From time to time, I like to feature a more contemporary mystery author on the Classic Mysteries blog and podcast - if only to dispel the myth that "they don't write them like that any more!" Well...some of "them" do. Which is by way of an introduction to the British writer Peter Lovesey, creator of the Sergeant Cribb mysteries as well as a later series featuring Inspector Peter Diamond, and a great many other books. Several years ago, I wrote and recorded an audio review for the podcast of Lovesey's sixth Sgt. Cribb book, A Case of Spirits. I've updated the transcript to include more up-to-date information about the book's general availability, at least in the United States. I hope you enjoy it:
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It wasn’t as if Sergeant Cribb had suddenly developed an interest in Spiritualism. No, Cribb was interested primarily in a couple of odd thefts of some rather peculiar art – thefts which might have involved some of the people taking part in a couple of private séances, seeking to get in touch with the spirit world. It was a popular pastime in England during the later years of the nineteenth century, and a fair number of people wanted to find out for themselves whether there was some truth to the stories about visitors from beyond. There were plenty of mediums…people whose presence seemed to spark other-worldly spirits to communicate through them…and there was a good living to be made by becoming a medium. Sergeant Cribb had a pretty good idea about those thefts. But he was pretty well confounded when a séance went very wrong – and somebody was murdered. It was indeed A Case of Spirits, which is the title of the mystery by Peter Lovesey that is our book today.
Peter Lovesey is a fine British writer who - [as of this updated writing in November, 2020] - continues to write good, traditional mysteries. [According to Wikipedia, an untitled 20th Inspector Diamond novel was announced in the Peter Lovesey newsletter, in October 2020.] Over the course of his career, Lovesey created both series characters and standalone mysteries. His first books, written in the 1970s, are set in Victorian England during the 1880s and feature a tough Scotland Yard detective named Sergeant Cribb. Plagued by his superior officer, Inspector Jowett, and generally assisted by Constable Thackeray, Cribb usually solves unusual crimes pretty much on his own – there wasn’t all that much criminology going on in Victorian London.
One of the pleasure of reading these books, of course, is the historical setting. Lovesey has done a first-rate job showing some of the social trends that were taking place in pre-turn-of-the-twentieth-century London – the battle over giving women the right to vote, the strict (and, to our eyes today, quite hypocritical) morality full of double standards, the sharp division between the upper and lower classes, and – of course – the popularity of Spiritualism.
Much of this is on display in A Case of Spirits, published in 1975 and the sixth of the Sergeant Cribb books. The book begins with Cribb being ordered by his superiors to investigate the theft of a couple of art works, including a painting by William Etty, a real painter who managed to create some controversy with his paintings of female nudes. The victims whose homes were robbed were all upper-middle-class people who had been dabbling in séances and Spiritualism – and, in fact, the robberies appeared to have been timed to occur when the homeowner would be safely out of the house, attending another séance.
So far, it doesn’t seem as if much had happened to concern the police…but that all changes in the course of a séance that supposedly has been set up to ensure that the medium conducting the séance could not cheat or falsify such phenomena as a “spirit hand” seen by witnesses. But when someone turns up dead during the seance – and it appears that nobody could have murdered him – Sergeant Cribb finds himself carrying on a murder investigation among people who are more than halfway inclined to believe that only a ghost could have committed the crime. The sergeant, being a no-nonsense type quite convinced that he is dealing with frauds and charlatans, has some interesting and – to us – enjoyable run-ins with the other characters on his way to a solution that is likely to surprise the reader.
All of this is handled with Lovesey’s usual cleverness and dry humor, which pretty well kept a smile on my face all the way through the book. Readers will also be treated to some interesting examples of the kinds of trickery used by less-than-honest mediums to perform their conversations with, and exhibitions of, the spirits of the dead. I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of these scenes by giving any examples – but let me assure you that Sergeant Cribb comes down firmly on the same side of the argument as, say, Harry Houdini, who spent much of his career exposing false "psychic researchers."
I believe that [some of] Peter Lovesey’s Sergeant Cribb novels [may still be] available in paper editions from Soho Constable and are also available in electronic format. A Case of Spirits is thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining reading.
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You can listen to the original recording by clicking here.
Next: 4;50 from Paddington, by Agatha Christie