The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939) by Christopher Bush

Last year, I was distracted away from Christopher Bush by the unending avalanche of reprints and translations, digging around the remnants of the Dutch detective genre and hunting for obscure, long out-of-print (locked room) mystery novels – as well as revisiting some old favorites. This left very little room for two of my favorite detectives, Ludovic Travers and George Wharton, who still got to shine in The Case of the Unfortunate Village (1932) and The Case of the Curious Client (1947). But my other two reads, The Case of the Climbing Rat (1940) and The Case of the Seven Bells (1949), were somewhat poor compared to the best the series has to offer. Fortunately, I had a promising, highly praised title tucked away for just such an occasion. 

The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939) is the twentieth entry in the Ludovic Travers series, "a classic village mystery," which used to be one of the scarcer titles until Dean Street Press reissued it in 2018. John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, got hold of copy back in 2012 and thought it was one of Bush's "more engrossing efforts" with Travers talent to bust faked alibis wide open "put to impressive use." There's an entire village teeming with alibis, faked and real, which he has to separate to find expose "a very cunning murderer."

The Case of the Green Felt Hat brings a honeymooning Ludovic and Bernice Travers, who met and fell in love in The Case of the Leaning Man (1938), to the quiet, agricultural town of Edensthorpe where a friend of Bernice had lent them a house – maid and gardener included. There they planned to spend the first-half of their honeymoon in anonymity without getting recognized as the well-known amateur detective and the retired classical dancer. But, when they drive through the nearby village of Pettistone, Travers recognizes the newly arrived owner of Gables as a recently released swindler, Hanley Brewse. Travers gave evidence at his trial and helped convict both him and his accomplish, Merrick Clarke, who died six months before his two years were up. Brewse served his time and Travers is of the opinion that even "a slippery rascal," like Brewse, has to live somewhere. But he does inform the Chief Constable, Colonel Brian Feen, who knows "no end of Pettistone people came a cropper when Brewse went smash."

Norman Quench, the Pettistone vicar, lost practically everything and his son, Bob Quench, had to come home from Oxford and loaf round till he got a job at the local garage. Charles Ammony, owner of the village garage and general stores, had thrust himself into the financial shenanigans and got "badly bitten for his pains," which made him "like a man demented" as he shrieked and raved about his lost money. Mr. Strongman got out in time, but his wife lost all her own money and she now has to go cap in hand to her husband "every time she wants a fiver," which made her very embittered about it all. Anthony Guff-Wimble, one of the local pillars and acting secretary of the Pettistone golf club, had has prestige damaged as many the disastrous investments were made on his recommendation as a sleeping partner in a firm of stockbrokers. Guff-Wimble is very indigent when he learns Brewse has settled down in Pettistone and calls together a counsel of war with the people who lost money and other villagers. Such as Pernaby, whose niece, Molly Pernaby, is practically engaged to Bob Quench and the son of the Strongmans, Gordon, who's home on leave from the Sudan. Tarring and feathering was casually mentioned during this meeting, which probably would have been the best solution considering what happens next.

There's a wooden, flimsy shed on a back road to the village, where manure is stored, is blazing and the body of Brewse was dragged from underneath the heap of manure. Brewse had been shot and the manure had protected the body from the licking flames, but why bury a body in a protective layer of dung and then set it on fire? That same day, they discover Brewse house had been vandalized. The whole end of the house that faced the road had been painted with a mock advertisement: "THE GABLES CINEMA (Hanley Brewse, proprietor) NOW SHOWING CONVICT 99." Some of the villagers definitely took measures against Brewse's presence, but who did what and when takes a bit of detective work to figure out.

Travers naturally feels guilty about having to play detective on his honeymoon, but Bernice wants him to help Colonel Feen find the murderer and even does some off-page detective work as talks and plays golf with the women of the village – which gives her access to a wealth of village gossip. A holidaying Superintendent George Wharton joins them halfway through the story, posing as Mr. Higgins, whose "ripe and fruity personality" always lights up a story when coming into contact with Travers. So while Travers pretends to be "an ordinary citizen and a golfer on holiday," Wharton accompanies Colonel Feen on the official side of the investigation. This is why I loved that brief moment in which Sergeant Reeper asks Travers "who's this Mr. Higgins?" and gets the answer "one of those old fogies who fancies himself as a detective." Travers and Wharton are the best!

Their investigation naturally focuses on alibis and Travers, "one of the best alibi breakers," has his work cutout as nearly everyone appears to have an alibi, some more looking more convincing than others, but appearances can be deceiving. And there are other factors complicating the question of alibis even further. Firstly, Travers has to pick at a pair of alibis for each individual suspect. An afternoon alibi for the shooting and an evening alibi for moving the body. Secondly, a witness claimed to have seen the bearded Brewse with his green felt hat walking down the road to Edensthorpe when, according to the medical evidence, he was a dead as a door nail. The time of death was very thoroughly established through "rigor mortis, state of wound, and stomach content."

So that gives this "a nice, quiet, gentleman's murder" a clearly defined window of time to toy around in with alibis. A scope Bush fully exploited to not only test the numerous alibis, but also explore the human element behind those alibis as being guilty of murder is not the only reason to fabricate one. This also gives room to a few false-solutions, or suggestions, of which one really stood out. Travers, "always ready with a theory," suggests a trick how a broken down car on the side of the road can be used to make it appear as if the murderer had been anchored to that location at the time of the murder. Bush should have put that idea to use in another novel. A great alibi-trick that could have carried an entire plot by itself. Only (very minor) disappointment is that the tenth chapter, entitled "Travers on Alibis," didn't include an alibi-lecture. I keep expecting one to turn up in this series ever since it was teased in The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936).

But, while there are alibis aplenty, The Case of the Green Felt Hat is, first and foremost, a pure Golden Age whodunit. A whodunit with enough twist, turns and complications to keep the most seasoned armchair detective on their toes, but never in a forced, or unnatural, way. Like John Norris said in his review, "nothing is superfluous here, everything has a purpose." This is all the more impressive considering the leisurely, almost holiday-like atmosphere. A detective-on-holiday, or honeymoon in this case, is too often used as an excuse to slacken the reigns over the plot. Bush kept things unhurried and focused without feeling the need to spice up the story with an additional body. Bush was a craftsman and The Case of the Green Felt Hat a marvelous display of his craftsmanship that can stand with the best the series has to offer like the previously mentioned The Case of the Missing Minutes or the WWII home front trilogy. Warmly recommended! 

