Vegetable Duck (1944) by John Rhode

John Rhode's Vegetable Duck (1944) is the fortieth title in his lengthy, long-running Dr. Lancelot Priestley series and has been praised by many readers as a particularly clever, crisply written detective story with an ingeniously contrived method for poisoning a piece of vegetable marrow – making it a veritable chef-d'oeuvre of the series. So imagine my disappointment when this supposedly five-star mystery turned out to be a pretty average, middle-of-the-Rhode entry in the series.

I've only read an infinitesimal fraction of the Dr. Priestley series, but Vegetable Duck is a second-tier title compared to The House on Tollard Ridge (1929), Death on the Board (1937), Invisible Weapons (1938), Men Die at Cyprus Lodge (1943) and Death in Harley Street (1946). However, my dissatisfaction has more to do with the excessive, undeserved praise than with the story's inability to live up to it. But it has negatively affected my reading.

So this is very likely going to be a short, poorly written and disappointing review, because I have not all that much to say about it. The reader has been warned.

Vegetable Duck begins with the return of Charles Fransham to his London service flat, Mundesley Mansions, who, earlier in the evening, had been lured away from his diner by a mysterious, unaccountable telephone call – leaving his wife to enjoy a dish of vegetable duck with potatoes, gravy and cheese. And in case you're wondering, vegetable duck is "a marrow, not too big, stuffed with minced meat and herbs" and "baked whole." A dish that was not only a personal favorite of Letitia Fransham, but also turned out to be her last meal. She's found in the dinning-room, unresponsive, when her husband returns. The doctor who examined the body suspects Mrs. Fransham had died from "the effects of a powerful dose of some vegetable alkaloid" and alerted the authorities.

Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, of Scotland Yard, is placed in charge of the case and initially focuses his attention on the husband as the primary suspect.

Charles Fransham tells Waghorn he had been called by a man, named Corpusty, who introduced himself as an employee of a private-detective he had hired and wanted to meet him immediately, because there had been developments in the case – only Corpusty never turned up. And when Fransham returned home, he found the body of his wife in the dinning-room. Yes, this is very reminiscent of the murder of Julia Wallace in 1931 and mentioned a number of times throughout the story. The Wallace Case had captivated the imagination of many mystery writers of the time and Dorothy L. Sayers even dedicated a chapter to the case in The Anatomy of Murder (1936).

Fransham had hired a private-detective because he has been receiving anonymous letters with shotguns drawings on them. An obvious reference to a fatal shooting incident that had killed his brother-in-law, but there are many people, such as the now retired Superintendent Hanslet, who are convinced Fransham had shot his brother-in-law. Simply made it look like an unfortunate hunting accident.

So there are more than enough potential leads to follow up on and then there's the genuinely clever method for introducing a lethal dose of digitalis into a piece of vegetable marrow. A problem clevery explained by Dr. Lancelot Priestley over the dinner-table and also solved the puzzling problem of damp, water-damaged envelope. Sadly, Dr. Priestley is only peripherally involved and acts more as a soundboard to Waghorn than as a armchair detective. Nonetheless, the poisoning method Dr. Priestley laid bare was as cunning and inventive as the unusual poisoning method from Gladys Mitchell's little-known The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959). But the poisoning of the vegetable marrow also happened to be the only aspect of the plot that lifted the story, ever so slightly, above average. Only very briefly.

Vegetable Duck has some good detective work with several interesting plot-threads, but, as a whole, the story has nothing to justify the inordinate amount of praise it has received over the decades, because the murderer really sticks out and can easily be pointed out the moment this character enters the story – becoming even harder to ignore when a second murder is committed. While the murderer's identity is obvious, you're not given sufficient clues to work out any of the (other) problems for yourself. So, even as a howdunit, you can hardly label it as a perfect, five-star mystery novel.

Admittedly, the book was not as poorly plotted as The Milk-Churn Murder (1935) or as dull a story as Death Leaves No Card (1940), but neither was it anywhere near as good or brilliant as any of the earlier mentioned titles. My unmet expectations killed any possible enjoyment I might otherwise have gotten out of it. Not entirely fair, I know, but I went into the story expecting a monument of the series. Evidently, this happened not to be the case.

