Poison Unknown (1939) by Max Dalman

Not much known today about "Max Dalman," born Max Dalman Binns, except that he was an journalist, publisher and the author of fifteen mystery novels, but "his sudden death at 46, leaving his wife with three children mostly under age 10, seems to have undercut his fame" – rapidly falling out-of-print and into obscurity. A similar fate befell his father, Ottwell Binns, who wrote adventure and mystery novels under the pseudonym "Ben Bolt" until his death in 1935. Interestingly, the (partial) bibliography lists numerous posthumously published novels and perhaps Dalman cut his teeth by completing or simply continuing his father's work. The posthumous novels appear to have dribbled to a stop following the publications of Dalman's first two detective novels, Three Strangers (1937) and The Hidden Light (1937).

Either way, Dalman had been largely forgotten and out-of-print for decades, until John Norris reviewed three of his books back in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, Black Heath reissued fourteen of fifteen novels as ebooks. The Elusive Nephew (1948) is the only title missing as the book is "extremely elusive itself."

Normally, I would be all over Dalman's third novel, Vampire Abroad (1938), but, for once, I'm not going to be an uncouth pulp monger with locked rooms on the brain. I decided to go with the fifth novel, Poison Unknown (1939), which appears to have been his most successful novel and praised at the time in The Observer by Torquemada, "the ways in which the author flouts convention in this thriller are entirely intentional, and rather stimulating than otherwise," but John Norris also thought highly of it – comparing it to some of Agatha Christie's "devilish murder mysteries." I stalled my locked room hobby horse and picked this long overlooked poisoning puzzle as my introduction to Max Dalman. So will he turns out to be another solid, unjustly forgotten mid-list writer or even better than expected? Time to find out!

Juliot Research Institute is the backdrop of Poison Unknown, "founded under a bequest about ten years ago with the intention of bridging the undoubted gap between the time a brilliant young scientist leaves college" and "the time when he can hope to get any kind of university appointment," which provides places for a professor, a demonstrator and four students. Professor Charles Roseland is the head of the research institute with his future son-in-law, Francis Seymour, acting as demonstrator. The four students in question are Paul Danton, Richard Thursden, Dermot Hope and Gaspar Wiedermann. What they do is called pharmacological research, but it comes down that everyone at the institute is "working upon some particularly subtle poison." Everything from aconite and arsenic to South American arrow poison and a new alkaloid ("...improving on Nature"). There is, however, trouble brewing at the institute.

Professor Roseland, "a swine in many ways," is not exactly popular at the institute. Over the years, the aging professor has been heavily leaning on the brains and results of the students. Professor Roseland publishes their results and gets the credit for all the work done, while the students who did the actual work received a mention at the end somewhere as "Mr. So-and-so" who "washed out the beakers and handed things to him." So when the professor is found dead in his laboratory, Inspector McCleod and Sergeant Ambrose not only have plenty of potential suspects on their hands, but a sudden death that's open to multiple interpretations.

It could have simply been a natural death as Professor Roseland had a weak heart and bumped his head on the way down. It could have been an accidental death as there were broken pieces of glass next the body beside the body's left outstretched arm and clutching a large cork in his right hand. There's always the remote possibility of suicide, but there's immediate talk of murder. The odd-jobs-man, Couche, claims to have caught a glimpse of a government letter addressed to the professor mentioning foreign spies and poisonous gas. During the war, Professor Roseland worked for the government on poison gas. Just moments before his body was discovered, someone suspiciously named John Smith visited the institute to ask where to find the professor. John Smith is someone who's very familiar to Inspector McCleod.

So, on first glance, Poison Unknown appears conventional enough. A detective novel, more or less, in line with Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode, but then the story and plot creates some pleasingly unexpected plot-patterns – beginning with playing on the case-for-three-detectives approach. Sylvia Roseland bands together with Paul Danton and her uncle, Dr. Boynley, to prove Seymour's alibi and clear her fiancé of suspicion. Normally, in mysteries from the British Realists School, it's the profession and trained policeman trying to breakdown alibis, but here we have three amateur detective trying to prove an alibi. Something that pleasing contrasted and complemented the first mysterious death with its multiple interpretations recalling Ronald A. Knox's The Three Taps (1927) and J.J. Connington's The Case with Nine Solutions (1928). Such as the problem of all the available, easily accessible, poisons comprising of a hitherto unknown, newly developed poison ("they would die instantly, painlessly, in a way no man had died before..."), venomous darts found underneath the body and the possibility the broken glass contained a deadly gas. A truly great premise for a Golden Age detective novel that (worryingly) flirted heavily with the locked room mystery ("it just knocks a bigger hole in the 'sealed room' idea"). For a moment, it looked impossible to escape those infernal locked rooms.

Most impressive of all is how Dalman managed to pull a tricky, purposely muddled plot together as a lesser mystery writer would undoubtedly have relayed on two, or three, independently acting culprits to muddy the waters and muddling the clues. Dalman kept things tight and concise with a good idea on how to spin a great deal of complexity, while keeping it simple. That helped in delivering a fairly convincing and mostly satisfying solution. However, while Poison Unknown is a good, solid mid-tier detective novel, it could have been so much more than that. Dalman unfortunately was very much a second-stringer who lacked the storytelling verve and plotting finesse to do more than touch upon the good, even somewhat original, ideas without fully exploring or exploiting them. A lot faded out before the ending rolls around and only the excellent explanation as to what, exactly, happened to Professor Roseland saved it from becoming a saggy disappointment.

Poison Unknown is not necessarily a bad detective story. On the contrary, it's a pretty solid, second-string mystery novel comparable to some of the better efforts from John Russell Fearn, Gerald Verner and Hampton Stone, but a second-stringer regardless. Poison Unknown has a good foundation as it lightheartedly flaunts the conventions without breaking them, but it has its shortcomings. The kind of shortcomings that noticeably detract from everything it did right, dragging everything down with it. So very difficult to unhesitatingly recommend and if this turns out to be true for all of Dalman's novels, I can see why he has been largely forgotten today. Nevertheless, I'm still going to try his two locked room mysteries, The Hidden Light and Vampire Abroad. And maybe one of his World War II mysteries. Mask for Murder (1940) and Death Before Day (1942) sound somewhat promising. So to be continued...