Classic Mysteries

"And Dangerous to Know"

You might think of Alice Dunbar as a sort of "poor little rich girl." Living with her family on the upper East Side of New York City during the late 1940s, the unmarried young woman had to conform to her family's expectations about behavior and such. But Alice Dunbar had secret aspirations of her own. As readers, we're going to accompany Alice as she decides to make certain major changes in the way she lives. We will see her pack, leave that house of hers, follow her through the crowded streets of New York City, into the subway, and then...

Alice vanishes.

Mr. Macloud, a lawyer and a business partner of Alice Dunbar’s father, sums it up very neatly, as he talks to a family friend, Henry Gamadge: “Off the map,” he says. “Right off the map.”

Macleod wants Gamadge, who has some experience at solving mysteries that have baffled professional investigators, to do a little of his own investigating, to see if he can succeed where the police – so far – have failed in their efforts to find Alice Dunbar. The story is told in And Dangerous to Know, by Elizabeth Daly. It is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Elizabeth Daly, said to have been one of Agatha Christie's favorite American authors, wrote sixteen books featuring biblio expert Henry Gamadge. By profession, he is an expert in books, manuscripts and other documents, and he is willing to provide discreet help for Macloud. And so he begins to carry out his own inquiries. What he discovers will shake the orderly foundation of the Dunbars’ world, as he tries to learn how a young woman never allowed very far away from close supervision by her family – remember, this is the late 1940s – how such a person might have been able to find some hidden place that would let her live a secret life – at least for a while. But Gamadge will also discover hidden passions that lead to murder.

Like Christie, Elizabeth Daly could build a twisted plot that would leave readers pursuing red herrings while she provided carefully hidden clues to the true story. And Dangerous to Know was one of Daly’s later books, first published in 1949. The story isn’t very cheerful, I’m afraid, but Daly is a fine writer and storyteller. And Henry Gamadge is someone I’d love to meet. I suspect you’ll feel the same way when you read And Dangerous to Know.

From the Vault: "Bump in the Night"

On the Classic Mysteries podcast and blog this week, I am featuring one of the Flaxborough Chronicles mysteries written by Colin Watson. It's called Lonelyheart 4122, and - in common with the other Flaxborough Chronicles - it's a wickedly funny satire of the mystery genre. It's good to have Watson's books back again. A publisher called Farrago appears to be bringing the whole series back - available both as e-books and as paper and/or audio editions. My only previous exposure to Watson was when the now-defunct Rue Morgue Press re-issued three of his books in the last decade. One of those is Bump in the Night, and it too is sharply funny satire. Here's the review I did for the podcast of that earlier edition; I've updated the information in the script to reflect the book's new availability:

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Anyone who reads classic mystery stories – particularly those from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction – is familiar with the many stories of life in small English villages that seem to be a staple of such mysteries. When the British author Colin Watson set out to write a series of small-town mysteries, he very consciously decided to make his small towns somewhat different. The town of Flaxborough, where many of Watson’s mysteries take place, has been described by one of his characters as "a high-spirited town…like Gomorrah.” So when a series of bombs is set off in the neighboring town of Chalmsbury, it is not such a stretch to think of Chalmsbury as being the Sodom to Flaxborough’s Gomorrah. And, in fact, there are a lot of high-spirited goings-on in Chalmsbury, as depicted in Colin Watson’s Bump in the Night.

Bump in the Night, which was first published in 1960, was the second in Colin Watson’s series of a dozen novels, collectively known as the Flaxborough Chronicles. As I said, it is set in the neighboring town of Chalmsbury, where someone has been setting off small bombs, destroying various monuments and signs. While there are some residents who may consider the bombings a form of civic improvement, the town’s chief inspector, Hector Larch, seems to be out of his depth when it comes to investigating the bombings.

As a result, the local chief constable asks Flaxborough to send over one of its senior police investigators to help solve the crimes in Chalmsbury. Help arrives in the person of Detective Inspector Purbright, who is the central character in Watson’s Flaxborough novels. Inspector Purbright, together with his assistant, Sergeant Love, (who does not appear in Bump in the Night), attempt – in the words of Tom and Enid Schantz, who wrote an introduction for this [1960 edition of the] book, "to keep the peace in spite of the best efforts of that town’s citizenry to break or flaunt every law on the books.”