Anyway, I have complained and rambled on long enough. Vegetable Duck didn't work out for me, but there's more where that book came from and will simply lift another John Rhode title from the big pile in the coming weeks or months. The Robthorne Mystery (1934), Mystery at Olympia (1935), Death at Breakfast (1936) and Nothing But the Truth (1947) all look very promising. So stay tuned.

Invisible Weapons (1938) by John Rhode

Major Cecil John Charles Street was simply John Street to his personal acquaintances and is remembered by mystery readers as either "John Rhode" or "Miles Burton," two of his pennames that were signed to over a hundred detective novels, but Street was tarred and feathered as a humdrum writer by the detractors of the cerebral detective story – which likely played a part in obscuring Street's work after his passing in 1964. At least until recently, that is.

This decade has blossomed into a renaissance era for the traditional detective story and an ever-expanding band of long-neglected mystery writers are finding their way back into print.

John Bude, Christopher Bush, E.R. Punshon, Harriet Rutland and Roger Scarlett are just a handful of examples of mystery writers who have recently been rescued from biblioblivion, but, now that humdrum is no longer a derogatory term, J.J. Connington and Freeman Wills Crofts also reappeared in print. Crofts is even shedding his undeserved, completely slanderous, reputation as the writer who cured insomnia.

Street is considered by many as the headmaster of the humdrum school, but is lagging behind Connington and Crofts when it comes to getting his work reprinted. British Library reissued The Secret of High Eldersham (1930) and Death in the Tunnel (1936) and Ramble House printed new editions of Death Leaves No Card (1940) and A Smell of Smoke (1959) – all four of them published as by "Miles Burton." A pseudonym Street used for his secondary series-characters, Desmond Merrion and Inspector Arnold.

However, Street is best remembered, if remembered at all, for the detective novels he wrote as "John Rhode" and they, too, are finally starting to reappear in print!

HarperCollins is currently reprinting an entire series of obscure, long-overlooked mystery novels as Detective Club Crime Classics and Rhode's primary series-characters, Dr. Lancelot Priestley, is part of the lineup! Brand new editions of Death at Breakfast (1936) and Invisible Weapons (1938) have already hit the shelves, which will be followed later this year by The Paddington Mystery (1925) and Mystery at Olympia (1935). So the mystery readers who love meticulous plotted detective stories have something to look forward to!

Invisible Weapons was released only a week, or two, ago and immediately snatched a copy for my personal locked room library. Yes, this is one of Rhode's altogether too rare excursions into the impossible crime genre and the apparently inexplicable murder from the first, of two, parts of the story would have been right at home on the pages of a Carter Dickson novel. You can even make a case that the first murder here is, kind of, a relative of the two impossible slayings in The Unicorn Murders (1935), which looked like the work of the legendary (invisible) unicorn – except that Rhode offered a different explanation. And the overall story was, as to be expected, more down to earth.

The story begins with Constable Linton of the Abberminster Police going around to the home of Dr. Thornborough, aptly named Epidaurus, to discuss a local nuisance, Alfie Prince, but the doctor is not home and the constable is asked to wait for him in the consulting-room. And there he hears how another unexpected visitor arrives at the home.

Robert Fransham is Mrs. Thornborough's uncle and claims to have received an invitation to come down, from London, to discuss a private matter, but the Dr. Thornborough never wrote such a letter and now Fransham failed to emerge from the cloakroom – where he was washing his hands. So the constable has to batter down the locked door and inside they find the body of Fransham stretched on the floor with an inexplicable wound in his forehead. The cloakroom had been locked on the inside and the only window had a small, open panel of frosted glass, which looked out on upon the carriage-way and the outside of this window was protected by stout iron bars. Framsham's chauffeur, Coates, was in full view of the carriage-way and swears nobody had entered the carriage-way at the time of the murder.

Superintendent Yateley favors Dr. Thornborough as the murderer, but he has no way of proving it. The cloakroom had been locked on the inside and no murder weapon had been found there, which makes the use of a projectile unlikely. So he calls upon Scotland Yard to figure out how the murder was committed and Superintendent Hanslet assigns young Inspector Jimmy Waghorn to the case. Waghorn represents here, somewhat, of a weak link in the overall plot.

Steve, the Puzzle Doctor, of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, was one of the first to review this new edition and observed that Waghorn's fluctuating intelligence is on full display here. I agree.

