Tag crime fiction

A Hundred Years Hence – part 1

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I’ve been enjoying browsing the ‘hot cup of pleasure’ blog recently and was quite taken with the idea of the ‘Hundred Years Hence’ reading challenge, whose premise is pretty much what it says on the tin. Obviously I’m a little late to be participating in the party but I thought I would slot a few new books into my ‘to be ride’ shelf this month just for the fun of it all. The first of these, then, is Ronald Arbuthnott Knox’s ‘The Aqueduct Murder’ and it has been enjoyable primarily for the reason that it is a light hearted poke at the crime/detective fiction genre that would have been all the rage in the UK (and elsewhere) a hundred years ago.

Knox, an English catholic priest and theologian, had an impressive catalogue of published books on a variety of subjects by the time of his death in 1957 but he did seem to have a particular thing for satire and parody. Amongst these we find: “A satire in the manner of Dryden on the latitudinarianism of the authors of Foundations”; “a satire on the readiness of certain Anglicans to sink doctrinal differences with the Nonconformist sects in the interests of Christian good fellowship”; “a parody of the current autobiographies of women of fashion with a gentle satire on current whims—educational, medical, political and theological”; “a satirical tale about a hoax played on a circle of spiritualists”; and “A satire on the religious opinions of some of the chief popular writers of the day (including Arnold Bennett and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)”. Against such a backdrop then ‘The Aqueduct Murder’ makes a lot of sense as Knox’s first foray into the genre.

The narrative revolves around a group of golfers (naturally all male they are a clergyman, a retired don, a former clerical assistant in the War Office who refers at every opportunity to his time “in Military Intelligence” and one largely unremarkable ‘dogs body’ type figure) who, following a clubhouse discussion on their relative skills at solving the fictional crimes found in books, discover a dead body at the base of a railway viaduct whilst searching for a lost ball. As one does.

The knowing preposterousness of such a situation could easily be overplayed, but Knox has, if not exactly a deftness of touch at least a lack of heavy handedness that is quite appealing. True, the tendency to use the technique of lengthy extrapolations of the amateur detective’s deductive processes can be as tedious in satirical form as in the serious, but this tricky balancing act is just about carried off and I only found myself skimming such interminable passages a couple of times in the book.


The story, whilst ridiculous in many respects, is well stage managed and progresses nicely according to the unwritten rules of detective fiction of the time. That said, as one the founders of The Detection Club Knox in 1930, Knox seems to have been unable to resist devising ‘Ten Rules for Detective Fiction’, around which no doubt his ‘serious’ attempts at the genre (five novels from 1927 to ’37 featuring series detective Miles Bredon) were constructed. I thought then that it might be fun to see how ‘The Viaduct Murder’ measures up against these rules:

“1: The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.” Check. Not really much to say about this, except that as per the rule the names and descriptions of most key players in the story are all present and correct in Chapter One.

“2: All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.” Amusingly there is a reference to ghosts in the denouement of the book, with hilarious consequences. Okay, mildly amusing consequences.

“3: Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.” Knox makes the most of this one by ensuring that there is indeed one of each in the story.

“4: No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.” Pleasingly, Knox does not fall into the trap of attempting some kind of wearisome parody of this rule by incorporating a device such as the adjustable golf club utilised by one Bertram Wooster. Full marks.

“5: No Chinaman must figure in the story.” Of all Knox’s rules this is surely the most bizarre. It refers to the fairly short-lived fashion for stereotypical Asian figures in thriller/detective stories of the period. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Knox that one might use Asian (or other non-white male) characters in a way that would avoid stereotypes altogether.

“6: No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.” It’s really hardly a spoiler to say that there are lots of intuitions at play in the book, none of which prove to be correct.

“7: The detective himself must not commit the crime.” Again, it is not really a spoiler to say that this rule passes muster, although amusingly one of the four ‘detectives’ is accused of being so by one of the others.