At any rate, Inspector Purbright finds himself in Chalmsbury – a town every bit as law-abiding as Flaxborough, which is, to say, hardly at all. And the bombings very quickly lead to the murder of one of the town’s less desirable citizens. Inspector Purbright must follow a devious set of clues – and overcome the outright hostility of some of the town’s more flamboyant characters – to solve the murder.

A great deal of this, of course, is tongue in cheek, and Watson manages to skewer a number of mystery clichés. The book is quite witty and funny – but you need to know, going in, that Watson seems to be really more interested in satirizing those clichés than creating a mystery. Watson was the author of an interesting book of mystery criticism called Snobbery with Violence, in the course of which, he writes about those typical English villages found in many mysteries by such authors as Agatha Christie. He gives these villages the generic name of “Mayhem Parva.” He describes it as a cross between a village and a commuters’ dormitory in the South of England. Here’s some of his description of the inhabitants of Mayhem Parva:

Characters would not be easy to distinguish as individuals, but class would be easily identifiable and the sheep would be separable from the goats without much trouble. A brigadier would talk like a brigadier, a vicar like a vicar, a wealthy hypochondriac would be unmistakably given to spite and self-pity, and her paid companion would be as meek and dowdy as are all paid companions. There would exist for these people no really sordid, intractable problems, such as growing old or losing faith or being abandoned or going mad. One or more would get murdered; the rest would be suspected for a while; one of them would ultimately be trussed for the gallows, if he or she had not first bitten on a pill smelling of bitter almonds or fallen from a train or something. And then, the air cleared, everything would be set to continue as before, right, tight, and reliable.

That quote from Snobbery with Violence may give you some idea of Watson’s writing style, and some indication of why his characters in Bump in the Night and the other Flaxborough books so clearly rebel against those stereotypes. A newspaper reporter, for example, also turns out to be a voyeur – and, in fact, his observations help find a solution to the case. The Chief Inspector’s wife has late-night trysts with one of the town undesirables. The town’s projectionist in the local movie theater is an Irish Republican Army sympathizer who confesses – falsely – to just about every local crime. And so forth. Not to mention the local civic dignitaries of the town, of whom the chief constable observes,

"One end’s so like t’other it’s a wonder that when they take their hats off they’re not run in for indecent exposure."

There is a great deal that is very funny in Bump in the Night – and a story that, ultimately, is more poignant than you might expect. I do have to warn you that – as a straight mystery – you may be less than satisfied, for most of the clues that lead to the solution are uncovered only in the last few chapters. But the mystery itself is almost secondary to the satire here of mystery conventions – and Detective Inspector Purbright is a delightful character surrounded by a fair assortment of very UN-delightful ones. Farrago now has brought back Colin Watson's Flaxborough Chronicles as e-books as well as both printed copies and e-books. If you enjoy traditional mysteries, you are likely to enjoy seeing how the books of the Flaxborough Chronicles turn those mysteries on their heads.

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You can listen to the original audio review by clicking here.

Next: The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins.

"Lonelyheart 4122"

Something peculiar appears to be going on in the English village of Flaxborough. Elderly women have been disappearing. They were at least moderately well-off (if not exactly rich) and - very definitely - all of them were lonely. Was someone preying on these women, whose loneliness may have made them targets of a smooth-talking killer? That's the question Detective Inspector Purbright and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Sidney Love, want answered, preferably before anyone else disappears. The details may be found in Colin Watson's novel, Lonelyheart 4122, which is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Flaxborough is not exactly the model of the Golden Age English village. Colin Watson wrote eleven mysteries set in Flaxborough, a town with remarkably lax moral standards, with Purbright and Love as his central characters. Flaxborough was defined in an earlier book as "a high-spirited town…like Gomorrah." It is not the sort of place where you might expect to find, say, Miss Marple. In Lonelyheart 4122, the fourth book in Watson's series, published in 1967, Inspector Purbright, and his assistant, Sergeant Love, tackle the mysterious disappearances of some local women. All appear to have one connection in common: each woman had paid a twenty guinea fee to a "matrimonial bureau" called Handclasp House, where women seeking husbands and men seeking wives were encouraged to correspond with and, ultimately, to meet each other with an eye towards eventual marriage. Purbright and Love found strong indications that the missing women might have exchanged introductory letters with the same man – another "client" of Handclasp House - but there was no easy way to identify him as his records appeared to be missing.

