9/25/17

All Joking Aside

"Our April Fool's joke had turned completely around, so as to make fools of us all."
- Dr. Watson (Ken Greenwald's "The April Fool's Adventure," collected in The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1989)
Uncovering the work of a previously unexplored, or even unknown, writer from the Golden Era of the detective story is always a pleasure, but when the stories are consistently good, even improving with each succeeding book, you potentially have a brand new favorite on your hands – which brings me, once again, to the work of Christopher Bush. Yes, I know. I promised in my previous blog-post that a review of Case Closed would be next, but decided to go for the hat-trick by tackling another one of Bush's mystery novels.

The Case of the April Fools (1933) is the ninth book in the Ludovic Travers series and the only novel-length detective story exploring the plot possibilities of All Fool's Day. 

Previously, I have only came across the April Fool's Day theme in a handful of short stories, which include Ellery Queen's "The Emperor's Dice" (Calendar of Crime, 1952), Peter Godfrey's "The Flung-Back Lid" (The Newtonian Egg and Other Cases of Rolf Le Roux, 2002) and the Sherlock Holmes pastiche that provided an opening quote for this post. And that pastiche originated as an episode of The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes radio-plays written by Anthony Boucher and Denis Green.

So using the chicanery of April Fool's Day, as a premise for a detective story, looks to have been mostly a play toy of writers who belong, or can be linked, to the Van Dine-Queen School of Detection, but Bush doesn't really belong to this group of writers – and that makes his novel-length treatment of this idea all of the more interesting. Let's dig in, shall we?

The Case of the April Fools begins with Ludovic Travers going over the paperwork pertaining to a vacant piece of property, the Mermaid Theater, of which Durangos Limited is negotiating the lease. A dilettante stage producer, Courtney Allard, has been toying with the idea to purchase the lease and dropped in on Travers with his business partner, Charles Crewe. So nothing out of the ordinary there and the relationship between both men would had remained purely a business one had Travers not serendipitously overheard a conversation between Allard and Crewe at a restaurant. And they were talking about Travers!

Allard was overheard saying that Travers "looked a bit of a fool" and Crewe suggested he'd ask him to come along with them, because "a jury'd believe every word he said" and that makes him "pretty useful as a witness." On the following morning, there's a letter in the mail inviting Travers to stay the night at Allard's country house, The Covers, to talk things over regarding the lease.

As to be expected, Travers becomes at once ensnared in a beautifully woven, but complex and knotted, web that has been spun around the perplexing circumstances of a double murder. Both of them committed, one after another, on the morning after his arrival at The Covers.

The first of the two victims is the business partner of his client, Charles Crewe, whose body is found slumped beneath the open window of his bedroom with "the handle of a knife protruding from his ribs," which completely shocks Allard – who mutters confusingly "we only meant it as a joke." Travers hurries out of the room to call the police, but, while he's away, a gunshot echoes through the house. When he returns to the room, Travers discovers that a second body has been added to the crime-scene: Allard was lying on his back with a gunshot wound underneath his chin, which plowed a bullet upward through his skull. Only problem is that the room is bare of any firearms that could explain this second death as a suicide.

So, there you have it, "a dastardly double murder," committed on April Fool's Day, to test the mettle of both detectives helming this detective story, of which the second is Chief Inspector Norris of Scotland Yard – who's actually the one who puts all the pieces together in the end. But more on that later.

First of all, Travers and Norris have to run through the entire gamut of potential suspects, clues and red herrings.

These clues and red herrings range from anonymous death threats, addressed to Crewe, to talks about a long-forgotten murder case that involved a Harley Street specialist, but equally interesting was the background of the characters that were gathered at the county house – including a couple of (American) actors. Allard and Crewe were developing a stage-play and the opening chapter showed, what could be called today, viral marketing with posters appearing all over the city showing a green-sleeved mandarin billed as Wen Ti. However, the posters did not make it clear what exactly they were advertising and this gave rise to a good deal of speculation.

Well, the plot-strand about the identity of this mysterious Chinaman, who was scheduled to make an appearance at the country house, is a very minor one and somewhat anti-climatic. Regardless, the reason for the poster campaign, the presence of the actors and pretty much everything else were revealed to be irreplaceable cogs in the machine of the plot. A machine that needed every single cog, wheel and valve to work exactly in the way it did in order to create the baffling double murder, which is really impressive.

I think this goes to show that Bush really was a mystery writer who was halfway between Freeman Wills Crofts and John Dickson Carr.

On the one hand, you have an intricate plot that can only be described as Carrian and recalled a particular story from The Department of Queer Complaints (1940), but has a solution anticipating a rather well-known locked room novel by Carr. I suppose the only real weakness of the plot is that seasoned readers of impossible crime stories can probably gauge the outline of the truth, but that still leaves you with having to fill in the details and clearing up all the loose ends.

And that brings us to the other hand. Once again, the detective work is split between different characters, Travers and Norris, but this time it's the policeman who upstages the amateur sleuth at his own game – figuring out the truth in a moment of inspiration when his children play an April Fool's prank on him. I assume this must have surprised readers at the time, because most of them were probably still accustomed to the Lestrade-type of Scotland Yard detectives in a case that involves one of those civilian snoops.

For more than one reason, I found The Case of the April Fools to be an intriguing read with an elaborately constructed, Carrian-style plot that could easily have been retooled as a full-fledged locked room story. On top of that, I believe the plot is the only example of a novel-length detective story built around the shenanigans of All Fools' Day. So, yes, I begin to believe to have found another Golden Age favorite in Bush and look forward to future reprints by Dean Street Press, but, after having read three of them back-to-back, I'll be taking a break from Bush. But you have not seen the last of him, or Travers, on this blog!

