H.C. Bailey | Margery Allingham | Anthony Wynne | Philip MacDonald | Josephine Bell | J.J. Connington | Gladys Mitchell | R.C. Woodthorpe | Shelley Smith | Glyn Carr | Ruth Rendell
A Guide to Classic Mystery and Detection Home Page
Call Mr. Fortune (collected 1919)
Mr. Fortune's Practice (collected 1923)
Mr. Fortune's Trials (collected 1925)
Mr. Fortune, Please (collected 1927)
Mr. Fortune Speaking (collected 1929)
Mr. Fortune Explains (collected 1930)
Case For Mr. Fortune (collected 1932)
Traitor's Purse (1940 - 1941) (Chapters 1 - 10)
Mr. Campion: Criminologist (collected 1937)
One can see several problems with this formula from such a description. There is often a concentration on horror elements in such a work, an approach that has never been a favorite of mine (for whatever reason I have no interest in horror fiction whatsoever, marking me out as very different from the typical American reader of today). Secondly, there is often an emphasis on morbid psychology, a look inside sick minds. This was exactly the element about Bailey's tales that appealed to Dorothy L. Sayers, who felt that Bailey's work in this direction showed "originality", but it often just seems to me to be "sick".
There are also formal problems with the approach of the Bailey School. The hidden conspiracies and complex backgrounds of the tales are often "deduced" by the detective from the slenderest and most innocuous looking clues. It often seems to me that their approach violates the convention of "fair play", that there is no way an intelligent reader or other independent observer could actually deduce these complex background plots from such slender threads.
I am not sure I really should be including any of the work of the Bailey School on a list of "My Favorite Mysteries". Certainly, some of the stories show real power, and deserve at least some respect for inventiveness. However, I also have very strong reservations about all of this fiction. To be fair, I must admit that my sampling of the Bailey school is quite superficial, and that there might be some outstanding works lurking in these writers' bibliographies that I have not yet read. In particular, some of Anthony Wynne's impossible crime novels are now beginning to gather a reputation. Also, one might point out the unanimous critical acclaim that at one time greeted Bailey's work. He was both praised and anthologized by S.S. Van Dine, Dorothy Sayers, Ellery Queen, and Howard Haycraft, a clean sweep of the great critics of the Golden Age. Also, the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection says that he was the most popular mystery writer in Great Britain between the wars. This means that his works were more popular than Chesterton, Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers or Carr, something that seems incomprehensible today. One might also note, that I still get very nice letters from contemporary enthusiasts of Bailey's fiction, so his work still has a significant following. One might also note that Earl Emerson's Going Crazy in Public (1996) pays homage to Bailey, by including characters named both for H.C. Bailey himself, and for his lawyer detective Joshua Clunk.
Within the Golden Age, where does Bailey's fiction fit? Is he aligned with the "intuitionist" school of Chesterton and Christie, or with the "realist" school of Freeman and Crofts? S.S. Van Dine firmly associated Bailey with the intuitionists, as Bailey's detectives, like Christie's, get their solutions by a mix of intuition and logical deduction, instead of anything resembling the realistic detective work of Freeman and Crofts. While Van Dine has a point, it also seems to me that Bailey's work is quite a ways off from what Jon L. Breen calls the Main Street of the detective story centered on such great intuitionist writers as Christie, Queen and Carr. One might add that Bailey's introduction "Mr. Fortune" to the collection Meet Mr. Fortune disavows that there is anything "intuitionist" about his sleuth.
The Bailey School's work also has some features in common with that of Freeman and his followers. The presence of doctors as detectives, combined with the frequent use of scientific or medical techniques to commit crimes, seems similar to Freeman's work. Bailey himself often used physical clues from which Mr. Fortune made deductions à la Dr. Thorndyke. Especially in the earlier stories, Mr. Fortune often concentrates on forensic analysis of the body to reconstruct the crime, also in the Thorndyke tradition. He combines this with a thorough look for other physical evidence at the crime scene. The clues also sometimes draw on natural history of plants in the vicinity of the crime, another Freeman-like idea. All these features make it likely that Mr. Fortune was originally conceived with Dr. Thorndyke as a model. The Fortune stories also occasionally deal with antiquities, another Freeman theme. There are tiny ancient statuettes from prehistoric cultures that serve as clues in such early Bailey stories as "The Hottentot Venus" and "The Young God" (1925).
Mr. Fortune loves to quote phrases from classic literature, a trait perhaps derived from another Realist school pioneer, E. C. Bentley. The best early Mr. Fortune tale "The Business Minister" also shares Bentley's skepticism about the rich and powerful, that appeared in Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913). "The Profiteers", an otherwise annoying ghost-story-masquerading-as-a-mystery, also has a vein of social criticism, going after businessmen who made a killing out of World War I. "The Profiteers" contains a brief but memorable statement of Supt. Bell's religious views, a subject that returns in "The Cat Burglar". "Zodiacs" (1927) offers a satiric look at murder of a businessman affecting events in the stock market, also echoing Bentley's novel.
The presence in "The Cat Burglar" (1926) of ex-Scotland Yard Inspector Mordan, now a private inquiry agent, echoes the regular appearance in Crofts of the British version of the private eye. Mordan is one of the more interesting recurring characters in the Fortune series.
However, the extremely melodramatic storytelling of the Bailey School seems like the dialectical antithesis of Freeman and Crofts, who stressed sober realism in all things. Bailey has little interest in alibis, and that Realist school standby "the breakdown of identity" rarely occurs in his fiction. Nor does the Bailey school create "backgrounds" that realistically depict some industry or social institution, although perhaps the North Country local color in Bailey's The Red Castle (1932) comes close.
All in all, it makes sense to consider Bailey and his followers as a "third school", one directly allied with neither Chesterton and Christie, nor with Freeman and Crofts. I have never seen any attempt at all to "place" Wynne or Bechhoffer Roberts in detective fiction history; both are fairly obscure writers. I have grouped them with Bailey on grounds of perceived similarities with his works. And although Ernest Bramah preceded Bailey by a decade as an author, some of his 1920's works show some affinities to the Bailey school. Such works as "The Mystery of the Poisoned Dish of Mushrooms" and "The Disappearance of Marie Severe" deal with children in jeopardy. They also have the medical background that often shows up in Bailey.
Bailey's first Mr. Fortune tales appeared in book form in 1919, a year before the appearance of Freeman Wills Crofts' The Cask (1920) and Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), often taken as the start of the Golden Age. Bailey did not publish a mystery novel till 1930, concentrating on short stories, instead. This emphasis on the short form seems more typical of the pre-Golden Age era of Doyle and early Freeman, rather than of the 1920-1950 period in which most of Bailey's mystery fiction actually appeared.
There are Doyle like elements in Bailey's Mr. Fortune stories. Both Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Fortune typically intervene in the midst of a complex, on-going intrigue, hoping to prevent a tragedy. Neither typically just stands around and solves an already completed crime, the way many Golden Age sleuths do. Fortune's disparagement of the police echoes Holmes belittling of Lestrade. Holmes solving a crime in A Study in Scarlet through being able to read German is echoed by Fortune's using his knowledge of Greek in "The Long Barrow", "The Violet Farm" and "The Picnic". The opening of "The Long Barrow" seems designed to contrast Holmes' position as a consulting detective, with Fortune's collaboration with the police.
