mystery by Michael Innes. Innes wrote a couple of mystery series – the best known of them featuring John Appleby, the Scotland Yard detective who matures through the series, starting out as a fairly young inspector and winding up as a commissioner. Some of his best books, however, have not been part of any series – books like The Case of the Journeying Boy, for example. Christmas at Candleshoe is another non-series mystery, and, I think, a very good one.

The best way I can describe Christmas at Candleshoe, and the technique Innes uses to tell his story, is to say that it is rather like peeling an onion, layer by layer. Events at first seem to be impossible to explain or to comprehend, but each successive chapter and incident sheds a little more light on what is really going on under the surface. Innes also writes a good deal of the book in the present tense, which gives us the impression that we are seeing the action as it takes place – and as its characters see it.

The story begins as we follow a group of tourists around another mansion, Benison Court, the estate of the Marquess of Scattergood. Bit by bit, we focus in – first on Lord Scattergood and his family, but then on a young American visitor, Grant Feather, and his mother, a very wealthy woman who may want to buy an English estate and settle down.

After leaving Benison Court, Grant wants to go to a nearby hotel and settle down for the night. But his mother discovers another estate nearby – one that isn’t on the tourist maps. This is Candleshoe. It turns out to be an ancient and – as we will discover – decrepit mansion. And there are odd things happening, as the Feathers approach – a young boy begins shooting arrows near them with warning messages to steer clear.

But the Feathers proceed to Candleshoe and meet both the woman who owns the estate – the elderly Miss Candleshoe – and her nearly-as-ancient chaplain of her private chapel, a Mr. Armigel.

Innes accomplishes all this with a very quietly understated wit. It is not clear, at first, whether the very funny misunderstandings in the conversation are a result of the elderly Candleshoe residents being hard of hearing – or deliberately changing the subject. For example, as the Feathers are introduced to Miss Candleshoe, there is polite conversation – at first discussing the bowling-green on the property. At this point, Grant wants to learn about the boy who seems to have been warning them away from the place. Here is a bit of the dialogue:

'The gardeners must see to it.' Miss Candleshoe pauses and sips Madeira. 'If there are any gardeners that is to say. Since my brother Sir James died several years ago, we have been obliged a little to cut down on one side and another. But the topiary, at least, is in tolerable order. The children, I am told, see to that.'

Here is something about which Grant wants to know. 'Then you do have kids living here?' He asks.

'At the moment, only a solitary goat.' Mr. Armigel seems to offer this reply in perfectly good faith. 'But the poultry are very flourishing, I am glad to say.'

Now this kind of dialogue persists – and, as I say, Innes exhibits a dry humor that is entirely in keeping with the story.

For when Grant finally does meet the children mentioned by Miss Candleshoe, he discovers that there is something rather sinister going on. The house is quite isolated – and Grant’s car has been deliberately made inoperative. It appears that there are some people outside who want to get into the house and don’t want to be disturbed by police or anyone else.

Why? As Grant learns, there are legends about treasure, hidden somewhere in Candleshoe – probably within or near a large piece of carving by Geoffrey Christmas, which is mouldering away up in an ancient gallery within the mansion. It is believed to hold treasure, but the secret of opening it has been lost.

And so Grant and the children find themselves defending Candleshoe – although they are not sure what they are defending, or whom they are defending it against. Lord Scattergood and his family also become involved in the affair, on the side of the defenders. It is all done in very good humor – although the attack on Candleshoe, when it comes, is certainly serious enough.

Christmas at Candleshoe is a delightful read. It does have some of the literary references we would expect in a Michael Innes novel, but they are not intrusive. It’s a good if rather gentle book, with remarkably little bloodshed.

One other note: in the late 1970s, Disney released a movie version – called simply Candleshoe – based VERY loosely on the Innes novel. It had a wonderful cast, headed by Helen Hayes and David Niven and a teenaged Jodie Foster as the leader of the children. The DVD is still available – but, again, it is only loosely based on the novel.

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To listen to the original podcast review, please click here.