And then another woman came to Flaxborough, quite possibly with matrimony on her mind. Miss Lucy Teatime - yes, that's her name - found and visited Handclasp House, paid her twenty guinea fee and began corresponding with an unknown man – who signed himself at first “Lonelyheart 4122.” She quickly met the man, and their romance appeared to be progressing quite smoothly. In fact, Purbright and Love became quite concerned for Miss Teatime’s safety when they found out about her, as nobody but Miss Teatime seemed able to identify “Lonelyheart 4122.” But Miss Teatime was quite convinced that she could take care of herself without police interference. And – it must be said – Miss Teatime had a few secrets of her own.

Lonelyheart 4122 is a wickedly funny satire that demolishes certain clichés of traditional mysteries. Colin Watson’s writing is laugh-out-loud funny in places. And he doesn’t forget that readers will be expecting a few sudden twists and turns along the way – and he provides them very neatly indeed. A British publisher, Farrago, is bringing back Colin Watson’s mysteries as e-books, and I think you would enjoy this one.

Left Coast Crime Scholarships

Ever wanted to attend a mystery conference like Left Coast Crime - but your finances said no? Left Coast Crime has just announced that five scholarship packages will be available for Left Coast Crime 29, to be held in Vancouver, B. C., March 28-31, 2019. Each of the five packages will consist of registration for the conference (currently 300 Canadian dollars) plus 200 US Dollars (or the Canadian Equivalent thereof) expense money. 

Full details, including an application form, are available at the LCC Scholarships web page.

It's important to know that these scholarships are open to anyone who needs the assistance, whether you are a fan or a writer. Fans and writers both are urged to apply.

 

From the Vault: "Thou Shell of Death"

In looking back over the many mysteries I have reviewed so far on the Classic Mysteries podcast, I find that I haven't mentioned very many of the excellent and literate mysteries written by "Nicholas Blake," the pen name used by the poet Cecil Day-Lewis for twenty mysteries, sixteen of which feature the work of the amateur detective Nigel Strangeways. I'm going to have to dig out some more, as many of his works do seem to be available now, at least as e-books. Unfortunately, a work I'd have to name as one of my favorites doesn't seem to be in e-book format yet, though there seem to be dozens of relatively inexpensive print copies available through used book dealers. That would be for Thou Shell of Death, a book which I reviewed on the podcast nearly a decade ago. Here's what I had to say about it - again, as always, slightly edited for clarity:

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A war hero’s life is threatened. A detective is dispatched to try to save him – to no avail. But who killed the popular aviator? And why? The answers will prove to be shocking – to say the least. All elements of an excellent puzzle, to be sure, and the situation at the heart of a very fine Golden Age mystery, Thou Shell of Death, by Nicholas Blake.

Cecil Day-Lewis had a long and distinguished career as one of the leading poets of the 20^th Century, serving for the last few years of his life as Britain’s poet laureate. Early in his career, however, he needed to supplement his income as a poet in order to support his family. He decided to try his hand at writing mystery stories. And so he began another career, using the pen name Nicholas Blake, with most of his mysteries featuring the amateur detective (and relative of a Scotland Yard commissioner) Nigel Strangeways.

Blake’s second novel, published in 1936, was the poetically named Thou Shell of Death, and I think there is general agreement that it is one of Blake’s finest works. It is a traditional mystery; the reader is given a lot of clues, but the author so skillfully leads us by the nose down side roads in search of those tasty red herrings that we have little chance of solving the puzzle correctly.