Bailey's tales are notable for their bloodthirstiness. There is often not one crime going on in a short story, but multiple killings, assaults, disappearances, burglaries, arson, con games, you name it. This is not merely a matter of melodrama, although Bailey exploits the lurid potential of such events to the max. It also aids Bailey's puzzle plotting. Bailey often shifts roles in the solution of his plots. What was assumed to be done by one character, was in fact done by another. Even before the solution, much of the criminal investigation done by Mr. Fortune and the police consists of speculations about the perpetrators of the crimes in the tale, with a constantly shifting perspective on who might have committed them. Bailey is uninhibited about coincidence. He finds nothing odd in a situation where two or three criminals are all running amok at once, piling up interlocked crimes that are all attributed to each other.
Bailey tales are often about kidnappings. These stories tend to come in pairs. An early pair consists of "The Magic Stone" and "The Little House" (1926). These tales seem like versions of each other. Both end with a climactic raid on a nest of bad guys. A later pair of stories describe kidnappings after outings in the countryside. In both, there are physical remains of the outing for the detective to study. This pair consists of the Mr. Fortune story "The Picnic" and the Joshua Clunk novel The Red Castle (1932).
Other Bailey tales also come in pairs. "The Young God" (1925) is a greatly improved version of material found earlier in "The Nice Girl". Both stories involve dysfunctional families in which there is an ambiguous, hard to interpret killing; their chief suspect being brought to trial, followed by a final revelation of the truth. The earlier story has some offensive stereotypes. Bailey has also made the characters more likable in the second tale, and deepened the amount of mystery.
Several stories of Bailey's use clues involving plants. Bailey knew a great deal about the flowers and trees growing in both the English countryside and in suburban gardens. Traces of these are always being found on bodies and at crime scenes. Bailey also liked butterflies and moths; he is almost as interested in these creatures as R. Austin Freeman was in mammals. Some of his stories give vivid pictures on butterfly hunting in the between the wars British countryside, especially "The Long Barrow" and "The Holy Well". In general, many of Bailey's best tales are woven around charming knowledge of some subject: nature, antiquities, art.
"The Greek Play" (1930) and "The Holy Well" are a linked pair of tales. Both have somewhat similar hidden criminal schemes and motives for their crimes. The one in "The Holy Well" is more elaborate, but the simpler one in "The Greek Play" is better concealed. Uncovering these schemes is the main puzzle plot of the tales. This makes the mystery puzzle aspects somewhat bare-bones and simple in both works. "The Greek Play" has a good Background depiction of a girl's school, not just the school life itself, but its upper class sponsors. It is rich in description and commentary on social class: one of the most pointed social critiques in Bailey. While issues of social class still play a role in "The Holy Well", including a brief critique, they are brief and less emphasized. Instead, "The Holy Well" has an unpleasant emphasis on abnormal psychology, something all too common in Bailey, but mercifully absent from "The Greek Play". In general, "The Greek Play" is a much more appealing story than "The Holy Well". However, one area in which "The Holy Well" has an advantage, is in the reasons Reggie Fortune gives near the start of each investigation, for disbelieving the official, apparent version of the crimes. In "The Greek Play" this is just some simple, if sound, analysis of body blows on the victim. In "The Holy Well", this is a more elaborate look at the natural world and moth collecting, something quite colorful.
"The Football Photograph" (1929) is a sort of police procedural. It follows Fortune and his police colleagues as they collect evidence and gradually close in on a murderer. It is not fair play - the reader can only watch as Fortune makes his deductions from physical and medical evidence. It is absorbingly written, with an interesting look at working class life and settings. Fortune itself says it is unusual in his work, in that he has no "emotions" in the case - since there are no strong issues of protecting the innocent, just tracking down a routine murder. This somehow makes a good counterpoint with the mechanical clockwork type effect of gathering more and more evidence. In this story, Mr. Fortune's quotes of poetry turn out to be from traditional British inspirational hymns and moralizing educational poems. "Duty, stern daughter of the voice of God" is from William Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" (1815); "Do the work that's nearest, / Though it's dull at whiles, / Helping, when we meet them, / Lame dogs over stiles" is by Charles Kingsley, social reformer and proponent of "muscular Christianity"; Methodist Charles Wesley scripted the 1749 hymn, "And are we yet alive, and see each other's face? Glory and thanks to Jesus give for His almighty grace!" This anticipates Bailey's other sleuth, Joshua Clunk, who also likes to quote Methodist hymns. Both Fortune here and later Clunk quote poems that praise work, and urge people to do it - a strong theme.
"The Profiteers" (1925) and "The Rock Garden" are unusual among the Mr. Fortune tales in being ghost stories. As long as the reader knows this to be the case they make pleasant enough reading. However, anyone who thinks the ghostly events of the tales are impossible crimes that are going to be explained rationally at the end, is in for a severe let-down. "The Rock Garden" also has a genuine mystery in its plot, separate from the ghost story. "The Long Barrow" (1925), "The Painted Pebbles" (1927) and "The Rock Garden" (circa 1929) are among those Fortune stories in which he goes into a country house in which all sorts of strange emotional cross-currents and oddly spooky events are taking place - but no apparent crime. Fortune has to untangle the hidden emotional relationships of the characters - and usually discovers that some sort of sinister scheme is taking place under the surface. All three involve a strange earthworks of some sort, near the house; in the first two these are of archaeological significance. All three invoke superstitious practices, for eerie effect - although as already said, "The Rock Garden" does not explain this away at the end. The stories also have some similarities in the kinds of personal relationships among the characters which Fortune uncovers. The best of these is the first, "The Long Barrow".
Bailey set a pair of his tales on the European continent. "The Hazel Ice" (1927) is a minor story. But it develops an approach that Bailey would use with perfection later, in "The Face in the Picture": a continental setting, Fortune bonding with a sophisticated, charming, and highly competent official of a foreign police force, and a mystery against a specialized background in that same country. In "The Hazel Ice", the policeman Herr Stein is Swiss, and the background is mountain climbing; in "The Face in the Picture", the gourmet policeman Dubois is French, and we look at the French art world. "The Face in the Picture" is very knowledgeable about both its Parisian setting, and modern art. Bailey, like Agatha Christie, was clearly quite pleased with modern painting. Fortune's relationship with both policemen offers a pleasing variation on his ongoing friendship with Lomas. The French policeman, Dubois, will return in "The Long Dinner" (1935). The Swiss Herr Stein returns in Shadow on the Wall (1934) (Chapters 19, 21).
Culinary note: in both Swiss tales Reggie is consuming "ices", a sweet concoction, hazel-flavored in "The Hazel Ice", greengage-flavored in Shadow on the Wall. The ices have nothing to do with the plot of either story - they are just there to add some colorful detail.
"The Love Bird" is full of mystery puzzles. And these puzzles are all off-trail. Bailey seems to delight in coming up with puzzling situations, that have never been seen in mystery fiction before. I will not spoil the story by saying what it is: but the central puzzle is jaw-droppingly unusual.
A very serious story "The Old Bible" also has a mystery puzzle that is completely unique. Mr. Fortune is presented with a mystery situation that just does not seem to make sense, in terms of psychology, previous murder cases, practical circumstances. He has to explain this. The story is not a whodunit so much as a what-the heck-is-going-on puzzle. Like "The Love Bird", this is a new and unusual puzzle situation that has not been seen before.
H.C. Bailey comes out of a comedy of manners tradition in the theater: Wilde, Maugham, Shaw, Coward. There are acres of clever dialog, wittily playing on phrases from literature, oratory, and ingenious shifts of subject matter. There is a mastery of English expression, rhetoric and repartee. This is intermixed with descriptive passages that appeal richly to the senses: colors, sounds, nature imagery, food descriptions, landscapes.
Bailey loves the Bible, and quotes from it memorably in "The Old Bible".
