Reverse the Charges (1943) by Brian Flynn

Brian Flynn's Reverse the Charges (1943) is the twenty-ninth novel featuring his consulting detective, Anthony Bathurst, which brings him to the village and Chief-Inspector Andrew MacMorran, of Scotland Yard, to the village of Mallett and the surrounding district – where an active serial killer is on the prowl. The case begins on a wet, windy March evening when Constable Wragg heard "a far-away scream" tearing through the night. And he found something downright bizarre.

A car standing on the road, "no obvious sign of collision or accident," whose dying driver lay slumped over the steering wheel with "a look of convulsed, contorted horror." Constable Wragg smells "something burning" inside the car without anything appearing to be on fire. Dr. Pegram, Divisional Surgeon, examines the body and finds six small glowing cinders lodged between his vest and the small of his back. Someone had dumped a small scoop of red-hot cinders down the victim's back and "the shock must have killed him." Sir Charles Stuart, Chief Constable, does not want to call in the Yard as it would be tantamount to an early confessions of failure. So the local police, represented by Inspector Venables, gets a first crack at the case.

The victim is identified as William Norman, farmer, who went to the market in Mallett and stayed, as customary, the whole day and had his dinner at the White Lion inn. Norman then drove home, picked someone up along the way and got murdered in a very outlandish way. Dr. Pegram discusses the case with the village physician, Dr. Martin Chavasse, who believes they have a homicidal maniac on their hands and fears a second murder before too long, because "a murderer of that type never stops at one" – which turned out to be "regrettably accurate." The body of Henry King, a baker, was found sitting at the dining table in the saloon of the White Lion. King had dropped in for lunch and is served with a dish of poisoned fish. A day later, Sir Charles calls in Scotland Yard and MacMorran is dispatched to Mallett together with Bathurst. Three days later, the drowned body of the third victim is found stuffed inside a water barrel standing in the courtyard of the White Lion.

So the murderer appears to be escalating, but, after the third murder, there's a sudden lull in the killings. It appeared as if the case was going to be "the first in the whole of Anthony Lotherington Bathurst's career as a criminologist which he was forced to relinquish." No new developments or a tantalizing clue came to him during the time spent in Mallett. Bathurst had to abandon and possibly write off the case as a failure, but was called back to Mallett when the body of an 11-year-old child is found in the smoking room of the White Lion.

Admittedly, Reverse the Charges has a premise as fascinating as it's puzzling. Flynn leaves some doubt whether you're reading a vintage serial killer mystery in the same vein as Philip MacDonald's Murder Gone Mad (1931) or something more cerebral like Agatha Christie's Murder is Easy (1939). Either way, the first-half had all the ingredients to make Reverse the Charges a standout of its kind, but the pace slackened during the second-half and Flynn really stretched out the ending. Not necessarily a bad thing or enough to sink a story, but it has to deliver something worthwhile in the end. That really didn't happen here.

First of all, the murderer enjoyed an incredible run of luck and particularly that first murder was nothing less than a gamble, which, once again, is acceptable enough as a short-lived run of luck is a defining trait of the fictitious murderer – only the method was completely glossed over. Dumping a handful of red-hot cinders down somebody's back on a cold, rainy evening is not as easy as it sounds. You can't simply say the murderer simply emptied a container of them down Norman's collar when he bent forward ("owing to the weather") to peer through the driving-screen. How where the cinders kept hot enough to cause fatal injuries? And him dying was not certainty at all ("his heart wasn't as strong, perhaps, as it might have been... but otherwise he was all right as far as I know"). If Norman had not died of shock and was only severely burned, the murderer's plan would have collapsed there and then as Norman would simply tell Constable Wragg who attacked him. So nothing really clever or inspired to it all, which is not helped when a very familiar-looking and expected solution emerges towards the end. One that has been done before and much better. Thirdly, there's an odd, stylistic choice in storytelling as the second-half introduces the plot-thread of Dr. Chavasse's mysterious, dying patient who had bouts of recovery during which he ventured outside. That plot-thread should have been expanded upon and the mysterious episodes with him peppered throughout the story. It would have livened up the pace of the second-half tremendously as the murders could be spread out a little more and shorten the dragging towards the end. It genuinely would have been an overall improvement to both the plot and storytelling.

So, as some of you armchair detectives have probably deduced by now, Reverse the Charges can not be counted among the best and finest detective novel Flynn crafted during his decades long career, but enjoyable enough to recommend to established fans of the series.