“8: The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.” This rule is strictly adhered to throughout, with the occasionally tedious result of extended postulations, mostly by Reeves, the ‘Military Intelligence’ chappie.

“9: The “sidekick” of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.” Of the four amateur sleuths investigating the crime, Reeves is probably the parodical Holmes character, and the other three all to some extent the Watson, but it is hazy ground to be honest. Indeed I thought all of the characters to be rather less intelligent than the average mystery reader, but this may have been because they all play golf.

“10: Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.” Twins and doubles do not appear, although the first wild attempt to explain the crime does indeed make a play on this theme.

Further rules that Knox might well have included in his list, and which he also adheres to in ‘The Viaduct Murder’ might be:

11: Make repeated reference to Sherlock Holmes and/or Arthur Conan Doyle. 
Knox enthusiastically ascribes to this ‘rule’ throughout ‘The Aqueduct Murder’, even including a chapter entitled ‘The Holmes Method’. Not being a very great fan of the Holmes stories, I admit that I find this ‘rule’ of the Golden Age to be perhaps the most tiresome.

12: Make repeated reference to Shakespeare and include quotes at every opportunity. 
Of course Knox follows this rule. It might be done satirically, but if so then only just.

13: Include a mysterious female character whose honour must be defended. 
Like so much Golden Age detective fiction there are few female characters in ‘The Viaduct Murder’ and the one who does appear is, as per this imagined rule, vaguely and rather stereotypically sketched. I admit I rather thought that the final chapter in the book was going to drop a bomb and cheekily invert this rule, but I was disappointed that this proves not to be the case.

Indeed, Knox kindly suggests that the final chapter “may be omitted if the book be thought too long”, which to my mind shows a perceptive awareness of the difficulty in pulling a detective novel to a successful conclusion. Not for Knox the unbearably detailed explanations of the clues we ought to have spotted in the text but were too stupid to notice. Not for Knox the eye-rolling temptation to show, through his characters’ ‘intelligence’ how smart the author thinks he is. The inversion of this approach might be entirely what one would expect of a gently satirical text, but it is nevertheless very welcome, particularly as in the closing chapters Knox also outlines a deconstruction of sorts of the genre. This section of the book, indeed, is perhaps where I found most pleasure, for the jabs and pokes at psychotherapy as well as literary and historical criticism are deftly placed. Lines like “A man with a documentary hypothesis can defy the rudest assaults of common sense” and “All documents which don’t happen to support your point of view thereby give themselves away as being untrustworthy” reverberate with eerie contemporary resonance.

‘The Viaduct Murder’ then may for the most part show every one of its one hundred years age, but even amongst its preposterous pages relevance can still be found.

The World Turns

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In the words of Ballboy, “Elvis sang that”, and here we are back again with some detective fiction. The British Library Crime Classics Series has continued in recent months with an Anthony Berkeley (‘Not To Be Taken’) that I just about enjoyed and another dreary John Dickson Carter Dickson Carr (‘The Ten Teacups’) that was preposterous and dull. Nothing new there then. Most recently however (well, not quite most because the newly reissued ‘Cat and Mouse’ by Christianna Brand has just landed in the mail) there has been Fiona Sinclair’s 1960 debut ‘Scandalize My Name’ which pretty much hit the spot. There are the flaws one might expect from a debut, notably, as Martin Edwards notes in his typically excellent introduction, her unveiling of a rather large cast of characters very quickly. Being someone who generally prefers to see the key crime occurring in the opening chapters, pages or even lines, this is something that usually irks me. Careful drawing of characters and the teasing out of potential motives for possible crimes? Oh just cut to the chase, let us know what we’re dealing with, no pussy-footing around thankyouverymuch. Yet in Sinclair’s case such frustrations are fairly quickly soothed when one realises the necessity of painting in the characters is not so much about supporting the crime element of the book but rather about capturing something of the nature of London’s post-war boarding house communities. Indeed it is this rather than the crime solving aspect that most appeals about the book, and Sinclair proves pretty adept at portraying the (often secretive, sometimes sordid) relationships that develop within them. There are faint echoes here of Shena Mackay’s ‘Music Upstairs’, or perhaps the near-distant reverberations of angry young men clattering off the walls.

