Classic Mysteries

"Dead Man's Shoes"

Wilbury Larkin certainly was a bully. But was he a murderer - or a murderee? Larkin was traveling on board the cargo ship Saragossa from Tangier on his way back to England in order to meet with police, who thought Larkin might have murdered someone. But Larkin disappeared overboard one stormy night at sea, after having totally alienated every other passenger (not to mention the crew) on the ship with his rude and thoroughly offensive behavior. He even left a suicide note. So why did people think that he may have been murdered?

That's the initial problem in Dead Man's Shoes, a 1958 mystery by Leo Bruce. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

It seemed highly improbable to anyone who knew Wilbury Larkin that he would commit suicide. It also seemed improbable that he really could have committed that murder the police wanted to talk to him about. So, while the police appear to be quite satisfied that Larkin’s apparent suicide also clears up that earlier murder, friends and family of the victim are not at all satisfied. And so they ask Carolus Deene, a schoolteacher and ex-commando with a fair amount of crime-solving experience,  to use his upcoming vacation from his teaching position to do his own investigating of the whole affair.

Deene agrees. He takes one of his students, a rather obnoxious young man named Rupert Priggley, with him as an assistant of sorts. And they follow a series of clues that lead from England to Tangier and back again. It is a dangerous journey for Deene, but ultimately he is able to sort out the many inconsistencies and oddities in the story of the murder and the apparent suicide and bring the case to a genuinely shocking conclusion.

The books featuring Carolus Deene make up the second series written by Leo Bruce, another once-popular and now unjustly obscure author of traditional, plot-oriented mysteries. His first series, featuring the stolid, unimaginative - but generally correct and successful where others fail - Sergeant Beef is a delight. The Carolus Deene books are somewhat darker than that early series, but they are cleverly written and generally quite full of twists and surprises. That's certainly true of Dead Man's Shoes, and I recommend it heartily.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Dead Man's Shoes is my entry for the square (sixth row, fourth column) calling for one book written by an author whose first or last name begins with the same letter as mine - in this case both  the L of Leo and the B of Bruce.

"Call Mr. Fortune"

It is hardly unusual for doctors to specialize in certain areas of medical practice. It is, perhaps, a bit less usual to hear one's specialty described as "the surgery of crime." Yet that's the way author H. C. Bailey describes the  area of specialization of his creation, Reggie Fortune:

“The Criminal Investigation Department, solicitors, and others dealing with those experiments in social reform which are called crimes, by continually appealing to his multifarious knowledge and his all-observant eye, turned Dr. Reginald Fortune, general practitioner at Westhampton, into Mr. Fortune of Wimpole Street, specialist in – what shall we say? – the surgery of crime. And Reggie Fortune, though richer for the change, was not grateful. He liked ordinary things, and any day would have gladly bartered a murder for a case of chicken-pox. This accounts for his unequalled sanity of judgment.”  

That was in 1920, when Reggie Fortune made his first book appearance in Call Mr. Fortune, a collection of six short stories by H. C. Bailey. That collection is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Reggie Fortune didn't appear in very many novels. His many appearances in short stories, however, were quite popular. In the first short story in this book, called “The Archduke’s Tea,” we are introduced to Reggie Fortune. He is taking over his father’s medical practice temporarily while the senior Mr. Fortune is away. Reggie is summoned to the London residence of the Archduke Maurice of Bohemia. The archduke has been struck by a motor car and is unconscious; could Mr. Fortune please come at once. Reggie answers the call, only to find a great deal more mystery than he bargained for.

If you listen to that audio review on the podcast, you will hear brief rundowns of the other five stories contained in Call Mr. Fortune.  The stories all are quite well done. I must admit that Reggie Fortune can be a bit of a drag sometime - always dropping his 'g's is a very irritatin' and even provokin' habit, as is his tendency to moan and groan a lot when he speaks. Also, as is often the case with mysteries from the early years of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, there are occasional mention of racial and gender attitudes in ways that may make a modern reader wince. On the whole, however, these stories are quite enjoyable. Call Mr. Fortune is available in e-book editions from The Mysterious Press/Open Road Media.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Call Dr. Fortune is my entry for the square (fifth row, first column) calling for one medical mystery (or features Dr. or nurse).