A note for the curious: Bush reworked The Case of the Green Felt Hat into a short story, "Murder at Christmas" (1951), which you can find Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries (2016).

Through the Walls (1936) by Noël Vindry

Noël Vindry was a French World War I veteran, deputy juge d'instruction (examining magistrate) and a celebrated mystery novelist who wrote a dozen locked room mysteries in the 1930s of "a quality and quantity to rival his contemporary," John Dickson Carr – which is why he was hailed at the time as the master of the roman probleme (puzzle novel). Vindry is "largely forgotten by the French-speaking world and almost completely unknown in the English-speaking" until John Pugmire's Locked Room International published the first English edition of La maison qui tu (The House That Kills, 1932) in 2015. That release was followed by translations of the absolutely fantastical La bête hurlante (The Howling Beast, 1934) and Le double alibi (The Double Alibi, 1934) over the next three years. But nothing new until 2021. 

Last December, Pugmire finally returned to Vindry with the publication of A travers les murailles (Through the Walls, 1936) with no less than half-a-dozen seemingly impossible situations and locked room murders. 

Through the Walls has M. Allou, "considered the best examining magistrate in Marseille," bogged down in boring office and paperwork. Several months had gone by without being "called upon to tackle an important case" to test his famed deductive skills, which he based on La Science et l'Hypothèse, "consists of finding a theory which fits all the facts" and "then investigating anew" – until "the theory is proved or disproved." Only case of apparent interest is "the man who walks through walls" and left the police powerless as "the massacre continues." M. Allou has heard of the case everywhere and glimpsed the newspaper headlines, but the murders took place outside of his jurisdiction and therefore didn't tempt himself by reading the papers. There was nothing he could do. Luckily, the powers governing the universe has him covered.

One evening, Allou is visited by Commissaire Maubritane, of the Police Mobile, who confesses to Allou he had abandoned his post as a defeated man. Maubritane had inserted himself in, what appeared to have been a simple and straightforward affair, but had quickly devolved into an incomprehensible, bloody murder case that had dominated the headlines. Even half-suspecting he had gone crazy and committed the (attempted) murders. Allou sits him down to tell him the whole story from beginning to end. It should be noted here Allou appears only in the opening and closing chapters, which is a similar approach Vindry employed in The Howling Beast and perhaps influenced by G.K. Chesterton (c.f. "The Dagger with Wings," 1924).

Four days before he appealed to Allou, Commissaire Maubritane received a plea for help himself. Pierre Sertat, a retired Customs official, who remembered Maubritane from a case he handled in the region to come to aid of him and his family. Saying they are "faced with a terrible menace" putting all of their lives in grave danger and asks Maubritane to meet him, at ten o'clock at night, in rue Van Gogh. Because the house is under observation. Sertat tells Maubritane someone has been coming into the house at night, where he lives with his wife, daughter and two servants, but the nightly intruder only moves objects around and makes noise when goes up, or down, the creaky staircase – only question is how he entered and exited the house. All of the windows shutters "were firmly locked on the inside" and the bolts on the front door were shot in place. But even to Maubritane, Sertat remains cautious and secretive with what, exactly, is behind this mysterious threat to his family.

Maubritane has to do some unorthodox detective work to discover Sertat's past is not entirely spotless and has a good reason to keep his lips sealed, but my favorite part of the first-half is Maubritane's initial chain of reasoning about the nightly intrusions. I really liked how he tried to bring a bit of sanity to an utterly insane situations with a series of reasonable and logical possibilities, which mostly hinged on an accomplish inside the house. But also appreciated the answer how you can go up, or down, a creaky staircase without a sound. They eventually setup a trap, or sorts, but, when the intruder threatens to escape, Maubritane fires a warning shot. The intruder returns fire, seriously wounding Sertat, before disappearing from the tightly locked house. This is when things really begin to take off.

One of the household members is stabbed in a locked bedroom with the key in Maubritane's pocket, while another is shot and wounded in a dark, empty street surrounded by high walls. The victim swears nobody else was in the street. A third person was killed when "a man suddenly appeared" between the victim and an eyewitness, plunged a dagger in the victim and vanished within a blink of an eye. Finally, a fourth victim is stabbed and wounded in a hospital room with Maubritane sitting in front of the door. This is the point where the plagued policeman throws up his hands in despair and abandoned the scene of the crime "to ask M. Allou's advice."

Unfortunately, this happens to be very close to the point where a lot of readers will throw the book across the room in disgust. While the story is saturated with impossible crime material, the solutions are without exception a let down. Some will even consider the solutions to be outright cheats, but, in Vindry's defense, he didn't intend Through the Walls to be a detective novel of tricks and ideas. The last chapter makes it clear it was supposed to be a demonstration of Allou's "system of philosophy" as he effortlessly, and logically, explains the whole series of utterly baffling, seemingly impossible crimes that baffled Maubritane for the better part of a week – all within a single chapter. But you, the reader, only learns about this in the last chapter. And that's too late to prevent most readers from closing the book disappointed. An impressive piece of armchair detection, to be sure, but, purely as a locked room mystery, Through the Walls is the weakest title to come out of LRI. That includes Ulf Durling's Gammel ost (Hard Cheese, 1971) and Paul Halter's L'arbe aux doigts tordus (The Vampire Tree, 1996).

However, I can easily forgive a dub coming hot on the heels of several absolute bangers of translated locked room mysteries: Michel Herbert and Eugène Wyl's La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932), Paul Halter's La toile de Pénélope (Penelope's Web, 2001), Tokuya Higashigawa's Misshitsu no kagi kashimasu (Lending the Key to the Locked Room, 2002) and Masahiro Imamura's Shijinso no satsujin (Death Among the Undead, 2017). The overall solution made me crack a smile when I flipped back to read the introduction, "Noël Vindry and the Puzzle Novel," which mentioned the rumblings of French critics and writers about the plot-oriented, puzzle-driven detective novel. I wonder what Vindry's critics thought of Allou's deconstructionists solution to the fantastical series of events that were described to him. Something I imagine critics of the simon-pure, jigsaw-puzzle detective story would be able to appreciate more than when the impossibilities were accomplished with diabolical, minutely-timed tricks. No matter how clever or original they might have been. So, to cut this rambling post short, I can only recommend Through the Walls to fanatical locked room fans who have been given up by society or to readers with a special interest in armchair detective fiction.