Primarily though Sinclair appears to be interested in what in 21st Century parlance we would call ‘mental health issues’, but that in 1960 was broadly called ‘madness’. There is an interesting exchange at one point between the novel’s sleuth (the well drawn Superintendent Paul Grainger) and a doctor in a Cornish asylum (the drive down from London is delightfully punctuated by traffic lights in Honiton and Exeter and a petrol station in Whimple), who propounds that “madness is much more common than the man in the street could dream of. If you included all the people who are walking about, but very far from what we call normal, the proportion of unbalanced to balanced would be so high that it would frighten you.” When Grainger asks if it is increasing, the doctor suggests that “it’s easy to get that impression, but not so simple to give a reliable opinion. As society gets more tightly organised these people show up more, y’see. You think of those big Victorian families, I wonder how many of their eccentric aunts would be labelled mad, or at least seriously neurotic now? It’s a bit like the cancer figures, they seem to increase, but I wonder how many died in the past and were buried under different labels because it wasn’t picked up?” Grainger repies (with, one suspects, a delightfully raised eyebrow) that “Figures can be deceiving.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly given this exploration of mental health, Sinclair also uses the novel to explore the idea of ‘nature versus nurture’, though in the context of crime rather than education. “Is the killer-type born and not made?” ponders Grainger, wherein lies much of the solution to the puzzle of the crime. Of course I say ‘puzzle’, but really the book is thankfully not one of those tedious puzzle focused yarns so beloved of the likes of Berkeley and Carter Dickson. Sinclair isn’t using ‘Scandalise My Name’ to show how clever she is but instead to probe at some questions of relevance to society. And thank goodness for that.

One certainly wishes that there were as many Fiona Sinclair titles to discover as there are from the numerous John Carter Dickson Carr stable, but sadly, the reference to cancer in Grainger’s exchange with the doctor proved to be a nod to reality, for in 1956 Sinclair had been diagnosed with breast cancer before undergoing a long period of treatment and operations. She died just a year after ‘Scandalize My Name’ was published, although a further four novels were published posthumously. One can only hope that the British Library Crime Classics Series bumps them up their list of future reissues. Fingers crossed.

One title that I suspect the BLCC will not be publishing anytime soon is D.R. Forbes’ 1941 novel ‘Murder Of An Unpopular Man’, though it would certainly provide the series with an intriguing little entry and I would enjoy seeing what biographical facts Martin Edwards might dig up about the author. All I can find after an admittedly cursory period of ‘research’ is that the author is “Possibly Doris Ruby Pryor who married Reginald Alfred Forbes in 1926 and after his death married Arthur Carsberg in 1953 and died in Bournemouth; if so, her dates are 1902-1983”. Now I may be thoroughly guilty of dealing in stereotypes here, but the idea that ‘Murder Of An Unpopular Man’ should have been written by a woman certainly makes sense, for there is a rather fun romance element threading throughout the book. If the writing were a little more polished one might even suggest that the book has a flavour of being how a detective novel might come out if it were written by D.E. Stevenson, or perhaps Noel Streatfeild with her Susan Scarlett hat on. Indeed it’s the somewhat clunky writing that initially threatens to leave ‘Murder Of An Unpopular Man’ floundering, but the book is rescued somewhat by at least conforming to my personal preference for getting the crime neatly, ahem, executed in the opening pages. In this case it’s with the vegetable knife in the office at a large department store in an English provincial town, with the victim being, as one might surmise from the title, a thoroughly rotten scoundrel.