Next week, a touch of history: The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey

 

Landmark Achieved: Podcast #500

It is more than slightly amazing to me that I am publishing today my 500th weekly podcast on Classic Mysteries. I have been doing these reviews for some 9 1/2 years now. Over the course of those years, I've read and reread a pretty good number of outstanding mysteries. I've learned a great deal about authors I didn't know before I began doing these reviews. And I look forward eagerly to continuing to read and write about mysteries.

There are a lot of people to thank. The Golden Age (and before and after) authors who wrote the books that we enjoy together. The publishers who are bringing back the wrongly-forgotten authors whose books are ripe for republication. My wife, who puts up with me (and my mysteries and my mystery conferences and...). And you, all of you, who keep coming back for more.

Because you do keep coming back, I'm offering something special today here and on the podcast: links to a Baker's Dozen (13) of my favorite mysteries. Please note that these are in alphabetical order by author's last name - there is no "preference of order" implied here. I like and enjoy them all (and could easily have provided a list ten times as long), and my only goal here today is to call your attention to a number of great classic mysteries that I think you would enjoy.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking here to learn a bit more about many of the titles. And - although the links below are to Amazon.com - PLEASE, if you have a favorite book store, especially one dealing in mysteries, buy through them!

The books on my list:

Christiana Brand: Green for Danger

Inspector Cockrill investigates the peculiar death of a patient on the operating table, which is compounded by a separate, stabbing murder. I love it because – just when you think you have figured out what is going on – the author pulls the rug out from under you and leaves you gasping. Well, leaves ME gasping, at any rate.

John Dickson Carr: The Nine Wrong Answers

He’s among my favorite authors. This one is a stand-alone, without either of his primary detectives. It reads like a thriller (which it is), but it’s a lot more than that, and I will promise you: you will reach a point in this book where you will jump out of your chair when you realize how cleverly and smartly you have been deceived.

Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None

It is amazing how much tension Christie is able to build in this stand-alone novel about ten people trapped on a remote island while a killer picks them off one by one. Who is that killer – and will anyone survive?

Edmund Crispin: Swan Song

Personally, I prefer it to his better-known book, The Moving Toyshop. The odious baritone Edwin Shorthouse will be singing the leading role of Hans Sachs in a production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger – or at least that was the plan until someone murdered Shorthouse in his own dressing room – a murder that apparently was impossible. Oxford Professor Gervase Fen investigates in a very clever and very funny mystery 

Elizabeth Daly: The Book of the Dead

Henry Gamadge must figure out why everyone who has seen a particular battered old copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest seems to become the target of a determined murderer. To my mind, this one rivals The Nine Wrong Answers in terms of its ability to fool the reader completely and send him or her haring off in the wrong direction. Daly is often said to have been Agatha Christie’s favorite American detective novelist. The Book of the Dead goes a long way towards explaining why.

Carter Dickson: The Judas Window

A young man is accused of murder because he and the victim were locked and bolted inside a sealed room. Only Sir Henry Merrivale, defending the accused, seems to know how that crime could have been committed - by using a Judas window. And what might that be? You'll find out...

Arthur Conan Doyle: The Hound of the Baskervilles

The book which – not coincidentally! – first lured me into my life-long love of mysteries. But then, how could you not be gripped by that wonderful description: “Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker

It’s a murder mystery, with an impossible crime – but it’s also a book that builds a great, brooding terror surrounding the death of a mad and miserly Scottish laird who falls to his death from the tower of his castle on a stormy winter’s night. And the surrealistic touches – well, wait until you meet the learned rats of the castle. It’s vintage Innes.

Ellery Queen: "The Lamp of God" in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen

My favorite Ellery Queen story – and it’s a story, rather than a full book, or, rather, a novella. I love impossible crime stories, and this one is truly amazing, dealing – as it does – with the disappearance of an entire house. You’ll find it in a collection called The New Adventures of Ellery Queen.

Rex Stout: The Doorbell Rang

I like all of the Wolfe books – we read them, of course, not for Wolfe’s flashes of genius, but for Archie Goodwin’s narration, his quick wit, and his amazing abilities. The Doorbell Rang is vintage Wolfe – but it’s also less of a murder mystery (though there is one) than it is an absolutely delightful Wolfe-against-the-government book, as the great detective takes on J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI in a high-stakes battle of wits.

