Something Smells Fishy: "The Affair at the Circle T" (1946) by Clifford Knight

Nearly a year ago, I read The Affair of the Scarlet Crab (1937) by Clifford Knight, whose career as a novelist was launched when The Affair of the Scarlet Crab emerged as the first ever winner of the Red Badge Mystery Prize – netting him $2000 and a publishing contract. Knight would go on to publish more than twenty detective novels over the next fifteen years.

The Affair of the Scarlet Crab takes place during a scientific expedition en route to the Galapagos Islands, but the snail-like pacing, lack of excitement and a lackluster conclusion resulted in an average mystery novel at best. However, this was Knight's first crack at the detective story and debuts tend to be less than perfect. So I wanted to explore Knight's work further to see how he developed as a writer, eyeballing The Affair of the Limping Sailor (1942), when I struck a well of disheartening comments.

The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary, 1942-47 (2009) has very little good to say about either Knight or his series-character, Professor Huntoon "Hunt" Rogers.

Anthony Boucher admitted in his reviews that Knight is excellent when it came to the local color of his novels, but has "an infallible formula" consisting of nothing more than Professor Rogers picking "a picturesque locale, calmly watch a series of murders committed under his nose" and after 60,000 words accuses someone "who obligingly confesses all" – as a rule his deductions are nothing more than "pure guesswork." Boucher remarked in his review of The Affair of the Dead Stranger (1944) that he only kept reading the series in the hope that some day a murderer will say, "OK, Hunt, now prove it."

So not exactly a glowing endorsement and an opinion backed by two genre-experts, Curt Evans and John Norris, who commented on my review of The Affair of the Scarlet Crab. John warned me that “the slow pace and lack of excitement are his unfortunate stock in trade” and Curt called one of his supposedly better novel, The Affair in Death Valley (1940), a “put-downable” read that took several days to finish. None of this was very encouraging, but, I reasoned, maybe the short story format was better suited for Knight's limited abilities as a plotter. Well, I'll say this, the problem with the pacing was solved... kind of.

"The Affair at the Circle T" was the first short story about Professor Huntoon Rogers and, believe it or not, was originally published in the October, 1946, issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as a fourth prize winner of a short story competition – anthologized later that year in The Queen's Awards (1946). I find it amazing that a simple landscape writer and average plotter, like Knight, can rake in prizes while a talented, innovative writer and plotter, like Harriette Ashbrook, bathed in the shade of obscurity.

As you probably guessed by now, "The Affair at the Circle T" and the short story format did nothing to cover up Knight's short comings. If anything, it exposed them even more!

The story and plot "The Affair at the Circle T" is very simple and straightforward: Professor Huntoon Rogers is on a fishing holiday in the High Sierras and visits the owner of the Circle T ranch, Buck Chamblis, where a murder had taken place the previous day. Professor Rogers listens the lion's share of the story of what has happened before his well-timed arrival. A dame from New York, Mrs. Rolard, had come down to Nevada for six weeks in order to secure a divorce from her third husband. She had rented a cottage on the Circle T ranch.

Mrs. Rolard was the kind of woman "a normal man would just naturally want to cut her throat," but her soon-to-be ex-husband followed her to the dude ranch and she already found a new toyboy, which doesn't prevent them from eating and singing songs together – everything seems very amicable between the three of them. This situation abruptly ends when Mrs. Rolard is ruthlessly murdered in her cottage. Only tangible clue the police has is that the maid was shoved in the face outside the cottage, but it was dark and she couldn't make out who it was. However, she "smelled fish on the guy's hand." After listening to this story, Professor Rogers orders a reconstruction and (unfairly) deduces (being very generous here) a simple, uninspired solution hinging on an obscure piece of trivia.