"Zodiacs" (1927) looks like a conventional mystery, at first, but it actually is more like one of Bailey's comic tales in disguise. Its sophisticated dialogue is delightful, and full of funny repartee. Its plot eventually develops approaches in common with some of Bailey's comic tales. "Zodiacs" has some structural approaches in common with "The Leading Lady", an earlier story that also bears an ambiguous relationship with the comic tales. Both of these can be considered as experimental mysteries, works that playfully bend the paradigms of the mystery tale. One wonders if Agatha Christie remembered "The Leading Lady", when she wrote the classic climax of The Tuesday Night Club Murders, "The Affair at the Bungalow". Both have actress characters, both show experimental variations on mystery paradigms, although these variations are different in each author.
The 1920's comic tales, such as "The Snowball Burglary", "The Leading Lady", "The Lion Party" (1926) and "Zodiacs" (1927), form one of the richest strands in Bailey's writings. But they are little known today, unfortunately. Anthologists have tended to prefer serious stories, and these playful ones are not much reprinted. All of these works show formal ingenuity, however, and show plot imagination that is not always present in Bailey's grim thriller tales.
The Red Castle. The Red Castle (1932) (known in the US as The Red Castle Mystery) is well written but badly plotted. Although published at the height of the Golden Age, the book does not all adhere to Golden Age standards of mystery construction. It is not "fair play": one does not see how any reader could deduce the solution to the case from the evidence in the story. Nor is the crime brought home to one person, but rather to a diffuse conspiracy. Some of the crooks involved do not even make an appearance till the finale of the story! The behavior and motivations of the tutor in the story are completely inconsistent, and the whole burglary subplot in the book makes little logical sense. Anyone expecting a clever, Agatha Christie style solution at the end of this book is going to be horribly disappointed.
All of this said, much of the book is enjoyable reading. This is partly due to the well characterized detectives in the book, Joshua Clunk, and his likable young assistant Victor Hopley. Hopley is distinctly of working class origins, and his go getting spirit, and romance with a pretty, smart and observant young maid at the castle have plenty of appeal. They seem designed as a rebuke to much of the snobbery of 1930's Britain, and of the British detective story of the era. For that matter, Clunk himself is distinctly non-U. He must have considerable education to be a solicitor, but he never seems to display any upper class traits. His status as a lawyer for criminals trying to beat the system in part seems to be a sort of class conflict with the forces of social authority, played by the police. Clunk's enthusiasm for revivalist preaching, and his endowment of what seems to be a slum chapel, also mark him as an adherent to the religious practices of the poorest classes of Englishmen. Clunk's friends and clients all seem to be of the very small businessman and shopkeeper variety: tradesmen. In The Red Castle he makes friends with a lady running a tiny country inn, Miss Telfer, whose country cooking is one of the more entertaining features of the book.
The Red Castle also shows plenty of North Country local color. The descriptions of the moors are well written; so are the evocations of Roman ruins, and of the remains of the Roman cult of Mithras worship, which permeates the novel. Bailey also shows a Chesterton-like gift for descriptions of the weather, especially in how it affects light and visibility. Unlike many thriller writers, Bailey is much more oriented to daytime scenes than night ones. The sheer visibility afforded by daytime allows Bailey to extend the visual imagery that is so important to him. Also, Bailey likes an atmosphere of the everyday for his most chilling scenes, and this happens more often in the day than in the dark. At night, his characters simply go to bed, reserving the next day for more adventures.
Bailey often creates clues to his characters' personalities. One method is through interior decoration, describing in great detail his characters' rooms and places of business. These rooms tend to be cluttered, elaborately furnished, and redolent of their owners' personality. Characters' gardens are similarly described and symbolic. Another path into his characters' minds is through their hobbies. Binks' collecting and Sally's rock climbing in The Red Castle are examples, as are Joshua Clunk's eating and revivalist preaching. Characters are also sometimes color coded. For example, the little old lady's love of light blue and pink in "The Gipsy Moth", and Sally's green clothes in The Red Castle. The ostinato recurrence of pink and blue in "Moth" creates an effect of underlining the old lady's existence as a human being. We are reminded again and again that she was a person with wants and feelings.
The Wrong Man. The Mr. Fortune novel, Black Land, White Land, fails to follow through in its solution, on its many intimations of police corruption. The same cannot be said of the Joshua Clunk novel, The Wrong Man (1945), which is made of much sterner stuff in this regard. The solution of this book is full of corrupt police activity, in a way that should also be present in the earlier book.
But The Wrong Man has problems of its own, that sink it as a novel. Its highly complex plot is so tangled that it never quite turns into an organized, fair play puzzle. And the book is homophobic, something not at all present in Bailey's 1920's work.
On a more positive note, Bailey's hero is an American officer who is stationed in Britain. Like Cyril Hare, Bailey clearly admired the Americans who had come to Britain to fight World War II.
Shadow on the Wall. Shadow on the Wall (1934) is the first Mr. Fortune novel. It looks at a circle of British politicians and their friends. While the novel takes a satiric look at politicians, it can hardly be said to be a "political novel", since the characters' actual political beliefs are never discussed. Instead, we get glimpses of the characters' political careers, maneuverings in the House of Commons, and jockeying for political advantage. Bailey's tone is gossipy, and full of sordid detail on the politicians' lives. It is unclear to me how realistic Bailey's account is, or whether it has substance in its portrait of 1930's political life.
Shadow on the Wall is both uneven and episodic. It can seem like a bunch of short stories, loosely strung together. Two long sections are well written. The opening (Chapters 1 - 7) centers on a costume party at Lady Rosnay's London mansion, and a second section (Chapters 11 - 15) reunites the same characters for a weekend party in Lady Rosnay's country house. Both sections are in the full Golden Age life-among-the-social-elite mode. They are also among the most novelistic parts of the book, fully concentrating on a group of characters and their social interactions. These are the parts of the novel, that give a portrait of the politicians and their circle. The second, weekend party section, seems modeled on an earlier Mr. Fortune short story, "The Love Bird".
However, other sections of Shadow on the Wall offer drastic and usually uninspired changes of pace. They give a look at the drug trade among chic British swells, that is as unrealistic and fantastic as the similar unbelievable looks at drug conspiracies in Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. These sections also take us away from the book's main characters.
A brief description of the Alpine glow (end of Chapter 19) is well done.
As a mystery puzzle, Shadow on the Wall is pretty dismal. The explanations of events that eventually appear are far-fetched. They also are sketchy and inadequately detailed, a problem that will be even more pronounced in the next Mr. Fortune novel Black Land, White Land. The choice of villains is hardly clued, and also makes little sense in terms of what we have seen of their previous characterizations. Best part of the solution: Mr. Fortune's analysis of a conspiracy (Chapter 18). This involves Fortune's finding common elements in a series of cases. The conspiracy itself also shows imagination.
Black Land, White Land. Black Land, White Land (1937) is a Mr. Fortune novel with strange flaws. The solution fails to explain much of the previous mystery novel. The most interesting subplot - that dealing with police corruption - barely gets any explanation in the solution at all! And the choice of killer does little to explain the suspicious activities and emotional churnings among the more obvious suspects - one of whom should definitely have been picked as the murderer, instead. The book virtually feels like a mystery novel without a solution. The text also refers throughout to the fact of Mr. Fortune having made deductions and discoveries at many points, which one expects to be shared with the reader at the eventual denouement. This does not happen, either.