Magic Makes Murder (1943) by Harriette R. Campbell

Harriette Russell Campbell was born in New York as the daughter of the state's Attorney-General, Leslie W. Russell, but settled down in London following her marriage to a Scotsman and produced eight detective novels between 1936 and 1949 – all but one featuring her regular sleuth, Simon Brade. Campbell appears to have cut her teeth on detective fiction for children having published at least two short stories, "The Escape of Pandora" (1927) and "The Mystery of the Brass Key" (1928), in St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls. 

Several years ago, Campbell's detective novels were reissued by a dodgy, short-lived publisher with an overzealous editors who tried to "improve" on the original text, which is why I gave all their editions a pass. Fortunately, Black Heath decided to give Campbell another print-run and began reissuing her novels last year as cheap ebooks. Magic Makes Murder (1943) stood out to me for obvious reasons, but it also helped Anthony Boucher praised how the plot "satisfactorily blended" horror, humanity and logic. Not to get ahead of to the end of the review, but, if Magic Makes Murder is representative of her overall work, Harriette Campbell could very well become another Harriette Ashbrook! 

Magic Makes Murder is the sixth case for Simon Brade, "well known to connoisseurs as a single-minded collector of Chinese porcelain," who used his "special gifts of observation in the detection of crime" to finance his expensive hobby. The story begins with three men, Brade, Blackett and Jerrold, sitting in front of comfortable coal fire to discuss a macabre case that had been forced upon the collector. Their discussion is interspersed with the pages from a manuscript written by one of the central characters in a family drama as bizarre as it's fascination. One that had been brewing for decades.

So the second chapter is the first, more lengthier, excerpts from Sylvia Shirley's manuscript, written at the request of Simon Brade, which begins with an extensive piece of necessary family history covering several decades – beginning towards the end of the First World War. John Shirley moved his family to Howells Farm in 1918 where he prospered as a farmer and devoted his spare time to studying the occult. Shirley had built two tower-like ends on the farmhouse where his son, Victor, witnessed him talking or controlling “impish creatures” and “astral shapes” who came from "a lower world," but John Shirley was not a practitioner of the dark arts. He picked the side of light and "he warned the public in grim terms against dabbling ignorantly in occultism." Over the years, Shirley created a happy household at Howells Farm. A household comprising of Nannie, a devout Catholic and utterly devoted to the family, who has looked over Shirley ever since she became wheelchair-bound as a 10-year-old girl. Denis Ridge came to Howells Farm to be Shirley's live-in secretary, but eventually became part of the family and now basked in the charm and comfort of Howells. The widowed Charlotte Lesurier came to keep house for them, but did so much more. Charlotte lightened up the whole place by making "it easy to be gay, difficult to be gloomy." She brought along her 8-year-old daughter, Frankie, who grew up to become Victor's wife. Its "happiness spread to the village, the neighborhood" and wherever his "influence was felt." Where there's light, darkness follows like the night the day.

There were three seminal moments that slowly descended Howells into darkness. Firstly, the death of John Shirley which freed his son to dabble in dark magic and began to impose his will on the household. Secondly, the birth of Victor and Frankie's son, Timmy, who his father intended to train, "as some Indians boys are trained," to become a master of magic. Thirdly, the outbreak of the First World War, but there was a five-year reprieve as Victor went abroad to further his study of the occult, but intended to take over Timmy's education when he returned. Those were both happy and troublesome year as Frankie fell in love with Dr. Warren Lang. So the stage had been set for the return of the evil magician.

Victor Shirley's ambition was gather a circle of adepts to control demons and 5-year-old Timmy had "to excel Hitler himself as a Witch Doctor of the future," but Victor's treatment of his son was "unnatural and wrong" – filling Timmy's receptive mind with images which terrified him. The entire household tried to undermine and subvert Victor's corrupting influence over the child, but he was in full control of their lives and their futures. Victor's corrupting influence even intruded upon their neighbors and the village itself. However, the household began to make serious plans to counter him and a clairvoyant warned him that he would find himself in danger from its members, which is why he dragged Simon Brade to Howells. But then the Nazis intervened!

Howells Farm was near enough to London "to see and hear the Battle of Britain and hostile planes frequently unloaded bombs" near them. One night, a bomb landed on the lane outside the farmhouse and left an enormous crater, which was immediately secured by the air-raid warden set out ladders and a warning lights to guard the crater. But did someone took advantage of the situation? Did someone remove the safe guards? Victor is an excellent driver with great eye sights, but drove his car straight into the crater and was left critically injured. So, while the doctors begin to operate on Victor, Brade finds himself as "an embodied threat" of Victor's power over the household as he tries to piece together what exactly has happened. The question whether Victor survives or dies will have consequences for everyone. Not just the culprit.

So, once you get past the introduction to the investigation, it becomes evident Campbell partially modeled her work on the so-called British "Humdrums," like J.J. Connington and John Rhode, but her handling of the vital (very original) clues places her closer to John Dickson Carr and Agatha Christie. There are some physical clues like two missing postage stamps, footsteps in the snow or instructing the reader to "get the position of the garden gate into your," but all of the important, tell-tale clues can be found in the personalities and actions of the characters. What eventually exposes the truth to Brade is combination of what was being said, heard and done at the time of the accident. A solution that more than lived up to Boucher's promise of a blend of horror, humanity and logic with a clearly stated and logical solution, but made complicated and morally murky by various, very human elements running through the case. There is, however, a very well done and original piece of alibi-breaking that hinged on (ROT13) gur orqgvzr evghnyf bs Gvzzl yvxr uvf orqgvzr fgbevrf naq ubj ur fnvq tbbqavtug. But even that excellent piece of plotting was dictated by the personalities and actions of the characters involved.

That's all I can say about Magic Makes Murder without giving anything away and whatever you think now regarding the direction of the solution, you're wrong. I, too, was reminded of those three detective novels (Puevfgvr'f Zheqre bs Ebtre Npxeblq, Zheqre ba gur Bevrag Rkcerff naq Pebbxrq Ubhfr), but Campbell pieced together a very different kind of solution that was only loose in its moral resolution. But this is one of those instances where you can't help but sympathize with the guilty party. 