The book rather picks up on the really appearance of the investigator, one Inspector McLeod of the local constabulary, whereupon it settles into rather an enjoyable if undemanding groove. There is nothing particularly unexpected in the way the story unfolds and in many respects the whole process of McLeod solving the crime is as a means of piecing together the romantic attraction between himself and the young lady who finds the body. The characters are nicely sketched and largely keep on the right side of caricature (in some cases only just). It’s all wrapped up with a denouement that carries with it a flurry of action and a most welcome lack of lengthy expostulation by the detective (he is, perhaps correctly from the perspective of the story, more interested in the young lady). The only thing that really detracts from its fun (apart from those clunky first few pages) are the occasional rather tangential references to war. With the book being published in 1941 one might have expected these to carry more obvious connection to the events that would have been going on in the real world, but they are instead rather vague and generalist. They remind me somewhat of that old Culture Club song where Boy George sang somewhat ineffectually about how “war is stupid” and make me wonder if ‘Murder Of An Unpopular Man’ might have been largely written prior to 1939 with the incidental asides added at the suggestion of an editor at Geoffrey Bles publishing house.


It does not look as though Doris Ruby Prior/Forbes/Carsberg (if it indeed was she) wrote anything after (or indeed before) ‘Murder Of An Unpopular Man’ and so the lack of any series may well mitigate against anyone taking a punt on reissuing it in the 21st Century. This would be a shame, for whilst hardly troubling the ‘greats’ of the genre it makes for a light and entertaining diversion. 

More Moray

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The tragic death of publisher Rupert Heath at the start of this year was hard to take on a personal level, for whilst we had only fairly recently begun to exchange emails and messages he already felt like someone I might have known for most of my life. From an objective perspective too his death has been an immense loss, for his Dean Street Press imprint was such a steadfastly reliable source of great books by often un-heralded and ‘lost’ writers of the Golden Age and beyond. There may have been some I warmed to more than others, but that is to be expected when considering such great ‘labels’. I mean, show me the person who loves every band who released a record on Factory and I’ll show you someone who may be bending the truth somewhat.

I’m happy, however, that the five Moray Dalton reissues planned before Rupert’s passing have seen the light of day, for they are terrific books and firmly in the spirit of what Dean Street Press was all about. Whilst the British Library Classic Crime series may focus on one or two titles by an author being squeezed out at a rate of one per month, DSP’s strength was always in striving to make available a body of work by any given author in a batch decent enough to get one’s teeth into. There are few things in life more rewarding than stumbling on a series of books, after all, and I will be forever grateful to Rupert Heath for giving me plenty of opportunities to indulge that pleasure. Ianthe Jerrold, Robin Forsyth, E.R. Punshon, Molly Thynne, Christopher Bush, Basil Thomson, Elizabeth Gill, the Radfords and the brilliant Francis Vivian. Even Brian Flynn, if you must. Plus, of course, Moray Dalton.

I wrote about the first batch of Dalton books released by DSP back in 2020, when they provided excellent entertainment in the early months of The Virus. I wrote at the time that her serial detective Hugh Collier was something of a wraith in the books and that whilst there seemed to be little character development this was not necessarily a bad thing. Whilst this is still true in most of the Collier series books I’ve read, in ‘The Mystery Of The Kneeling Woman’ there is a degree more colour added to the background of the Scotland Yard detective as he attempts to disentangle a mystery involving the death of a village recluse, poisoned chocolates, church brasses, bitter reflections on The Great War, obsessive revenge fantasies, small children, ‘memory loss’ and characters determinedly Taking The Blame. It’s hardly a spoiler to say that this is the book in which Collier’s love life is laid out for us and his future state of marriage explained, and Dalton confidently paints Collier as a Thoroughly Decent Chap. Perhaps one of the reasons I warm to Collier is that, besides being a fellow Scot, he reminds me of Francis Vivian’s tremendous Inspector Knollis in that he eschews all the fluff and flummery of the amateur sleuth and replaces it with quiet hard graft. Knollis famously disregards notions of coincidence and Collier is certainly hewn from the same stone, pointing out that “What some people call the science of detection is simply the accumulation of apparently irrelevant and unimportant facts.” One can imagine Knollis nodding sagely in agreement.

