Death of an Author (1935) by E.C.R. Lorac

Edith Caroline Rivett was a British mystery novelist who, over a thirty year period, penned over seventy detective novels and a smattering of short stories – published under her two pennames, "E.C.R. Lorac" and "Carol Carnac." Lorac's work was highly regarded during her lifetime, but, as so often is the case, they went out-of-print and mostly out of circulation upon her death in 1958. If your reputation hinges on easily available, secondhand copies of a book like Murder by Matchlight (1945), you can almost under why she had been dismissed for decades as "pedestrian and forgettable." Fortunately, Martin Edwards and the British Library Crime Classics series have gone a long way in restoring Lorac's reputation with reprints of some her better work such as These Names Make Clues (1937), Bats in the Belfry (1937) and Checkmate to Murder (1944). The subject of today's review is arguably the finest Lorac reprint to date.

Last year, British Library reissued Lorac's Death of an Author (1935) and marked this forgotten, out-of-print gem's return to print for the first time in close to a century. A very fitting title to reprint today considering the premise and characters populating the story aged like a vintage bottle of wine.

Death of an Author begins with a successful publisher, Andrew Marriott of Langston's, giving some attention to one of their prize authors, Michael Ashe, whose novels are "regarded as the best things of their type since Conrad" ("...and they sold"). Ashe terrifies Marriott by threatening to turn to crime fiction to fight the early onset of fossilization ("I'm getting stylised"), which is countered by the shocked publisher that "crime stories are a legitimate branch of fiction, but they're mere ephemerals" selling like hot cakes today – gone tomorrow. This was not an uncommon opinion among Golden Age mystery writers. Agatha Christie believed her detective stories had a sell-by date, but history, especially the past two decades, proved them wrong. If only John Dickson Carr knew one of the monstrosities of the modern age (the internet) would end up giving his beloved impossible crime story the room (of course, locked from the inside) it needed to thrive like never before. Anyway, Ashe points to another one of Marriott's prized authors, Vivian Lestrange, whose bestseller, The Charterhouse Case, is "a crime story that is in the rank of first rate novels." Ashe asks his publisher to arrange a dinner party and introduce him to his fellow writer, but Marriott tries to explain Lestrange is a notorious recluse.

That and there's another problem. Ashe believes Lestrange is a man and an ex-convict, but Marriott has actually met Lestrange in person and was astonished to discover his top-selling "thriller merchant" proved to be a tall, slim and capable young woman. Surprisingly, Miss Lestrange accepts the invitation under the condition that Ashe respects her privacy and not leak her secret to the public. The meeting between Miss Lestrange and the bewildered Ashe is very amusing, which Lorac evidently had fun writing down. And not without reason.

Martin Edwards writes in the introduction that "she adopted the ambiguous writing name of E.C.R. Lorac because of a suspicion of prejudice against female authors." Lorac was so good at hiding her identity that she was often referred to by reviewers ("Mr. Lorac can write") and fellow authors ("his Inspector Macdonald is one of the most sympathetic professional detectives that I have had the luck to encounter," Nicholas Blake) as a man. I think the assumption a man was behind the Lorac pseudonym had more to do with the technical side and murder methods featuring in her plots that recall the work of the so-called "humdrum" mystery writers, which is commonly associated with male writers. If you read a mystery in the "Had-I-But-Known" vein with an ambiguous name on the cover, the first assumption most readers would make is that it was probably written by a woman. But there have been male writers who dabbled in the feminine HIBK school (e.g. Baynard Kendrick's Blood on Lake Louisa, 1934). Back to the story.

Three months later, the same woman goes to the police who announces herself Vivian Lestrange's secretary, Eleanor Clarke. She's worried sick about her eccentric and reclusive employer, because he appears to have simply disappeared.

I should note here that this case is not in the hands of Lorac's celebrated policeman, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald of Scotland Yard, but handled by the local policeman Inspector Bond and Chief Inspector Warner of the C.I.D. – who enters the picture after the former has "done a steady week's work investigating the disappearance." Bond and Warner are an engaging pair of characters and investigators, but, sadly, Death of an Author is their only recorded case. The introduction suggests the characters were probably abandoned, prematurely, when Lorac jumped ship from Sampson Low "to the more prestigious Collins Crime Club imprint." Death of an Author was incidentally her last published by Sampson Low. Whatever the reason might have been, Lorac presented Bond, Warner and the reader with a pretty problem to pick apart.

Eleanor Clarke explains Vivian Lestrange is an eccentric recluse, practically cripped with rheumatism, who dislikes visitors and publicity. And lived pretty much in complete anonymity. So, when people began to pester him, Eleanor Clarke took on the role of Vivian Lestrange. Just one tiny problem: Lestrange always wore gloves and nobody outside the small household has ever laid eyes on the celebrated mystery novelist. Only person who could have corroborated her story is Lestrange's housekeeper, Mrs. Fife, but she has also disappeared without a trace. What, exactly, is going on?

Bond and Warner have opposing views of the case, or rather about Clarke's absurd story in addition to a noticeable lack of background, which arouses the suspicion of the former. Bond sees her as "one of those queer secretive women" who appeared to have been very much at home with her equally secretive employer. Could they have been one and the same person after all. Warner gives her cool, collected account of the strange situation a bit more credit, but wonders whether they're "handling a case for a psycho-analyst, a case of perjury or a murder case." Everything they uncover along the way proves to be "susceptible to various interpretations" to an almost maddening degree. Even the eventual discovery of a body only ends up deepening the problem instead of giving some much needed clarity to the two detectives.

Death of an Author is an exemplary detective novel in how it takes an ultimately simple situation and turned into a maze-like structure merely by playing a game of Guess Who? with the cast of characters. A very intense, hard fought game of Guess Who? that chipped away at Warner's sanity and remarked towards the end, "if I petitioned Parliament do you think I could get an enactment that no man writes under any name but his own” and “his finger-prints be registered on the title page?" ("it oughtn't to be allowed... hardened offenders... recidivists..."). It goes without saying Death of an Author emerged as splendid detective novel comparable to the best from Christopher Bush, Freeman Wills Crofts and especially Brian Flynn. My favorite Lorac reprint to date. Highly recommended!