Waghorn showed competence when questioning people, gathering information and even making an important discovery in the wall that faced the window of the cloakroom, but was unable to put two and two together to work out the murder method – a nifty, innovative new take on an old trick. A seasoned armchair detective will have no problem imagining how the locked room trick was worked when learning the shape of the wound in combination with the situation within that cloakroom. So why Waghorn didn't catch on is a little baffling.

Still, I had fun in the first part putting together, what turned out to be, a false solution largely based on Fransham personality, his (family) back-story and a worn greatcoat from the First World War. I began to warm to my own theory as it began to take shape, but, at the end of the first part, Waghorn admitted defeat and threw the towel in the ring.

The second part of the story concerns the death of Sir Godfrey Branstock, who was found dead in his own wine cellar during his birthday party, but the peculiar link here is that Sir Godfrey was the next door neighbor and landlord of Fransham! And we all know that can't be a coincidence.

At this point in the story, Dr. Lancelot Priestley, who made a brief appearance in the first half of the book, becomes more active and helps Waghorn and Hanslet with figuring out how both murders were pulled off. Priestley gives an after-dinner demonstration how the murder weapon in Fransham case could have a vanished from a locked room using a calf's head and his explanation for the murder of Sir Godfrey shows why Rhode was the genre's engineer of crime.

On a whole, the logical explanation fitted together very nicely. Not just how the murders were committed, but also the identity of the culprit and how the crimes were linked together, which turned out to have a (somewhat) original motive for the murder of Fransham – giving his death a shade of tragedy. I also liked the matter-of-fact ending in which Rhode stated that the murderer was committed to trial, found guilty by a jury and "condemned to death." I wonder if the murderer was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint. Anyway...

You can place question marks behind the feasibility of the murder methods, but the ingenuity of the plots is one of the hallmarks of Rhode's detective-fiction and is what makes them so fun to read. Bush and Crofts were craftsmen who constructed and destroyed cast-iron alibis. John Dickson Carr found out ways to accomplish the seemingly impossible and Rhode was a technically-minded writer who used the marvels of modern science and mechanics to shed people of their mortal coil. Invisible Weapons is a good example of his technical prowess and ingenuity. Highly recommended to everyone who loves pure, plot-oriented detective stories.

I hope HarperCollins, or any publisher out there, continues to reissue his work, because there many titles within his immense body of work that need to be reprinted as soon as possible. Personally, I would like to see Death at Low-Tide (1938), Murder, M.D. (1943), The Three-Corpse Trick (1944) and The Cat Jumps (1946) getting reprinted, which are part of the Desmond Merrion series. As for the Dr. Priestley novels, I would very much like to see Dead Men at the Folly (1932), The Corpse in the Car (1935), The Bloody Tower (1938), Vegetable Duck (1944) and Twice Dead (1960) appear back into print. So, if any publisher is reading this, you would do all of us a great service if you can get those reputed gems on our bookshelves. I believe Steve, the Puzzle Doctor, wants to talk with you about getting Brian Flynn reprinted. 

So far my rambling review and I'll be returning to Bush for the next one. 

The Fourth Alternative

"To every reasonable theory of the cause of his death they raised some technical objection."

- Inspector Arnold (Miles Burton's Death Leaves No Card, 1944)

Earlier this month, "Puzzle Doctor," who blogs over at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, announced he was embarking on a month-long Rhode-a-Thon, called #IReadRhode, which came shortly after my review of Death in the Tunnel (1936) and was swiftly followed by a blog-post about that book's immediate predecessor – namely the slightly disappointing The Milk-Churn Murder (1935).

Well, I had done my miles on the Rhode less traveled, but Death in the Tunnel and The Milk-Churn Murder both came from the Desmond Merrion series, published under the byline of "Miles Burton," and it had been a while since I read one of his Dr. Lancelot Priestley novels. So, I reasoned, why not use this convenient excuse of a Rhode-a-Thon to return to Rhode's work for a third time this month. The book I ended up with has been praised by the likes of Jacques Barzun for its clever, innovative and unique plot: Death in Harley Street (1946).

Death in Harley Street opens in the study of Dr. Lancelot Priestley, "an eminent if somewhat eccentric scientist" who "had adopted as his hobby the whole theory of criminal investigation," where a small clutch of his friends had assembled: a retired Superintendent Hanslet, Superintendent Waghorn and an elderly, successful general practitioner, Dr. Oldland – who found himself in a comfortable state of semi-retirement. It was not the first time they gathered in that study and it was tradition for Priestley to enthrone himself behind his desk, "apparently in a state of complete torpor," to listen to the problems of the police.

