Black Edged (1939) by Brian Flynn

So far, March has not been the month of the traditional detective story with reviews of 1970s retro-pulp, vampire murders, pastiches and Dutch and French pulp fiction from the 1960s, which wasn't done intentionally, but wanted to return to the regular whodunits and locked room mysteries of yore – decided to randomly pick one of my unread Brian Flynn novels. However, I forgot Flynn wasn't strictly a traditionalist himself. 

Flynn belongs to that rare group of prolific fiction writers who can boost he never wrote the same novel twice. Steve Barge, of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, who rediscovered Flynn and pens the introductions to the new Dean Street Press editions noted how Flynn "shifts from style to style from each book." You get a 1920s drawing-room mystery or Golden Age courtroom drama in one novel and a Victorian-era throwback or a hunt for a serial killer in the next. On more than one occasion, Flynn dived head-first into the thick, murky waters of the British pulps where John Russell Fearn and Gerald Verner lurk. Only things linking all of his work together are his series-detective, an undying love for Sherlock Holmes and simply wanting to write engaging and entertaining detective stories. And, more often than not, he succeeded in that a goal. Such as the book under review today. 

Black Edged (1939) is the 23rd entry in the Anthony Bathurst series and another example how willing Flynn was to experiment with the genre to produce something entirely different from the previous novel (The Ebony Stag, 1938). This one puts a spin on the inverted detective story and chase thriller.

The story is divided into four-parts, "The First Escape," "The First Chase," "The Second Escape" and "The Second Chase," beginning with Dr. Stuart Traquair's suspicions about his wife involvement with an acquaintance, Rupert Halmar – overhearing them say that "he must be got rid of" when "the time comes." So the doctor steeled himself "to the inevitable ordeal that was close at hand" and confronted Madeleine with a pack of playing cards and a loaded revolver. Dr. Traquair is going to give Madeleine a chance of living by cutting cards and "the winner of the cut may take and use the revolver," which sounds reasonable enough. But it ends in a messy shootout in which Madeleine is shot and killed. Dr. Traquair has precious little time to make his getaway.

So pretty much what you would expect from an inverted mystery that turns into a chase thriller with the detective and murderer playing a game of cat-and-mouse, but early chapters makes it clear more is going on in the background. What did Dr. Traquair mean that Madeleine knew his secret? Why was Madeleine armed? Who's Armitage and why does the doctor need to see him? Who's Halmar and why had he house surrounded on the night of the murder? Which naturally made escaping an even more precarious undertaking, but, throughout the story, Dr. Traquair proves himself to be a resourceful man as slips through closely-drawn nets and dragging red herrings across the trail. And that makes his parts of the story all the more fun.

The chase-parts reunites Anthony Bathurst with Chief Inspector Andrew MacMorran, of Scotland Yard, as they join the local Inspector Rudge at the scene of the crime. While the reader knows what happened there, the police has to try to make sense of "the sight of Madeleine lying dead on the floor with the scattered playing-cards around her" and the story of the frightened maid, Phoebe Hubbard, who had locked and barricaded herself in the bedroom during the night – hearing noises on the stairs and voices in the house until early morning. Opening the door to more than one interpretation of the doctor's disappearance on the investigative side. So there's genuine detective interest in the chase-parts. Such as when Bathurst deduced the meaning of the disturbed dust on the lid of a hatbox and its content, but, even the best detectives, sometimes needs "the finger of Fate" to help guide them in the right direction. Well, either the finger of Fate or a cold, dead hand protruding from beneath a bed ("the dead hand speaketh"). Yes, there are more murders along the way. It helped keep the story engaging and moving along. 

Black Edged gives the reader two novellas, a pursuit and a detective story, which Flynn tightly intertwined and knotted together in the last couple of chapters. Even trying to spring a surprises, or two, on the reader, but you should be able to anticipate in which direction story is heading. However, I was briefly on the wrong track and suspected Madeleine either survived the gunshot wound or had replaced the bullets in her husband's revolver with blanks. Dr. Traquair says in Chapter II Madeleine "had gained access to my private drawer and had read my private papers." Since the story was evidently going to be on the pulpier side of Flynn's work from the start, I thought Madeleine had somehow survived, shot the maid and traded places to play for time and hunt down her husband. While my initial solution was wrong, it still headed in the same direction as the actual solution.

So I have to echo's Steve's opinion on Black Edged, "a tale very much of its time," but the ending shouldn't take away Flynn wrote an entertaining, very well executed chase thriller with detective interruptions and alternating viewpoints. It simply worked. While not one of the top-tier titles in the series, it's another fine example of Flynn's versatility as a mystery writer and his dedication to simply entertain his readers. I'm really curious now to see how different the next one is from either The Ebony Stag and Black Edged. I guess The Case of the Faithful Heart (1939) just got a fast pass to the top of the pile.