The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942) is the twenty-fifth novel in the Ludovic Travers series and concluded a wartime trilogy, anteceded by The Case of the Murdered Major (1941) and The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942), which places Travers on the staff of a new Home Guard school in Derbyshire – resulting in a war-themed scholastic mystery. So this may very well be the only detective novel to combine a school setting with a strong war-theme sewn through the plot.

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

An urgent postal telegram summons Major Travers to the War Office, Room 299, where he learns that the Home Guard is in need of skilled instructors. The Home Guard came into being after Dunkirk to meet "the imminent threat of invasion," but, now that they were fully armed and equipped, what they needed is "an enormous number of trained instructors" to turn the paper tiger of the Home Guard into a regular fighting force – who know how to use the weapons and are skilled in "the very latest methods of attack and defense." However, the task allotted to Travers at Peakridge is not as exciting as training the Home Guard in explosives and guerrilla tactics.

Travers is to lecture on administration, because a lot of men simply don't seem to get the hang of the administrative side. Something that's becoming very important.

No. 5 School for Instructors of Home Guard at rugged Peakridge in Derbyshire has a staff drawn from professional, full-time soldiers ("Regulars") and "Not-So-Regular" members of the army. The Home Guard was formed to defend the islands in case of invasion and, when they can no longer hold a defensive position, they become guerrillas to "harry the Hun," which is why the irregulars were attracted as instructors – who gained valuable experience in anti-tank warfare and guerrilla tactics in such scraps as the Spanish Civil War. After only a week, or so, the staff was split into two camps with Travers acting as "as a kind of liaison officer."

The Case of the Fighting Soldier is narrated by Travers and he tells the reader that he has disguised the names of the characters, because he "cannot even hint at the real names." All of the name describe the man or his duties at the school. For example, Colonel Topman is the top man of the lot and Flick is in charge of the school cinema.

So this is probably nothing more than to give the story a (fictional) whiff of authenticity, but you have to wonder whether the characters, or their personalities, were based on people Bush had met during his time in the army. It could be a sly way of telling the reader that, yes, these characters really do exist. According to our resident genre-historian, Curt Evans, Bush probably pulled a similar stunt in The Case of the Monday Murders (1936) with a character who could have been modeled on Anthony Berkeley.

One of the school instructors is Captain Mortar, a very brash, self-styled fighting soldier, who fought in The Great War, The Spanish Civil War, Mexico and Bolivia – reputedly "cursed like hell because he couldn't be in South America and Abyssinia at the same time." Mortar has brought along his own batman, Feeder, which is very irregular and not entitled to wear a uniform, but Feeder had been fighting with Mortar all over the world. Together with a man by the name of Ferris, who fought in Spain, they represent the faction of irregulars. Unpopular with their fellow staff members, but immensely popular with the Home Guard students.

However, Mortar has a genius for making enemies and there are several near "accidents." During a demonstration with the Blacker Bombard, a winged, twenty-pound bomb with nine pounds of high-explosives inside is fired, but it was aimed low and didn't explode. There are traces of chewing-gum found inside the barrel of the bomb launcher, but even more worrying is that they're unable to locate and destroy the unexploded bomb.

A second incident occurs on the bombing ground where the students are instructed how the throw grenades with dummy bombs. Ferris is conducting this class from the middle of the ground, into which the dummy bombs would be thrown, but, all of a sudden, there was a crashing roar of an explosion and Ferris had a narrow escape, which turns out to have been a live grenade – attached to a length of a twine and a peg. A good, old-fashioned booby-trap! The culmination of these incidents is a huge explosion blowing Captain Mortar to Kingdom Come in his bedroom and the booby-trap employed here is worthy of John Rhode.

 

A nifty diagram of a grenade from Fighting Soldier

Superintendent George "The General" Wharton was an Intelligence officer in the previous war and is summoned to the school to investigate the death of Mortar, but this task is done under the guise of a special lecturer on security. This means that he's back in uniform and turned his huge walrus mustache into a first-class buffalo, which made him nearly unrecognizable to Travers. And speaking of Travers. The Case of the Fighting Soldier is the third time in a row that he's upstaged by Wharton. So this wartime trilogy should really be considered the Superintendent Wharton mini-series with Travers as a supporting character.

