Affairs of Death (1967) by Nigel FitzGerald

Nigel FitzGerald was a stage actor and former president of the Irish Actors' Equity Association who penned a dozen crime-and detective novel, published between 1953 and 1967, which mostly take place in remote, isolated pockets of Ireland – teeming with "popular superstition, ancient rituals and not-so-well-kept secrets." Curt Evans discussed FitzGerald's Suffer a Witch (1958) on his blog, back in 2014, describing the book as "a later manifestation of the classic Golden Age detective novel." Something of "a transition between the more anodyne detective fiction associated with the Golden Age" and "the more gloomy (i.e. realistic) stuff of P.D. James" in modern times. That has recently brought FitzGerald back on my radar.

I've been coming across the scattered remnants of a lost generation of traditional-minded mystery writers, namely Kip Chase, Charles Forsyte, Jack Vance and Ton Vervoort, who tried to reconcile the values of the classic detective story with the changes of the 1960s. They were, technically speaking, not wholly unsuccessful as Chase's Murder Most Ingenious (1962), Forsyte's Diving Death (1962), Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) and Vance's The Fox Valley Murders (1966) showed what could have been had the Golden Age continued into the sixties and beyond. They vanished as quickly as they appeared. Averaging three detective novels each. Vervoort managed to put out six novel, but, considering tales of ratiocination and plotting had gone out of favor with publishers at the time, they always impressed me as "small fish" that slipped through the meshes of the net.

FitzGerald seems to fit in with this group of late and forgotten, Golden Age-style mystery writers, but he entered the game during the twilight years, or decade, of that era and as a result his output is nearly as big as that of Chase, Forsyte, Vance and Vervoort combined – who together produced roughly fourteen detective novels. Regrettably, practically all of them are currently out-of-print and have been so for over six decades. That include two of FitzGerald's most tantalizing detective stories, The Student Body (1958) and Suffer a Witch. Both listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991).

There are, however, two of his later novels currently in print as cheap ebooks. A small, little-known indy publisher, PFD Books, reissued Black Welcome (1961) and Affairs of Death (1967) back in 2013. And they're still in print! So why not take a gamble on one of them? It goes without saying I picked Affair of Death and, going by the book title, cover and synopsis, I expected something classical wrapped in the gloomy, morose packaging of a 1960s crime novel. Affairs of Death is more like a cross between a character-driven drama, a sitcom and a modernized whodunit.

Standish Wyse is a stage actor who has "as much experience of stretching pennies as anyone." So while his car is in Dublin to be repaired, Standish opts for a seven hour bus journey to visit his former lover, Stella Hazard, who married his rich stage friend, Barney Hazard. Getting to Hazard Point House, in Rossderg, becomes somewhat of a comedic endeavor. Firstly, Standish meets his younger cousin, Juliet Carr, who's traveling the same direction as him to spend the summer working on costumes for an autumn pageant at the cottage of Kinky Myles. So he gracefully gives his window-seat to his motion sick cousin, but, when he arrives, Barney is not there to pick him up. A breakdown in communications. Standish rents a bicycle and ends up taking "a gentle purler into the dry ditch," from which he emerges slightly concussed and is brought to the home of Kinky Myles. The scene of a house party where "some twenty or so young people had gathered and were enjoying themselves." However, the party turns exuberantly sinister when they begin to dabble in witchcraft by manufacturing a "wretched doll" out of modeling clay, christening it wine and sticking pins in it – before tossing the doll into a smoking cauldron. A harmless enough joke, but someone caught the name of the doll. And then the news reached them that there's a fire at Hazard Point House.

One of the rented cottages had gone up in flames and inside, "pinned to the living-room floor with a hayfork," they discovered the body of woman. However, the body is quickly identified as a local girl and a manhunt is organized to apprehend her jealous husband. So the story returns to Standish messy love life, mishaps and the unforeseen consequences of his actions or even neglecting something as easy as reading a letter. During the first-half of Affairs of Death, the storytelling and characterization outpaces the plot until a second death brings murder a lot closer to home. A murder involving a second hayfork and giant, smoldering haystack. Affairs of Death becomes more like a proper detective story during the second-half and even FitzGerald's series-detective, Superintendent Duffy, puts in an appearance, but only to have a chat with Standish and tying up all the loose ends in the last chapter. Standish is the one who gets to confront the murderer and, as to be expected, cornering a murderer can be dangerous. I was reminded by the end of book of The House Without a Key (1925) by Earl Derr Biggers. But how well does the solution stack up? That's a bit of a mixed bag.

The overarching idea behind the murders and how the second murder was executed is not bad at all. The kind of update of the traditionally-plotted detective story I've come to associate with Roger Ormerod, but not as fully developed or as fairly clued as it could have been. You can perhaps put that down to the plot not having enough room to breath. By the time the second murder is discovered, the story has already crossed the halfway mark with four chapters left to go. However, the more character-driven first-half is definitely necessary to make the second-half work. So, yeah, I'm in too minds about it. I didn't dislike Affairs of Death at all, but wish more could have been done with the plot. Maybe some parts from the first-half could have been cut or some pages could have been added to the second-half. It's a short novel and one, or two, extra chapters focusing on the detection part might have elevated it to the level of the previously-mentioned 1960s mystery writers.

Nonetheless, Affairs of Death shows FitzGerald was a polished writer with an eye for characterization and could have been an excellent plotter, which has made me curious about his 1950s novels like Midsummer Malice (1953), The Student Body and Suffer a Witch. After all, Affairs of Death was FitzGerald's last mystery novel published four years after Echo Answers Murder (1963). So the weaknesses that held back the plot here could simply be decline or simply the last scrap he had to offer the genre. Whatever the answer, FitzGerald is getting a second hearing on this blog and, if I can't easily track down one of 1950s novels, I'll go with Black Welcome. Apparently, a favorite of John Norris. Must be a pretty sinister book then.