This is all too bad, because the book is well written and absorbing as a piece of storytelling. Some of the landscape descriptions are very good, particularly when Bailey gets into the limestone and chalk regions, which fascinated R. Austin Freeman before him: see Freeman's "The Green Check Jacket". It is above average in terms of literary style. Still, most readers will prefer to enjoy Bailey's rich prose style in his best short stories, where the style is wedded to logical and complete mystery plots.
The title Black Land, White Land refers to two types of soil in rural England. It has nothing to do with race or ethnic conflicts.
The Bishop's Crime. The Bishop's Crime (1940) is a Mr. Fortune novel. It has a cathedral town, clerical setting, that recalls the short tale "The Woman in Wood" (1928). The opening chapters are written in Bailey's lively style, and have some interesting detective work, reconstructing a crime. But after this, the book slides into needless and confusing plot complications, and becomes uninteresting.
Her detective Mr. Campion is a genius with unofficial ties to Scotland Yard. While Mr. Campion is not a medical doctor like Mr. Fortune, he does have Fortune's upper class social standing. Both Fortune and Campion are often the protectors of young lovers. Frauds and swindles are common in upper class society in both writers. This may just be a convenient plot generator, but it is a persistent motif in Allingham, far more than in Christie or Marsh. There is a lot of fraud in Bailey. Nice young people often suffer unjust persecution in both authors, often being framed for something they didn't do.
Campion's chauffeur, Lug, sometimes splits detective duties with Campion, just like Mr. Fortune's chauffeur Sam, with Lug or Sam researching the lower classes in a town while the detective sleuths among the upper. (Sayers' Bunter does this too.)
In both the Bailey and Allingham stories, there is a great deal of emphasis on exploring upper class life, especially its cultural side. Allingham was more systematic about this than Bailey, but there are distinct similarities - see Bailey's "The Violet Farm" or "The Greek Play", for example.
Both Bailey and Allingham showed a certain degree of disdain for the formal puzzle plot story popular in the Golden Age; once again, Allingham pushed this tendency to extremes, but the seeds are present in Bailey. Campion's investigations seem painfully unsystematic; they instead involve exploring more or less at random all aspects of a case.
"The Snapdragon and the C.I.D." intercuts Allingham's satire with a moving nostalgia and evocation of the passage of time.
"The Border-Line Case" has a clever puzzle plot. It bears some similarity to a non-satire story, "On Christmas Day in the Morning" (1952). Both deal with mysterious crimes, in which the geography of the crime scene is all important. Both tales have different solutions - Allingham is coming up with different solutions to the same kind of mystery problem.
The order in which the tales were originally published: "The White Elephant" (1936), "The Case of the Old Man in the Window" (1936), "The Man with the Sack" (1936), "The Widow" (1937), "The Danger Point" (1937), "The Definite Article" (1937), "The Question Mark" (1938), "The Name on the Wrapper" (1938), "The Frenchman's Gloves" (1938), "The Longer View" (1938), "The Hat Trick" (1938), "The Case is Altered" (1938), "The Meaning of the Act" (1939), "Safe As Houses" (1940) and "A Matter of Form" (1940). This last story appeared in the May 1940 issue of The Strand; one sees that it was probably written not too long after war broke out in September 1939. The series, and the happy, comic English life it describes, did not long survive the horrors of World War II.
Among Allingham's puzzle plot stories, "The Hat Trick" (1938) and "The Case of the Old Man in the Window" (1936) shows a similar plot complexity to her "logical" tales, and are especially appealing. In both tales, apparently magical situations occur, to which Campion eventually finds logical explanations. These are not quite impossible crimes in the Chesterton-Carr tradition; instead the events seem magical, an eruption of magic or the supernatural into daily life. Such "magic explained" is also an element in "The Villa Marie Celeste" (1960) and "Safe As Houses" (1940).
Also outstanding as a pure mystery is "The Meaning of the Act" (1939). This tale, like many of Allingham's 1930's and 40's tales, incorporates elements of the Rogue tradition. Crooks in these stories tend to have a clever, ingenious scheme; unraveling this scheme forms an important element of the puzzle plot.
Allingham's Campion short stories show real story telling polish. Like Ellery Queen's short stories of the period, they are fully worked up pieces including plot, detection, characters, social atmosphere. One feels that both Queen and Allingham had standards, and they did not release a piece till it reached the full measure of what a short story should be.
Allingham's tales have a recurring set of comic characters:
Another short story in the same mode is "Safe As Houses" (1940). Here the eccentric family is presented as Campion's own. The old lady in the tale is just as concerned with her furniture, being horrified by a ring on a table again. And once again, letter writing plays a role in the tale. Campion's comically whiny Cousin Monmouth in the story is similar to Uncle William in Police, Uncle William being one of Allingham's richest creations.
Allingham's characters tend to be members of families. They rarely stand on their own, or are unattached people with romantic relationships, but no blood ties. Sometimes they are young men from "the best families", like Campion himself, and many of Allingham's romantic leads. Other times, they are members of middle class families. One thinks of the unhappy family in Police at the Funeral, and the Fittons in Sweet Danger. While the Fittons are as happy and nice as the family in Police are warped, both families actually resemble each other a lot. Both families are eccentric. Both have money trouble. Both seem to stick very close to the large home where they all live together, and seem to have little interests beyond this house. None seem to have jobs that take them outside the home. Both families contain a large number of siblings, and an older woman who serves as matriarch. Both families have an ancient home, both have a lot of old furniture, both are keeping up traditions of the past that have nearly died out elsewhere. In both cases, being a member of this family marks one as a special person, sharing in traditions and attitudes that completely cut one off from the outside world. Both families virtually have a "culture" in the anthropological sense, a set of values, beliefs and life styles separate from the rest of society.
Like other Golden Age authors, Allingham was interested in architecture:
Main Mystery Plot. While I recognize skillful aspects of the book's writing, it also seems worthwhile to point out its many limitations. The modern-day main plot of Flowers for the Judge is skimpy in aspects in which other, less "literary" detective writers often excel, such as mystery plot and detective work. Backgrounds showing a business, institution or intellectual group are also absent. For example, anyone hoping for an in-depth Background look at the publishing industry, since many of the characters work at a publishing house, is going to be badly disappointed.
Flowers for the Judge has some decent science involving the means of death (Chapter 3), but science largely disappears from the book after this. This section has another plus: the main plot's only involvement with architecture. Both science and architecture are mainstays of much Golden Age fiction. This chapter of Flowers for the Judge benefits from both subjects.
Flowers for the Judge has lots of characterization, one of the book's chief concerns. But it tends to be concentrated on dysfunctional characters: the failed marriage and its adulterous complications that is central to the story, as well as pompous doctors, second rate business executives and blow-hardy barristers. Consequently, we are seeing a poorer grade of human being, than the skilled detectives, scientists and artists who are the subjects of so much "non-literary" mystery fiction. Non-literary mystery novels often have in-depth characterization of the detectives and scientists thinking and reasoning. There are many exceptions to the following generalization, but: dysfunctional, failing human beings, like those in Flowers for the Judge, are often the preferred subjects of post-1860 "serious literary novels". The emphasis on dysfunctional characters, studied in depth, does indeed link Flowers for the Judge to mainstream literary fiction.
Ever since Flowers for the Judge and related Allingham novels were first published, admiring critics have praised them as being closer to mainstream, serious literary novels, than are many conventional murder mysteries. This is true, in the sense that their subject matter and techniques approach those popular in literary fiction, and avoid subjects common in "non-literary" mysteries. But this doesn't mean that Flowers for the Judge has more substance than "non-literary" mystery fiction, or is a better work of art. The approaches used by other, "non-literary" mystery authors have artistic value, too.