Anyway, the first half of the story is arguably the best part of the book. The background of the Home Guard school is fascinating and the setup of the plot, alongside the initial stages of the investigation, were very well done, but interest began to flack a little bit in the second half as the story slowly morphed in a regular whodunit. A whodunit that was not all that difficult to solve. I immediately spotted the motive of the murder and the identity of the culprit can easily be worked out from there, which makes this book, plot-wise, the lesser entry in this trilogy – which is not to say that this is a bad mystery. Just not the best in the series.

There is, however, an interesting scene in the second half demonstrating to the reader how Travers' brain work. Travers has often alluded in previous novels that his mind is of "the crossword kind" and his contribution to the solution came when he solved a crossword puzzle in an illustrated magazine. There's even a diagram of the crossword puzzle he was working on when a remark from Mortar came flooding back to him, but it was his policeman friend who followed this evidence to its logical conclusion. Nevertheless, I still think Travers is the best example of how the create a fallible detective without crushing their conscience with guilt over a failure. I'm looking at you, Ellery Queen!

So, all in all, The Case of the Fighting Soldier is a good, but not the best, entry in both this series and trilogy of wartime detective novels. I'm glad this trio of war stories ceded the spotlight of detective to Superintendent Wharton. A normally secondary character who's more than deserving to upstage the series-character and you can easily see how Wharton could have helmed his own series. So this was a nice side-track in the series, but hope to see Travers get the best of his policeman friend again in my next read.

The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942) is the twenty-fourth novel in the lengthy Ludovic Travers series and the second of three mysteries, book ended by The Case of the Murdered Major (1941) and The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942), that together form a trilogy of war-themed detective stories – branded by Curt Evans as "the most notable series of wartime detective fiction." I think the first of these three wartime mysteries definitely lived up to praise, but what about its second one? Let's find out, shall we?

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

Previously, Captain Travers was assigned to an internment camp as its Adjutant Quartermaster and became, yet again, embroiled in a murder case. However, this time he was upstaged by his policeman friend, Superintendent George "The General" Wharton of Scotland Yard.

The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel is the first book in the series to be narrated by Travers, promoted to the rank of Major, who's transferred to Camp 55 near the city of Dalebrink in Derbyshire. Major Travers is placed in charge of the camp and the place is tasked with guarding two factories, tunnels, a bridge and "a certain hush-hush establishment."

Wharton happens to be in Derbyshire on "special hush-hush work" and Travers begins to suspect Wharton is the reason why he was transferred to Camp 55, which involves vitally important research work for the defense department and a leftist group of pacifists, New Era Group (N.E.G.) – locally known as "Neggers." A wily lot of "cranks and intellectuals" planning a New Order and there are people who want to see "the whole collection of Neggers" under lock and key.

Dalebrink Hall is the home of Colonel Brende, a gunnery expert, who uses the place as a facility to research a method to detect night-flying aircraft. Colonel Brende is assisted in his work by three experts: Heinrich Wissler, formerly Professor of Physics at the University of Prague, who resembles Albert Einstein as a young man. Francis Newton, Professor of Physics, and a research student, George Riddle. The well-born and alluring Hon. Penelope Craye, a distant cousin of Colonel and Mrs. Brende, fulfills the duties of private secretary, but before the war, there were whispers that "she was one of the set of Hitler's apologists." So there you have some of the important pieces of the plot, but, before they can be moved into action, we get to see some of the effects of the war on the local community.

The town is bombed during a nighttime air-raid and the bombing demolishes a number of houses, killed twelve people and left some forty injured.

Rev. Lancelot Benison, an Anglican minister, is the moving spirit behind the Neggers and published a fiery letter in the Clarion holding the authorities responsible for those twelve souls as "surely as if they had cut their throats" – coldly countered by Travers that you can't have an omelet without breaking an egg. He also has his duties as Commandant of Camp 55 and one of his jobs is having to deal with Howard Craye, "a lounge lizard in uniform," who's Mrs. Brende's nephew. And he can't even be bothered to salute properly. Than there's a mysterious background character, Major Passenden, who turned up in Lisbon and had hinted at "incredible adventures in France," but the fat hits the pan when Colonel Brende is inexplicably taken from his home.