As the equal eminent Dr. Oldland remarks on this occasion, it's usually the pair of coppers "who take the floor and hardly let a chap get a word in edgeways," but on this particular evening he wants to hear Dr. Priestley's opinion on the strange death that befell one of his colleagues.

Dr. Richard Mawsley of Harley Street, "the leading authority on glandular diseases," was alone in his consulting-room when his butler, Phepson, heard a dull thud and the rattle of a door handle, which was followed by the faint, muffled sounds of movement from the adjoining dispensary. Suddenly, there was "a blood-curdling cry and a sickening crash." Dr. Mawsley was discovered on the floor of his dispensary, "writhing in agony," with the coat sleeve and cuff of his left forearm rolled up, which revealed a fresh puncture mark and near him lay the pieces of a broken hypodermic syringe – on the bench stood a phial, the rubber cap torn off, which bore a label identifying its content as strychnine.

Evidently, the gland specialist had been injected with a lethal dose of poison, but how this came about seems to be an unanswerable question.

Suicide appears to be out of the question: Dr. Mawsley was a reserved, self-centered man who loved to see his wealth accumulate and on the evening of his death he received incredible good news from a visiting lawyer. One of his first patients had remembered him in her will and he found himself the recipient of a generous, entirely unexpected legacy. A legacy to the tune of five thousand pounds. The lawyer, who was the doctor's last visitor, left him in the best of spirits, which is another strike against the possibility of suicide. Murder is equally improbable for a litany of reasons, but the most obvious ones are that there were no signs of a struggle or an opportunity for a nebulous murderer to enter (and leave) a room that was under constant observation.

So everyone, including the courts, settled for the easiest possible explanation, namely accidental death, but, as Oldland remarked, for "a medical man of his experience" to "make such a mistake was extraordinary" – even though it appears to be the only answer that made remotely sense.

Well, Dr. Priestley agrees that the case is exceptional and states that the circumstances exclude accident, suicide or murder and "a fourth alternative should be sought," which got him permission to reopen the case with Jimmy Waghorn as his legman. First the thing you’ll notice from the subsequent investigation is that Rhode gave more than his usual consideration to characterization and in particular the personality of the dead doctor.

At his best, Dr. Mawsley was considered as a man of "all head and no heart." A man widely respected in the medical world as one of the best gland specialist of his time, but this respect never extended to the person behind the reputation. At his absolute worst, he was considered to be "an inveterate fee-snatcher" and he had no interest in seeing people whose primary source of income was a weekly pay envelope, which resulted in the unnecessary death of several people.

So combine this piece of well-done characterization, especially by Rhode's own standard, with the baffling premise, as well as its clever and original explanation, and you got a potential classic on your hands, but what keeps the book from attaining a place in the first ranks of the genre is the conversational-style of the plot – which gave the story the pace of a dying snail. I do not believe the pace should take anything away from the shimmering brilliance of the plot, but there's no getting away from the fact that Death in Harley Street is an incredible slow moving story and you should keep that in mind.

As you probably gathered from this padded review, the conversational approach Rhode took to the plot and writing makes it kind of hard to make any pointed observation. Not without giving something of importance away. I mean, I noticed one part of the solution, which did not involve the fourth alternative, strongly resembled the plot of an Agatha Christie novel, but naming that specific book would probably give away the identity of the murderer and motive to a perceptive reader.

But rest assured, the book is well worth the attention of fans of vintage mysteries and if you happen to be one of those readers, like yours truly, who loves to play armchair detective than you'll enjoy trying to figure out what the fourth alternative is. In that case, the slow pace of the book might even be a positive attribute, because it gives you the time needed to consider all of the evidence.

For my next read, I have selected a detective story with a plot that reportedly contributed a piece of military strategy for the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe.

A Barrel Full of Red Herrings

"A quarrel is like buttermilk: once it's out of the churn, the more you shake it, the more sour it grows."

- proverb 

On the tail of my review of Death in the Tunnel (1936), the Puzzle Doctor announced his embarkation on a month-long Rhode-a-Thon and Vintage Pop Fictions posted an enticing review of Death at Low Tide (1938), which managed to immediately lure me back to the works of John Street – who penned over a hundred of plot-driven mystery novels as "John Rhode," "Miles Burton" and "Cecil Waye." Initially, I wanted to read one of his Dr. Lancelot Priestley novels, but ended up settling for the book that preceded Death in the Tunnel.