Here’s the situation:

Fergus O’Brien, a flying ace and hero of World War I, receives a series of anonymous letters threatening to murder him on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas. O’Brien is something of a man of mystery – nothing is known of his activities before the war – but his bravery and skill have turned him into a public hero. Even though he takes the letters to a friend – the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard - O’Brien refuses police help, but he does ask if his friend can send down somebody unofficial, to keep an eye on things. Enter Nigel Strangeways, a scholar and unofficial criminal investigator who happens to be the Commissioner’s nephew.

Strangeways is invited by O’Brien to attend a house party over Christmas in order to observe the other guests and, unofficially, to help protect the airman. Among those guests, according to O’Brien, is everyone who could possibly be responsible for the death threats.

Despite Nigel’s presence, O’Brien is indeed killed on Boxing Day. Strangeways is invited to help first the local police inspector and then the official Scotland Yard detective sent to solve the mystery. And  - as additional attacks and another murder quickly follow - Strangeways discovers that in order to make sense of what has happened, he will have to learn a great deal more about Fergus O’Brien’s mysterious past in order to find out who could have hated him – and why. On top of which, there’s an additional complication, as Strangeways finds himself falling in love with one of his primary suspects.

It all makes for an extremely complex and intricate plot, well and wittily told. And while there is a great deal of humor in the writing, the underlying mystery will lead to what Blake describes at one point as a dizzy and melodramatic tragedy in its final scenes.

You might expect a book written by a distinguished poet to be both literate and witty, and you will certainly not be disappointed in that regard by Thou Shell of Death. Another of the central characters in the book is a scholar, a friend and former instructor of Nigel Strangeways at Oxford, and it is that scholar who will help provide some critical clues to Strangeways and to the reader. Blake provides a plot as intricate as any conceived by Agatha Christie or John Dickson Carr – and as fairly clued. I’m reluctant to say much more about the plot or its twists, because I don’t want to spoil any of the surprises for you. I will only say that I was quite surprised by the conclusion of the book – and that, in fairness, I should NOT have been.

 

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You can listen to the original audio review by clicking here.

Next: Bump in the Night, by Colin Watson

"Too Many Women"

To Archie Goodwin, it probably seemed like a dream come true - at least at the beginning. Nero Wolfe had been hired to find out whether a hit-and-run accident victim named Waldo Wilmot Moore was, in fact, murdered. And, as Nero Wolfe never willingly leaves the house on business, he sends Archie to the company where that victim worked, the idea being that Archie would take an undercover job at that company - a large engineering supply firm - and see what he could find out. That's when Archie discovers that there really can be Too Many Women, which is the name of Rex Stout's eleventh book about the remarkably sedentary and corpulent Nero Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, who is Wolfe's right hand (and, as Archie says, "the heart, liver, lungs, and gizzard of the private detective business of Nero Wolfe, Wolfe being merely the brains." Too Many Women, first published in 1947, is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Nero Wolfe is approached by a businessman named Jasper Pine. He is the president of a very large supply company named Naylor-Kerr (those were the names of its two founders). Waldo Moore, one of the company's senior managers, was killed some months earlier by a hit-and-run driver. The police (and most of the senior managers at Naylor-Kerr) believe it was an accident. Now, though, another senior executive at Naylor-Kerr is insisting that Waldo Wilmot Moore was murdered. And as that senior executive is named Kerr Naylor (and happens to be the son of one of the company’s founders and the owner of a large block of the company’s stock), Jasper Pine has to pay some attention. So what Pine wants to do is to hire Nero Wolfe to determine for sure whether Waldo Moore was the victim of an accident…or was murdered.

Archie finds himself assigned by Wolfe to go take a job as a personnel expert at Naylor-Kerr, under an assumed name, where he can investigate and report back to Wolfe. And that’s how he comes to the unusual setup at Naylor-Kerr. Here’s how he describes the stock department, where he will be working:

Primarily, as far as space went, it was a room about the size of the Yankee Stadium, with hundreds of desks and girls at them…One good glance and I liked the job. The girls. All right there, all being paid to stay right there, and me being paid to move freely about and converse with anyone whomever, which was down in black and white. Probably after I had been there a couple of years I would find that close-ups revealed inferior individual specimens…but from where I stood at nine-fifty-two Wednesday morning it was enough to take your breath away.