Once again, Bush created here a quasi-impossible situation. There was a cordon of sentries around the house and "they were all keyed up to the highest pitch of alertness," because the Home Guard had setup an exercise with the aim of entering certain spots the camp was guarding as mock German para-troopers. This placed the guards on high-alert. So how did the kidnappers passed through this cordon? Not once, but twice! I think the solution strips this locked house mystery of its status as an impossible crime, you'll know why when you read it, but this is why I have become so fond of this series.

Up to this point, the story appeared to be dominated by the intrigues of the spy genre, but the traditional detective elements slowly overtake the plot when Penelope Craye's champagne is doctored with "a strong solution of veronal" – which will furnish the book with an ending befitting a mystery novel of this vintage. I needed some time to penetrate through the fog of far and piece together (most) of the puzzle, but eventually, with only a quarter left to go, I had a good, nearly complete picture of what had been happening.

There is, however, one thing I need to mention about the identity of the murderer (no spoilers). Bush was not the first one to use this specific solution and only came across it once before, but the plot was handled very poorly in that novel. Resulting in one of the most transparent mysteries ever written. I think it's a testament to Bush's talent as a plotter that he only could make this trick work, but even fool a reader who has seen it before! Honestly, the comparison didn't occur to me until I had figured parts of the solution out. Well played, Mr. Bush. Well played.

You know what else I really like about this series? You'll never know who's going to provide the solution. More often than not, the unraveling of the plot is collaborative effort between Travers and Wharton. As each of them find the various pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes, one manages to completely upstage the other. This is the second time in row Travers is reduced to the rank of supporting character by Wharton. This is an interesting and original way to humanize your series-detective without having to resort to the fallible detective trope. Travers and Wharton are simply ordinary human beings who pool to talent and knowledge to solve a problem.

By the way, if Wharton goes 3-0 in The Case of the Fighting Soldier, I'm going to refer to this wartime trilogy as the Superintendent George Wharton series. He deserves it.

So, yes, this was definitely one of the better Bush's, regardless of period, and comes highly recommended to fans of the series and mystery readers who love detective stories with WWII as a backdrop. Or if you simply enjoy a good detective yarn.

The Case of the Murdered Major (1941) by Christopher Bush

Earlier this month, Dean Street Press released the third batch of ten titles in Christopher Bush's outstanding Ludovic Travers series, originally published between 1939 and 1946, covering the entire period of World War II.

During these years, Bush penned a trilogy of wartime detective novels, "drawing directly on his own recent experience in British military service," described by our resident genre-historian, Curt Evans, as arguably "the most notable series of wartime detective fiction" published in Britain during WWII – seeming more informed by "martial experience" than other, more well-known, wartime mysteries (e.g. Christianna Brand's Green for Danger, 1944).

The Case of the Murdered Major (1941), The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942) and The Case of the Fighting Soldier (1942) form this thematic trilogy and decided to read all three of them back-to-back. So let's get started!

Bush served in an administrative capacity during the Great War and briefly returned to active duty in 1939 when he helped administer prisoner of war and alien internment camps, which earned him a promotion from 2nd Lieutenant to Captain, before being granted indefinite release from service on medical grounds – retiring with the rank of Major in August, 1940. This allowed him to return full-time to writing detective fiction and drew on his personal experience of running internment camps for the first of his three lauded wartime mysteries.

The Case of the Murdered Major is the twenty-third novel in the Ludovic Travers series and broke with the previous novels by dispensing with the third person narration.

The story is related by "an anonymous individual serving in the British Army," who resembles the author, after which all of the books are narrated in the first person and Travers begins his conversion from an inquisitive amateur to a genteel private-investigator in the mold of American hardboiled detective (e.g. The Case of the Amateur Actor, 1955). However, here we see Travers in a position that differs very much from his past and future incarnations.