Historical Mystery Plot. Embedded in Flowers for the Judge is a historical mystery about a disappearance, that actually has little to do with the main modern-day plot of the book. The brief sections dealing with this historical mystery, add up to short story length (first page of Chapter 1, last page of Chapter 9, first half of Chapter 10, later half of Chapter 20, Chapter 21). The historical mystery is conspicuously closer to traditional mystery approaches:
The historical mystery subplot anticipates some short tales Allingham would write:
It is interesting in that it is narrated by Campion himself. Allingham comes up with an original "voice" or prose style for Campion, that is not what one might expect. Much effort in fact is expended on distinctive styles of dialogue for most of the characters.
"The Case of the Late Pig" comes out against the "development" of an unspoiled country center. It seems less concerned with damage to the environment, than in changing a community and its architectural and social feel. Anti-development ideas, more purely environmental, will play a role in Glyn Carr's Death Under Snowdon (1952).
The basic plot premise is morbid, and depressing to read about (end of Chapter 1). It is a nightmarish treatment of the theme of "escape", given a much more light-hearted version in Flowers for the Judge and "Last Act".
The treatment of fashion salesman Rex shows anti-gay stereotypes (Chapter 1). Lugg's remarks (start of Chapter 6) also show anti-gay bigotry.
The heroine's office is a pleasant touch, and shows a bit of the Golden Age interest in architecture (start of Chapter 2). Even if it does resemble a glamorized version of Bentham's Panopticon (1786-1791). We can also have some polite applause for the golden salon (start of Chapter 3).
The middle section of the book (Chapters 7 - 10) is very much in the same style as Allingham's earlier thriller Sweet Danger (1933). Both works are thrillers, and seem a long way from the paradigms of the Golden Age country house mystery. Both stories have an extravagant wealth of bizarre, eccentric invention. Both guest star Campion's love interest, Lady Amanda Fitton. Both take place in very peculiar English towns, steeped in ancient traditions and a powerful sense of menacing activities going on behind the scenes. Both invoke an invented European institution going back to the Renaissance or beyond, Averna in Sweet Danger, the Bridge Institute in Traitor's Purse. Both books are full of large scale, unusual architecture, associated with centers of sinister power. This is partly in the Golden Age tradition of interesting buildings, although Allingham imaginatively takes this right over the top.
Traitor's Purse falls apart in its final section, when Campion goes On The Run from the authorities. His fugitive status starts mid way through Chapter 10, and lasts for most of the rest of the novel. The inventiveness disappears.
"Wanted: Someone Innocent" is a delightful suspense tale. It brings a nice but naive young woman into a sinister house, and soon she is up to her neck in suspense, intrigue, mystery and eventually a little genteel danger. The story is full of corny elements, but somehow this does not destroy their storytelling appeal. Maybe they enhance it. Similarly, the reader can often guess what is going to happen next. This should destroy the story - but somehow, it just seems to make it more enjoyable. Even the newest mystery readers will be much less naive than this heroine, who is so kind hearted and positive that she never suspects even the most obvious problems that will occur.
"Wanted: Someone Innocent" has detailed, sympathetic portraits of the servants in the mansion. And it opens with the heroine's kindly Cockney landlady in London, before the heroine moves into the mansion. These are instances of the sympathetic working class characters in Allingham.
"Last Act" is a more serious tale than "Wanted: Someone Innocent", but not as enjoyable. "Last Act" has story elements that recall Flowers for the Judge:
The family in "Last Act" is involved in the theater. This is positively portrayed, unlike their real estate holdings. The theater and its rich traditions gives this family a separate "culture", like other Allingham extended families.
Denis is an attempt to create a young man who is more resourceful and accomplished that the more typical upper class eligible young men who often flit through Allingham tales.
More creative are some of the medical mystery ideas. Wynne seems to have invented new medical conditions, as well as new drugs to treat them, and woven this into his plot and solution. This concern with new, imaginary medical drugs with strange properties also pops up in other Bailey school writers, such as J.J. Connington. I am of two minds about all this. On the one hand, Wynne's plot has a certain satisfying symmetry and ingenuity, in dealing with these imaginary chemicals and their effects. On the other, it seems like a complete violation of fair play. There is no way that any reader could have predicted such new substances or their effect. So the solution of the mystery seems to be arbitrarily made up. A mystery writer could "explain" just about anything by making up some imaginary medical syndrome out of whole cloth. A tale like this in fact approaches science fiction. A better writer might have carefully explained the syndrome during the exposition, thus playing fairer with the reader.
Readers can experience most of Wynne's plot by reading the opening, Chapters 1-5, and the solution, Chapters 25-29.
Some of MacDonald's books have been made into entertaining movies. Edgar Selwyn directed The Mystery of Mr. X (1934), based on the MacDonald novel known as X. v. Rex (1933) in Britain, and as The Mystery of the Dead Police in the US. Henry Hathaway directed 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956) based on MacDonald's Warrant for X (1938). Both of these films are discussed in the articles on their directors.
The Rasp, like the later The Crime Conductor, is a full formal detective story, set in an English mansion, not a thriller. In both, the well-to-do owner of the mansion is killed. Servants play a bigger role in both books, than they sometimes do in Golden Age detective novels. Both mansions also house the murdered man's secretary.
The killer's motive in both The Rasp and The Crime Conductor is mainly emotional, bruised ego leading to irrational hatred. This psychological portrait makes interesting reading - but can seem weak as an actual motive for murder.
SPOILER Both novels involve fake evidence at the crime scene designed to mislead the police, and Gethryn's reasoned investigation of the same.
The Detective. Chapter 2 contains a biography of Anthony Gethryn, before he took up sleuthing. Gethryn worked as a British spy in Germany during World War I. He is now suffering from "war strain", recalling Sayers' earlier portrait of her detective Lord Peter Wimsey in Whose Body? (1923), who was also a troubled veteran. Gethryn is otherwise so "perfect" as to not have any actual individual personality, being a wealthy member of the upper crust who is good at science, the arts, athletics, war work, publishing, painting and writing novels and poetry!
Gethryn is the publisher of a small newspaper, and its editor asks him to investigate the murder in The Rasp. Gethryn is thus working essentially as a reporter, recalling E.C. Bentley's reporter-sleuth in Trent's Last Case (1913).
Gethryn is in some ways an amateur detective, being a wealthy man who is not paid for his sleuthing work. But in other ways he is not quite an amateur, being a former Government spy, and being the owner of the newspaper for which he is investigating.
Instead, much of the book is taken up with vaguely comic vignettes, telling the story of the events leading up to the crime and its aftermath. These often make entertaining reading. They are full of cameo portraits of working class members of Britain, a group of people usually featured less often in Golden Age fiction. Even the more middle class characters are businessmen here, being members of the Rynox company, and are not the upper class people of leisure one often finds in this era. Bailey and Allingham also sometimes featured sympathetic working class characters in their tales.
While considered as a puzzle plot, the book is very slowly paced - Agatha Christie would have packed all this into a short story - the puzzle is well constructed, and managed to surprise me at the end. The solution has elements which recall the work of R. Austin Freeman, although it has no medical or scientific aspects. The sheer methodicalness of the culprit, and his willingness to put an elaborate, logically thought through and very detailed scheme into place over many months, seems Freeman like, as do many details of that scheme.
The book is divided into Reels, like a movie, and the first two Reels are much better than the third - the reader can skip from the end of Reel Two right into the Prologue which ends the tale without losing any plot.
MacDonald's book seems influenced by H. C. Bailey. The crimes are crimes against young people, as in Bailey. And the killer's motive, a perverted desire to see people suffer, is also straight out of Bailey's works: see "The Unknown Murder" (1923), for example.