The Milk-Churn Murder (1935), alternatively known as The Clue of the Silver Brush, began very promising as the opening chapter painted a charming picture of rural dairy farming in "the small hamlet of Tolsham." A place called Starvesparrow Farm, owned and run by the short-tempered Mr. Hollybud, is used an example to illustrate how the milk is transported from the local farms to the dairies for processing.

But one day, the working routine is broken by a sensational and gruesome discovery that "set the police a problem which at one time it seemed they would never solve."

The break in routine came when a lorry-driver from the dairy picked up an extra, unaccountable milk-churn from Mr. Hollybud's farm and at first glance the content seems to be pig-wash, but the "curious liquid" turns out to be something more disgusting than simple pig-wash – a pottage of milk, water, formalin and the dismembered body parts of a man. Only the head was missing! There were also an assortment of particulars found in the churn: a sharpened, ivory-handled carving-knife, an old leather wallet, horn-rimmed spectacles without lenses, a railway guide and a key to a hotel room, which were wrapped inside a blood-stained flannel vest. Some of these items also had initials scrawled on them, namely "A.L.S."

Chief Constable of Wessex immediately put in a call for assistance to Scotland Yard and that same afternoon Inspector Arnold from the Criminal Investigation Department arrived in the vicinity, but there's barely a chapter between his primarily investigation and him sending an invitation to his friend, Desmond Merrion – who has made a name for himself as an amateur detective. Here's where the story slowly began to sour for me.

Merrion comes to the conclusion that "the murderer is a pretty cunning bloke," but is also "one of those people who can't resist the temptation to gild the lily" and seems to be very "fond of red herrings," which he seems to have dragged across every trail they uncovered.

However, the first problem is that Merrion seems a bit too omniscient when it comes to separating the manufactured pieces of evidence from the real ones. Or when correctly guessed there might have been as second person who left bread crumbs for the police to find. It also makes you wonder why the murderer did not simply drove the innocently looking milk-churn to a quiet, remote and rarely frequented spot in the English countryside and simply buried it, but that would have been entirely forgivable as the investigate parts of the story were not bad – which seems to be the best parts of the Miles Burton books.  

What I have a problem with is that the murderer turned out to be an unknown element in the story and only made an appearance when this person was identified, but the story did not end there. Unmercifully, the plot began to drag itself out and two additional bodies failed to sustain or renew my interest in the story. One of the murders was suppose to make it very personal for one of the detectives, but the personal note of the second murder was not done very convincing and the final murder, presented as a suicide, was very frustrating – because it stretched the story out over another chapter. Even the inspector eventually remarked that he was "sick to death of this infernal case."

Considering the renewed interest in Rhode/Burton, I really wish I had a better story to report back on, but this is what I found and it simply was not that good. I might take down a third Rhode/Burton title later this month and hope it'll even out this negative review, but The Milk-Churn Murder is a title that can only really be recommended to completists.

Hopefully, I'll have something better for my next blog-post.

Devilish Conspiracy

"The affair attracted enormous attention at the time, not only because of the arresting nature of the events, but even more for the absolute mystery in which they were shrouded."

- Freeman Wills Crofts' "The Mystery of the Sleeping Car-Express" (1921), collected in The Mystery of the Sleeping Car-Express and Other Stories (1956)

I have covered John Street, or "John Rhode," before on this blog, but not as often as I would have liked to.

Rhode had a technical mind and he could be described as a mechanic of detective fiction who engineered and constructed over a hundred tricky plots, which was not necessarily restricted to his own body of work – as he was credited by John Dickson Carr as the co-author of Fatal Descent (1939) for his relatively small, but very technical, contribution to the plot. But his reputation as a wholesaler of clever and ingenious contrived plots is best illustrated in an anecdote from Christianna Brand. She once suffered from a pesky case of writer's block and Rhode kindly offered the then young novelist to come down to his place, examine his bookshelves and help herself to one of his plots. Assuring her that she was "most welcome" to do so. What a gentleman!