"The Sussex Downs Murder"

John Rother drove away from Chalklands Farm in Sussex for a short vacation - and promptly disappeared. His car turned up - with bloodstains - but there was no sign of John Rother - unless, of course, those stains were an ominous sign. Enter Superintendent Meredith - and the sinister discovery of human bones at Chalklands. Superintendent Meredith came to the not unreasonable conclusion that he was probably investigating a murder. You'll find the full story in The Sussex Downs Murder, a 1936 Golden Age mystery by John Bude. It's the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

John Bude (the pen name used by Ernest C. Elmore) was a prolific writer during and after that Golden Age of Detective Fiction we define as being, primarily, the period between the two world wars. The Sussex Downs Murder was his third book. Like almost all of Bude's books, this one has been out of print for many years and has been virtually unavailable. The British Library has now republished the book (to be released formally in the US next week) as part of its Crime Classics Series; the Poisoned Pen Press, which is publishing the series in the US, kindly provided me with a copy for this review.

When human bones begin appearing at construction sites around Chalklands Farm, Superintendent Meredith must try to determine if they are grim evidence of John Rother’s fate. The superintendent has a limited field of possible suspects – and, for quite a while, it is far from clear exactly what those suspects might have done, and why, and how. Meredith’s search for the truth is carefully laid out in a plot full of twists and surprises. It's part procedural - but also quite definitely a traditional, plot-driven mystery with interesting characters and a well-delineated setting - not to mention a challenge to the reader to solve the mystery before Meredith - "Not guess-work, mark you, but a certainty based on proven facts."

In an introduction to this new  edition of The Sussex Downs Murder, mystery writer Martin Edwards calls the book "an ingenious and highly enjoyable detective novel." I couldn’t agree more. Edwards says that he suspects Bude may have more readers now than he did during that Golden Age. Let’s hope that readership continues to grow. The official publication date, according to Amazon's site, is May 5; your local bookseller, Amazon and others, will be happy to take orders now.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, The Sussex Downs Murder is my entry for the square (fifth row, sixth column) calling for one book written by an author with a pseudonym; as noted above, "John Bude" was the pen name of Ernest C. Elmore.

An Extra Challenge This Month

Rich Westwood, over at the very excellent Past Offenses blog, has challenged us to blog about a mystery this month that was published in the year 1936 - which, as it happens, was the publication year of The Sussex Downs Murder. This is my entry in that challenge.

"The Mystery of Hunting's End"

The private hunting lodge of the Kingery family was called "Hunting's End," and it was located out in the middle of the desolate Sand Hills of Nebraska. It was certainly no place to be stuck in the middle of a howling blizzard, with no way to get out or to communicate with the outside world. And there was the added complication that one member of the gathering at Hunting's End was a murderer - a person who, it was increasingly clear, would have no qualms about killing again.

Welcome to The Mystery of Hunting's End, by Mignon G. Eberhart, a tremendously popular and prolific writer of mysteries and romances whose career ran from the 1920s through the 1980s. The Mystery of Hunting's End, her third mystery, published in 1930, is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

Five years ago, the owner of Hunting's End, Huber Kingery, was shot and killed at Hunting's End. The people who were present at the time, members of the Kingery family and other friends, managed to cover up the murder. But Kingery's daughter, Matil, wants the killer uncovered. So, on the fifth anniversary of the murder, she has invited all of the guests who were present at the time to come back to the lodge. Unknown to the guests, who rather grudgingly agree to return to the lodge, Matil also invites Lance O'Leary, a private detective, to join the guests. And, at O'Leary's suggestion, Matil hires Nurse Sarah Keate to look after Matil's elderly Aunt Lucy Kingery, an unpleasant old woman. O'Leary and Nurse Keate have worked together before - or, more accurately, have both been involved doing secret investigative work, usually at least nominally on the same side.

But on the very first day that everyone arrives at the lodge, a November blizzard blows in and completely isolates Hunting’s End from any possible contact with the outside world for several days. The people at the lodge very quickly come to realize that they are trapped there – and that, if Matil is correct in her insistence that her father was murdered, one of them must be the killer and will undoubtedly not hesitate to kill again to protect his or her secret.

Mignon Eberhart manages to give her readers a real sense of the near-panic and claustrophobia among the guests at Hunting’s End, all of whom know each other – but do not like each other. Some of this, to be sure, is in the “had I but known” viewpoint which we are offered repeatedly, but it’s also in the keen observations of our narrator, Nurse Keate.