Murder Gone Mad is not a favorite of mine. The early scenes are well written, but the book tapers off in diffuseness and mediocrity as it progresses. (This is a good description of MacDonald's Warrant For X (1938), as well.) The puzzle plot aspects of the work are nil. The killer is eventually caught through some good police work, but any "fair play" clues to the killer's identity are non-existent. Much of the material, as in much of the Bailey school, is "sick".
John Dickson Carr once picked MacDonald's book as one of the ten best mystery novels of all time. The scenes late in the book where the police stake out the village, setting traps for the killer, pop up in the final scenes of several of Carr's works. Carr admired this book (in 1946), not so much for its mystery plot elements, but as the ultimate in horror. Today, serial killer books are so common that they are recognized as a subgenre of crime fiction. Most people today would regard MacDonald's books as pretty weak tea. They have been superseded by a host of much sicker works.
The story's setting. like that of The Crime Conductor, involves a bath.
This first half has a nice use of a floor plan. The section also has some perfunctory, simple, unoriginal locked room features.
After this solid first half, The Crime Conductor disintegrates. Nothing much happens in the second half, except sinister facts about the suspects' backgrounds and motives being unearthed. The final choice of killer is unclued and arbitrary. There is also an ugly racial slur.
Gethryn's Scotland Yard contacts, Assistant Commissioner Sir Egbert Lucas and Superintendent Arnold Pike, recall a bit in rank and personality H.C. Bailey's series police contacts the Honorable Stanley Lomas and Superintendent Bell. Bailey's police are much better developed as personalities, though. Still, one wonders if MacDonald has modeled his police officials on Bailey's earlier characters.
MacDonald marks the break between the two halves of his story, by having sleuth Gethryn go home at the end of the initial investigation (the novel's first half) and getting a good night's sleep. Such a clear break between the initial and subsequent investigation of a murder occurs in other Golden Age writers, such as John Dickson Carr.
By 1931, H.C. Bailey, G.K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie and probably other authors had written mysteries with theatrical backgrounds. While not a novelty, the often comic look at theater people in the first half of The Crime Conductor is pleasantly done. MacDonald is especially interested in good-looking leading men: two play a role in The Crime Conductor.
The main feature of this novel is its depiction of its villain, a sinister mastermind who never appears on stage in the story. Unfortunately, villains have never had the slightest interest to me; I only like detectives.
Its main value is its story telling: not so much the serial killing, as its view of an English village and country house dinner party. While no masterpiece, it is absorbing reading. The dinner party includes both American and English guests, like the one in The Crime Conductor.
Bell's work shows the influence of several kinds of British Realist School authors, especially H.C. Bailey and R. Austin Freeman, with a bit of Freeman Wills Crofts as well. She is not a director imitator of any of these writers, but their influence as a whole on her work is powerful.
Like Mr. Fortune, David Wintringham is happily married to a wonderful young woman, and scenes of domestic bliss and good-natured marital conversation dot both sleuth's cases. David Wintringham also resembles Mr. Fortune, in being a bright, cheerful man, given to friendly banter and an interest in the world around him. In some ways, David Wintringham is very much in the mode of Mr. Fortune, although he is toned down in personality. He is also more "typical", more "every day", and even a bit more "ordinary" and "realistic" in personality than the flamboyant Mr. Fortune. He also seems not as affluent, though he is mildly prosperous, and much less of a big shot. All of this is consistent with the tone of sober realism in Bell's books.
Dr. David Wintringham differs from his predecessors, in that he is mainly an amateur detective. Mr. Fortune is an official consultant to Scotland Yard; Dr. Thorndyke is frequently brought in as a paid consultant, by solicitors or insurance companies. By contrast, David Wintringham seems to "stumble over corpses" like other amateur sleuths. He gets teased about this in Fall Over Cliff (Chapter 14).
David Wintringham has a policeman friend, Inspector Steve Mitchell of Scotland Yard, with who he frequently works on his cases. This reflects a long tradition of amateur detectives before and since, who often work closely with a friendly policeman.
Death at the Medical Board is relentlessly grim. Bell apparently lacks any sense of humor or comedy. She also makes the most likable characters be the murder victims, adding to the sense of gloom.
There is a Dying Message, which is written in an unusual way (end of Chapter 2). The message itself is interpreted in fairly conventional ways. Dying Messages are not a favorite of the British Realist School.
As the title suggests, Death at the Medical Board has medical settings and characters, in the Realist School manner. Death at the Medical Board reflects many different Realist School authors and traditions (SPOILERS):
A Chief Constable was the head officer and administrator for the police in their counties or districts. They often show up in Golden Age British detective novels, but are rarely the main sleuth. Instead, what typically happens is this: the local police make a first investigation of a murder; they go report to their local Chief Constable, who is their superior and in charge; the Chief Constable makes a decision to call in Scotland Yard, deeming the problem too serious for the locals to handle.
Chief Constables were rarely depicted as having any great skill as detectives. Their job was administrative and decision-making. They often have Sir in their names, like Sir Clinton Driffield, and seem to be local big-wigs and representatives of the Upper Classes. They tend to be shown as bluff hearty country types. Some authors show them as highly competent, stalwart men, the kind who made the British Empire allegedly great; others depict these local members of the elite as incompetent figureheads.
In any case, Chief Constables are mainly shown at their desks, getting reports and assigning men to the investigation. By contrast, Sir Clinton Driffield goes right out to crime scenes, making a full scale investigation. Driffield is especially skilled at discovering evidence at the scene, such as blood stains. He also is good at reconstructing crimes, based on these observations. He is much better at these tasks than any of the local police officers who work for him.
Connington is an exceptionally cold and heartless writer; no one in the book seems to have the slightest sign of human compassion or warmth. Also, his plot is a mess, and the detection routine, with the exception of the science-based elements in the tale. The book is not recommended at all.
Warning: The title suggests that this is a mystery in the tradition of E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case, Ellery Queen's The Greek Coffin Mystery, or Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case, dealing with multiple, successive solutions. This is not so. Instead, the 9 solutions are all routine permutations of each other, and are discussed as a group one third the way through the case, in Chapter 6.
A comic footnote to the book: in Chapter 15 Connington introduces a middle aged maid called Mrs. Marple. Today no one would dream of naming a character this, but in 1928 the first of the series of Miss Marple stories that would make up Agatha Christie's The Tuesday Night Club Murders were just appearing in magazines.
The best parts of The Case With Nine Solutions are the opening chapters (1 - 5). The beginning is virtually a quotation of R. Austin Freeman: it deals with a young doctor, serving as a substitute for another, who is called out to a mysterious house where he witnesses the aftermath of a crime. This is a common initial situation in Freeman's books. But nothing that comes thereafter is especially Freeman like, and the doctor himself drops out of the work after a while. The opening scenes of driving through a foggy night are quite effective. They have a vivid tactile quality missing in much of the later novel. They also have a historical aspect, showing today's reader what driving was like in the 1920's.
The end of The Case With Nine Solutions contains excerpts from the detective's notebooks, showing the evolution of the detective's thinking over the course of the novel's events. The early books of Gladys Mitchell will feature similar notebook-finales.