I've to admit that there were two clues hinting at this solution, but, without knowing that piece of trivia, you can only make an educated guess. The waver-thin plot rests entirely on this "ha, gotcha!" revelation and the murderer obligingly confesses, but it has to be weakest piece of evidence for a solution I've ever come across in a detective story! There were two suspects with a "fishy odor" on their hands and Rogers never demonstrated why the other couldn't have done it, which alone is enough for reasonable doubt. There's no supporting evidence and the maid's testimony can probably be shaken in a courtroom, because in the story itself there was a hint of duplicity.

So, no, Knight's "The Affair at the Circle T" is not a good detective story in any shape or form and think he might have been better suited for the novel-length mystery after all, because the local flavor of his setting can paper over some of his short comings as a story-teller and plotter. I'm still going to read The Affair in Death Valley or The Affair of the Limping Sailor, but then I'll close the book on Clifford Knight and Professor Huntoon Rogers. Maybe...

Sorry to end this second review of the year on such a downer, but I'll try to do some quality control for my next read.

The Affair of the Scarlet Crab (1937) by Clifford Knight

Clifford Knight was an American author of more than twenty detective novels, published between 1937 and 1952, whose debut came when he emerged as "the winner of the $2000 Red Badge Mystery Prize." A contest in which over "three hundred new manuscripts were entered," but The Affair of the Scarlet Crab (1937) came out on top and with good reason, because the setting alone makes the book standout even during the height of the Golden Age – a scientific expedition "to that bizarre, isolated archipelago," the Galapagos Islands. More importantly, the story has a technically sound plot and even opens with a challenge to the reader!

The first page has a footnote, of sorts, telling the reader "the shadow of the murderer is cast across the page" at least twenty times. There's an index of all these clues, better known as a clue-finder, at the back of the book reminiscent of C. Daly King's Obelists Fly High (1935) and Elspeth Huxley's Murder on Safari (1938). I really wish the clue-finder had been a staple of the period, because they're fun and would enforced the fair play principle. So, without further ado, let's explore, what's perhaps, the only detective novel in existence (partially) set on the Galapagos Islands.

Carlos Lanfrey is a wealthy, versatile and talented man whose hobby is leading "small scientific expeditions into out-of-the-way places on a palatial yacht," named Cyrene II, but preparations for his latest voyage haven't gone so smoothly.

The curator of a San Marino museum, which is never named, has an incomplete Galapagos collection and the scientific expedition is tasked with collecting various specimens of flora and fauna. They'll also be examining the problems presented by "the odd assortment of wild life to be found on the various islands" and in "the seas round about." However, Lanfrey had to find a last minute replacement for his ornithologist, Dr. Charley Risner, who was hospitalized and reeled in "something of an amateur," Benny Bartlett – describing himself as "a hunter of birds." Bartlett also narrated the story and agreed to come aboard when he learned an old friend is part of the expedition, Professor Huntoon "Hunt" Rogers.

Huntoon Rogers is an overworked professor of English and needed a much deserved rest, which is why Lanfrey attracted him for the expedition and simply made him a supercargo on his luxury yacht. You can almost say Lanfrey is the Fizziwig of this story.

Rogers is not exactly one of those gifted amateur detectives, who roam the halls of academia and dabble in police business as a hobby, but is forced by circumstances to don the deerstalker, because, as one character remarks, "there's no Sherlock Holmes on board" – betraying that the book was originally intended as a one-shot and not a series. But winning the contest allowed him to bring back Rogers in an additional seventeen mystery novels. So the book became an origin story as Knight began to expand the series.

The other members of the expedition are Dr. Gorell, "an outstanding naturalist," who brought along his wife, Mrs. Gorell. Dr. French is another naturalist with a special interest in marine life and Dr. Ardleigh is an elderly, but respected, geologist. There are two people to document the expedition: Alice Wilmer is a scientific artist and a photographer from one of the film studios in Hollywood, Jack Quigley, who was also a late minute replacement. Finally, there's Lanfrey's right-hand man and a former prize-fighter, Starr, and the millionaire's troublesome nephew, Jay Cranston. And as they set sail to those islands, they gamble, get into fist fights and argue over a scientific problem dating back to the days of Charles Darwin.