However, Archie quickly begins to discover that a lot of those young women had agendas of their own, and they could be quite unscrupulous about accomplishing their goals. As for Kerr Naylor, who had made that original accusation about Waldo Moore being murdered, he would prove to be rather bizarre in his behavior. Eventually a killer would strike again. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin would find themselves stymied at almost every turn, unable to pry loose any of the information they needed to carry out their jobs – or to uncover a killer – until Wolfe came up with a daring and very risky gamble to force a killer’s hand.

Too Many Women isn’t really among my favorite Nero Wolfe adventures. It tends to be talky, the plot isn’t the book’s strongest suit, and a lot of it may be politically incorrect, to say the least. It’s worth reading, as always, for Archie’s wisecracks and the presence of so many other series characters at Wolfe’s brownstone. Archie winds up doing most of the work in this one, while Wolfe grumbles in the background until it’s time to plot out the final course of action to uncover the killer. Worth reading, though? Of course!

Ink Spot

Novelist R. G. Belsky interviews Guest of Honor Meg Gardiner at Deadly Ink 2018. Photo: Nikki Bonanni

Just back from Deadly Ink, a small and incredibly friendly conference for a couple dozen mystery authors and perhaps double that number of mystery fans. The Guest of Honor this year was thriller writer Meg Gardiner. She writes mostly about serial killers and, I am told, her books will scare the stuffing out of you and send you running to be sure all the doors are locked and the windows barred - in spite of which, she is a person with a great sense of humor and a fine storyteller.

Also at the conference Deadly Ink's annual award for the best novel of 2017 was awarded to The Persian Always Meows Twice, by Eileen Watkins. Hmm...cozy cats and puns on one side, serial killers on the other - that's Deadly Ink for you. If you've never been to a mystery conference, and you live anywhere in or near New Jersey, you would enjoy getting your convention-going feet wet at next year's Deadly Ink. No dates set yet - stay tuned!

Deadly Returns

Leslie and I are on our way to Woodbridge, NJ, for this year's biggest little mystery conference, Deadly Ink. It's VERY small this year, which makes it a good place for novice mystery conference goers to get their feet wet in the conference world, meet a couple of dozen authors and a somewhat larger group of other mystery fans, and have a lot of fun together. Thriller writer Meg Gardiner is our guest of honor this year - why not come and meet her? Any Jersey folks reading this, I hope to see some of you there!

From the Vault: "Double for Death"

Regular visitors to this blog know how much I enjoy Rex Stout's books featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Given the continued success of those books, it may be easy to forget that Rex Stout wrote mysteries featuring other characters as well. Some belonged to the "universe" of characters found in the Nero Wolfe books. Others stood on their own. That's why you almost certainly have heard of Nero Wolfe - but did you ever meet Tecumseh Fox? He's certainly worth knowing. Nearly a decade ago, I recorded an audio review of the first of Rex Stout's Tecumseh Fox books called Double for Death. Here, somewhat edited as usual, is what I had to say about it:

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The district attorney in Westchester County, just up the road from New York City, was not having a particularly good day. First, a very wealthy and powerful businessman was shot and killed in a very private and very remote cabin. Then a couple of possible suspects turned up – only to have one of them disappear out of an unlocked room. Then a couple of other potential witnesses seemed to have disappeared. And on top of everything else, the dead financier – or somebody claiming to be him – turned up alive and well. And that’s when things REALLY start to get complicated in Double for Death, a mystery by Rex Stout that does NOT feature Nero Wolfe.

Rex Stout is one of my favorite authors, and Nero Wolfe is one of my favorite detectives. Most of Stout’s mysteries feature Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin and the rest of the 35^th Street crew. But for a few years, mostly at the end of the 1930s, Stout also wrote a few novels featuring other detectives. Wolfe’s old adversary, Inspector Cramer, got his own book. So did another Wolfe cohort, a woman detective named Dol Bonner. And one delightful novel featured a man named Alphabet Hicks, who, as I recall, was a disbarred lawyer who drove a cab for a living.

