These Names Make Clues (1937) by E.C.R. Lorac

Edith Rivett was a British mystery writer who prolifically produced detective novels and short stories under two different pseudonyms, "E.C.R. Lorac" and "Carol Carnac," but she was a second-stringer with her seventy some novels being very uneven in quality – contributing to their decent into obscurity following her death in 1958. If you asked about Lorac, you usually got a mixed response.

A few years ago, I reviewed Death Came Softly (1943) and Nick Fuller commented Lorac is like "a cross between John Rhode and Ngiao Marsh" with "the worst aspects of both," while JJ countered that he remained "curious about Lorac purely on account of the uncommon ways she approaches what should be fairly standard problems." Lately, I have noticed a shift and you can likely put it down to the recent run of British Library Crime Classic reprints. Martin Edwards and the British Library have slowly been rehabilitating Lorac's reputation by cherry picking her best detective novels to reprint. Checkmate to Murder (1944) was good enough, in spite of some of its obvious flaws, to reintroduce Lorac to my to-be-read pile. Bats in the Bellfry (1937), Murder in the Mill-Race (1952) and the once lost, now posthumously published, Two-Way Murder (2021) currently reside on the big pile, but one of the more recent reprints sounded too intriguing to ignore or put off for too long.

Martin Edwards described These Names Make Clues (1937) in his introduction as "an intriguing detective novel" closely "in tune with the mood of traditional detective fiction of the kind we associate with 'the Golden Age of Murder’ between the two world wars," but had been practically forgotten until British Library reprinted it. There were no secondhand copies for sale on the internet nor any critical commentary in the reference books. Only a very short review from 2008 on the GADetection Wiki. Going into the book, I half-expected something along the lines of Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table (1936), but These Names Make Clues struck me as a conscious imitation of Christopher Bush's detective novels from the same period – like Dead Man's Twice (1930), The Case of the April Fools (1933) and The Case of the Bonfire Body (1936). It's not just because of how the plot was structured with two closely-timed murders, but there were several references to the characters having "the cross-word mind." A variation on a phrase I have only come across in Bush's novels to describe his series-detective, Ludovic Travers. But let's get to the story! 

These Names Make Clues begins with Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald going through his correspondence and finding an invitation from Graham Coombe and his sister, Miss Susan Coombe, to a Treasure Hunt at Caroline House on April's Fools Day.

Graham Coombe is a celebrated publisher whose firm had produced the bestseller Murder by Mesmerism, which Macdonald had sharply criticized during a diner with Coombe without being aware he had published the book. So the invitation challenges Macdonald to pit his "wits against those of the thriller writers, and others, who are competing" in a Treasure Hunt with "clues of a Literary, Historical and Practical nature" provided to the contestants. Coombe gathered eight writers to participate in the game. Nadia Delareign, Andrew Gardien, Ronile Rees and Denzil Strafford represent the so-called "thriller merchants" and Valerie Woodstock (history), Louise Etherton (romance), Digby Bourne (travel) and Ashton Vale (economics) the straight writers. All of the contestants, who have never met before, is given a pseudonym and "a clue to unravel," which has to be deciphered to get to the next stage in the game. The library and telephone-room with guides and timetables is at their disposal. The hunt ends with a final test during which each guest will be allowed to ask six questions in an attempt to deduce, or guess, the identities of their fellow guests.

Macdonald finds himself in the hospitality of a publisher "who turned the other cheek to the smiter" and "who at the same time challenged the critic to use his wits in practical combat against those whom he had derided," which makes him feel like he was hoist with his own petard, but set to work – working his way through a variety of clues and running ahead in the Treasure Hunt. The whole evening begins to acquire "a Mad Hatter quality" when the main fuse blows and the house is plunged into darkness. When the lights are finally restored, the body of Andrew Gardien is discovered in the telephone-room. Apparently, Gardien died of heart failure following a shock, but marks on his hands and a minute fraying of copper wire makes Macdonald suspect the thriller writer had been cleverly electrocuted. And the murderer had removed the gadget that did the trick. Interestingly, Gardien earned the nickname "Master Mechanic" due "to his ingenuity in inventing methods of killing based on simple mechanical contraptions" involving "bits of cord and wire and counterpoises."