John Dickson Carr was a Connington enthusiast: see his essay "The Greatest Game in the World" (1946). Carr's first novel was published in 1930, and he mentions two of Connington's 1920's novels with admiration. They were evidently part of his literary background in the years of his formation as a writer. Some similarities:
Mystery Plot. The Sweepstake Murders is a pleasantly straightforward detective story, of a kind not always seen, then or now. It has a single villain, who commits a series of carefully planned murders. There are no third parties who complicate things, by hanging around crime scenes, destroying or altering evidence, etc. At the end, the sleuth reveals who the criminal is, and the details of the killer's activities. Each of the murders contains a puzzle plot, which is solved by the sleuth at the end. The puzzles and their solutions are all logical. By doing all of this, The Sweepstake Murders achieves a sound level of detective story craftsmanship. It is not a masterpiece, but it is a solid piece of work.
When the mystery puzzles of the first two murders are unraveled, they each point to the killer as the only person who could have perpetrated the puzzles. This gives strong clues to the killer's identity. This approach is an indication of Connington's careful craftsmanship.
The Sweepstake Murders is constructed like a series of short stories. Each murder and its investigation is fully set forth in detail, forming what is essentially a short story within the novel.
Howard Haycraft's sole comment on Connington in his history of mystery fiction Murder for Pleasure, was to include Connington on a list of "conventional method" British detective writers. The Sweepstake Murders is indeed conventional. The kinds of puzzle plots in the various murders, fall into the same broad categories as those widely used by other British Realists of the era. One would not have been surprised to see The Sweepstake Murders signed by Freeman Wills Crofts or John Rhode. The sheer conventionality of The Sweepstake Murders is indeed a limiting factor. It is more an intelligent effort in standard directions, than any great work of originality or imagination. SPOILER. The alibi puzzle beloved by Crofts, and the murderous devices used by Rhode or the Coles, are central to the murder puzzle plots in The Sweepstake Murders.
Settings. The Sweepstake Murders does not have a full Background. That is, it does not set forth in detail some institution. The early chapters have an account of the Sweepstakes, modeled on a real-life lottery of the time. This perhaps forms a mini-Background.
The Sweepstake Murders shows industry coming to a traditionally agricultural county, something the rich landowner Watson laments. He also seems unpleased about the building of cinemas in the district, and their cultural influence on the local working class. An unpleasant local businessman has become rich through building and owning these cinemas. This guy rose from poverty to become a wealthy man, and is depicted as the most abrasive, rude man as possible.
The first murder is in the countryside, set against a spectacular - and dangerous - gorge. Such landscape features were beloved by Freeman, Rhode, Bailey and other British Realists. Connington uses the setting to add drama to the crime. But it doesn't actually play any role in the mystery puzzle.
The inquest (Chapter 8), quotes from Thomas Ingoldsby's poem Hand of Glory (circa 1837). This quotation centers on "the Dead Man's knock", later used by John Dickson Carr as the title of a 1958 mystery novel. According to the Wikipedia, other mystery writers also refer to The Ingoldsby Legends, including Dorothy L. Sayers in The Nine Tailors (1934) and Ngaio Marsh in Death in a White Tie (1938).
Inspector Severn rides that favorite form of British Realist School transportation, a motorcycle (start of Chapter 9).
The Four Defenses (1940) shows Connington's interest in science, both in the murder plot itself, and in the means of detection. Mark Brand employs an analytic chemist to study such clues as soil samples and paint. Connington explains such scientific analysis in fascinating detail. These sections recall the work of R. Austin Freeman. However, Connington stresses the recent nature of many of these methods of scientific analysis, and we do seem to be seeing approaches more modern than the somewhat Edwardian ones used in Freeman's earlier novels. The interest in "the disposal of the body" also seems Freeman like. There is a crypt scene somewhat recalling that in Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke's Discovery (1932).
Connington also shows how radio broadcasters can appeal to the public for information. These portions of the novel, mainly in the early chapters, show considerable ingenuity. The gambit of having radio broadcasters look into unsolved crimes popped up in such entertaining Hollywood pictures as George Sherman's Mystery Broadcast (1943).
The Four Defences is notable for the complexity of the plot. Every chapter unveils much new detail about the crimes. There is no padding: Connington has produced a Golden Age detective novel whose length is justified by the richness of the plot.
Although Mrs. Bradley is medically trained, and hence in theory recalls the scientific detectives of Freeman, one sees little in common between Mitchell and the Realist School deriving from R. Austin Freeman and Freeman Wills Crofts. Science, medicine and technology play little role in The Saltmarsh Murders.
Backgrounds detailing some business or social institution, a major feature of the Realist School, do occur in Mitchell.
While alibis are investigated, they are neither central nor ingenious, as they are in Crofts and his followers. There is no Crofts-style plodding, methodical investigation by the police.
The Saltmarsh Murders pays tribute to P. G. Wodehouse, and in part suggests that it is just a parody of English mystery novels, especially the cozy kind that take place in small English villages and in which the local vicar is a benevolent character. Such a characterization no doubt helped to get the novel published, and gave it a polite position in the world of English letters. However, the book's full frontal attack goes far beyond anything that can actually be classified as mere parody. Mitchell gives no explicit political position in the book whatsoever, and one cannot tell from it what her politics are.
The novel is explicitly Freudian, with its detective heroine Mrs. Bradley being a psychiatrist and follower of Freud.
The book's events seems as least as surreal as anything in the official Surrealist movement. It is hard to imagine anything topping the events in Chapter 6 or Chapter 9, for instance, as a surrealist statement.
Mystery Plot. How does Mitchell's mystery technique compare with other writers of her day? The Saltmarsh Murders is a full-fledged Golden Age mystery novel, with a complex plot. The book starts out with some early, mysterious situations that do not involve murder. These include some disappearances, and a pregnant unmarried woman who refuses to name the father, thus leading to much speculation. Mitchell's treatment of these early mysteries is quite imaginative, with good storytelling and interesting solutions.
Only after a hundred pages or so do the actual murders appear in the book. The solution of these murder mysteries is uninventive, and shows little of the skill that distinguishes the earlier sections of the novel. There is an interesting choice of killer.
"A Light on Murder" (1950), "The Jar of Ginger" (1951) and "Peach Jam" (1951) are all tales that turn on the intricacies of handling food. Sometimes this is for the purpose of poison, but not always. Mitchell has an eye for complex processes involved with food handling. "Juniper Gammon" (1950) is related to these tales, but more distantly.
"The Fish-Pond" (1953) is an inverted mystery. It too turns on an intricate process, that also involves handling objects. This is not a food process, but it is almost as domestic. Here the process is "draining a fish-pond".
"Manor Park" (1950) is a whodunit. The sole mystery is to pick out a killer from a group of suspects. Hidden in the story are three clues. These clues, once they are pointed out by the detective, indicate the killer. Such a profile of clues is a standard sort of mystery puzzle, a kind that needs ingenuity to write. It is associated with such works as Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, "Silver Blaze" (1892), E. C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913) and Ellery Queen's Halfway House (1936), as well as many other Ellery Queen tales.
"Our Pageant" (1951) has an interesting setting among modern-day people recreating traditional Morris dancing. It also has an ingenious solution. Both anticipate to some degree Ngaio Marsh's Death of a Fool / Off With His Head (1956), although Marsh's solution is different and more complex. Mitchell had previously explored this important part of British folk culture in Dead Men's Morris (1936).
"The Swimming Gala" (1952) has an arbitrary solution, none too interesting. But it has a richly developed setting. The setting shows much of the life of a whole small city. We get portraits of the city government, civic events, and an institution: the town swimming pool. Plus there is a whole Golden Age style architectural layout of an unusual building.
"The Price of Lead" (1952) also looks at civic life, this time the business aspects surrounding a church. It has a simple mystery, but hardly a full scale puzzle plot, and like "The Swimming Gala" is more notable for its well-developed social background.