Hake Talbot: Rim of the Pit

It’s one of the very few impossible crime books that I’d rate every bit as highly as I rate those of John Dickson Carr. A houseful of people is stranded in their lodge, surrounded by a blizzard – and with someone in their party bent on murder. It has one of the best opening lines of any book: quote “I came up here to make a dead man change his mind.” Unquote. The speaker means that literally by the way.

Arthur Upfield: Man of Two Tribes

It stars Upfield’s brilliant Australian detective, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Bony is called in to find out what happened to a woman who disappeared from a train while crossing Australia’s bleak and barren Nullarbor Plain. He finds a good deal more than he expected, and it will take all his considerable knowledge of how to survive in some of the most hostile circumstances to escape and rejoin civilization.

Robert Van Gulik: Necklace and Calabash

one of the author’s brilliant historical mysteries featuring Judge Dee and set in T’ang Dynasty days nearly 1400 years ago. I think this one may be the most enjoyable and readily accessible to today’s readers, as the judge must help the emperor's favorite daughter, the Third Princess, find a valuable necklace that is the center of court intrigue, as he also solves a gruesome murder and another mysterious disappearance.

Some of these books are a little hard to find - the ones by John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson, in particular - but the links should help, if your favorite bookdealer can't find what you need. Again, the podcast has a little more detail about most of these books, and I hope you'll listen to it! 

Comments are welcome! 

From the Vault: "Tied Up in Tinsel"

'Tis the season to be jolly, and all that, and what could be as jolly as a nice murder? Fictionally speaking, of course. There are a great many fine mysteries set around the holiday period. One of my own favorites is Ngaio Marsh's 1972 mystery entitled Tied Up in Tinsel, one of the mysteries I reviewed during the first year of the Classic Mysteries podcast. Here, slightly edited, is what I had to say about the book:

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In a way, I suppose, you could call this the perfect Christmas gift for a mystery lover: the murder of a faithful retainer…a group of suspects that includes several convicted and confessed murderers…one of the strangest setups ever confronted in a grand, if not-so-old, English manor house…and a Scotland Yard detective whose wife is one of the principal witnesses. Merry Christmas from Ngaio Marsh and Tied Up in Tinsel.

In Tied Up in Tinsel, we have a fine example of the holiday mystery. In fact, I’d have to call it one of my favorite Marsh novels. It takes place in an English manor house at Christmas. It features the detective work of Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of the C. I. D. Even more to my liking, it features Alleyn’s marvelous wife, Agatha Troy, as a principal character. And it contains one of the oddest stories and group of possible suspects that I can remember from any mystery.

Here is the situation: Troy, who is a distinguished painter, has been commissioned to do a portrait of Mr. Hilary Bill-Tasman, a non-titled gentleman, an authority on antiques, and the host of a Christmas party under way at his manor, named Halberds. Troy discovers a most peculiar setup at Halberds: Hilary, for a variety of reasons, has hired as his household staff several convicted murderers. They are all “oncers” – that is, they each killed one person, served their sentences, and have been released, considered unlikely to kill again. But when murder does take place – as it does – the unavoidable question becomes, has one of the murderous servants reverted and killed again?

The victim is another servant, who works for one of the other guests – and he disappears after having played the role of a Druid in an elaborate Christmas pageant staged by Hilary Bill-Tasman for the children of the local gentry. And, to be sure, the other guests at the holiday party, all of them related to or friends of Hilary, are also potential suspects and killers.

Troy finds herself, quite obviously, caught up in these strange goings-on. Her husband, having just returned from Australia, is invited to Halberds, at first as a guest. But, when it becomes obvious that the missing servant seems to have been the victim of foul play, he finds himself pressed into service by his superiors – much to his distaste, for as Alleyn observes, he doesn’t like to see his wife within a hundred miles of a murder case.