Captain Travers has been appointed Adjutant Quartermaster of No. 54 Prisoner of War Camp in the city of Shoreleigh, "a grim sort of place," where a huge, out-of-date Victorian hospital has been turned into a POW camp with huts, movable barriers and piles of sandbags – surrounded by "a double apron of barbed wire." There are a couple of helpful diagrams and floor plans of the camp to help the reader get a good mental image of the place.

The senior official placed in charge of this POW camp is the unlikable, woolly-minded and short-tempered Major Stirrop.

Major Stirrop leadership, or lack thereof, was like sand in what would otherwise have been a well-oiled, efficient machine and never took any personal responsibility. Consequently, Major Stirrop had not only lost the respect of his own man, who called him "a twerp of the first water," but was dangerously close to losing their loyalty. Travers way of dealing with his superior is composing "a queer sort of document," entitled The Case of the Murdered Major, in which he worked out a way to murder Major Stirrop and crafted a perfect alibi. A piece of paper that would come back to haunt him later on in the story. However, it goes to show how much of a pain Major Stirrop really is when even the series-character took great pleasure in imagining his murder.

The problems really begin to stir at the camp when the first group of German prisoners arrive, "a mixed collection of planters, Nazi agents and wandering Gestapo men," who were aboard a captured ship on the West Coast of Africa and number seventy-three in total – only problem is that there appears to be a phantom prisoner among them. Every day, there's a headcount of the prisoners and on several occasions there appeared to be one additional prisoner. When they recounted the prisoners, the number was back to normal. Someone is moving around the camp unseen and unimpeded.

I mentioned in my review of Dead Man Twice (1930) how Bush's plots often include borderline or quasi-impossibilities and the way the problem of the spare prisoner is presented is another example of this. After all, the problem is not just the inexplicable appearance and disappearance of an unaccounted prisoner, but that this person managed to "lay doggo somewhere during the day" without being detected. Only to appear when the prisoners were being counted, which is sheer madness.

A second quasi-impossibility occurs when the body of Major Stirrop is found in the snow outside of the main building, beyond the body was deep depression, but the snow surrounding both the body and depression lacked the expected footprints. This is, however, not seen as an impossibility or treated as an obstacle the murderer had to overcome to get to the victim, but it goes to show how closely related Bush was to the locked room sub-genre. Bush could have been remembered as a notable contributor to the impossible crime story had he retooled all of his borderline impossibilities into full-blown miracle crimes, but, even just as plot-driven howdunits, they're a treat to read – especially if your personal taste runs in the direction of plot-driven, jigsaw puzzle detective stories.

The story takes an interesting turn when Superintendent George "The General" Wharton appears on the scene and has his "finest hour" as he slowly, but surely, eclipses Travers.

A reader who's introduced to this series through The Case of the Murdered Major might mistake Wharton as the series-detective, because he not only ferreted the murderer from the closed circle of suspects, but also knocked down this person's carefully staged alibi. An alibi directly linked to the murder method. Meanwhile, Travers emerges from this story as a Dr. Watson or Captain Hastings rather than an Albert Campion or Lord Wimsey.

There is, however, no shame in playing second fiddle to the General of Scotland Yard and Travers had a lot on his plate here. He had to readjust to army life, after being out of the game for more than twenty years, after which he had to take over the camp when Major Stirrop was murdered. I also think that's part of the charm of this wartime detective story. Travers had his duty to fulfill and this prevented him from fully playing amateur detective, which is an approach I have never seen from detective novels or short stories from this period. The upside of Travers being too occupied to properly play detective is that I finally got my Superintendent Wharton novel!

On a whole, The Case of the Murdered Major is a well-written, tightly plotted detective novel with an intriguing backdrop, inspired by Bush's own experiences, which only had one real drawback – namely its shorter than usual length. The story impressed me as a good deal shorter than the previous entries in the series and can probably be blamed on paper rationing. This is also the reason why this review has been rather summary when it comes to plot-details and characters, because one half of the short novel looked at how the camp is run and sets up the plot. And the second half has the murder and solution. So you can't really go into the finer details without giving away vital information. Nevertheless, the end result is a clever and compact mystery novel that comes highly recommended. Particularly to readers interested in (crime) fiction from the Second World War.