"The Vacuum Cleaner" (1953) is another story more fun for its social background, than for its skimpy mystery elements. Here we get a look at house-cleaning in the British Isles. Mitchell rings comic changes on various elements of such cleaning, in transition to the electric vacuum cleaner.
Some of the tales might be dismissed as "failed whodunits": plots which look like whodunit mysteries, till their finales evade bringing home the crime to one of the suspects, instead settling for a well-known way of avoiding such a solution. It's too bad, because these stories have some decent story values up to that point. "Strangers Hall" (1950) has a decently described setting of an old English country house and surrounding landscape. It might interest fans of such country house stories, if they can overlook the dismal solution. And "The Falling Petals" (1952) imagines fairly well the relationships among a small troupe of acrobats.
Mystery. The mystery and detective aspects of Death in a Little Town are tenth-rate. It is one of those mysteries in which a bunch of characters are coincidentally hanging around the murder scene, complicating the crime. This makes any puzzle plot aspects be nil.
Politics. Death in a Little Town is most striking in its opening chapter, which shows the villagers revolting against a rich man who has fenced in a path. The sympathetically viewed villagers have a leader who has organized them, and who is now orchestrating "direct action". This term is associated with both some kinds of left wing labor movements, and Mussolini's Fascism. Death in a Little Town never makes its specific politics clear. "Direct action" also shows up in Robert Heinlein's famous science fiction story "The Roads Must Roll" (1940) - where it is not endorsed, but rather implicitly condemned. To be blunt, I find these political aspects of Death in a Little Town creepy. The leader compares the class conflict between the poor villagers and the rich man with World War I, terming it: "the other war . . . the war that goes on for ever . . . between those who have and those who haven't."
Woodthorpe's kind words for such jingoistic poets as Rudyard Kipling and the war-mongering John Masefield are also not encouraging (Chapter 5, Section 2). Nor is his support for corporal punishment in school (Chapter 4).
Architecture. Three of the main characters are associated with architecture or constructions. These are probably the most creative aspects of the novel. Although they have nothing to do with the mystery plot, they are examples of the Golden Age interest in architecture:
Society. The story telling aspects of He Died of Murder! recalls Gladys Mitchell. Its portrait of a religious monastery or communal farm recalls that Mitchell's St. Peter's Finger depicts a rural convent. The severe criticism of the local Anglican Vicar recalls Mitchell's The Saltmarsh Murders.
The prominence of an awkward, eccentric young teenage girl recalls the teenage characters in Mitchell in general, and the young girls in St. Peter's Finger in particular.
A spinster offers lurid gossip about the commune members and other locals. Mystery stories often depict spinsters as gossipy, but they rarely show us the actual contents of their gossip. He Died of Murder! differs in showing us the gossip, in lurid sexual detail. This recalls the open look at a village's sexual problems in Mitchell's The Saltmarsh Murders.
In addition to the religious characters, local school officials play a role in He Died of Murder!. These recall the many schools used as settings in Mitchell books - although school settings also appear in other writers as well.
Race. The look back (Chapter 6) at the local Lord of the Manor in He Died of Murder!, and his vicious mistreatment of Africans, recalls the black character in Mitchell's The Saltmarsh Murders. Shelley Smith's commentary on race relations is unusually scathing and pointed, going beyond Mitchell, though.
While He Died of Murder! offers a progressive treatment of black people, it suffers from an anti-Semitic slur (also in Chapter 6).
Narrative Structure. J.J. Connington's The Case With Nine Solutions (1928), followed by early Gladys Mitchell novels like The Mystery of a Butcher Shop and The Saltmarsh Murders have an appendix or chapter at the end, setting forth the the sleuth's ideas leading up to the solution. These appendices are told by the sleuth in the first person, while the bulk of the novel is told in the third person. Shelley Smith follows the same structure in He Died of Murder!, with the sleuth narrating an Addendum, detailing his step by step reasoning that led him to the solution.
The Mitchell chapters are presented as excerpts from the notebooks of Mrs. Bradley, Mitchell's sleuth. Similarly, the Addendum in He Died of Murder! is depicted as the policeman detective's notes on the case.
The J.J. Connington and Mitchell notebooks contain entries from various dates throughout the duration of the case. Each shows the sleuth's understanding of the crime up to that time, and new ideas based on new clues that emerged on that date, as depicted in the main body of the novel. Shelley Smith uses a basically similar approach, with her detective outlining his step by step development of ideas over the time span of the novel.
Both Mitchell and Smith conceal their detective's thoughts through the course of the book, only revealing them in the solution at the end, and in these final notes which outline their reasoning over time. This is in contrast with Mitchell's popular contemporary Freeman Wills Crofts and his followers, who often have their sleuth's sharing all their ideas with the reader throughout the novel.
While the appendices in Gladys Mitchell novels are fairly schematic, with Notes in outline form, the Addendum of He Died of Murder! is told in full novelistic style.
Another difference: the Gladys Mitchell novels frequently change Point of View characters throughout the novel. By contrast, while He Died of Murder! is also mainly told in third person, everything is from the Point of View of its policeman sleuth.
Sleuth. The detective in He Died of Murder! is a Scotland Yard police Inspector, who has been called into the case. This resembles not Gladys Mitchell, but rather the Crofts School of British police detectives. Smith's Inspector Chaos is smooth, affable and a bit sneaky, like Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French, and many of the police sleuths of Crofts' followers in the Crofts School.
Impossible Crime. He Died of Murder! has an impossible crime plot. This plot is not-bad-at-all, and is the novel's best feature.
Oddly, the "impossible" nature of the crime is not much emphasized until the solution. This seems to me just bad storytelling. A key fact, that the shooting took place in close range - and yet no one was there, according to witnesses - is barely brought out. This hurts the clarity of the novel, and its impact as a clever impossible crime.
The presence of an impossible crime in He Died of Murder! is a break with Gladys Mitchell traditions: Mitchell rarely if ever used impossible crimes. According to Robert Adey's outstanding bibliography Locked Room Murders, Mitchell wrote no impossible crimes, while He Died of Murder! is the only impossible crime credited to Shelley Smith.
SPOILER. The basic approach used in the crime's solution, recalls solutions used by The Coles. The details of the solution are Smith's own, however.
H.C. Bailey's "The Hazel Ice" (1927) is an early mystery with a mountain climbing background.
Lament for a Maker is full of literary quotations, also like Carr. Such quotations are common in many Golden Age British mystery writers.
Death Under Snowdon also has a non-technical puzzle, relating to the identity of the killer and the overall structure of the events. This plot is a full mystery puzzle. Unfortunately, it seems none too original. For example, Anthony Boucher's The Case of the Solid Key (1941) has a broadly similar choice of killer.
I'm not a mountain climber, and somehow naively expected that a mountain-climbing novel would be full of scenes of knotting climbing ropes, special picks and technical gear. Instead, the mountain climbing scenes in Death Under Snowdon mainly show people doing simple hiking: people walking around Mt. Snowdon. Carr's emphasis is on the geography, geology and scenery of this beautiful mountain, as seen by people walking up and down it (Chapter 4).
Death Under Snowdon is politically interesting, when it examines issues of Energy and the Environment. It shows that issues facing 1952 Britain are still relevant in today's society: maybe even more so! Death Under Snowdon is less convincing when looking at Labour vs. Tories. Were Labour MP's in 1952 really hopeless vulgarians with bad table manners? One doubts it!
Death Under Snowdon is best in its opening section (Chapters 1-7; 11) The book then runs out of steam. It is only mildly interesting as a murder mystery. And the best looks at Mt. Snowdon and the technical details of the murder, all come early in the book.