This novel gives Ngaio Marsh a chance to indulge in a number of her specialties. The planning and execution of the Christmas pageant, for example, is stunning – which is not, perhaps, surprising, given Marsh’s vocation as a professional theatrical producer and director. The pageant itself – and the appearance of the Druid, who will later disappear and wind up the victim of violence – is the central incident in the novel, and it is wonderfully done. Here is just a little bit of her description of the pageant – which is performed before a roomful of neighbors and their children:

Hilary, standing before the children, raised his hands for quiet and got it. From outside in the night came sounds that might have been made by insubstantial flutes piping in the north wind. Electronic music, Troy thought, and really almost too effective: it raised goose-pimples, it turned one a little cold. But through this music came the jingle of approaching sleigh bells. Closer and closer to an insistent rhythm until they were outside the French windows. Nothing could be seen beyond the tree, but Hilary in his cunning had created an arrival. Now came the stamp of hooves, the snorts, the splendid cries of “Whoa.” Troy didn’t so much as think of Blore.

The windows were opened.

The tree danced in the cold air, everything stirred and glittered. The candle flames wavered, the baubles tinkled.

The windows were shut.

And round the tree, tugging his golden car on its runners, came the Druid.

Well, Troy thought, it may be a shameless concoction of anachronisms and Hilary’s cockeyed sense of fantasy, but it works.

That passage gives you a taste of a theatrical spectacle, designed – and written – by a person who knew her way around the theater.

Tied Up in Tinsel also gives Marsh a chance to show off her knowledge of the visual arts. Over the course of several novels in which she appears, Agatha Troy Alleyn emerges as a marvelous painter and knowledgeable critic, with the kind of quirks that you might expect to find in a first-rate artist’s personality. There is a very good passage in the novel, before the pageant itself, but after a number of very curious and ultimately significant events, where Troy muses on her surroundings and work this way:

It was at this point that Troy began to feel really disturbed. She began to see herself, as if she was another person, alone among strangers in an isolated and falsely luxurious house and attended by murderers. That, she thought, like it or lump it, is the situation. And she wished with all her heart that she was out of it and spending her Christmas alone in London or with any one of the unexceptionable friends who had so warmly invited her.

The portrait was almost finished. Perhaps quite finished. She was not sure it hadn’t reached the state when somebody with wisdom should forcibly remove her from it and put it out of her reach. Her husband had been known to perform this service, but he was twelve thousand miles away…

The passage goes on. And, of course, Troy’s premonitions prove to have been correct. And, fortunately for her, her husband was NOT, in fact, twelve thousand miles away, but returning to London and, as we will discover, available to be forced into investigating the mystery that enfolds these characters.

It is quite typical of Marsh’s novels to find that each character in a book with a great many individual characters nevertheless stands out as a fully rounded personality. Whether it is Hilary’s eccentric uncle and aunt, his rather unpleasant fiancée, his Cockney business partner, or any of the ex-murderers – if there is, indeed, such a thing as an “ex-murderer” – Marsh rounds out their personalities and makes us see them as individuals, not as stock characters. The Christmas setting, which is integral to the action and plot, is an added bonus at this time of year.

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Let me just add my own greeting to all of you, my visitors here at Classic Mysteries. Whatever holidays you may enjoy, may they be pleasant and meaningful ones.

If you'd like to listen to the original podcast review, please click here.

Next week, another seasonal (or is it?) book worth re-reading: Christmas at Candleshoe, by Michael Innes.

"Furious Old Women"

Mrs. Bobbin's fury might be easily explained. The 71-year-old Mrs. Bobbin had just lost her older sister, Millicent, to violence - apparently murdered in the course of a robbery. Mrs. Bobbin thought that explanation was nonsense; her sister, she believed, was murdered in the course of a vicious fight with another angry old woman, Grazia Vaillant, over the rituals that should be observed in the local Church of England. Millicent Griggs was staunchly Low Church and Miss Vaillant was just as strongly High Church, and the vicar, Mr. Waddell, did not always find it easy to keep the peace between the two. Both had well-deserved reputations for both anger and nastiness. In fact, that anger is at the heart of the mystery presented in Furious Old Women, a 1960 mystery and biting satire by Leo Bruce. It's the topic of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

There are, in fact, a surprising number of nasty and furious - sometimes comically so - old women living in the village of Gladhurst, along with a variety of English village "types." It is the death of Mrs. Bobbin’s older sister Millicent Griggs, that brings matters to a head. Her body is found in a new and open grave that had been dug for a Mr. Chilling, a shopkeeper in the village. She has, apparently, been hit on the head and the body appears to have been robbed of both money and jewelry. Mrs. Bobbin having little faith in the local police – a lack of faith which seems, over the course of the book, to be quite justifiable – she asks independent amateur sleuth Carolus Deene to lend a hand.