Nurse Keate is certainly among the "Had I But Known" school of narrators, popularized by such writers as Mary Roberts Rinehart, and there's a great deal of narration along the line of, had I but known the horrors that awaited us behind those locked doors, I would never have gone there alone in the middle of the night. That sense of foreboding was a strong suit for Mignon G. Eberhart as well. Her characters are quite well-defined - and many of them are quite unpleasant. As our narrator tells us, at one point:

It was quite natural, I suppose…that the little cloaks of conventionalities to which we had clung so desperately during the preceding days and nights should finally and completely escape our clutches and vanish. I have never before or since that time seen men and women in their primitive, selfish state, and I never wish to again, for it is singularly disillusioning. Our treasured little masks of customs and behavior were gone entirely, and the sight of what was left was not pretty.

 The Mystery of Hunting's End is an enjoyable and thought-provoking mystery. It's available in a trade paperback edition from Bison Books, with an introduction by editor, Jay Fultz, who notes that Eberhart was able to create "an atmosphere of all-encompassing dread, a polished style that barely puts the lid on the underlying barbarism of some social sophisticates." I think you'll like the book.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, The Mystery of Hunting's End is my entry for the square (second row, sixth column) calling for one book with a place in the title.

"Death at the President's Lodging"

"An academic life, Dr. Johnson observed, puts one little in the way of extraordinary casualties. This was not the experience of the Fellows and scholars of St. Anthony's College when they awoke one raw November morning to find their President, Josiah Umpleby, murdered in the night. The crime was at once intriguing and bizarre, efficient and theatrical."

And there is so much more to come! What we have here is the opening of Death At The President's Lodging, by Michael Innes, the first recorded case of Inspector John Appleby. Originally published in 1936, and known in the U. S. by the title Seven Suspects, Death at the President's Lodging is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

It is invigorating to find the problem set out for the reader this way in the very first paragraph of the book, but it is, of course, only the beginning of a very complex mystery indeed. For the events leading up to Umpleby's death will prove to be a considerably more difficult and perplexing puzzle than might be posed by a simple, straightforward shooting.

Appleby finds himself assigned to investigate Umpleby's murder. Umpleby has been shot to death in his residence, which is one of the college buildings located in a portion of the campus which is securely locked at night, when the murder was committed, and only a handful of senior scholars have keys. So the field of suspects would appear to be severely limited.

And it is also true that the murder itself was surrounded by very peculiar circumstances – not least of which is the fact that the President’s body is lying in the midst of human bones, scattered across the floor of his study. There are a great many clues – too many of them, perhaps, and yet, although Umpleby was nearly universally disliked, it proves to be extremely difficult to find a scholar with a motive for the murder who would, in fact, have had the opportunity to commit the crime.

It is up to Appleby, of course, to get everything sorted out. And I have to warn you that the ultimate solution, when Appleby explains it, is likely to induce dizziness on the reader's part. But it is eminently satisfying. Innes is one of my favorite authors, whose writing manages to include a great deal of wit and humor along with a splendidly complex plot. This was his first mystery. It's highly entertaining.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Death at the President's Lodging is my entry for the square (third row, sixth column) calling for one book published under more than one title.

"The Hand in the Dark"

Since before the Norman Conquest, Herediths had lived at the estate known as the Moat House. The Herediths, to be sure, were nobility - but there was an undercurrent of violence, and their relations overall with the neighbors of their country home were not always smooth. Certainly when Philip Heredith brought his young bride to live there, it was not really surprising that the young woman, used to the pleasures of London, didn't very much like the place. And then, one night, when most of the residents and their guests were seated together uncomfortably at dinner, there was a scream and the sound of a shot...

Melodramatic? Perhaps. But it is the opening of a very good Golden Age mystery from an author I did not know, Arthur J. Rees. It's called The Hand In The Dark, first published in 1920, and it's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast. You can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

It is indeed murder at the Moat House - but virtually the entire household was at dinner, so the possible suspects certainly are limited. Nobody is hiding, and nobody is missing, so perhaps it is not surprising that the police, in the person of an eager young Scotland Yard detective named Caldew and his superior, Superintendent Merrington, quickly form a theory and arrest a suspect.  Merrington and Caldew are persuaded that they have solved the case and arrested the likely perpetrator. And, if they can be faulted, it is primarily for following their instincts and – once new clues have been uncovered – resolutely refusing to pursue the matter further.

But the Heredith family is not persuaded, and they engage a private investigator, named Colwyn (not given a first name in this book) to look further into the case. He quickly uncovers additional clues – clues which, in fairness, were discovered AFTER the police had concluded their investigations. And these new clues suggest a very different direction that needs to be explored before Colwyn will be able to solve the mystery.

What makes this book work so well, I think, is Rees’s ability to write excellent descriptions of the places and people involved in The Hand in the Dark. His view of both the Herediths and of the police is, to put it mildly, somewhat jaundiced. Rees has many observations to make – about the enormous gulf between the people living in the moat house and their servants, about the bureaucracy of the police, and about the impact of what we now know as the first world war on the characters of the story.