22 comments:

  1. You're certainly getting through these new reprints of Bush quickly! It is handy though as I didn't have the strongest experience of him earlier this year so it's good to know there are some stronger works in his oeuvre.

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    1. Kate has a review of The Case of the Platinum Blonde on her blog, which you can find here.

      I guess you going to come across some weaker titles in a series counting over sixty books.

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    2. Ah, yes, I remember reading it when it appeared; for some reason, Googling "Christopher Bush" + "cross examining crime" didn't bring it up!

      I enjoyed Platinum Blonde when I read it, apparently with a couple of reservations. (Review here: http://gadetection.pbworks.com/w/page/7931744/The%20Case%20of%20the%20Platinum%20Blonde.)

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    3. But probably not an ideal Bush to start with! I started with TCOT Heavenly Twin, one of his very late books, which was like trying to start Christie by reading Hallowe'en Party.

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  2. Thanks for these three positive reviews, as the handful of Bush reviews I read earlier this year were all, at best, disappointing. Which of the three titles would you say is your favourite?

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    1. "the handful of Bush reviews I read earlier this year were all, at best, disappointing."

      This is going to be my Punshon experience all over again, isn't it? I'm going to be all alone in my enjoyment of these reprints. Oh well.

      As for my favorites, I would say Cut Throat and in particular the second half on account on the wonderful alibi-trick. If Carr had written alibi stories, he would have plotted them like that! Secondly, I would pick The Case of the April Fools.

      But it is really hard to pick favorites after only three reads. Reads that haven't yet included The Case of the Missing Minutes and The Case of the Chinese Gong.

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    2. This is going to be my Puncheon experience all over again, isn't it? I'm going to be all alone in my enjoyment of these reprints. Oh well.

      I had no idea these reprints were even available. I'll certainly be grabbing some of them. I'm already a convinced Christopher Bush fan.

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  3. This is one of my favourite Bushes. You're right that Bush is halfway between Crofts and Carr; he's got the ingenious alibis of the Croftsian school, but the cleverness, GAD Baroque plotting, and gamesmanship of the great fair play puzzle plot writers.

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    1. You pretty much summed up why I'm warming to Bush's detective fiction. What's not to love there?

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    2. Yes, the whole Wen Ti opening is something you would see more in Carr, it's something the true Humdrum writer wouldn't spend time on. But it's a piece of showmanship that dovetails so nicely in the plot. There's a flair and lively imagination in many of Bush's openings which reminds one of Carr and Gladys Mitchell in her heyday. Dead Man Twice has another good example and certainly Dancing Death. Reading Dancing Death several years after Cut-Throat is what really sold me on Bush, I figured lighting doesn't strike twice, this must be sheer natural talent for detection.

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    3. Exactly! It's this kind of showmanship and ability to dovetail various plot-elements which I find so incredible attractive in a mystery writer. These qualities are the reason why (for example) I have such a high opinion of The Frightened Stiff by Kelley Roos, which also showed imagination, showmanship and dovetailing.

      You're tempting me now with Dancing Death!

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    4. Speaking of resemblances to Carr: https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1437917111p5/866455.jpg

      (Or is it just me?)

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    5. There's definitely a resemblance in that particular picture, especially if you imagine a mustache, but it might just be the angle and poor quality of the photograph. Curt has a front photograph of Bush, in uniform, on his blog (here) that shows him sporting a mustache, but in that picture he doesn't resemble Carr at all.

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  4. I think the thing with Bush is, as others have commented before me, is that there was a change of style in his books with the war. Bush's style became much drier, his plotting less grandly baroque. I think people who are looking more for a "classic" Golden Age read are going to find it more in the first score or so of books he wrote. Those next ten are coming soon I hope!

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    1. Is Dean Street Press releasing the titles in order? Have all the pre-war ones been released...?

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    2. Yes, the series is being reissued in chronological order and the (front) covers are numbered.

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    3. Yeah, the later ones are less GAD, with more hard-boiled influence; Travers is a genteel PI. But there are still several clever plots. I liked Counterfeit Colonel and Flowery Corpse, and I've heard good things about Housekeeper's Hair, Purloined Picture, and Extra Man. (There are some duds, though.)

      What disappears is the richness (and some of the cleverness and exuberance) of the early books' style. Travers is a drier narrator than Bush! The first person narration works, though, and often seems as though he's talking directly to the reader, telling him about the Case over drinks at the club - what Barry Pike called Bush's "button-holing" technique.

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    4. "Yeah, the later ones are less GAD, with more hard-boiled influence; Travers is a genteel PI."

      I was surprised when I read the synopsis of The Case of the Corner Cottage, published in 1951, which compared the story with The Maltese Falcon (an operative of Travers is murdered) with the obvious murderer being sought in the sordid milieu of professional criminals. Not really what one would expect after reading The Perfect Murder Case and The Case of the April Fools. Do you know if Corner Cottage is any good or one of those duds? It sounds like it could go either way with that one.

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    5. Corner Cottage is average; I enjoyed it, but it's not great. (For a dud, try TCOT Happy Medium.) Oh, and be careful of those reviews - some of them give away far too much. (In particular, avoid Haven Hotel and Counterfeit Colonel. Missing Minutes might be dangerous, too.)

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  5. Halfway between Crofts and Carr, you say? Well, there's certainly nothing there to interest me...

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    1. Yeah, nothing to see here for you, I'm afraid. :)

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