Midsummer Murder (1937) by Clifford Witting

Midsummer Murder (1937) is Clifford Witting's second novel starring Inspector Harry Charlton, attached to the Downshire County Constabulary, who has to put aside his daily, small-town problems to turn his attention to a curious murder – committed in the town square of Paulsfield. The murder happened during a chaotic moment on a market day, in July, when a bull "intent on its one brief hour of glorious life" got loose and turned the whole market in an uproar. So the sound of a gunshot largely went unnoticed in the pandemonium. What didn't went unnoticed is the man who had been cleaning the statue of a former Lord Shawford dropping dead between the railings and the plinth with a bullet in his head.

Inspector Charlton begins to investigate this strange shooting with all the accustomed thoroughness and plodding vigor of the British police.

They begin to gather evidence, which isn't much, trying to determine the general direction from which the bullet came or hoping to match the extracted bullet to locally issued firearm permits. A whole crowd of witnesses need to be questioned and close attention is being paid to the shopkeepers occupying the part of the square from where the shot was presumably fired. And there's the question of motive. Why shoot "an ordinary working man" who's cleaning a statue? A somewhat unusual case, but an isolated one and nothing too sensational until the murderer decides to make murder a habit.

On the following morning, the murderer kills a second man in the then deserted square and, later in the day, a third man is shot and seriously wounded while sitting in his car – only links are the bullets and opportunistic nature of the shootings. Every time the shooter pulled the trigger, it was during "the psychological moment." Like a bull rampaging overturning market stalls, a passing thunder storm or a deserted street with "no one awake but a nodding night-watchman." More shots would be fired in the town square "before the sniper's reign of terror came to an end." So the newspapers begin to screaming about the Paulsfield Sniper spreading terror in town and making veiled comments regarding the lack of progress the police has made in apprehending this homicidal maniac. Charlton remains undeterred and investigates each crime, "separately and also in relation to the others," with that same thorough and plodding vigor.

Midsummer Murder is not the first Golden Age mystery to revolve around a serial killer, but Witting certainly penned one of the earlier examples and a pretty odd one at that.

The serial killer from the pre-World War II detective novel has always been an odd, often out-of-place character compared to its modern-day counterpart. There are generally three types of serial killers in the classic detective novel: a rational murderer who uses the serial killings as a smokescreen for their through motives/objectives or a genuine homicidal maniac, which always feels out-of-place in a Golden Age mystery – a third type is a combination of the first two. So closer to the serial killers of modern crime fiction. One thing they all have in common is that they lean into the thriller-ish elements of having a serial killer present as panic spreads across the community stoked by sensational headlines blaring about the latest murder. For example, Francis Beeding's Death Walks in Eastrepp (1931) and Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails (1949) do this very well. However, Midsummer Murder reads like a charming, leisurely paced small-town mystery with a thick dollop of local color, quirky, but well-drawn, characters and some lighthearted humor. There are blaring headlines and the people of Paulsfield began to favor the parts of town "free, as yet, from the murderous attentions of the Sniper," but within a week "everything had returned to normal" as they began to drift back into the square. Even though the newspapers about alarm and panic, the actual description of "that 'orrible to-do in the Square" is very little more than an annoyance to the locals. Like the shopkeepers around the scene of the shootings.

Now I appreciated the calm, levelheaded approach of the police and the town to the presence of a sniper indiscriminately picking people off in the market square, but it strikes a false note. And a missed opportunity. Witting put on the local color thickly and it would have made for a great read to see a rural town, where "everything seemed so ideally peaceful" under the midsummer sun, getting paralyzed as everyone locked themselves away in their sweltering homes. But without that element of spreading fear and terror, Midsummer Murder comes across as an overwritten, drawn out novel that badly needed trimming in order to expand the ending. Midsummer Murder ends abruptly and not in a good way. Nor something that justifies taking the long way round to get there. The story begged for something better and more substantial to end on.

I don't think the story's shortcomings would have bothered me half as much had Witting not been so cute by constantly acknowledging those shortcomings with such lines as "it will be as well if local colour is not laid on too thickly at this early stage in the story" or "overstock this story with characters." Even worse is the sudden ending in combination with that closing line (ROT13), "jr xabj gung gur Qrgrpgvba Pyho, haqre gur cerfvqrapl bs Ze. R. P. Oragyrl, qb abg yvxr znq zheqreref, ohg gurer vg vf." Without those comments, I would have taken Midsummer Murder as an interesting, well-intended curio of the Golden Age serial killer novel similar to Brian Flynn's experiments in The Edge of Terror (1932) and Reverse the Charges (1943). Witting knew what the story lacked and simply didn't appear to care. Just wanting to write the story, whether it worked or not, and joking about it. I can forgive a lot from a mystery writer when they have something to show in the end, but not being cute and empty handed. So the conclusion annoyed me to no end.

That being said, I did enjoy Charlton trying to grapple with the problem of a serial killer, "these are not natural crimes," while admitting ordinary police methods can have its limits with an indiscriminate killer. And trying to anticipate in which direction the solution is headed. Other than that, the least satisfying of the Witting reprints so far. Catt Out of the Bag (1939), Subject—Murder (1945) and Let X Be the Murderer (1947) are all infinitely better detective novels. Murder in Blue (1937) is better written than plotted, but would even place that one above Midsummer Murder. Well, you get the idea. I'll try to pick something good for the next time.