The Resurrected Press has reissued The Hand in the Dark and some other books by Arthur J. Rees. There’s also a good and useful introduction to Rees and his work by The Resurrected Press’s editor in chief, Greg Fowlkes. I definitely recommend the book to you.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, The Hand in the Dark is my entry for the square (first row, fourth column) calling for one country house mystery.

"She Died a Lady"

"If there's one thing we can be certain about in the business, it's this: Mrs. Wainright and Mr. Sullivan walked out to the edge of that cliff, and they didn't come back."

...And as I can see now, what he said was quite true.

The evidence was very clear: the lovers must have committed suicide. There were only two sets of footprints leading across the sand to the edge of the cliff, from which they had jumped. There was even a suicide note.

Only it didn't happen that way. When the bodies were recovered from the sea, it became very clear that it had been murder.

Only the murderer would have had to be lighter than air and left no footprints anywhere.

Impossible? No. Not for John Dickson Carr, writing as Carter Dickson, at the peak of his game with She Died a Lady, originally published in 1943. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

John Dickson Carr, of course, was the acknowledged master of the impossible crime mystery, the locked room, the unbroken expanse of snow or sand, the invisible murderer. If you take a look at this blog's backlist page, you'll find a pretty hefty list of reviews I've done of books by Carr. She Died a Lady features Sir Henry Merrivale, the character about whom Carr wrote when using the pen name "Carter Dickson." As readers of Carter Dickson’s mysteries know, Merrivale was brilliant in his ability to explain impossible crimes – and wildly eccentric and often quite funny in almost every other way. In She Died a Lady, H.M., as he is known, is visiting an artist who lives nearby and who is painting H.M.’s portrait. There are some very funny scenes, particularly one involving Sir Henry, a motorized wheelchair, and what seems to be all the dogs in the village – but the overall tone of the book is anything but funny. Can those impossible murders be explained? It was almost enough to fool Sir Henry Merrivale. Almost.

I don't want to say much more about it, because I want you to have the real pleasure of being misdirected and manipulated by the expert in impossible crimes. She Died a Lady is very very good. It's currently available both in paper and as an ebook. Either way, get a copy and enjoy it.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, She Died a Lady is my entry for the square (fourth row, first column) calling for one locked room or impossible crime.

"Corpse Diplomatique"

There are a fair number of married couples who moonlight as sleuth teams in classic mystery novels. There were Nick and Nora Charles, Jeff and Haila Troy, Henry and Emily Bryce, Jake and Helene Justus, to name just a few. And then there were Dagobert and Jane Brown, who brought their own odd brand of detection to mysteries written by Delano Ames in the late 1940s and through the 1950s. Dagobert, a young man who appears to be chronically allergic to any kind of job, spends some of his time investigating murders; his wife Jane, who writes mysteries (which, apparently, bring in enough money for the couple to live on), helps Dagobert and serves as the narrator for these books, which really fall into the category of "screwball comedy-mysteries."

The third book about this rather odd couple is called Corpse Diplomatique, originally published in 1950. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you're invited to listen to the full review by clicking here. Dagobert and Jane find themselves staying at a small hotel in Nice, on the French Riviera. They meet Don Diego Sebastiano, the Vice Consul in Nice for the small Central American republic of Santa Rica, who - not to put too fine a point on it - tries to pick up Jane, but fails. Soon thereafter, as the Vice Consul is walking down the street, someone apparently takes a shot at him - missing him narrowly, but killing another resident of that small hotel, Major Hugh Cartwright. Was Don Diego the intended victim? He certainly thinks so - although Major Cartwright turns out to have been doing quite a lot of blackmailing of just about everyone in the hotel and the surrounding neighborhood - including both Don Diego and Dagobert.

It's all done with a very light touch; there are some very funny scenes and bright exchanges in the dialogue. I can carp over a lot of the details of this book – there are a number of plots and subplots which, in my view, don’t really dovetail into a coherent story. But Dagobert and Jane are a charming couple who manage to get away with a great deal of what in most people would be considered very unusual behavior as they team up to find a killer. If you don’t know the Browns, you would probably enjoy meeting them in Corpse Diplomatique, by Delano Ames.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Corpse Diplomatique is my entry for the square (top row, fifth column) calling for one book with a detective "team."

[Updated 3/29 to correct the title for my Bingo challenge submission. Sorry!]