Magic Makes Murder is a very unusually-structured detective novel with an opening recalling John Dickson Carr and Paul Halter, but began to take on the shape of the humdrums the moment the crime was committed (complete with diagrams) while the graceful handling of the characters, clues and red herrings is something to be expected from one of the top-tier Queens of Crime. So expect more of Harriette Campbell and Simon Brade on this blog in 2022!

The King's Club Murder (1930) by Ian Greig

Ian Borthwick Greig is a now forgotten, obscure mystery writer, born in 1892 and died in 1959, whose name has been wrongly reported online as Ian Baxter Greig, but a little detective work revealed his correct name and the error is probably due to someone having misread the title of one of his novels – namely Baxter's Second Death (1932). You can see how someone could have read it as Second Death by Ian Baxter Greig with the middle name being in the wrong place. But this is not the only misunderstanding surrounding his identity. Some websites mixed him up with another Ian Greig, a Scottish conservative, who wrote The Assault on the West (1968), but he was born in 1924 and died in 1995. 

So, having all of that sorted out, I tried to track down what I could find about this long-forgotten mystery writer and pickings were regrettably slim. I found his name listed in Record of Service of Solicitors and Articled Clerks with His Majesty's Forces, 1914-1919 (1920), which noted Greig had "served as 2nd Lieut., 8th Batt. Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry, subsequently promoted Capt." and was "mentioned in dispatches" as well as being "awarded the MC" (Military Cross). Greig then vanished from the records until he briefly reappeared in the early 1930s as the author of five now exceedingly rare, often expensive detective novels. None of the books have been reprinted since the thirties and images of the dust jackets are practically non existent online. However, the dust jacket of Greig's The Tragedy of the Chinese Mine (1930) is mentioned in a 2013 article, "The Library of Unborrowed Books," whose "title is spelled out in letters that are meant to seem assembled from stalks of bamboo."

Greig's work would have been next to impossible to sample had he not bowed out of the genre with the publication of The Inspector Swinton Omnibus (1934), which is the cheapest, most common title in the series and comprises of his first three novels – The King's Club Murder (1930), The Tragedy of the Chinese Mine and Murder in Lintercombe (1931). I recently stumbled across a slightly battered, dirt cheap copy of the omnibus edition and always welcome an opportunity to explore a completely forgotten mystery writers. See my more recent posts on John Hymers and B.J. Kleymens. 

The King's Club Murder, published in the US as The Silver King Mystery, is Greig's first novel and introduced his series-character, Inspector John Swinton, which is apparently his most sought after novel by collectors of golfing/sports-themed mysteries. The first-half can be read as an origin story.

John Swinton was "young to be an inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard" and had not only "the initial advantage of a thoroughly good education" to thank him rapidly climbing the rank, but also "his ability to carry out the most dreary form of police drudgery" – almost with enthusiasm and without complaint. Like the "unenviable job of keeping the suicide register." Swinton still wonders "whether he would ever get his chance in a spectacular case" or "whether he was doomed for the rest of career to drug-smuggling and its allied trade," which is when the news arrives that there's been a murder at King's Club. Since two of the senior detectives are absent, Swinton is dispatched to the golf club to take charge.

King's Club is an exclusive, old-world institution near London and exclusive here means that "no amount of gold will unbar its gates," but one of its members, Miss Amelia Piltar, whose large house practically stood on the grounds of the club. Miss Piltar became a member and is often playing practice shots, where she's not supposed to, but nobody has the courage to tell the short-tempered, vaguely sinister old lady not to. And it was her body that was found in a clump of trees near the eighteenth fairway. Admittedly, the murder is a strange one! 

Miss Piltar had received two very severe blows to the back of the head, insufficient to have caused death, but the bizarre thing is that the doctor believes that the blows were "almost certainly due to a golf ball." After being knocked unconscious, she was strangled with some very rough material and apparently robbed. The case is guaranteed to become a cause celebre when Swinton discovers the victim had been blackmailing people left and right.

This first-half is easily the best part of The King's Club Murder as it shows a young and promising, but mostly inexperienced, police inspector handle his first murder case. And not everything goes perfect. Swinton forgets to check up on certain things or threatens to lose his temper with a suspect, but demonstrated some shrewd diplomatic skill when handling two notorious press hounds. Less professionally is Swinton falling "blindly and madly in love" with a strange woman who turns up again in the second-half and making a small fortune on stock market with an insider tip. But swearing "a vow never again to let money fever grip him again." Swinton also investigates an unusual structure on the club grounds, a polo-practice hut, which has a floor sloping up steeply to the walls on all four side leaving a small level patch in the center – occupied by "an extraordinary-looking hobby-horse." A piece of poorly discarded evidence is discovered in the polo hut, but it should have been used as the scene of the crime. Why not toss the blackmailing victim (hogtied?) over the saddle like a cowboy's bounty to mock her crimes? There's a good and original locked room-trick hiding somewhere in that polo hut.

More importantly, the first-half had focus with clues and a serious suspect to concentrate on, but, as the police case collapsed, so did the structure of the story and plot. The whole story rapidly changed from a not uninteresting, second-string whodunit into a lethargic, third-rate British pursuit thriller typical of the 1920s and '30s chasing around a criminal with a penchant for disguises. A chase involving a capitalist plot involving commies, police raids, a booby trapped car and a damsel in distress (tied to a gate, not a railroad track), but nothing particularly good or worth elaborating on. So the ending could not have been anything but a huge letdown.

Greig's The King's Club Murder started with a lot of promise and energy by presenting a very young and green policeman getting a big break to prove himself, which shaped up to be a fairly decent, second-string mystery novel. But everything (potentially) good had to take a backseat in order to do a badly dated, unoriginal chase thriller. You could almost feel the plunge in quality when the story shifted gears. So, needless to say, The Inspector Swinton Murder Omnibus is going on the shelf for the foreseeable future.

Note for the curious: there are quite a few references in the story to the First World War, but one, very brief, allusion towards the end stood out to me. Swinton comes across a wooden seat in a village street with on the back, scarcely distinguishable now, painted "for the use of wounded soldiers only." Eleven years had barely passed in 1930 since the Armistice was signed and time was already doing its withering work en route to the next Great War.

