"Cards are war, in the disguise of a sport"- Charles Lamb
Anthony Boucher (rhymes with voucher) tends to
linger on in our collective memories as a critic, whose compendium of newspaper
reviews, published under the title The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews
and Commentaries (1942-1947), has become an important reference guide for
contemporary mystery fans excavating the genre's lost history, but aside from penning critical commentary, science
fiction stories, radio plays or compiling anthologies he also has seven
detective novels to his credit – including a triad of books in which he
confronts his private shamus, Fergus O'Breen, with a few very familiar tropes.
The Case of the Solid Key (1941) has him jimmying the door of a locked room problem and The
Case of the Seven Sneezes (1942) drops him off on an isolated, cut-off
islet with a murderer and an entire cast of suspects. Boucher's second endeavor
as a mystery novelist, The Case of the Crumpled Knave (1939), takes a
stab at the Queenian motif of the dying message.
Humphrey
Garnett was a former research scientist, attached to the military, who has
contented himself with doing private research from his private laboratory,
collecting vintage playing cards, playing four-handed chess and worked on a
five-pack solitaire, but he was not granted the time to complete these
projects. Someone spiked his drink with poison and the only clue the police have
to go on is a crumpled playing card they pried loose from Gernett's cold dead
hand. Luckily for them, Colonel Rand arrives from New York City at the home of
his old friend and he has a telegram that could refer the entire case to dusty,
cobweb strewn archives where the police store their solved cases.
Before he
faced his would-be-killer, Garnett dispatched a telegram to his old friend,
Colonel Rand, asking him to come to Los Angeles because he might be an
important witness at the inquest of his body. It turns out to be a pretty
accurate prediction. Colonel Rand identifies Richard Vinton, engaged to Kay
Garnett, Humphrey's daughter, as a cardsharp who used to work aboard ocean-liners
and the one to whom the crushed knave of diamonds must refer to, however, his fiancé
is not convinced and engages the services of her old childhood friend, Fergus O’Breen,
who has just opened up shop as a private investigator. Now that trouble is his
business and daily bread, he decided to take on the case.
O'Breen
goes over the Garnett household with a fine toothcomb and examines Kay herself
and her ineffectual uncle, Arthur Willowe, the lab-assistant and Vinton's
rival, Will Harding, the mysteries Camilla Sallice and few outsiders, but it's
one of the attendees of the classic drawing room scenes who sees the truth
after O'Breen delivered a clever, but wrong, solution and both of them have a
specific problem. The false solution appears to be lifted from a Nicholas Blake
novel and has nothing new to offer to a seasoned mystery reader. The correct
solution is not bad, but, as it is explained, you realize that you already knew
basically everything that is being told except that everything is now in its
proper place and context. I can see and appreciate what Boucher was trying to
do with this novel, but I can also understand readers who say "Oh, is that
all" after reading the final chapter.
Still,
the final part of the book might not deliver the punch promised in the set-up,
but it's still better than some detective stories I have read that were
actually a mess. I also enjoyed the characterization (especially of the amiable
Colonel Rand and the pathetic and longsuffering Arthur Willowe) and the entertaining
writing, which included some self-referential humor and even a bit of lamp shading ("It's against all rules,” Fergus groaned in desperation. “A new
character at this hour!”). However, it was not all laughs and giggles as
there were also a few interesting tidbits on playing cards and an interesting
discussion (read: condemnation) of modern warfare and all of its horrors –
especially against unarmed citizens. It's a bit discomforting to read knowning what the
world had to look forward to in 1939.
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