The more we see of the people in the village, the more evident it becomes that the original explanation of the death is wrong (even if the police don’t want to acknowledge the fact). The reader will follow along with Carolus Deene as he investigates the death – and the other complications which soon evolve – and will quite probably be as surprised as I was by the twists and turns along the way.

Furious Old Women, by Leo Bruce, is worth finding and reading. One warning, however: the book is available both as a paperback and as an e-book. If you have an e-reader, go for the e-book – the paperback edition is not at all well bound, and the book is likely to crack and fall apart as you try to open the pages enough to read. It’s a problem, obviously, that doesn’t extend to the e-book, so I’d recommend you read it in that format.

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Rich Westwood, who blogs at the Past Offences blog, has been collecting reviews this month of books published in 1960. As Furious Old Women was published in that year, I'm submitting the review to Past Offences as well. You might check out the 1960 sign-up page for a lot of additional mysteries published that year!

 

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Rich Westwood, who blogs at the Past Offences blog, has been collecting reviews this month of books published in 1960. As Furious Old Women was published in that year, I'm submitting the review to Past Offences as well. You might check out the 1960 sign-up page for a lot of additional mysteries published that year!

From the Vault: "The Moving Finger"

Our "From the Vault" feature last week was a fine Agatha Christie novel starring her Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, he of the "little grey cells." This week, let's turn to another of Christie's finest creations, Miss Jane Marple, spinster - and student of human nature. Her grasp of village psychology leads her to solve mysteries which have baffled the police. One of her best appearances, I think, is in The Moving Finger. Here, slightly edited as always, is how I reviewed that book nearly ten years ago:

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There’s a good reason why anonymous notes are often called “poisoned-pen” letters. These messages are hateful – and sometimes the recipients can’t handle the accusations, even when untrue. That can have tragic results – and the police may ultimately need some help tracking down the letter writers. That’s where Miss Jane Marple comes in.

 Of Agatha Christie’s series detectives, I think my favorite is Miss Marple. As I’ve noted before, I find Hercule Poirot can be a bit smug, and when his annoyingly idiotic friend Hastings is around, the combination is usually insufferable. Miss Marple, however, though she has friends and admirers in the police force, usually doesn’t suffer the same intrusions from sidekicks, and she is usually quite low-key about her role in solving the most difficult mysteries.

I think The Moving Finger is among Christie’s best works, and it is interesting to note that Miss Marple, while she does solve the mystery, does so as almost a figure on the sidelines. She doesn’t even appear in the book until two-thirds of the way through the story. But – as is so often the case in these stories – her expertise at village life and her knowledge of how ordinary people are likely to behave make her the perfect detective to solve this mystery.

The Moving Finger was written in 1942, during the darkest days of World War II. It is narrated by a young man, a flyer who crashed during the war, and who is now trying to regain his health in a small and quiet English village. Small and quiet English villages, of course, are usually anything but small and quiet in such mysteries. And our narrator, Jerry Burton, and his sister, Joanna, soon find there is a great deal going on in the village of Lymstock.

There are the anonymous poison pen letters which are being sent to a lot of the villagers. They contain the usual kind of garbage found in such letters – lots of accusations of sexual misconduct and the like. While Jerry is inclined, at first, to simply ignore the letters, he soon finds that they are being received, and talked about, all over the village. While he is quick to dismiss the charges in the letters as nonsense, he discovers that a great many of the village gossips – and there are a lot of them indeed – tend to believe the old adage, “where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

Soon, the letters drive one woman to suicide. And that puts the letters in a new light – for it means that the author, when discovered, can no longer claim it was all a harmless joke. And that makes the whole affair more dangerous for everyone. Soon, there is a murder. And the police are baffled about who might be behind the letter-writing campaign.