There is much, then, in ‘The Mystery of The Kneeling Woman’ that appeals, and there are some tremendous little digs thrown into the mix by Dalton through her various characters. The City versus Country trope is well served by the Yard detective sergeant Duffield who, amongst other things, betrays “some ignorance of life in the country” by suggesting that “one day must be very like another in these villages”. Elsewhere he suggests that the furnishings of a Country House now owned by a business magnate “smells of the Tottenham Court Road”, a line which I admit made me snort into my sherry. Indeed, Dalton enjoys playing on the trope of New Money playing at being Gentry, having one of her village characters sniffly say about the aforementioned business magnate that “he’s not one of the old landed gentry” but rather “a retired manufacturer [who] made his pile during the War.” As the book progresses there is certainly a sense that Money might be able to buy one property and titles, but it does not, as Collier later wryly observes “bring happiness.” He does, naturally, unravel all the bizarrely entwined threads of the case and gives us all a satisfyingly brief explanation at the book’s conclusion. None of your tedious extended expostulations of clever deductions for Dalton, thank goodness.

In many ways ‘The Mystery of The Kneeling Woman’ then is a romantic tragedy masquerading as a detective story (or vice versa) and is none the worse for that. The following year’s ‘Death In The Dark’ is every bit as fine and every bit as deliciously bonkers as Dalton gleefully throws circus performers, drugs, disreputable doctors and a private zoo into the mix. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!… There is a nice thread of continuity between ‘Kneeling Woman’ and this one in that it is the same small child from the previous book who pulls Collier into the mystery of this one. The major protagonist, however, is the sister (Judy) of a circus acrobat deviously framed for murder. She inveigles her way into the lion’s den (almost literally – the Big Cat in question is actually a Tiger) in a bid to Learn The Awful Truth, uncover the devilish plot and save her brother from the hangman’s noose. As you can probably tell, it’s a marvellous thriller of a novel as Collier and Judy race to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice. Bonus points for the South West of England setting, with Seaton and Sidmouth both getting a name check.

The third and last of the Inspector Collier books to be republished by DSP is 1939’s fantastic ‘Death In The Forest’. I say fantastic because it really is fantastical with a central trope of lycanthropy and a rather marvellous section that takes place during a revolution in the fictional South American country of San Rinaldo. Indeed, this part of the book reminds me of ‘Tintin and The Picaros’ with General Alcazar leading his revolution in San Theodoros. These days one could most likely not get away with such a cartoonish portrayal of what used be called ’Banana Republics’ and in some respects it is perhaps surprising that Herge did so in 1974. In 1939 however there were certainly no qualms about portraying these South American countries as a ‘backward’ realm where superstition was ancient and deeply rooted whilst notions of government merely fleeting and transitory and dependent on who had most money/power at any given moment. Which rather sounds like a description of contemporary global politics, but there we are…

‘Death In The Forest’ then continues Dalton’s preference for throwing multiple ingredients into the mix and blending them into a peculiarly delicious concoction. So as well as the suggestions of werewolves we have more poisonings, star-crossed lovers, family betrayals, domineering mothers and self-obsessed sons hellbent on a life of frippery and foppery, plus the kitchen sink besides. There is an also a delightful piece of self-reference when Collier is confronted by the notion of lycanthropy. “I’ve come across some strange things myself” Collier points out. “I was in charge of the Belgrave Manor case, you know. You mayn’t have heard of that. A witch’s coven on the Sussex Downs.” Indeed, as in that ‘Belgrave Manor Crime’, Dalton seems to take enormous pleasure in writing a marvellously entertaining piece of fantasy fiction where the basic form of the detective novel serves merely as a foundation for her active (over)imagination. I suspect that such wild flights of fancy might put off fans of the more, ah, ‘considered’ practitioners of detective fiction, but even they must surely appreciate the genius of Dalton’s deployment of the grounded and reliable Collier as foil to the fantastical. Indeed, it’s this marvellous drama of contrasts that make Moray Dalton and Inspector Collier amongst my favourite combinations.