No Friendly Drop (1931) by Henry Wade

Major Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher was an English baronet who fought in the two World Wars with the Grenadier Guards and held the positions of High Sheriff and Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, but Major Sir Henry's greatest service to his country was performed under a pseudonym, "Henry Wade" – plastered on the covers of more than twenty detective novels. Barzun & Taylor considered Wade to be "one of the outstanding authors not only of the thirties," but "also of the immediate post-war period." Particularly his earlier novels are well thought of by classic mystery readers. I had only read Constable, Guard Thyself! (1934) and Heir Presumptive (1935) years ago. So it was about time I returned to Wade and Detective-Inspector John Poole. 

No Friendly Drop (1931) is Wade's fifth novel and the second one to star his series-detective, Detective-Inspector Poole, who made his first appearance in The Duke of York's Step (1929). This one has been on my wishlist and big pile ever since reading glowing reviews from Nick, Patrick and "D for Doom." Having now read the book, I can say No Friendly Drop can be counted among the best of the British country house mystery novels. A story presented as typical, almost idyllic, country house mystery, but the devil is in the details and the nigh perfect plotting has a genuine and moving tragedy hidden underneath.

Tassart Hall, in Brackenshire, has been the ancestral seat of Lord Grayle's family for centuries and he loved both "the old-world furnishings of Tassart" and his dear wife, Lady Grayle. She was "passionately devoted to her husband," but dark clouds slowly gather over the country house.

Lord Grayle is nearly sixty, happily married and very popular in the region, but poor health made him a sad, delicate man that prevented him to make "use of his natural ability and opportunities" and lately developed a neuralgic tic – attacks of acute pain could drive him into a state "far more serious than the disease itself." On top of that, the cost of running a big estate has doubled in post-war England. And on the way of being taxed out of existence. Their son and their ambitious daughter-in-law, Lord and Lady Chessingham, disapprove of Lady Grayle not only refusing to cut back on her royal allowance, but even exceeding it. But nothing out of the ordinary for the time, which makes what happens next so devastating.

One morning, the household finds Lord Grayle unresponsive in his bed and Dr. Norman Calladine suspect he might have died from an overdose of medication, but a tabulation of the time of death and medication left shows something doesn't quite add up. Chief Constable knows "this is going to be an extremely awkward case" involving "one of the best known and most respected families in the country." So he decides to call in Scotland Yard who send Detective-Inspector John Poole down to Tassart Hall. Poole comes to the conclusion that he has deeply perplexing murder case on his hand without an apparent motive. Everyone agreed Lady Grayle's "love for her husband was the strongest and most genuine feature of her character." Lady Chessingham was hardly going to push colorless and pompous husband "into an earldom and the Cabinet over the dead body of her father-in-law."

So while they are all flawed people, overly generous, extravagant, ambitious or pompous, none of them are truly evil people who had a need to bump off of the beloved family patriarch – which would have netted them only a few hundred pounds or a heavily taxed estate. Lord Grayle's death actually forces his widow to make serious financial cutbacks. Not quite the cast of vultures commonly associated with these English country house mysteries. Even more uncharacteristically is the character who becomes the focal point of the police investigation.

A tired, completely untrue cliché of the detective story is "The Butler Did It," because a butler is practically part of the furniture and the least likely person to suspect. I can think of only a handful of detective stories in which the butler turned out to be murderer. I cringed every time. No Friendly Drop did things a little bit differently by dragging out the butler of Tassart Hall, James Moode, whose messy financial and private life attracted Poole's attention. Poole strongly suspects Moode of being in the middle of a lucrative scheme to secretly replace the valuable antique furniture at the hall with copies, but, as he digs deeper, Poole begrudgingly admits to himself that even Moode "could not be altogether a bad lot." Continuing the theme of the flawed family members without a pressing motive that really holds up. But then the problem deepens even more when the autopsy report comes in.

Lord Grayle had been given a "skillful mixing" of two poisons, di-dial and scopolamine, which were only lethal in combination. The doses were administrated hours apart. So why did the poisoner use "two stones to kill one bird" and what was the vehicle of the poisons? Poole knows "it's always a risk to leave a poisoner out," but decides to treat very carefully and not always ask the important questions as he hopes to lure the murderer in a false sense of security. Very much to the chagrin of the county police. And they appear to be justified when a second person is poisoned. A poisoning as mystifying as the first one that at the same time brings a great deal of clarity to the problem. I didn't realize just how fairly Wade had been playing the game until roughly the last quarter of the story.

I had a few ideas and suspicions, but the picture remained in unclear until reaching the last quarter when nearly everything, almost automatically, began to click together to form a practically complete picture and only aspect remained hazy – revealing the only weak link in the plot. Wade should have told the reader (ROT13) nobhg gur oebxra fcbhg bs Ybeq Tenlyr'f grncbg. However, it's the only design flaw in what's otherwise a flawlessly plotted detective story that even Agatha Christie could not have improved upon. But the solution is not merely an answer to a complicated, if ultimately simple, puzzle because the characters are not merely chess pieces who stand and move in service of the plot. So the solution is both logical and emotionally destructive, which delivered the finishing blow to the murderer. A truly tragic ending! 

No Friendly Drop has the outward appearance of a typically British, traditionally-structured country house mystery, but you only have to read the first chapter to understand this one is different and what unfolds in the succeeding chapters is an intelligently written and plotted detective story – particularly how Wade handled the plot-thread concerning the faked furniture. When it became evident what had happened at Tassart Hall, the story smartly began to shape into a human tragedy to deliver an ending befitting a classic. The fire that was lit in the 1920s was beginning to roar. Highly recommended!

The Julius Caesar Murder Case (1935) by Wallace Irwin

Wallace Irwin was an American journalist, satirist and writer whose work covered everything from humorous sketches, political satire and light verse to short stories and novels. Irwin began his literary career as a satirist with a laugh when he and his older brother, Will, were expelled from Stanford University in Palo Alta, California, because they lampooned their professors in campus publications – "an unusual achievement" for "which the Irwins should be fondly remembered." But readers of detective fiction have another reason to remember him fondly. 