It takes an expert to solve the case – and that expert is Miss Marple, invited to do so by the wife of the local vicar. Near the end of the book, after Miss Marple has exposed the letter-writer and killer, the vicar’s wife says of her guest:

“Look at her well. I tell you, that woman knows more about the different kinds of human wickedness than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“I don’t think you should put it quite like that, dear,” murmured Miss Marple.

“But you do.”

“One sees a good deal of human nature living in a village all the year around,” said Miss Marple placidly.

That’s what I meant when I talked about Miss Marple’s low-key approach to solving cases of this sort. She sits in the background and knits and is often ignored – but all the time, she is listening and her insights into village life and human weakness lead her to finding the right solution which has eluded other investigators.

There are also a couple of love stories woven into the mix here, as both our narrator and his sister find potential mates in the village. The characters are quite well developed here, and few fit into the all-too-frequent stereotypes of village life.

Agatha Christie is said to have considered The Moving Finger among her favorite stories. I think that’s quite justified. For once, she plays scrupulously fair with her readers. All the clues are there – in fact, the narrator frequently calls attention to points at which, he says, he should have been able to figure out what was happening and who was responsible for it. But these clues, of course, are well concealed, with a great many red herrings dragged across the trail, and the solution, when revealed, may come as a surprise.

Most of Agatha Christie’s novels happily remain in print, and The Moving Finger should be easily available through your favorite book dealer or mystery bookstore. I recommend it strongly. I think it’s one of the best Miss Marple stories, even though, as I say, she remains on the sidelines for much of the book. I think the characters are generally quite likeable and sympathetic, and the use of a single narrator throughout works quite well.

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If you'd like to listen to the original podcast, just click here.

Next week, one of my favorite holiday mysteries, Tied Up in Tinsel, by Ngaio Marsh.

"A Private View"

Sir John Appleby wasn't inclined to take the whole thing very seriously at first. He had happened to be with his wife attending an exclusive private art show at a London gallery when someone rather audaciously stole a very large painting, practically from under his nose. Frankly, it might well have been a publicity stunt. Certainly the stolen painting didn't appear to be of much value - or did it? And the man who painted the picture had recently committed suicide - or was it possibly murder?, It wouldn't take very long to come up with a rather grim answer. And then a young woman, a close friend of the artist, disappeared as well, and everything would prove to be linked - and lead to something a great deal more serious than it had first appeared.

And so begins another fine Michael Innes novel, A Private View, featuring Sir John Appleby, by this time in his career an Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard. A Private View is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here. Like so many other books by Innes, this one, originally published in 1952, is very hard to classify. I’d say it’s more thriller than detective story. We are given revelation after revelation – often at the end of chapters, serving as excellent cliff-hangers. And as each mysterious point appears to be explained, we discover another complication which must be cleared up before the mystery can be solved.

As is often the case with Michael Innes, in addition to a complicated and often funny plot, we are treated to a great deal more. Appleby’s wife Judith will play a very significant role in uncovering the truth. So will Appleby’s close colleague and friend at Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Cadover, who will largely take over the case. And as for Appleby…well you’ll have to read the book to find out.

This isn’t the most memorable Appleby story, but it is extremely well and carefully written, with a great deal of the kind of humor and wild surrealism we expect to find in a Michael Innes book. The art world comes in for a lot of pointed satire, and some of the climactic sequences in the plot sound a bit like slow-motion Keystone Cops – type action. And there is more than enough of that action to keep the reader turning the pages to see what happens next. Murder, thefts, abductions, car chases, even gun battles – there's something for everyone here!

I’m not saying a lot about the plot, because so much of the pleasure in A Private View comes from the unexpected twists and revelations you'll encounter. I’d suggest settling down with the book on a chilly evening and just relaxing into it.

The Nero and the BONA 2016

The Nero Wolfe Award for the best American mystery novel for 2016 goes to David C. Taylor for Night Life, the first novel in a series of historical mysteries set in New York City in 1954. You can learn more about the winner by clicking here. The Nero is presented each year by the Wolfe Pack to a novel written in the tradition of Rex Stout's stories about Nero Wolfe, and it must have been published originally in the United States during the year preceding the award - 2015, in this case.

