Tag golden age fiction

Three’s A Treat

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Harriet Rutland first came to my attention back in 2015 or so when I read the Dean Street Press reissue of her 1939 detective novel ‘Knock, Murderer, Knock’. This would have been around the time I first came across the Dean Street Press imprint, having gravitated further and further from an immersion in the world of American hardboiled Noir into the realms of the English Golden Age courtesy of the British Library Classic Crime series. This would have been a period when I was still buying more printed books than electronic, and a quick glance up at my shelves suggests that back in 2015 I was rating the likes of Robin Forsyth, Ianthe Jerrold and the Radfords as being of more interest than Rutland. All of those are fine writers whose books I have enjoyed enormously, yet it strikes me now as peculiar that I did not immediately pick up more Rutland’s, particularly as there are only two other titles in her, ahem, criminally small catalogue. Recent re-reading of ‘Knock, Murderer, Knock’ assures me of its quality and of Rutland’s class, so I can only assume that I was feeling particularly befuddled by school when I first read it, or, as is perhaps more plausible, I simply ran out of Detective Novel steam and needed a change. Some eight years later, then, it is most certainly a pleasure to reacquaint myself with Harriet Rutland and her set of three almost pitch perfect novels, originally published over a four year period between 1939 and 1942.

As Curtis Evans points out in his typically well-researched and engagingly written introductions, Harriet Rutland was the pen name of one Olive Shimwell, who, with ‘Knock, Murderer, Knock’ seemed to appear somewhat out of the blue as a fully-formed, bona-fide Top Quality new author in the detective fiction genre. The book is certainly great fun, laced with witty and intelligent references to literature assumed to be well above the genre’s scope, whilst managing to contain an entertaining puzzle within pages that glisten with the sheen of assured writing. It is a book that positively bristles with quotable outbursts from various characters, all of whom are sketched out in deft strokes, their foibles gently massaged into delicious caricature. It is also marvellously meta in so much as it features a would-be author of imaginary crime fiction within the book itself. This particular character is at one point asked if she writes for a hobby. “Oh no”, she replies. “I don’t like writing sufficiently well for that; it’s very hard work.”

The gift that Rutland/Shimwell has of course is to make it seem effortless. All three of her novels trot along at a perfect pace, which is to say just exuberantly enough to keep one turning the pages, yet with enough consideration to allow pauses for breath, reflection, and to take in the views. Speaking of which, there are some pleasant fictional views of Devon in ‘Knock…’ as the story is set in a fictionalised Paignton, with an additional nod to a faintly cloaked Newton Abbott, where Shimwell lived out her life, dying in 1962. This setting, though, with the Presteignton Hydro Hotel being likely modelled partly on what is now Paignton’s Esplanade Hotel, is apparently in itself transplanted from Shimwell’s experiences in Cork, Ireland. The obfuscation (along with Shimwell’s use of the Harriet Rutland nom de plume) is as well, because the characters who inhabit the pages of the book are hardly sensitively sketched. If they were, indeed, based even loosely on individuals encountered in the real Hydro hotel, then I dare say I would do my utmost to raise a smokescreen too.

It is, then, the darkly humorous manner in which Rutland depicts her characters and their relationships that is at the heart of what makes her books so entertaining. Catty exchanges and The Ultimate Vengeance abound in ‘Knock…’ with some withering glances cast at class distinction and social (im)mobility along the way. There is too, in all three of Rutland’s novels, a particular distaste shown towards the relationships between men and women. Reflective, perhaps, of Shimwell’s own experiences at the time (she divorced her first husband shortly after the publication of ‘Blue Murder’), there is something darkly pleasurable in the misogynistic attitudes displayed by some her male characters, most notably in ‘Knock…’ by the typically hapless local Police Inspector Palk who possesses “the greatest contempt for women writers” and whose estimation of the fictional writer of detective fiction goes up when “he realized that her books were still unprinted”.