Interestingly, their argument has a link to another obscure, little-known detective novel that was published in the same year as The Affair of the Scarlet Crab.

The problem concerns the question how those islands were supplied with life. Some believe there was a land bridge in ancient time over which "the flora and fauna of the islands came," while others, like Dr. Gorell, believe prehistoric men put animals on the islands as "a future food supply" – similar as to how modern navigators, like Captain Cook, left goats, pigs and goats on islands in the South Sea. Now here's the interesting part. Robin Forsythe's Murder on Paradise Island (1937) tells the story of a group of shipwrecked survivors, marooned on a deserted island, but the previous occupants left behind pigs and had cultivated sweet potatoes, yams and taro-root. This helped them survive their ordeal. Funny how both books were published in the same year, but lets get back to the story.

As the group is en route to the Galapagos Islands, Jack Quigley vanishes from the yacht without a trace and must have gone overboard, but was it an accident, suicide or was he shoved?

The last possibility is not seriously considered until a member of the expedition attempted to climb a lava ridge on Indefatigable Island, slipped and fell to his death. Or so it appeared. This time the possibility of murder is mentioned, but it becomes undeniable when the expedition is put on hold and they set sail to Panama, in order to get the body repatriated back to America, when a third and unmistakable murder is committed – a savage case of throat-cutting. Shockingly, the crushed carcass of Jimmy, the scarlet rock crab, was found on the floor next to the body.

I was becoming quite fond of that little, brave-minded rock crab who liked humans enough to greet them with "a snappy salute." An animal with a personality of its own is as difficult and tricky to write as a convincing child-character, but Jimmy was shaping up to be as good an animal-character as the foul-beaked parrot from Gret Lane's The Guest with the Scythe (1943) and the schizophrenic cat from Edmund Crispin's The Long Divorce (1951). So his untimely death felt as the most tragic of them all.

As mentioned at the beginning of my review, the plot is technically sound, but has the flaws you can expect to find a debut novel. First of all, there's the pacing of the story, or lack there of, because the story, while interesting, lacks excitement. This could have been made up by putting more emphasis on the background, but their time on the islands only cover a brief period of the book. Most of the story takes place on the yacht. Secondly, the clues are plentiful and present through out the story. However, they're a trifle weak and can be better described as hints or foreshadowing rather than clues, which require a bit of educated guess work to fit together – reason why the solution I had pieced together turned out to be completely wrong. You see, the structure of the plot resembled another well-known shipboard mystery, namely Carter Dickson's Nine-and Death Makes Ten (1940), which I modeled my solution on. They even have two identical murders (man overboard and a throat-slashing).

The link between the three victims appeared to confirm my suspicion and thought I had seen through the murderers cover, but was baffled how the murderer managed to accomplish his trick. And had I been right, The Affair of the Scarlet Crab would have featured an alibi-trick that could be measured against the best by Christopher Bush and Freeman Wills Crofts. Not to mention that the plot would have anticipated Nine-and Death Makes Ten by three years! Unfortunately, the actual explanation was not as inspired as my own and the murderer's alibi-trick was pretty mundane.

Nonetheless, The Affair of the Scarlet Crab is a competent and interesting debut novel with some good ideas, but Knight hadn't learned yet how to use them to their full potential. So I want to see how he further developed and there are intriguing-sounding detective novels in repertoire. The plot of The Affair of the Limping Sailor (1942) sounds like a winner and the book-cover of the bizarrely titled The Affair of the Skiing Clown (1941) is simply fascinating. And will probably give Ho-Ling Wong, who believes clowns are part of Satan's demon horde, nightmares for weeks! :)

So you can expect more of Clifford Knight and Huntoon Rogers later this year. 

Note: this review was originally scheduled for earlier this month, but had to move it up to make room for Soji Shimada's Naname yashiki no hanzai (Murder in the Crooked House, 1982). And this is why it followed so soon on my previous review.