My next stop in this trio of wartime detective novels is going to be The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel and from what I gleaned the plot pays homage to the first spy movie/play of the war (Cottage to Let, 1941). So stay tuned!

The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938) by Christopher Bush

The Case of the Tudor Queen (1938) is the eighteenth mystery novel by Christopher Bush and has the unfortunate, two-sided reputation of being an ingeniously plotted detective story marred by lackluster writing and paper-thin characterization. This appraisal of the book is not entirely without merit. However, I can be very forgiving of a detective story's imperfections, like a cast of cardboard characters, if the plot is well put together – probably the reason why I never had a problem with the so-called humdrum school of mystery writing. The Case of the Tudor Queen has quite a rack of a plot on her!

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

A tricky, complicated plot that slowly begins to unravel when Bush's lanky, bespectacled economist and freelance detective, Ludovic Travers, is driving his Rolls-Royce up from Southampton.

Superintendent George "The General" Wharton is in the passenger seat next to him and Palmer is sitting in the back, which makes for a diverse party that provides the book with brief, but interesting, character sketches of the men – only genuine piece of characterization in the entire novel. Travers is described as a man who had been born with "a gold spoon in his mouth" to whom "deduction and the chase were the most thrilling of hobbies" and as a detective was always looking for "the short cut." Wharton was a man who had risen from the ranks and his preferred method is "patient inquiry, slow accumulation" and "the gradual elimination of the unwanted." They were "the perfections of the opposite that make the unique fit."

Travers had missed a turn along the way and they got lost, which is how they ended up at the front-gate of a cottage standing on the outskirts of a tiny village.

A woman emerged from the gate of the cottage, as they passed it, who looked in a hurry and they offered her a ride to the nearby train station. The name of the woman is Edith Bunce, a maidservant and dresser, who's in the employ of a well-known theatrical actress, Mary Legreye – currently playing Mary Tudor in Stony Heart. Legreye had given Bunce a three-day holiday and expected her back at the cottage that day, but the cottage was still all locked up and Legreye had not come with the last train of the day.

Travers and Wharton decide to accompany Bunce back to the cottage, which turns out to have been burglarized. The telephone-line had been hacked through with a knife and later two miniatures, that had hung on the wall, are discovered to be missing.

There's evidence Legreye had arrived at the cottage, but inexplicably left again without her hat, fur and gloves. So this interests our detectives and they decide to take a gander at the main residence of the missing actress, a two-storey house in Westmead called Arden, which is dipped in darkness when they arrive there and awaiting them inside is the scene of a bizarre, double tragedy – which could be either murder, suicide or a combination of the two. Fred Ward was employed by Legreye as an indoor servant and part-time gardener, as "a kind of permanent charity" on her part, but the man was now laying on the kitchen floor. Ward had been dead for many hours.

Legreye is eventually found in an immense room that ran along the whole front of the house and the room had been cleared of all furniture, which had been placed behind a large screen. The only furnishing in that bare room was a single high-backed, winged chair with a side-table next to it. A throne on which the body of Mary Legreye was seated, like "a queen posed to give an audience," with an empty glass and an uncorked bottle standing on the table besides her. Legreye and Ward had both been poisoned. And there was a twenty-four hour gap between their deaths!

Admittedly, I think these opening chapters are the only really engagingly written parts of the story with the investigation at the dark, gloomy house, after the bodies had been discovered, resembling a mansion-story by Roger Scartett – in which the house almost becomes a character itself in the story. Travers is even relieved when finally two uniformed constables arrive, because the house no longer seemed "as clammy and deadly silent." The arrival of the local police had miraculously turned the place into "a mere building" that held "a grim, and even alluring, mystery."

However, I can understand why some readers have a problem with the remainder of the story, which is, regrettably, as flatly written as it's characterized and the plot is structured like one of the earlier novels from the series (c.f. Dead Man Twice, 1930). Something probably not every reader will appreciate.