When it was first published, The Julius Caesar Murder Case (1935) was perhaps seen as nothing more than an amusing curiosity, but, over the passing decades, it has become more than a mere genre curio. A mystery novel that, in some ways, was ahead of its time.

First and foremost, The Julius Caesar Murder Case stands as one of the earliest examples of the now popular historical mystery novel. John Dickson Carr's The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936), Victor Luhrs' The Longbow Murder (1941), Agatha Christie's Death Comes as the End (1944) and Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee-series were still in the future. However, it's not a historically accurate mystery and can best be described as an alt-history retelling of Caesar's murder with an explanation why historians got it wrong. More importantly, the book predates Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) as a self-aware parody ("had he been born two thousand years later he would have brought out his cigarette lighter") that happens to be a good detective story in its own right. But that's not all!

Robert Adey spotlighted The Julius Caesar Murder Case in his introduction to Locked Room Murders (1991), under "More Golden Age Contributors," as a very odd, but incredibly fun, historical mystery with "the impossible crime, a stabbing by invisible agency, is well handled" – solved by, "in a manner of speaking," the first recorded journalist-detective. The Julius Caesar Murder Case was first published by the D. Appleton—Century Company and remained out-of-print until Ramble House printed a new edition in 2007 with an introduction by Richard A. Lupoff. The introduction points out that the novel is perhaps the very first of so-called "toga mysteries," but I think it might be the only piece of “papyrus pulp” ever written. I'll explain in a minute. First let's get to the story at hand!

Q. Bulbus Apex is the owner and city editor of "the world's first experiment in daily journalism," Evening Tiber, whose star reporter and well-known sports columnist is Publius Manlius "Mannie" Scribo. The best reporter in ancient Rome who goes by the motto, "it's my business to meddle." And meddle he does!

Mannie's journalistic interest is drawn to the seemingly insignificant murder of the General Producer of Pompey's Theater, Q. Bulbus Comma, who lived way out on Hesperides Avenue in a small bungalorium. There he was found, on his front porch, with his throat cut. A case of apparent little importance in a time and place where Gladiatorial killings was a public pastime and the use of a bare fist instead of "a boxing glove stuffed with nails" considered unsportsmanlike. And, generally, a murder rate that could reach "magnificent proportions." Mannie got a lead on the story as the victim was one of the Big Fella's (Julius Caesar) pet poodles. So he puts his personally designed .xxxii dagger in the special breast pocket of his toga and hops on a litter across town. Following him along, on foot, is his slave and strong-arm man, Smith, whom Mannie rechristened Smithicus. A Briton who speaks and acts with all the reserve of a 1930s English butler. They make a magnificent pair and their interactions are among the highlights of the story. What a shame this is their only appearance.

So they begin to poke around the crime scene and city in a time, 44 BC, when "the alliance between the Police Department and the underworld was so well recognized" that "only by his uniform could the hunter be distinguished from the hunted." Something was obviously going on in Rome as the simple minded Sergeant Kellius, of the Homicide Squad, is promoted to Chief of Police, Mark Anthony is showing interest in the Evening Tiber and tries to bribe Mannie's boss with a shipload of papyrus – while rumors buzz along Rome's whispering gallery that "a giant plot was on the fire." Two things that run through the case is the motto Sic Semper Tyrannis (so always with tyrants) and that ever-present warning that has echoed throughout history, "beware the Ides of March!" But political games in ancient Rome can be dangerous. Mannie finds himself backed into a corner on more than one occasion and falls in love with the cherchez la femme ("as the Gauls would have said") of the story.

Yes, if you strip away the togas, marble and historical characters, The Julius Caesar Murder Case resembles a fairly routine, 1930s pulp-style detective story, but Irwin did such a fantastic job in dressing up the plot that I didn't notice it until halfway through the story. He really did a lot with surprisingly little, particularly during the first-half, but the last half gave the plot some much needed weight and depth with an impossible murder, ghostly visitations and a well handles solution.

Mannie witnessed with his own eyes Julius Ceasar walking quite alone, "fully a dozen feet beyond the reach of any assassin's arm," when a knife, "coming out of nowhere," pierced the Dictator through the back – stood "quivering in his bleeding and lifeless body." Not exactly the story that was passed down the ages, but that historical account was printed that very day in the first papyrus edition of the Evening Tiber. So now "contemporary historians would consult the Evening Tiber's files and get the queer, fanciful version" while "future historians would copy the bunk, and improve on it." This made Mannie determined to get to the bottom of the case and he goes down in society quite a bit before he comes back on top with the correct solution.

Solution to the impossible stabbing is, to be fair, not one of the greatest and basically combines two carny tricks not uncommon to the type of pulp-style locked room mysteries Irwin was parodying, but the who-and why were very well handled. Particularly who stabbed Caesar and why and how the two murders were linked together. This weightier ending is one of the many reasons why the story gets away with its shortcomings. 

The Julius Caesar Murder Case really is a second-string mystery that pretends to be first-rate historical detective novel and gets away with it, because it's such a tremendously fun story to read with the two main characters who deserved to be more than mere one-shot detectives. Just to give you an idea how firmly Irwin had his tongue planted in his cheek, he "affectionately dedicated" the book to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler with "the author's feeling that in distance there is security." But don't expect a historical detective comedy a la Blackadder or Monty Python. Irwin was an American and The Julius Caesar Murder Case reminded me of Colin Quinn's one-man show Long Story Short, but told as a typically 1930s, American pulp detective story that refuses to take itself (or anyone else) too seriously. So why is it still so obscure and little-known around these parts? 

Notes for the curious: The Julius Caesar Murder Case was reviewed by Patrick in 2013 and JJ in 2019, which you can read here and here.

Sable Messenger (1947) by Francis Vivian

Back in 2018, Dean Street Press resurrected another, long out-of-print and forgotten mystery novelist, Arthur E. Ashley, who produced eighteen crime-and detective novels from 1937 to 1959 under his penname of "Francis Vivian" – half of them starring his series-detective, Inspector Gordon Knollis. Vivian's work often straddles the line between the traditional detective story and the then slowly, more character-oriented crime novel with various degrees of success. I wasn't too impressed with The Sleeping Island (1951), a drab, gloomy affair, but The Threefold Cord (1947), The Laughing Dog (1949) and The Singing Masons (1950) were more than deserving of being lifted from obscurity. The Elusive Bowman (1951) distinguished by being one of those very rare, archery-themed mysteries. 