And then there was Tecumseh Fox, who starred in three novels of his own before Stout retired him to concentrate on Wolfe. The first of the Tecumseh Fox novels, Double for Death, appeared in 1939, and it’s a pretty good mystery. Unlike Nero Wolfe, Tecumseh Fox is tall and skinny. He combines a keen mind with the kind of physical activities that would horrify Wolfe. His headquarters is a house in the country, called “The Zoo” by his neighbors, with an odd collection of residents, including Dan Pavey, who is referred to as Fox’s vice-president.

In Double for Death, a young woman named Nancy Grant comes to Fox seeking his help. She and her uncle, Andy Grant, have been taken into custody by police for the apparent murder of Ridley Thorpe, a rich and powerful businessman. The Grants say they had never met Thorpe and have no idea who might have shot him through the window of his isolated cabin.

In fact, the police don’t seem to have much of a case against either of the Grants – except for the fact that they were on the scene of the crime when it occurred. But the whole affair is turned upside down when Ridley Thorpe himself turns up very much alive. That’s when Tecumseh Fox really swings into action, and watching him cook up a scheme to explain Thorpe’s absence from the murder scene (and his return a couple of days later) is a wonderful thing. It’s the kind of scheme that Nero Wolfe might well have dreamed up.

Of course, that’s still only the beginning. There will be another murder. There’s a lot of working against the local police – again, the kind of thing that seems to come naturally to Rex Stout’s characters. There is, to be sure, a love story woven in – although it sometimes seems as if the two characters involved in it would be more likely to kill each other than to fall in love.

All this is told in a third-person narrative which, for the most part, follows Tecumseh Fox’s perspective. And the final confrontation, when Fox persuades the murderer to confess to the local district attorney, is a pretty good one.

For readers who enjoy the books of Rex Stout, Double for Death is a worthwhile read. It’s different from the stories with Nero Wolfe and Archie, but it’s still unmistakably the voice of Rex Stout. In fact, Stout turned the next Tecumseh Fox novel, Bad for Business, into a Nero Wolfe novella called “Bitter End.” But Double for Death stands nicely on its own, and Tecumseh Fox is a character worth meeting and enjoying.

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You can listen to the complete original audio review by clicking here.

Next: Thou Shell of Death, by Nicholas Blake.

"The Case of the Murdered Major"

With the outbreak of World War II, Britain found itself in need of such things as Prisoner of War camps, to house captured enemy fighters, some refugees and interned civilians. So it was that Ludovic Travers, that very successful amateur investigator of major crimes, became Captain Ludovic Travers, the Adjutant Quartermaster (and second in command) of Prisoner of War Camp #54, in the city of Shoreleigh. It wasn't going to be an easy job, and the camp's commandant, Major Percival Stirrop, described as "a bantam of a man, full of quick and self-important nervousness," most certainly wasn't going to make it any easier. A nasty, incompetent officer, a monkey wrench in the efficient mechanism of the camp's operation, the major was a source of immense frustration to Travers and the other officers and men charged with the camp's operation. So perhaps it won't come as much of a surprise to find Major Stirrop dead - murdered, lying in a field of snow unbroken by any other footprints. Fortunately, Scotland Yard sent in a senior officer to help the military with their investigation: Ludovic Travers's old friend, Superintendent George Wharton. He and Captain Travers will have to solve The Case of the Murdered Major, which is the title of the 1941 mystery by Christopher Bush which is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

 The Case of the Murdered Major provides the reader with a powerful and exciting view of an England on the verge of war (for it is set just before the war actually begins). Against that backdrop, an impossible murder and the search for a murderer – and quite possibly for senior enemy agents and high-ranking Nazi officials trying to get into England to be ready for the war – makes a fascinating detective story. I must admit I couldn’t put it down – and I was caught off-guard by several of the story’s twists.

Dean Street Press is continuing its project of re-issuing all of Christopher Bush's 63 mysteries that featured Ludovic Travers, and the publisher sent me an e-book version of The Case of the Murdered Major for this review. According to mystery historian Curtis Evans, who provides a very helpful introduction to this book and to the rest of Bush's work as well, this was the first of a trilogy of wartime books which was based on Bush’s own experiences as an administrator of a real prisoner of war camp in England early in the war. It's quite good, and I recommend it to you.