The Case of the Tudor Queen is divided into two parts, respectively titled "Presentation" and "Solution," which gives the main-stage almost entirely to Superintendent Wharton. As he questions suspects and tests the soundness of their alibis, Travers recedes into the background, like a chameleon, to polish his “monstrous hornrims” and ponder the case. A similar role he had in the earlier novels, like The Perfect Murder Case (1929), but Travers is still the one who eventually gets hold of the solution. Although it took a while in this instance.

The last portion of the story takes place months after the initial investigation, which lead to nowhere, but, by pure chance, Travers is placed on the right track that allows him to completely demolish one of the suspects air-tight alibis – which also explained the clue of the "flake of green enamel paint." I wanted to kick myself for having missed that "the vital clue" that tied the murder or Legreye to the play and the life of the historical character she had portrayed on stage. In my defense, this link didn't occur to Travers either until the last couple of pages.

So, on a whole, The Case of the Tudor Queen is an imperfect detective novel, notably the lackluster story-telling and flat characterization, but the plot is an interesting take on the theatrical mystery. A theatrical mystery that primarily took place in the private life of the lead actress and how the murders came about, as well as why her body was posed on the throne, is vintage Bush. This made for a clever, intricately plotted detective novel that was perhaps not told as well as it could have, but this did not deter me from enjoying the book. I think fans of Bush, Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode will agree with me. Unless you're JJ.

Dead Man Twice (1930) by Christopher Bush

Dead Man Twice (1930) is the third title in Christopher Bush's Ludovic "Ludo" Travers series and has been recommended to me several times by Nick Fuller and Curt Evans. The book considered to be one of the stronger titles from the early period of the series and not entirely without reason.

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

In this early title, Travers is still working as a financial adviser for that distinguished inquiry, advertising and publicity firm, Durangos Limited, which means that his role is still that of a chameleon in the background and cedes the stage to his friends, Superintendent Wharton and John Franklin – head of the Detective Bureau of Durangos Ltd. So the story has a slightly different feeling than those that have a more prominent role for Travers.

Franklin is visited in his office by Kenneth Hayles, a writer of hackneyed, cliché-ridden thrillers, who wants to use him and his office as a model for his next novel, but Hayles also co-authored Two Years in the Ring. A book he wrote together with Michael France, a gentleman boxer and heavyweight champion of Europe, who's scheduled to fight Toni Ferroni in New York and everyone expects him to bring the world title back to England. So their meeting ends with Franklin getting an opportunity to meet the public hero of the moment.

However, Frankling comes down to Earth again when France wants to consult him on a string of threatening letters, which gave him a few days to leave the country or his "numbers up," signed by "Lucy" and gave Franklin three specimens of handwriting to compare – all three specimens were procured from people who stand close to the boxer. France also asks Franklin to drop by his house, but when he arrived it looks as if nobody is home. The hammering with the door knocker and ringing the bell gets no response whatsoever.

After a while, the valet of France, Mr. Usher, arrives and opens the door, but what they find inside is a scene as bizarre as it's inexplicable.

The body of the butler, named Somers, was lying on the rug of the lounge with tumbler next to his outstretched arm and on the table, next to the decanter and siphon, stood "a small, blue bottle with a red poison label." A suicide note is found, "this is really the end of everything," but Usher recognizes the handwriting as that of his master, Michael France! So this prompts them to further explore the house and they find a second body in an upstairs room. France lay on the bedroom floor with a bullet wound in his forehead and a tiny, toy-like pistol two feet from his outstretched hand. However, the medical evidence reveals that the shot was fired from "a devilish awkward position" and "the bullet might have missed the brain altogether." And the awkward angle of the bullet is a clue as to what happened in that bedroom!

Travers is only a background figure in the investigation, who analyzes the published work of France and Hayles, which leaves all of the legwork to Franklin and Wharton. Once again, the performance Superintendent George "The General" Wharton demonstrated that we lost a great lead-character for a series of detective novels.