The ‘star’ of the first two books is the rather elusive Mr Winkley of Scotland Yard. I say ‘elusive’ because he is not a Yard Inspector, but rather a back-room boffin recruited from the Intelligence Services after WW1 and, in normal circumstances, apparently tucked away in a room surrounded by years’ worth of evidence scraps that eventually, with a trick of his puzzle solving brain, he might connect in some way that shines light on previously unsolved crimes. His appearance in Rutland’s books is not even ‘official’ Yard business, but rather Winkley having something of a Busman’s Holiday. It’s a neat touch, for it allows the character to straddle the realms of amateur and professional; a foot in both camps of the genre, as it were. He’s a strange character compared to the others in Rutland’s books too in the sense that he often seems barely there. He sort of drifts wraith like through the first two novels, listening, looking and sifting, yet one almost gets the sense that he is never ‘investigating’. This, presumably, is a nod to his grounding in the Intelligence services, and it feels like a neat play by Rutland, anticipating in some ways the Cold War character of spooks that will come in the future. Certainly there is no notion that Winkley might possibly have come out of a Buchan novel, and certainly too there is nothing of the Holmes about him. This, I suggest, is A Very Good Thing.

Rutland’s second novel ‘Bleeding Hooks’ followed closely on the heels of her first and whilst it is again thoroughly enjoyable, it does perhaps suffer a little from being just a little hasty, with one or two characters feeling more lazily drawn than in ‘Knock…’ This is particularly true of two more, ah, youthful characters who are rather unfortunately named Pussy and Piggy. There is a notion that these two characters are intended as a lighthearted critique of Christie’s popular Tommy and Tuppence, and with much of Rutland’s work being quite transparently ‘about’ the whole nature of how detective fiction works (or doesn’t) then it’s easy to give this suggestion traction. What feels more interesting to me, though, is the way in which Rutland captures something of the timeless tensions that inevitably exist between generations. In one priceless moment she knowingly structures an exchange wherein a more elderly character exclaims to Pussy that “You Bright Young Things can’t keep your noses out of affairs which don’t concern you. It’s the result of all those wild Treasure Hunts, I suppose.” It is marvellously funny to see such a wildly out of date reference being made in 1940, and it is met with understandable distaste: “Pussy violently disliked the appellation. To her, Bright Young Things were antiquated. Most of those whom she knew had already become “hags”, and by this time had acquired several babies or divorces, or both.” I admit that I do enjoy this kind of obviously exaggerated generation gap, and whilst there is much to be frustrated about in the characters of Pussy and Piggy, there is a certain amount of warmth in how they are portrayed that is less visible in her more elderly characters. The humour has an almost Margery Sharp quality to it, and Rutland permits her nice Mr Winkley to reflect: “He wondered what kind of men and women they would become, and tried, ineffectually, to remember whether he had been quite so gauche, and yet so sophisticated, in his twenties.” In other words, even, or especially if we cannot remember, the chance are that we WERE all so gauche and yet so sophisticated in our twenties. It is the charm and the curse of the age. And we ought all to be so pleased to get beyond it.

As a ‘fishing’ detective novel, ‘Bleeding Hooks’ fits neatly within a sub-genre that also features such luminaries as Ngaio Marsh, Cyril Hare and the aforementioned Radford’s, whose ‘Murder Jigsaw’ was also resurrected by the Dean Street Press. One of the elements of such ‘activity-specific’ tales is the need for technical extrapolations (remember Sayers, ahem, clanging on interminably about bells in ‘The Nine Tailors’?) and Rutland rather unfortunately rises to the challenge here. Unless one is a fly-fishing aficionado, perhaps, in which case there is likely nowhere near enough technical detouring, and what there is tainted by the dilettante’s – or the fiction writer’s – inaccuracy. It’s hardly a deal breaker, however, for elsewhere in the book there are lovely undercurrents with subtle observations on notions of privacy, secrecy and the difficulty in making meaningful connections with other humans.