I admit then that the lack of Inspector Collier in the final two Dalton novels to be published by DSP filled me with a little apprehension, as did the shifting of setting from the familiar South of England to Italy. I need not have worried though, for Dalton’s sense of place is, if anything, even more at play in her 1945 novel ‘The Death of Eve’ and the following year’s ‘Death At The Villa’. In contrast to her tremendously fantastical mysteries of the interwar years, these two stand-alone yet connected novels are altogether more serious and sombre affairs and admirably display the fact that Dalton is, for all the wild and unbelievable excitement of her earlier books, quite simply a Good Writer.

The two books may be standalone novels set some forty or more years apart, yet they are certainly connected by the notion that history is a thread where events pulse through eras and inform the future. ‘The Murder of Eve’ and ‘Death at the Villa’ may be set in two different Italy’s, but it is clear that Dolton is saying something about how Money and Power corrupt absolutely and that whilst Political Ideology may be used as a cloak, it is essentially the same patriarchal power structure that prevails and that it is women who pay the greatest price. Indeed, the title of ‘The Murder of Eve’ kind of flags this up from the start, just in case you miss the point being made…

Both of these novels, then, feel much more Modern than any of the Inspector Collier books, and whilst Dalton still effortlessly employs her skills to provide well-paced narratives, there is little that is light about these books other than the writer’s deftness of touch. One of these light touches is another of those lovely self-referential comments, where amateur sleuth Roger Fordyce admits that “It was comparatively easy for the detective heroes of the thrillers he most enjoyed. They usually had the resources of New Scotland Yard at their disposal, or, if they happened to be amateurs, they had a faithful, though thick-headed, friend in attendance, or a valet who was also a boxing champion and an expert photographer.” Fordyce does eventually employ the assistance of a friend in the form of disgraced piano teacher Lily who, it must be added, is far from thick-headed. From this point however Dalton rather subverts the usual form for amateur sleuthing, and this is another sign perhaps of a bleaker darkness at work. Meanwhile, for fans of Postcard Records there is a mention of Louis Wain’s cats… The book is fired through with this kind of turn of the (19th to 20th) Century detail and if its central obsession with the idea of so-called White Slavery seems quaint, then re-phrasing it as sex trafficking perhaps makes it feel more, depressingly, relevant and up to date.

‘Death At The Villa’ meanwhile portrays a much more contemporaneous Italy as Dalton sets the story in the midst of WW2. In this Italy the crumbling aristocracy struggles to survive alongside the peasantry, neither being particularly safe against the pervasive evil of fascism. That being said, it is of course the exploited peasantry who suffer most and Dalton isn’t shy about making this observation. Her main protagonists though are Richard Drew – a Thoroughly Decent Englishman (of course) – and Alda, an Italian woman whose status straddles the vanishing world of aristocracy (to which she belongs through blood, if not position) and the harsh realities of living in a fascist state. The English RAF flyer Richard naturally plays the part of the plucky fighter and is straight out of a Richard Hannay novel, which makes me wonder if the character’s name is indeed a cheeky nod to Hannay. You may not be altogether surprised to learn that the book is in part a romantic thriller that builds around the relationship between him and Alda, and in this it works admirably. Yet it is also a bleaker treatise on the savagery endlessly perpetrated by the patriarchy and alongside ‘The Murder of Eve’ it stands as a highly entertaining but essentially sober piece of fiction.

Again, bonus points too for the mention of the South West of England in ’Death at the Villa’, this time the little Devon coastal town (then village, I suppose) of Beer, where Richard Drew recalls a holiday “when he was about eight years old, a holiday when the sun always shone and there were shrimps for tea, and the object of his hero worship, a good-natured fisherman, allowed him to sit by him on the beach and help to mend nets that smelt deliciously of tar.”

It is of course a source of profound sorrow that these Moray Dalton books may be the final bow from Dean Street Press. They are, however, a mighty fine high on which to lower the curtain.