Back in March, I reviewed
Derek Smith's Model
for Murder (1952), a surprisingly cerebral entry in the
colossal Sexton Blake Library, which is probably why the novel
remained unpublished for more than six decades until John Pugmire, of
Locked Room International, got
his hands on the manuscript – publishing it as part of The Derek
Smith Omnibus (2014). A splendid volume that includes the
all-time classic Whistle
Up the Devil (1954) and Come
to Paddington Fair (1997).
The Sexton Blake Library
consists of roughly two-thousand short stories, novels, stage plays
and comic books, written by over two hundred writers, but ended my
review by saying I would likely never read another Blake story during
my lifetime. A well-known problem with the Sexton Blake series is
quantity over quality that helped it acquire a reputation of a badly
dated, second-rate pulp-series.
Hardly a year has gone by
since my review of Model for Murder, but I recently came
across a short Sexton Blake story that actually looked promising. And
the story delivered on its promise!
"The Grosvenor Square
Mystery" was anonymously published on October 26, 1909, in Answers
and is a bone-fide locked
room mystery with a solution that cleverly moved away from the
secret passages of eighteenth century detective fiction.
The setting of the story
is the house of Sir George Hilton, in Grosvenor Square, which is an
ancient mansion furnished "the heavy style of the early
Victorian era" and has "prevailing air of solidity"
with its solid doors, locks and bolts – solid shutters on all the
windows. However, this was not enough to keep out a thief and
valuables began to disappear from the locked apartment "sacred
to the use" of Sir George and his wife.
An apartment has four
interconnecting doors: two of them lead to the rooms Sir George and
Lady Hilton, one to a boudoir and the last one to a bathroom, which
pretty much eliminated a secret passageway or hidden trick-door. You
can only enter the apartment through one of these four doors. All of
the doors were fitted with "patent locks, bolts and burglar
alarm," but despite these security measures valuable rings,
necklaces, scarf-pins, a pearl pendant and a purseful of sovereigns
were taken from that locked apartment. This culminated in the theft
of "a packet of State papers."
These inexplicable string
of thefts began to foster "an actual spirit of mutual suspicion" and mistrust between Sir George and Lady Hilton. So they decided to
take Blake as an undercover house guest and have him bust open their
locked room conundrum.
Blake makes short work of
the case and the revelation of the thief doesn't come as an
astonishing, gut-wrenching surprise, but, where the plot becomes
interesting, is the explanation to the problem of the locked
apartment – a solution that was original, inventive and clever for
the period. You can say that the unknown author of this story took a
locked room idea from the eighteenth century reworked it by applying
some of that twentieth century ingenuity that G.K.
Chesterton and John
Dickson Carr would bring to the impossible crime story in the
subsequent decades.
A note for the curious:
the Kindaichi
series has a locked room story that uses this exact same idea, but
made it even better by elaborating on it and the result was awesome.
So, considering the poor
reputation of the Sexton Blake series, "The Grosvenor Square
Mystery," as a second-string Sherlock Holmes imitation, wasn't all
that bad and the locked room angle was surprisingly good.
Particularly for 1909. The plot lacked proper clueing and the culprit
was obvious, but the impossible crime and solution makes this story
potential anthology material.
You can read story here.
Thanks it was a somewhat fun read. Out of curiosity which Kindaichi story are you referring to? I can't remember a similar trick right now...
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked it, Yannis. I was referring to this Kindaichi story. As I said, the locked room-trick from Kindaichi is far more elaborate, but the basic idea is the same.
DeleteAh, I see. I did think of that story for a moment, but dismissed it.
DeleteYes these short stories you post lately are nice especially as I am out of books currently :)
Good news. I've more short story reviews lined up for this month.
DeleteYeah, it stands to reason that there's going to be some decent stuff in the Sexton Blake corpus -- hell, 87,000 authors writing 64 billion stories will hit the mark some of the time -- but it's just a question of whether one can uncover the diamond in the coalface. Sounds like you've had quite the triumph here,good news! I'll check out the story forthwith, and thanks for flagging it up.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome.
DeleteI'll just limit my scope with the Sexton Blake Library to the stories that were listed by Adey in Locked Room Murders. If there's a locked room or impossible crime, it might be a little more than just your average dime novel or magazine fodder.
"The Grosvenor Square Mystery" showed their might be something to that shaky hypothesis. So here's hoping!
I'm rather surprised to hear negative things about Blake. I haven't heard it anywhere else. Mark Hodder is a champion of the stories and has his own website devoted to them, while there are a couple of anthologies out there compiling some of the best ones. Michael Moorecock is a big fan too.
ReplyDeleteReally? You can probably put that down to a difference of perception between pulp and detective readers. I mean, there are thousands of Sexton Blake stories and you can hardly claim that they're all high quality stuff.
DeleteWhile I like this short story and it's locked room-trick, there were no clues whatsoever and the murderer was very obvious. So that's why readers like myself and JJ have a different view of the voluminous Sexton Blake Library.
By the way, have you read Derek Smith's Model for Murder? If you know of any Sexton Blake novels or short stories, like that, I would like to give them a shot.
Yes, the Blake stories are thrillers so run on a parallel line beside detective fiction. On that line (in Britain) is also The Saint, The Toff, Blackshirt, Norman Conquest, Edgar Wallace, Bulldog Drummond, James Bond and maybe even Biggles.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Model for Murder, no, but the Casebook of Sexton Blake would be a good read for adventure fans.