Also announced this evening: the winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, or BONA, which this year goes to author Steve Liskow for his novella, "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma." He's the first author ever to win the BONA a second time; his first win came in 2009. This year's winner will be published in a forthcoming issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, which co-sponsos the award with the Wolfe Pack, the New York - based association of fans of Rex Stout and Nero Wolfe.

Both awards were presented at the Wolfe Pack's annual Black Orchid Banquet, held each year to honor the birth anniversary of Rex Stout. Congratulations to both winners!

From the Vault: "Taken at the Flood"

When it comes to popular authors from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction in Britain - roughly the years between the two world wars of the 20th century - Agatha Christie was, and remains, in a class by herself. There were many fine and popular writers during the period. None has shown the "staying" power that Christie has shown. She is, for the most part, still very much in print. Her books have been outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible. One of her plays, The Mousetrap, opened in London in 1952 and is still playing there as it begins its 65th year onstage. 

One of my early podcast reviews was of Christie's Taken at the Flood, which stars her dapper little Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. Here's that review, again slightly edited:

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Agatha Christie’s Taken at the Flood involves Poirot in an unusual and puzzling tragedy. The book begins with a  prologue set in a British men’s club, where Poirot overhears a long story, told by the club’s resident bore, about a young woman, newly married to a very rich man, who was the only survivor of a German air raid which killed her husband and a couple of servants. Now, the young woman will inherit a very large fortune – and her husband’s relatives, who had relied on him as their primary means of support, aren’t at all happy about it.

The widow, and her late husband’s family, live in a town called Warmsley Vale. Opinion in the town is pretty solidly lined up against the young woman and her brother, who lives with her. But then some strange events begin happening. A mysterious stranger turns up in town – and very quickly meets a violent end. And members of the husband’s family seek help from Hercule Poirot.

And so Poirot goes to Warmsley Vale – too late to prevent death, but in time to decipher the clues that lead along a remarkably twisted path to the murderer.

In fact, Poirot plays a more limited role in this novel than he does in most of the other stories where he appeared. And he seems a little wiser, and a little more mellow. Taken at the Flood dates from 1948, which was about midway in Christie’s career, and Poirot has become less the pitiless avenger and nemesis of evil, and more compassionate and, I think, more aware that his actions and his investigations will have life-or-death consequences for at least one of the characters. That same mood is reflected in the book’s title. Taken at the Flood is a quotation from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, spoken by Brutus:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

On such a full sea are we now afloat,

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

Taken at the Flood is, in my opinion, one of Agatha Christie’s better stories featuring Hercule Poirot. Over the course of her long career, she created a number of series of detectives – Poirot and Miss Jane Marple being the two best known – and wrote a lot of non-series books and plays. I think her finest work often comes from that last group – books such as And Then There Were None, which we discussed in an earlier program in this series.

But Poirot was certainly among the audience’s favorites – though he can certainly be irritating. In the novels where he is accompanied by his Watson, an incredibly dense ex-military man named Arthur Hastings, Poirot’s tendency to show off becomes almost unbearable – made worse by Hastings’ incredible stupidity.

Happily, Hastings is absent from Taken at the Flood, and Poirot as a result is far more bearable – and, I would argue, far more believable as a character. In fact, the mystery here is one that grows out of the personalities of the characters. As a result, one of Christie’s usual ingenious and complex plots becomes much more believable. And her characterizations are beautifully done – revealing a great deal in an unexpected line or thought. At one point, one woman is talking to her husband, and reveals this extraordinary thought:

She stared at him. Extraordinary, she thought, to have been married to someone for over twenty years and not have know what was going on in their minds. But how could one know when it was a mind so different from one’s own? A romantic mind, of course, well camouflaged, but essentially romantic…the poor idiotic darling.

That level of writing is maintained throughout the book, and it’s one of the reasons why I enjoy it and recommend it to you. If you’re not familiar with Poirot, this is a good place to meet him. I don’t believe that in this book he ever does refer knowingly to his “little grey cells,” the brain which he uses to solve the most complex problems. But he does employ them quite effectively – and comes to a conclusion which is likely to satisfy the reader.

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

Next week, one of the best Miss Marple mysteries, The Moving Finger.