Layer by layer, Wharton slowly peels away the mysteries and is "worming his way into some subterranean and buried essential," but the complications are numerous and one of these is that there was a six-inch circle of glass cut out of the window – except this was not a garden-variety burglary. And then there's France's involvement with the wife of the well-heeled, aristocratic racing motorist and his chief financial backer, Peter Claire, who had planted Usher in France's house to keep an eye out. Compounding these confusing jumble of problems and the contradictory facts at the scene of the crime are a couple of durable alibis.

The unbreakable alibi is a trademark of Bush's detective fiction and this begs comparison with another craftsman of cast-iron alibis, Freeman Wills Crofts, but Bush's plotting technique actually makes him closer to John Dickson Carr and John Rhode than to Crofts.

The murder of France could have easily been presented as an impossible situation and Bush's plots are often borderline or quasi-impossibilities (e.g. The Case of the Bonfire Body, 1936), but rarely crosses the border to become a full-fledged locked room mystery. Regardless, this could have been a nifty locked room yarn and the method, which also helped the murderer forging a cast-iron alibi, could have been plucked from the pages of Rhode's mystery novel. As a matter of fact, I have seen variations of this trick in the works of both Carr and Rhode.

Nevertheless, this could have been a nifty locked room and the murder method is something straight out of of a Rhode's novel. As a matter of fact, I have come across variations of this trick in the works of both Carr and Rhode. John Russell Fearn even used a very similar trick to create an actual locked room murder, but I believe Dead Man Twice predates all of them.

So I really liked this plot-strand of the story, which came with diagrams and floorplans, but the poisoning plot wasn't bad either and the nature of the crime, with all its complexities, fitted the personality of the murderer like a glove – which nicely contrasted with the more plot-technical killing of France. But the best part of the plot is how these plot-strands were intertwined and threw one of these plots in disarray.

Only thing you can hold against the plot is that the identity of the culprits were rather obvious. A problem corrected by the intriguing question as to how the murders were committed and the attempt to fit every piece of the puzzle together to form a logical and coherent picture of all the events.

I've not read the first title in this series, The Plumley Inheritance (1926), but feel confident in stating that Dead Man Twice is the first of Bush's baroque-style detective novels that introduced his favorite plot-device of having two murders taking place in close proximity of each other and link them together with a bale of plot-threads. An approach he used to great effect in Dancing Death (1931) and The Case of the April Fools (1933). The result is usually a pleasantly intricate, mind-twisting and challenging detective story and Dead Man Twice is not the exception to this rule.

Dead Man Twice is a grand old-fashioned detective story and more than worthy of the praise it has received, but, personally, I would not go as far as placing it right alongside the superb Cut Throat (1932) and the equally superb The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936). Dead Man Twice stands a step below them along with the previously mentioned The Case of the April Fools, The Case of the 100% Alibis (1934) and the Carrian The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935), which is not a bad company to be in.

So, a long story short, I continue to enjoy my exploration of Bush's detective fiction and will return to him soon, but first have to pick a title. Currently, I have whittled down my options to three titles: The Case of the Dead Shepherd (1934), The Case of the Hanging Rope (1937) and The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939). Ah, luxury problems!

The Case of the 100% Alibis (1934) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush was "a supreme alibi artisan" and was "to the unbreakable alibi what John Dickson Carr was to the impossible crime." 

A claim he cemented with two classic detective novels, Cut Throat (1932) and The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936), crafted around ingenious, clockwork-like plots cunningly manipulating the perception of time – which is helping with turning Bush into a personal favorite. I assume The Case of the 100% Alibis (1934) is one of his lesser-known, alibi-oriented mysteries, but the story could not have made "his fascination with the alibi problem any clearer." As well as showing flashes of that Carrian ingenuity that was on full display in The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935). 

Reprinted by Dean Street Press

The Case of the 100% Alibis opens with a short prologue, titled "For the Ingenious Reader," which could have been written by Dr. Gideon Fell.

A prologue purporting to explain to the reader the apparent contradiction of a solved murder case that was littered with one-hundred percent, cast-iron alibis, because "such an alibi admits of no loopholes." After all, even "the law cannot move the unmovable" or "break an unbreakable alibi," but the murderer was apprehended and the prologue gives two reasons why this person was discovered: Mrs. Hubbard's prize-winning cake recipe and Captain Moile's first attempt to fly the Atlantic solo – neither appear to have any relevance whatsoever to the story. 

