The Second Shot (1930) by Anthony Berkeley

Anthony Berkeley's The Second Shot (1930) is the sixth title in the Roger Sheringham series and was first published at the dawn of the Golden Decade when the traditional, plot-oriented detective story burst into energetic adolescence, but Berkeley was already looking decades ahead with The Second Shot – asking the question "what is the future of the detective story?" Berkeley prophesied in his dedication that "the puzzle element" will become "a puzzle of character" rather than "a puzzle of time, place, motive, and opportunity."

A type of detective story exploring "what remarkable combination of circumstances did bring X" to "the decision that nothing short of murder would meet the case," which is sadly the direction the genre went with by the time the 1960s rolled around.

So you might be worried to learn Berkeley endeavored to write "the story of a murder" rather than "the story of the detection of a murder" with The Second Shot, but Berkeley was more than a visionary. He was a talented plotter who understood that even the most detailed character portrait needs a frame to be truly complete. This is done here by not disclosing the murderer's identity and telling "the reader-detective" to "use his own wits a little more," because not all of his thinking is done for him here and showcases that valuable mystery writer's asset – namely the ability to lie through your teeth by strictly speaking the truth. You have to remember Berkeley was playing with these ideas when the pure, Golden Age detective story still had to produce most of its monumental classics. But did it work? Let's find out!

The Second Shot opens with a grabbed-from-the-headlines prologue reporting on "a shocking accident" that occurred at the residence of the scientific farmer and celebrated mystery novelist, John Hillyard. A small house party had staged an outdoors murder mystery at Minton Deeps Farm, but the pseudo-victim was found at the end of the day with a very real gunshot wound. And the police have their reasons to believe this was not an unfortunate accident with a carelessly-handled rifle.

The story then shifts to first-person narration with the manuscript of Cyril "Pinkie" Pinkerton, who comes across as, what I believe the British call, a bit of a posh twat.

Pinkerton had often thought of writing a detective story from the point-of-view of the murderer, "showing his hopes and terrors as the process of detection progresses," but now had an opportunity to put "academic theory" into "grim practice" – because he's primary suspect in a murder case. Pinkerton is a childhood friend of Mrs. Ethel Hillyard and was invited under a neutral flag to a house party given under false colors and an ulterior motive.

Mrs. Hillyard acts as the self-appointed guardian of the young daughter of a late friend of hers, Elsa Verity, who's "innocent in the ways of the world" and has fallen under the spell of a popular, well-known man-about-town and all-around cad. Eric Scott-Davies is a womanizer, mired in scandals, who's rapidly squandering the family fortunes. So, Mrs. Hillyard not being born yesterday, pretended to go along with Elsa's fancies and made her believe the party had been solely arranged for their benefit. But in reality, she mixed together a social party guaranteed to explode and consume Eric. Eric's name has been coupled with Sylvia de Ravel in the gossip columns and only her husband, Paul, gives the impression of being unaware of the affair, but Sylvia's not the kind of woman "who can be picked up, toyed with for a time, and then dropped," which is why Ethel invited them both. She also asked Eric's cousin, Armorel, to balance out the numbers, but she has her own reasons to prefer her unruly cousin dead rather than alive. Pinkerton is simply there to distract Elsa from Eric.

A potentially hazardous social gathering and, through Pinkerton's narrative, the reader sees the wheels of murder slowly grinding into motion, but the human element also begins to intrude as not everyone is what they appeared to be on first glance – in particular our narrator, Pinkerton, who becomes more likable as the story progresses. Berkeley delivered on his promise to craft a puzzle of characters and what makes them tick. But not to the deep, murky depths of the contemporary crime novel. Because the story still has a plot.

Once the mock-detective investigated the scene of the staged murder, the party returned to the farm and on their way back two shots, five minutes apart, where heard. When Eric failed to return, two of them went looking for him in the woods and found his lifeless body a short distance away from the scene of the staged murder. Since our narrator becomes the prime suspect, he dispatches a telegram to Roger Sheringham telling him he's stuck in "a perilous position" and urgently needs his help.

My confrere, "JJ" of The Invisible Event, complained in his 2016 review of The Second Shot that A Challenge to the Reader around the halfway mark, "the reader should now, at this stage in the story, be fully aware whose finger pulled the fatal trigger," rendered Sheringham subsequent investigation useless to the reader. But this is not entirely true. Firstly, Sheringham always brings a story to life with his energetic detective work and fanciful theories, which had its effect on the other (main) characters who become more human-like in his presence. And, noticeable, a comedic element slipped into the story (e.g. Armorel at the inquest). Secondly, Sheringham is the best of the so-called fallible detectives and his multiple, false-solution, particularly the last one, were needed to make the ending work – which is where Berkeley showed his brilliance. Although one aspect of the solution hasn't aged very well over the past ninety years.

The central idea behind the solution had already been experimented with in the 1920s, but The Second Shot would probably still have surprised readers in 1930. Readers who read Golden Age mysteries in 2020 are more genre-savvy than those in 1930 and this allows us to spot Berkeley telegraphing the final twist very early on in the story. Something that couldn't be more obvious, if he was semaphoring the murderer's name in your living-room. So, plot-technically, the story is a clever piece of work, but where the solution acquired a timeless quality is how it subverted its own premise.

Berkeley told in the dedication that "the days of the old crime puzzle pure and simple" where, if not numbered, at any rate in "the hands of the auditors" with "psychological ties" slowly replacing the hard puzzle pieces. This he said when the plot-driven detective story was only just beginning to bloom, but Berkeley wanted to write a character-driven tale of murder and basically an anti-detective story with Sheringham miserably failing at deducing the truth. Only to turn around and show the crime was executed with all the grandeur of a Golden Age detective story. Something you would expect from a writer like Ngaio Marsh! Yes, Berkeley was playing with the conventions of a type of crime fiction that would not fully emerge until two or three decades later! What a guy!

Some aspects of The Second Shot don't work as well in 2020 as they did in 1930, but the story, as a whole, is an excellent showcase of Berkeley's originality and talent as a plotter, which shined even when he was shining the spotlight on the characters – complimented with a superb use of the multiple twists and false solutions. So definitely recommended (sorry, JJ!).