I wanted to continue rooting around in the series, but Vivian and Knollis were buried under an avalanche of Christopher Bush and Brian Flynn reprints rolling of the DSP printing press. A return to Vivian has been long overdue and there has been one title, in particular, that caught my attention. 

Sable Messenger (1947) is the second entry in the Inspector Knollis series and synopsis promised a detective story along the lines of Bush "a crime with no apparent motive" and "a host of alibis," which has to be broken down, one by one, before the situation can be resolved – except that the story played out very differently than expected. The final chapter is almost a story by itself, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The story begins with the statement that "if Lesley Dexter had not been a snob her husband might have lived out his three-score-and-ten years." Robert Dexter "wanted to flow easily through life" and enjoy his hobby, collecting Elizabethan poetry and plays, but Lesley had "ideas of advancement by rush methods." She pushed him to study all the subjects that would help him get promoted and began climbing the ladder to become the manager of the Packing Department of the Groots Chemicals Limited. A remarkable accomplish considering his age and size of the company. So they moved from their humble lodgings in Denby Street to Himalaya Villa in River Close. One of the better suburbs where Lesley could play the socialite and get her name in the local paper as being 'among those present' at various functions.

So nothing out of the ordinary, for the English, but, one night, Lesley is keeping Robert awake with her modern poetry and she hears someone knocking on the door of their next door neighbors, the Rawleys. She overhears Margot Rawley directing the midnight visitor to their house and this person gently begins to tap on their front door. Robert goes down stairs to answer the door, but Lesley heard him swear, "oh hell," followed by a thud. And then silence. When Lesley went down to see what happened to her husband, she finds Robert lying on a blood soaked doormat with a knife wound in his chest. The man-in-black with the black velour trilby hat is nowhere to be found.

Inspector Russett, chief of the Burnham Criminal Investigation Department, is immediately sidetracked by the Chief Constable, Sir Wilfrid Burrows, who asks the Yard to immediately dispatch Inspector Gordon Knollis to River Close. Knollis used to hold Russett's position until he solved The Death of Mr. Lomas (1941) and was requisitioned by the Yard, because "the war had justified many unconventional happenings." Now he returns to his old stomping ground with his good natured, intelligent assistant, Sergeant Ellis.

Knollis and Ellis have to cover a lot of ground and collect a ton of puzzle pieces as they attempt to make sense out of a coldblooded murder without the slightest trace of a motive. All though one part of the solution kind of stands out, "it looked all too complicated" and "there were loose ends sticking out at all angles." So, to the reader, Sable Messenger is more of a what-happened and why than a whodunit and you can't help but think the murderer is a complete idiot. As the story progressed, I kept being reminded of that quote from R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke how "the cautious murderer, in his anxiety to make himself secure, does too much" and "it this excess of precaution that leads to detection" – of which Sable Messenger is a textbook example. Such as the cleverly contrived, but insanely risky, alibi-trick. One that never stood a chance when closely scrutinized by the police. If the murderer had simply killed him on his way to work or home and took his wallet, Knollis would have had a very difficult job delivering the murderer to the hangman ("the sable messenger, whose errand knows no mercy").

So, while the bulk of the plot is uneven, the second-half and the last chapter elevated Sable Messenger to a slightly above average mystery novel. Firstly, there's the solution to the presence of the man-in-black and you'll probably crack a smile when you learn what it is. Something you either spot or completely miss. Secondly, the last chapter has a plot (of sorts) of its own when a second crime occurs in River Close. A mysterious man knocking on a front door, but was not seen by the policemen guarding the area and swore no one had entered the close. Yes, an impossible crime that comes with an apparently cast-iron alibi for the culprit. Knollis demolishes the problem almost as quickly as it was presented, but it served its purpose as it made the story, as a whole, suddenly appear much stronger than it actually was. 

Sable Messenger is perhaps not the best entry in the series, but the plot has some clever, if sometimes impractical, touches and the last chapter acted as forceful punctuation mark that helped raise up the weaker aspects of the plot. So not the best place to be begin, but, if you already like Vivian and Knollis, you shouldn't ignore it either.

Well, that about wraps it up for 2021. I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope to see back here in 2022!

The Finishing Stroke (1958) by Ellery Queen

The mystery writing cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, better known by their shared penname of "Ellery Queen," likely intended The Finishing Stroke (1958) to be their last Ellery Queen novel and designed a plot befitting a farewell performance to the American detective – an ambitious plot covering a period of fifty-two years. Fittingly, for this time of year, the story is written around a parody of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." So why not give it a second look now that nearly all memories of the story have faded from my memory. 

The Finishing Stroke begins on January, 1905, when publisher John Sebastian and his pregnant wife, Claire, were driving from New York to Rye in "a blizzard and smashed their car up near Mount Kidron." Fortunately, they crashed near a little house where Dr. Cornelius Hall lives, but, as a result of the accident, Claire went into premature labor and gave birth to twins. She survived delivering the first baby, but not the second. A wounded and shocked John denounced his second son on the spot ("the little monster killed my wife"), which is rather fortunate for Dr. Hall and his wife. They never had a child and that has remained a source of unhappiness to them.

John Sebastian agreed and promises to setup a trust fund, but dies of an untreated head injury less than a week later. He only acknowledged one son, John Sebastian Jr, who's to inherit his entire, multi-million dollar estate on his twenty-fifth birthday and is under the guardianship of his father business partner and friend, Arthur B. Craig. So nobody, except the Halls, knew there were two sons and they had a reason to keep quiet. This was also the year Ellery Queen was born.

Twenty-five years later, Ellery took his first, tentative steps as one of those meddlesome amateur detectives when helped his father navigate "the labyrinth of the Monte Field case" and wrote down the case in a bestselling novel, The Roman Hat Mystery (1929) – reviews were, on a whole, nourishing. Only taking offense to the being called "a philovancish bookworm" and accused of being merely competent. But, on a whole, things were looking bright for the young author and sleuth. So he was going up in the world when he accepted an invitation to attend a Christmas and New Years house party in Alderwood, New York, culminating in a birthday bash.