Evidently, Rhode was a man who knew his way around a plot and his output was probably the closest you could get to an emporium of nefarious schemes, devilish plots and cleverly fabricated puzzles, but they tended to be technical in nature – which earned him an undeserved reputation in the post-World War II landscape of the genre as a boring, sleep inducing writer. You only have to read such titles as The House on Tollard Ridge (1929), Death on the Board (1937) and Men Die at Cyprus Lodge (1943) to know how wrong the detractors of the so-called humdrum writers were about Rhode. He was first and foremost a plotter, which meant characterization often took a backseat in favor of the plot.

One of the negative side effects of being reputedly dull was Rhode's name sliding into obscurity and a large swath of his work became rare or fairly hard to get, which naturally meant prize-tags with double, triple or even quadruple digits scrawled on them – effectively keeping them out of the hands of ordinary readers. So I have been carefully rationing the small stack of his books acquired over the years, but, recently, they appear to have reached the front of the line of Golden Age mysteries that were waiting to be reprinted. That brings us to the subject of today's review.

Death in the Tunnel (1936) originally appeared under Rhode's second byline, "Miles Burton," which has recently been republished by the Poisoned Pen Press as a British Library Crime Classic and is prefaced with an excellent introduction by Martin Edwards – who recently swooped up an Edgar statuette for The Golden Age of Murder (2015).

Sir Wilfred Saxonby is the president of an import company, Wigland & Bunthorne Ltd, who serves his community as the chairman of the local Bench of magistrates, but he "was a man of temperate" and "frugal habits." As a magistrate, his philosophy was that "the law was an excellent thing" and considered himself "a firm supporter of it," but it was made for a different class of people and did not always felt bound by it himself – which did not prevent him from being reluctant "to temper justice with mercy" when acting in the capacity of magistrate. So not exactly "the sort of character who inspires affection."

There seems to have been something very irregular on Sir Wilfred's mind when he boarded the train from London's Cannon Street to his home in Stourford for the very last time. He pressed a one-pound note in the hands of the train guard, Mr. Turner, to find him a first-class carriage to himself, which he was able to do and locked him into the compartment. Sir Wilfred is left to his own devices, but when Turner returns to the supposedly secure and impromptu private-compartment he discovers the body of his once generous passenger. Shot through the heart!

Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard is assigned to the case and the problem confronting him is rife with contradictory evidence. The death of Sir Wilfred is either a case of suicide or murder. There are some points in favor of the former: a small, automatic pistol engraved with his initials is found near the body, the request for private carriage that was locked and he sent his children abroad – which could have been done to make sure that they would not be suspected if the authorities mistook his death for a murder. Only problem is that he lacked a clear and conceivable motive for taking his own life. Business was thriving and he was opposed to the idea of suicide, but the presence of a mysterious murderer seems, literarily, an impossibility.

So Arnold turns to his good friend, Desmond Merrion, who's "something of an amateur criminologist" and even he remarks how "there is at least as much evidence in support of the theory of suicide as there is against it," which makes for an engrossing and meticulous investigation – as they sift through the evidence and hypothesize about the various clues. The best part of their investigation is figuring out what exactly happened when the train went into the titular tunnel on that fateful journey. A situation that forms the meat of the impossible situation of the plot.

When the train entered the Blackdown Tunnel, the driver claims to have been "held up by a man waving a red lamp," assuming it was simply someone working on the line, and "clapped on the brakes," but then the light changed to green and the train rattled on without losing too much time. There is, however, one peculiarity about this seemingly unimportant incident: nobody was reported or scheduled to work in the tunnel at the time and "some unauthorized person" could not have entered the tunnel, because at each end there's a signal cabin and "nobody could possibly get in without being seen by the men on duty."

My favorite part of the book is probably the exploration of the tunnel as trains murderously roared past them and more than once they had to crawl into one of refuges in the wall for safety. Arnold and Merrion are well rewarded for braving these dangers, because they discover some important pieces of evidence, such as shattered fragments of glass, which seem to indicate Sir Wilfed was the victim of a vast, strange and sinister conspiracy. But even better is the explanation they work out for entering and leaving a sealed and watched train tunnel, which does not hinge upon a spare uniform from a railway worker.

The method is very involved and perhaps a bit too clever for its own good, but you have to admire Rhode for finding a hidden Judas window inside a train tunnel!