"Jumping Jenny"

To those at the scene, it was quite clear that the death was a suicide. The victim, an extremely unpleasant person, would almost certainly have qualified as insane, with the ability to spread misery everywhere. The death was undoubtedly a blessing for everyone, the victim included. Even the police were inclined to look on the matter from that point of view. Only Roger Sheringham spotted the one impossible fact that made it clear that they were dealing with murder. And he was rather inclined to hide it. Could he?

That's the basic question in Anthony Berkeley's 1933 mystery, Jumping Jenny. It's the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the entire review by clicking here.

It's a curious book - and I'm a bit reluctant to share too much of it because there are too many first-rate twists that make it difficult for me to avoid spoilers. Berkeley's amateur detective, Roger Sheringham and his efforts to conceal the fact that the victim was murdered, apparently by one of Roger's friends, are at the center of the mystery; what makes it more fun for the reader is that the reader - not the detective - is given certain additional facts about the murder which Sheringham does not know.

In Berkeley's novels, facts can indeed be tricky things. It's worth noting this comment from Roger Sheringham, talking to a friend:

“It’s so easy to think of a feasible explanation of a fact, without knowing in the least whether it’s the right one, and without probably realizing how many other feasible explanations of the same fact there may be. That was the trouble with the old-fashioned detective story…One deduction only was drawn from each fact, and it was invariably the right deduction. The Great Detectives of the past certainly had luck. In real life one can draw a hundred plausible deductions from one fact, and they’re all equally wrong.”

Keep that in mind as you enjoy the surprises in Jumping Jenny, by Anthony Berkeley. It is available both in a print edition and as an e-book, and it is worth seeking out.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

Continuing my participation in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. under way at the My Reader's Block blog, Jumping Jenny is my entry for the square (top row, second column) called "TBR First Lines." The idea of this square is for the reader to choose, from among his/her pile (or mountain) of books To Be Read, one whose first line captures his/her attention. Jumping Jenny opens with this line:

"From the triple gallows three figures swung lazily, one woman and two men."

Grabbed my attention all right. By the way, that woman's figure is the "Jumping Jenny" of the title. At any rates, that completes the square for me!

 

NOTE - This is being published a few hours early this week, as much of my Monday will be spent on board assorted planes, returning from Left Coast Crime. Back to normal Monday publication next week.

"Murder Gone Minoan"

You might think that the theft of a priceless statuette from the private museum on a magnate's private island shouldn't be all that difficult to solve.

You might think that a murder on that same island, cut off from the outside world, with a limited number of suspects shouldn't be difficult to solve either.

You might be wrong, as we will see in Murder Gone Minoan, a 1939 mystery by Clyde B. Clason. It is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the full review by clicking here.

 In Murder Gone Minoan, we meet department store magnate Alexis Paphlagloss, owner of a chain of department stores named Minos, after the classical pre-Hellenic people who lived on the island of Crete. He has bought himself an island off the California coast, where he has built a replica of a Minoan palace, and he has renamed that island home Knossos, after the ancient city on Crete. He calls himself “The Minos,” as the absolute ruler of his own island.

In his private museum in the palace, his most valuable possession is the priceless statue of the Minoan snake goddess. When it is stolen under circumstances where the thief must be a family member or an honored guest, police suggest to The Minos that he invite historian and professor Theocritus Lucius Westborough to his island to help uncover the thief. Professor Westborough is Clason's amateur sleuth who has shown himself able to help the police solve difficult - often seemingly impossible - puzzles.

When Westborough gets to the island, he discovers that there now has been a murder - and police, again, are stymied and ask Westborough to help. And so the professor stays on Knossos and begins to gather information. It will be, as the police had warned him, quite dangerous. And the story will certainly take some unexpected twists, as the tension builds. Yet there is a trail of evidence pointing the reader towards the solution, though I think it’s sufficiently obscure to fool most readers. It all leads to a most satisfying climax.

Clyde B. Clason wrote only ten mysteries, packed into just a few years, but they all are really fine traditional mysteries from the American Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Murder Gone Minoan seems to me the best plotted and most interesting of Clason’s books, at least of the ones I have read. Clason obviously did a lot of research for this one – I learned a great deal about ancient Minoan art and culture among other topics. It’s a fascinating journey and I recommend it to you.

The 2015 Bingo Challenge

As you probably know by now, I am participating in the 2015 Vintage Mystery Bingo challenge. The Bingo card has 36 squares to be filled by reading a book appropriate to each square's instructions. Murder Gone Minoan is my entry for the square (third row, third column) which calls for a book with an amateur detective.