Young John Sebastian is now "a dilettante poet of great charm" and an acquaintance of Ellery whose engaged to a fashionably textile designer, Rusty Brown, whose creations "were beginning to be mentioned in The New Yorker's 'The Talk of the Town''and sought out by Park Avenue." In two weeks time, John turns twenty-five and comes into his full inheritance as well as seeing his first book of verse published. So things are looking very bright for everyone and the reason why he's invited a dozen guests to the home of his guardian to celebrate the season. John promises a huge surprise at the end of the twelve-day holiday.

Arthur Craig is the host of the party and not only had he to be a father-figure to the young poet, but also to his orphaned niece, Ellen Craig, who's like a sister to John. Mrs. Olivette Brown is John's future mother-in-law who's a devotee of astrology and an amateur medium. Valentina Warren is a theatrical actress whose "great crusade" is to get to Hollywood to became a famous movie star. Marius Carlo is a composer with an "adoring clique of Greenwich Village poets, artists and musicians who had attached themselves to him like a fungus," but earned a living playing in Walter Damrosch's symphony orchestra "heard coast-to-coast each Saturday night at nine over NBC." Dr. Sam Dark has been the family doctor ever since he came to Alderwood and Roland Payn. Dan Z. Freeman, of The House of Freeman, is Ellery and John's publisher. Lastly, Reverend Mr. Andrew Gardiner, recently retired from his Episcopal rectorate in New York, who's a friend of the Browns. And, of course, Ellery Queen.

So an interesting cast of characters to put together for a fortnight in a large, rambling country house during the holidays and mysterious, inexplicable things begin to happen almost immediately.

On a snowy, Christmas morning, the house awakens to discover the packages under the Christmas tree missing, but, mere moments later, a Santa Claus appears in the hallway with the presents and begins "distributing the gay little packages with wordless gusto" – before vanishing without a trace. The spotless, unmarked snow anywhere near the house proved nobody could have left the place, but a search didn't turn up a thirteenth house guest. Surprisingly, the story is full with these quasi-impossible situations and near locked room situations. More interestingly, the nature of presents reveals to Ellery that all twelve of them were born under different signs of the zodiac. So here we have "twelve people in the party, twelve days and nights of Christmas, and now a vanishing Santa Claus who distributes twelve signs of the zodiac," but things get much stranger and more incomprehensible.

During those twelve days, on each of those twelve days, a neatly wrapped package addressed to John Sebastian is found in the house. Every package has a card attached to it with a parody on the carol "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and some have weird doodles on the back, which serve as a kind of dying message. But the content of the packages would continue to puzzle Ellery for more than a quarter of a century. And, to complete the mystery, the body of an elderly man turns up on the library rug with a dagger in his back. Nobody knows who the man is or how he got into the house and there are no identifying marks. So the police officially confines the party to the house pending the investigation.

So an intriguing, intricately-presented problem, but, before getting to the plot, it should be mentioned The Finishing Stroke can be counted as an early example of the historical mystery with the majority of the story taking place in the last week of 1929 and the first week of 1930 – concluding nearly three decades later in 1957. There are references throughout the story to what happened in the world during that period. They listen on the radio to Chris 'Red' Cagle, the Cadets' great All-American halfback, playing his last college game. They discuss the Hoover administration, mock New York's Mayor Jimmy Walker being sworn in "for his second hilarious term" and talk international politics ("the growing power of the Dutchman") and other subjects of the time ("the new I B M calculator"). Naturally, there are plenty of references to "the ravages of Prohibition" and Black Thursday, but Ellery also reads Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) and How Like a God (1929) by "someone named Rex Stout." These historical crumbs served their purpose by placing the setting in that particular period in time, but let the reader be warned. Not everything is period dressing!

But what about the plot, you ask? That's an entirely different kettle of fish. The Finishing Stroke is more interesting in what it tried to do than how it was done. 

The Finishing Stroke is, technically speaking, a fair play detective story, but the clueing is too esoteric and the red herrings too rich to give average reader a fair shot to arrive at the same conclusion as Ellery. You can spot the murderer by figuring out the motive, but deciphering the secret of the Christmas packages is beyond most readers. Not everything is explained. What about the locked bedroom door and where were the packages hidden? A bit sloppy compared with the methodical plotting of the 1930s EQ novels. However, the central idea behind the whole plot was devilish clever and possibly unique at the time as (ROT13) gur zheqrere unq ernq Ryyrel'f obbx naq qrfvtarq n cyna pnyphyngrq gb znavchyngr naq zvfyrnq uvz. Something that had, to my knowledge, not been done before. I think our mystery writing cousins deserve praise for how they handled one of the biggest no-noes of the detective story. 

Father Ronald A. Knox stated in his "Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction" (1929) that "twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them." Not only was the reader duly prepared for the presence of a twin brother, which took away the problem of how John Sebastian could be in two places at the same time, but Queen somehow succeeded to get several extremely ingenious twists out of that lengthy prologue. If you're going to use twins in a detective story, this is how its done! But the end result is a very uneven, atypically EQ novel.

Ellery Queen is often called the embodiment of the American detective story, but this intended last outing strangely reminded me of two novels by a highly unorthodox, British mystery writer, Gladys Mitchell – who's as different from EQ as a witch is to a mathematician. Mitchell's The Echoing Stranger (1952) is another detective novel that knew how to use spotty twins, but The Finishing Stroke reminded me the most of her own trip down memory lane. Late, Late in the Evening (1976) is, like The Finishing Stroke, a nostalgic trip back to the 1920s. Both stories almost read like the detective story itself is reminiscing about happier days. And the uneven plotting did very little to dispel that impression. 

The Finishing Stroke is not the best or fairest of the Ellery Queen novels, but the plot toyed with some interesting, even original, concepts and ideas to tell a detective story. Despite some of its shortcomings, the story of a cocky, know-it-all Ellery ("I must have been insufferable") failing to solve the case until he matured into middle age is fascinating and would have made a fitting conclusion to both the character and series. So not to be skipped by true EQ fans.

Notes for the curious: out of simple, historical curiosity, I looked up the football player (Chris Cagle) and discovered he was born in 1905 and died the day after Christmas, 1942. The body on the library rug in the story is discovered on December 26. A coincidence or done by design? And why? Lastly, The Finishing Stroke revealed just how much Ton Vervoort's Moord onder astrologen (Murder Among Astrologists, 1963) was modeled on Queen's work.