Anyway, Death in the Tunnel concerns itself almost entirely with the reconstruction of the shooting and the particulars found on the body, which is both a major strength and weakness of the book. If you love pure, unadulterated detective work this book is for you, but, as a consequence, even I found the characters to be cardboard-like. I can usually forgive shallow characterization, if the plot is good, but even I can't deny the characters here where nothing more than chessmen. Death in the Tunnel is also primarily a how-dun-it and this came at the cost of the who and why, which is what bars the book from a place in the top ranks of the genre because the plot-thread explaining the motivation for this admittedly devilish ingenious conspiracy was introduced in the final part of the story.

I believe that could've been handled a bit better by a professional plotter, which Rhode was, but, if you read the book purely as a how dun it, they become fairly minor complaints. Above all, it's simply a lot of old-fashioned fun to read how Arnold and Merrion take apart the mechanics of a very tricky criminal conspiracy. It makes for an engaging and involved reading experience.  

Finally, Death in the Tunnel also made me want to read more from the so-called school of humdrum detectives, which even include writers I have not even touched yet! Scandalous, I know. How dare I label myself as rabid and fanatical when it comes to vintage mysteries, but give me some time. I'll get there and, in the mean time, you can look forward to more of these reviews. Oh, you lucky, you!

The Auspicating Bone Counter Murders

"Calm down, doctor! Now's not the time for fear. That comes later."

- Bane (The Dark Knight Rises, 2012)

First of all, an explanation is needed for the unusual and archaic-sounding post-title I slapped on this review, which is nothing more than a contorted attempt at linking Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders (1936) with John Rhode's The Murders in Praed Street (1928) – one of the first detective novels to examine the handy work of a serial killer.

John Rhode has a reputation for being a dry and dull writer, whose books herded flocks of insomniacs to dreamier pastures, but I think that reputation is undeserved. Back in 2011, I wrote jubilating review of Death on the Board (1937), in which I "defended" Rhode against the charge of being dull and have often praised The House on Tollard Ridge (1929) and Men Die at Cyprus Lodge (1943) – both handling the haunted house setting in a sober and rational manner. The Murders in Praed Street is basically an overdose of imagination peppered with out-right acts of super villainy!

The opening of the story depicts the shop strewn Praed Street, which has turned in recent years in a dreary traffic artery of London, and the people who toil there. There's the simple-minded, but hardworking, green grocer, Mr. James Tovey. The chatty tobacconist, Sam Copperdock, whose son, Ted, is friendly with Tovey's daughter, Ivy. And the herbalist, Ludgrove, is the confident of many of the secrets of the inhabitants of Praed Street.

After being lured from his home with a telephone call, Mr. Tovey collapses in the street with an unusual blade buried in his back. The old baker, Ben Colburn, buys a brand new pipe in Copperdock's shop and cuts his tongue on a poisoned crumb of glass lodged in the stem and dies a few hours later. A middle-aged poet, Mr. Pargent, died under similar circumstances as the green grocer. The only thing Inspector Whyland has to connect these deaths is that each victim received a white bone counter, about the size of a half penny, with red roman numerals etched on them in sequential numbering. But it gets better!

A former resident of Praed Street, Mr. Martin, who resided there as a receiver of stolen goods from only "the aristocracy of thieves," is lured back with a blackmail note and is poisoned in the small cellar of No. 407, Praed Street. The house was locked and bolted from within, windows securely fastened and the body blocked the door of the cellar – and all of the keys were accounted for. And even if we learned of the solution in the next chapter, it's still a bone-fide locked room mystery and there was even more impossible material. Another bone counter was found in someone's bedroom when the house was locked up and the key in possession of the owner. Not very difficult to solve, but I appreciated its inclusion nonetheless.

This is the point where Dr. Priestley enters the picture, but the analytical and cerebral is incredible dense here and that may be due to his personal involvement in the case. The murderer is easily spotted as was the then original, well hidden-and clued motive that will be viewed today as hackneyed, but you can't slam Rhode for coming up with it first. However, the background of the motive reads like an origin story of a hero (Priestley) creating a super villain (the murderer) and involves something that is still considered controversial today. I couldn't help but feel somewhat sorry for the murderer and Priestley came-off as a dick in that part.

Under its pulp-like exterior, The Murders in Praed Street has a lot of modern-day grim and grit. It's the Golden Age of Detectives' answer to The Dark Knight Rises and I just love how apt the opening quote of this post is for this book. Even the endings share some similarities. But for the villainy, Rhode seems to have tapped from the Sherlock Holmes canon. The image of The Black Sailor and the numeral warnings recalled the vengeful Jonathan Small from The Sign of Four (1890) and Rhode's love for deadly gadgets got echoed another one of Holmes' iconic adversaries.