Now the "Lights Out, Murder!" trope tends to be one of the genuine hacky and trite cliches of the genre, which actually would be more of obstacle to the murderer than a cover, but These Names Make Clues is an exception to the rule. Lorac had a very simple, but good, explanation why the house went dark. Particularly liked how the blown fuse ended up affecting the murderer's plan. One of Lorac's more ingenious and inspired pieces of plotting. So with a good reason for the blackout in place, the movement of everyone involved becomes much more interesting with several of the guests swearing they saw an uninvited person in the house leading up to the murder. A gray-haired, flat-footed gentleman who's nowhere to be found when the lights come back on, but this mysterious interloper is not the only complication Macdonald has to contend with.

Macdonald has a potential murder on his hands with a victim who had completely obscures his identity and past life, which becomes even more mysterious when Gardien's literary agent is shot in his private office. Gardien's name was accusingly written on the blotting paper and a gun is discovered entangled in the mechanisms of a grandfather clock, but the timing between the two deaths simply don't add up for them to have killed one another. So what really happened to those two mysterious men that lead to their equally mysterious deaths? 

These Names Make Clues is a tremendously enjoyable mystery novel in which Lorac tried to rise above her status as a second-stringer with a tricky plot attuned "attuned to the cross-word method, anagrams and reversals" with several cleverly contrived death traps. There are, however, some of Lorac's usual flaws show up like her roundabout way (like JJ said) in which she approached what should have been a fairly straightforward problem. I think the second death needlessly complicated the case and it would perhaps have better if that death had been immediately explained, which would have then added another layer of mystification to Gardien's murder. Like a lot of second-stringers, Lorac's strength was not in creating misleading, double-edged clues or even more treacherous red herrings and reasoning your way to the solution requires a bit of inspired guesswork – which is normally a serious flaw in any detective story. But the story and characters were so enjoyable, I found myself in an extremely forgiving mood. Martin Edwards noted in his introduction Lorac was elected to membership to "the world's first social network for detective novelists," the Detection Club, in 1937 (same year as Bush) and she likely "drew inspiration from her experiences and encounters on becoming a member of the Detection Club" for These Names Make Clues. For example, Miss Romile Rees, who writes as R. Rees, is "accepted by the critics as a man" on account of her dry, mordant style. Something that has happened to Lorac herself as there were not many female mystery writers who toyed around with mechanical death traps. A toy commonly associated with the technical-minded writers of the humdrum school. Speaking of the humdrums, I think Lorac subtly namedropped a few of John Rhode's pavement-themed names (like "Major Road ahead" and "just off John Street").

Something else I always admired about Lorac's novels, which is very much present in These Names Make Clues, is her awareness of what was happening in Britain and Europe before, during and after the Second World War. Checkmate to Murder and Murder by Matchlight (1945) depicted the squalor of blackouted London during the Blitz, while Fire in the Thatch (1946) takes place among the bombed-out houses of a scarred, post-war London. These Names Make Clues was written several years before the outbreak of the war, but the possibility of war is already present here with several characters being convinced pacifists and members of the Peace in our Time campaign. You can fill entire bookshelves with detective novels and short story taking place during or after the Second World War, but very few mystery writers were prescient enough to tackle a potential war during the 1930s. Only names that come to mind are E.R. Punshon (Crossword Mystery, 1934) and Darwin L. Teilhet (The Talking Sparrow Murders, 1934). This gives Lorac's novels a kind of unintended historical flavor that I can always appreciate. 

These Names Make Clues has some of the flaws you come to expect from Lorac, but the overall package of characters, plot and storytelling made it something very much worth resurrecting from the depths of biblioblivion. And, if these British Library reprints are representative of her best novels, Lorac could very well secure a place among my favorite second-stringers of the genre.