The possible Tommy and Tuppence reference aside, there is also more post-modern meta-fiction at play in ‘Bleeding Hooks’ to tickle our trouts, as it were. Little asides are peppered through the novel: “if this were a thriller, he’d definitely turn out to be the murderer”; “detective novels are not real reading, they’re recreation”; ““It sounds to me like one of those yarns you fishing fellows tell,” he said, “or else a plot by a lady novelist.””; ““Everybody knows that people commit suicide with prussic acid…” “In books,” put in Paget. “The lay public knows so little about it, that it’s a positive godsend to the writer of detective fiction.”. This last, incidentally, might notionally be considered A Spoiler, but frankly the whole story is so delectably mixed up in terms of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ (or ‘fiction’ and ‘meta fiction’) that it hardly matters. ‘Bleeding Hooks’ then might be the weakest of the three Rutland books, but only by the width of a gnat’s wing.

Now it is certainly the case that if The War (or the state of England in the shadow of it’s inevitable approach) is strangely all but invisible in Rutland’s first two books, it is certainly a feature in ‘Blue Murder’. It may be the best of the three, and opens spectacularly with what must be one of the most sharply withering lines about The Male Gaze: “Mr. Hardstaffe had reached the critical time of life when elderly gentlemen gaze at the legs of schoolgirls in railway carriages.”

This rather sets the tone for what is perhaps Rutland’s most direct assault on masculinity and the patriarchal society. Throughout the book there are barbs about the role of women, and the nature of women, very often put in the mouths of women characters themselves. The appalling Mrs Hardstaffe (it’s no spoiler to say that She Gets Her Comeuppance) spews out such gems as: “Girls are quite above themselves nowadays, with all these uniforms and high wages. I shudder to think what they’ll be like after this war.” And should one be in any doubt as to her personal leanings (in current times one rather imagines her as Suella Braverman) she comes out with this about, inevitably, Hitler: “I must say this is the first time I’ve felt any sympathy for ‘That Man’,” remarked Mrs. Hardstaffe, “but if all Jews are like her, I don’t wonder he cleared them out of the country, do you?”

The ‘her’ in question is Jewish refugee Freda Braun who has found employment as the Hardstaffe’s maid, and Rutland uses all of her characters to very effectively express a distaste for the anti-semitism and rampant nationalism that led Europe into the darkness of war. Rutland sides naturally with the oppressed and the worker, but also with the Younger Generations in whom, here, she seems to find some kind of Hope, even if it is tempered with a degree of bleak existential darkness.

Whilst there is, then, an understandable element of bleakness to the story, Rutland sets this off with her trademark black humour and clever critiquing of the genre in which she is working. There is a sense, indeed, of Rutland rather pulling out all the stops in this one, as she pushes the ‘fiction within a fiction’ play for all it’s worth. Mr Winkley is absent (perhaps recalled to the Intelligence Services to Serve His Country) and is replaced by struggling author Arthur Smith as the amateur sleuth looking for materials for a detective story that will bring more success than the dwindling returns from his Romances. Thus we see Rutland addressing the ‘psychological’ approach to investigation alongside the red herring of the individual confession, with typically amplified delight. It all makes for a thoroughly enjoyable and well written piece of period detective fiction, and one that anyone interested in fiction both written and set during WW2 ought to find space for on their shelves.

As previously mentioned, Curtis Evans’ introductions are informative and engaging, yet he offers no explanation as to why there were no more Harriet Rutland stories published after ‘Blue Murder’. Perhaps there was simply the realisation that she had pushed her meta-fictional critique of the genre as far as she cared to take it; that to do more would be to inevitably, eventually, dilute the entire process and end up being insufferably smug and repetitive. Perhaps too the ‘need’ to write (both from a financial and creative perspective) no longer lingered. It is, after all, “very hard work.” Or then again perhaps it was simply that her second marriage (in 1948) proved rather more pleasant than her first, and that perhaps as a result she found it rather more difficult to write with the pointedly, wickedly amusing scorn that makes ‘Knock, Murderer, Knock’, ‘Bleeding Hooks’ and ‘Blue Murder’ so marvellously appealing. Whatever the reason, it is has left us with a marvellously unspoilt snapshot of Harriet Rutland as an author and three tremendous pieces of detective fiction that belong in the very top tier.

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.