Regular readers of the Unpopular Guide To Crime and Detective Fiction, if there be such a thing, will know that I have a particular penchant for books where an effective sense of place is evoked. A decent setting, preferably in a landscape where the real is either barely fictionalised or easily recognisable is almost guaranteed to have me hooked and spending my time between reading bouts poring over old OS Maps. George Bellairs is a master of this, particularly with his books set on the Isle of Man, as is E.C.R. Lorac, whose books set in Lunesdale are one of the greatest pleasures in her impressive catalogue. I have written about this before, of course, but the recent publication of her ‘Theft Of The Iron Dogs’ in the British Library Crime Classics series makes a re-statement of Lorac’s tremendous appeal worthwhile.

First published in 1946, ‘Theft Of The Iron Dogs’ (it’s title in the U.S.A. was ‘Murderer’s Mistake’) is another one of those terrific post-WW2 novels that captures a sense of the age and gives an astute nod to the immense social shifts that are inevitably occurring in the English landscape, both physical and metaphorical. The theft of clothing coupons acts as one such contextual marker in the book but is significant only in so much as to mark out a character as one of those Spiv type chancers whose actions are bound to be dubious and whose sticky end we find difficult to mourn. That said, there are numerous references to the importance and value of fabrics throughout the book, which feels faintly quaint to anyone rooted in the disposable culture of our own times, but which effectively captures something of the austerity of the times. There is too something of the way in which old, well-worn, tatty overcoats and raincoats are seen as a symbol of pride amongst the gentry (I’m reminded of this again in a wonderful Harriet Rutland novel that I’m currently reading), and indeed it’s the ratty, smelly (“all good tweed smells!”) overcoat used in a reconstruction that helps nail the murderer.

In terms of the murder, it is a little difficult to say too much about this aspect of the book without giving away spoilers, but suffice to say that Lorac seems to use the book to tentatively explore those notions of the changing positions of class in the structure of the English landscape so vitally prevalent in the post-war period. There may still be a degree of mistrust in the itinerant working-classes, but Lorac does a decent job of attempting to play a fair hand. It’s notable of course that in her Scotland Yard character of Inspector MacDonald she allows the body of the Police force to be seen as decent and entirely reasonable, something that would, I’m sure, feel sadly alien to many in our 21st Century times. Whether the portrayal is any more accurate of the state of policing in 1946 is, of course, entirely up for debate.

The book really though is about that division between rural and urban that seems to have coloured much of the immediate post-war period. Lorac makes the point early, noting that “In the [rural] north-west of England the war effort had not been concerned with the nervous energy required by resistance to bombs or doodles or rockets: it had been the strain of sustained physical effort.” Later, she has characters discussing this divide, with one asking “Why the devil do we equate civilisation with cities?” before noting that the open fire before which they sit is “worth more than the proximity of cinemas and shops.” Finally, at the book’s conclusion, Lorac has her Inspector MacDonald reflect that “The life of the land was incomparably more important than the deaths of two men who had never realised that man still lives by the land and that its tilling is more fundamental to human needs than the accumulation of money.” No doubting where Lorac’s sympathies lie in that urban/rural debate, then…

Headon Hill’s ‘The Cliff-Path Mystery’ was written nearly a quarter of a century before Lorac’s and it shows. Many novels inhabiting the crime/detective genre from this period seem to me to be caught in a place where the author cannot quite decide if their book is a mystery or a thriller/adventure and end up with a foot in both camps, with neither convincingly planted. ‘The Cliff-Path Mystery’ is certainly such a book, but has more than enough charm to make up for this fact, particularly for anyone familiar with the Devon coastline around Budleigh Salterton, which here becomes Bicton-On-Sea.

The ‘mystery’ alluded to in the title refers to the death of a ne’er do well character tramping the coastal path who rather fortuitously stumbles on a letter in an overcoat pocket (those damned tatty overcoats of the gentry again). Said letter remarkably alludes to a wife deserted by the tramp some seven years previously who now, even more remarkably, appears to be living in Budleigh and planning to marry a retired Colonel. Such scarcely believable coincidences (which are unfurled in the first few pages of the book, incidentally, so I’m hardly giving the game away here) do rather set the tone for the book, which romps along in much the same way for it’s entirety. Naturally there is a Scotland Yard element (both retired and serving), alongside mystery romance novelist Claude Raven (which if one were to be enormously generous one might suggest lends the novel a gossamer thread of postmodernism) and his daughter who lends a romance element of sorts. Throw in an illicit distillery, a melodramatically evil financier (“with the coal-black hair and the Hebraic nose”, naturally) and a gaudy stage celebrity whose star has waned, plus sundry stereotypical Toughs and Wrong’Uns and you have a concoction that fairly bubbles with entertaining action. It’s hardly top-drawer stuff, and if the final third of the book dissolves rather into run-of-the-mill adventure yarn, that’s fair enough. Still, it is more than worth the 79p admission price for a Kindle edition. One might be excused for asking for a new cover, however, as the design of the Black Heath Classic Crime series books really are universally appalling. Many is the time I have shuddered and passed on their titles when they are ‘recommended’ by the algorithm, and I would certainly have done the same with this one if not for the local setting. As such, the cover shown here is my own replacement, dashed off in a few idle moments. If I ever pick more of the Black Heath reissues (and after this one, I admit, I could be tempted) I can see the template being re-used (publishers please note that I’m for hire)…

‘The Cliff-Path Mystery’ does capture its setting remarkably well, however, and it is obvious that Headon Hill must have been intimately familiar with Budleigh Salterton and its environs. The old Rolle Hotel for example becomes Royal Hotel (see what Hill did there?!), whilst the importantly positioned ‘Peak House’ is most likely the red-brick late Victorian villa that sits above the site of the former Rosemullion Hotel, its garden gate vitally giving direct access to the cliff-path. I admit that I am uncertain if the Rosemullion would have been built at the time Hill wrote his novel, but nevertheless the inclusion of Claude Raven as “a household word on four continents as a writer of sensational fiction with a punch in every chapter” seems a rather nice nod to the fact that Sir Henry Rider Haggard enjoyed spending some of his last days at the hotel. Entirely possible too that this is merely my projecting knowledge onto the fiction, but that is half the fun of such things, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the retired Scotland Yard detective sergeant and his wife keep a lodging house on the Parade, which these days is commonly referred to as ‘Millionaires Row’. So a shrewd investment for their future family I should have thought. Elsewhere, the golf course (where Noel Coward’s Elvira Condomine would spend “seven hours of every day”) is of course in play, as are the cottages and villas of Victoria Place and the imposing holloway of Dark Lane. Also, as is not uncommon in such books, there is a mixing of real and not-quite-real place names. Exeter, Sidmouth, Ladram Bay, Brixham (with specific reference to the brown sailed trawlers at work in Lyme Bay) and the distant Berry Head are all named, but Newton Poppleford rather bizarrely becomes Newberry Poppleton.

Of course one of the downsides of having local knowledge is in seeing peculiarities amongst accuracies. As such, anyone with a working knowledge of the area (and now, by default, anyone reading this) cannot help but wonder why anyone going from Budleigh (okay, okay, Bicton-On-Sea) to ‘Mucklepath Farm’ (which is supposed to be very close to Ladram Bay – so perhaps the real ‘Sea View Farm’) would go all the way up to Newton Poppleford and then back down the lanes. Why would they not just cross the river by the Otterton bridge and cut several miles off the journey? It is possible that Hill was overthinking things (as indeed I have just done a century later) in order to extend the time needed to get there from here (or vice versa). Such are the vagaries of landscape, fact and fiction.