My only quibble is that none of the victims made the connection themselves. It seems such an obvious thing to remember, especially in the face of a rising body count. Anyway, I was glad to discover that I had not become too jaded and was still able to enjoy the ride, even if it's one of the oldest, timeworn rides in the park.

Oh, and shame on you, Mr. Rhode. Writing about working class people and criminal folks, and addressing controversial topics while you're at it, when you're suppose to be writing posh thrillers with smart aleck dialogue or the gentry's plight. You were a man and published this book in 1928. What are scholars supposed to do with you? Do you think Curt Evans' book, Masters of the Humdrum Mystery: CecilJohn Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961 (2012), hawks itself? 

A Casualty of War

"All war is deception."

- Sun Tzu.

I can't remember if I brought this up before or not, but I have a soft spot for detective stories set during the dark years of WWII. The atmosphere provided by the black-outs, food rationing, air-raid drills and German bombers roaming the skies are often integral to the plot and offer up a picture of a time that now seems as far removed from our every day reality as a medieval castle under siege – even though there are still people around who lived through the war that tore the European continent asunder.

It was also a period that had the elements needed to furnish a story with an array of backdrops, characters, circumstances and motives unique to that point in history and these scenarios were explored in-depth by mystery writers, back then and now, in their stories. Case in point: John Rhode's The Fourth Bomb (1942).

Yardley Green is one of those sleepy hamlets, tucked away in the placid, slumberous countryside, which makes it an unlikely military objective for air raids from enemy bombers, however, one evening the dozing members of this community find themselves rudely awakened when an enemy aircraft drops a stick of bombs on them – which leaves two people wounded and one dead. The only fatality is a merchant in precious stones, Mr. Sam Gazeley, found in a ditch beside the crater of the fourth bomb and naturally the local authorities presume that the man was killed by the impact of the blast – and chalk his name up among the casualties of war.

But was Sam Gazeley a victim of an enemy attack or was he perhaps struck down by someone a lot closer to home? The situation at the bomb site seems to be favoring the former, but it quickly proves to be a problematic solution that is unable to erase every single question mark, that are doodled all over this case, when it becomes clear that a special belt, with small pockets filled with valuable diamonds, was not strapped around the waist of the dead merchant – and failed to turn up on what now turns out to be a crime-scene. As a result, Jimmy Waghorn is drawn into the case and he quickly comes into contact with a witness who spoke with Gazeley at the moment when the German aircraft began unloading its explosive cargo on Yardley Green!

Unfortunately, Waghorn is also tied to the Intelligence bureau, which does not give him the time needed to close the book on this investigation himself, but there's always his old friend, Dr. Lancelot Priestley.

The opening chapters were bursting with promise, demonstrating once again the dubious nature of the claims that John Rhode penned stories that could turn every long-suffering insomniac into a droopy-eyed Rip van Winkle, but this time that quality of story telling didn't sustain itself and the middle section can easily be summed up as a distribution point for providing his severest critics with ammunition. It was lethargic, repetitive, and, worst of all, just plain dull! The plot came into motion again when Dr. Priestley took over from Jimmy Waghorn, but that was when there were only thirty pages left to go and I was simply incapable of caring who had done in Gazeley (or what had happened to the diamonds) at that point in the story. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I rather liked watching the cerebral Dr. Priestley play the role of a modern day dues ex machina, logically explaining that what eluded mere mortals, and the final chapter was very well written – even if the ironic turn of events was rather predictable.

The Fourth Bomb is a classic example of a novel that should've been a novella at most. It has an excellent set-up and the solution is adequate, showing a rather clever crime made possible due to the wartime conditions, but everything that was uncovered in between them should've been condensed to one or two chapters – which would've made for a splendid novella instead of the bogged down novel that it is now.

Going over this review, I can't help but be surprised at how another disappointing read translated itself into a shoddily written review. Why can't I be better at this stuff?

Anyway, on a slightly unrelated note: I have found a solution to the ratio problem between GAD and Post-GAD reviews. I wedge this Golden Era between 1920 and 1950, but since I will partake in Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge of 2012 I will simply copy her Gold standard by adding a decade to mine – which will immediately smoothen out the discrepancy in the ratio. Moving the goalpost: problem solved... for now. ;)