So the prologue was as elucidating as the cryptic remarks of detective characters, like Dr. Fell, when they begin to mumble about the significance of the untouched sandwich on the secretary's desk or the sawdust found underneath the bookcase. Anyway...

This time, the clockwork-like plot of this eleventh title is set in motion by three telephone calls made shortly before and after the murder. And these phone calls complicate the case almost as much as the parade of unbreakable alibis flaunting the detectives as they pass them by.

During the first phone call, Frederick Lewton had rang up an acquaintance, Mr. Beece, in "a normal voice mentioning some tolerably unimportant meeting," but five minutes later rings Dr. Rule, "scared stiff," urging her to ask her husband, Dr. Rule, to come and see him immediately – followed only three minutes later by a phone call to the local police station. A voice identifying himself as Lewton's manservant, Robert Trench, tells the policeman on duty that he found the body of his master when he got back home. Someone had stabbed him to death.

Superintendent George "The General" Wharton of Scotland Yard happened to be in the coastal town of Seaborough, which was also the setting of The Case of the Chinese Gong, who lends a hand to Chief Constable Tempest. On a side-note, Wharton is here accompanied by his wife, Jane Wharton, who shines in her supporting role.

Wharton and Tempest hunt down every possible lead and clue with the dogged determination of a bulldog, but problems and complications quickly pile up all around them.

Trench appeared on the scene after the police had discovered the body and swears he never reported a murder to them. The murder weapon was found stuffed up the chimney and a safe had been rifled. An innocent looking note has a cryptic line scribbled on the bottom right-hand corner, "little fish may be sweet, but what about this for a middle cut of salmon," followed by "R.C. 105" and "B.C. 33" in the bottom left corner – a clue connected to a thread of blackmail. But it gets more entangled. One of the suspects is an actor, who could have mimicked one or two the voices on the telephone, while another suspect is a lauded mystery novelist. Someone who knows his way around an alibi. And that's the unmovable wall Wharton bumps into. Every single suspect is in possession of "the most beautiful twenty-two carat, diamond-studded alibi."

Around the halfway mark, Ludovic Travers arrives on the scene to save the day. Or, as Wharton cynically observes, "to poke his nose in." Honestly, Wharton has a point.

During the first half, Wharton showed he can carry a story and it was a pleasure to see him at work as he used different tactics and approaches to get information. Such as in the way he approached witnesses and assumed a personality that would get the most results, but also takes the time to ponder and tabulate all of the evidence and information – which should have brought him the solution. Travers only really becomes a functioning presence in the story towards the end. So, in my humble opinion, The Case of the 100% Alibis should have been written as a solo outing for the superintendent. He could then have bragged to Travers that he once gutted one of those clockwork alibis of its wheels, cogs and springs without his help.

However, you can only think of that as a missed opportunity, not a flaw, but the one thing that can be said against the plot was cleverly acknowledged and lampshaded by Bush.

Travers asks the suspected detective novelist, Raymond Rennyet, what he considers to be "the first essential" of a plot. Rennyet answer is that if you give him "a perfectly good faked alibi" he'll write "a murder story—of sorts—around it." And that's probably what happened here. I think the story and characters was written around the alibi-trick and this is probably why, in spite of a pack of alibis, the plot felt rather slight when compared with earlier titles like Dancing Death (1931) and The Case of the April Fools (1933).

Regardless, The Case of the 100% Alibis presents a cleverly constructed, minutely-timed plot with pleasant, solid police work that should not fail to entertain the puzzle-oriented mystery reader, but stands a step or two below Cut Throat and The Case of the Missing Minutes – which are admittedly two hard-to-top classics of the unbreakable alibi. So this one comes still very much recommended as a good example of the traditional, plot-driven mystery novel from the genre's Golden Age.

On a final note, my next Bush is (finally) going to be much recommended Dead Man Twice (1930), but it's not going to be my next read. That's going to be a three-way toss-up between Case Closed, John Russell Fearn and E.R. Punshon.