Beware the Red Herring!

"So, Morse, must the evil that men do live on after them?"

- Mrs. Radford (Inspector Morse, The Sins of the Father, 1990) 

George Michaelmore is a well-preserved, middle aged widower of independent means with four adult children in their twenties, whom he provided for with their own apartments in the family's ancestral home christened "Sunbay." However, the Michaelmore household is in for an overhaul following a letter from their father announcing his intensions to marry a woman, named Adelaide, he met abroad and intends to bring her home in a fortnight.

Thus begins Herbert Adams' The Judas Kiss (1955) and as the publication date indicates, Adams penned the story during the twilight years of the Golden Era. A transitional period in which the focus shifted from plot-and idea driven narratives to in-depth characterization and social commentary. You can find traces of these changes in the attitudes and opinions of some of the characters, but The Judas Kiss remains foremost a detective story – and one that's surprisingly domestic in nature.

The first half basically consists of two different quarters: the introduction of Adelaide into the Michaelmore family and the unraveling cumulating in murder. Adelaide talks with George's two sons and daughters. Garnet entered the church and tries to revive the local community, often with the gleam of the zealot in his eyes. Jasper is the artistic soul of the family and uses his apartment as a studio. He also flirts with his stepmother. Emerald is a wishful writer currently working on a serious novel with Victor Gore-Black, but is their relationship purely professional? Pearl is the babe of the lot and the confident of her siblings. The source from which all of their problems spring are ideas and morals that in Britain of 1955, a full decade before Roy Jenkins eased divorce laws and whatnot, could be experienced as an assault on the institution of marriage. Granted, some of the things are still considered a no-no, but there was definitely a break with the idea that a marriage begins with secret kisses in the apple orchard and ends with sharing a plot of land in the church graveyard.

Interestingly, there's another break with tradition going contrary to what's happening at Sunbay, but to be honest, in the wake of Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngiao Marsh, it's more of a continuation than a break – except that a male mystery writer does it. Adams' series-detective, now retired Major Bennion, has taken temporary possession of the house next door to enjoy a holiday with his wife Ruth and their baby. The brief intrusions on the Bennions are cozy, domestic snapshots of what I imagine people thought of as the Good Life in this period after World War II and the Cold War warming up. So, yes, detectives have a private life, but I'm still grateful John Dickson Carr spared us a homely bedroom moment between Dr. Gideon Fell and his wife in Hag's Nook (1933). That's a genuinely, disturbing mental image. I should also note here (before continuing the review) the apparent physical-and mental fitness of the characters, because they're constantly playing golf, tennis, chess or reading detective stories.

Anyhow, the nice, quiet domicile of the Michaelmores is uprooted when a car fatally strikes down George and the reading of the will lays bare hurt pride and greed within the family. It also pits Adelaide against George's children and there's a clever bit about wording of the will, but where The Judas Kiss distinguishes itself is the red herring apparently designed to fool the self-absorbed, armchair Philo Vance's who fancy themselves the stuff of geniuses – because they've read far too many detective stories than is good for them. I can't even claim I was properly fooled by deducing the wrong murderer. After a while, I was back at jabbing a finger at my first suspect (a corpse) and shouting, "you did it... I just know you did!"

How did Adams pull this off, you ask? There's a confrontation between Adelaide and the Michaelmore children, which leads the former to go into partial exile at the local inn and that's where someone manages to poison her behind the locked doors and shuttered windows of her bedroom. The police are unable to find a trace of poison in the room or how the murderer was able to administrator the poison, but Bennion solves the locked room angle almost immediately and this is the part where the seasoned mystery reader has to tread carefully. Trust me. A dead man through space-and time manipulated me by going that route. I won't go into precise details, but you've been warned.

Unfortunately, the cleverly deposited red herring was better than the actual and much more mundane solution, which was under whelming, but the worst part was that it gives ammunition to the people who say whodunits are only about restoring order. Well, The Judas Kiss did exactly that and more: all of the "rotten" branches of the Michaelmore family were cut-off and the bad intrusions rooted out. The ones who were left behind have a married life to look forward to and all was well with the world. That part felt as a definite cop-out on Adams' part. C'mon, Adams, it was 1955! We could've handled a bleak ending with one snake left in George's old love nest. 

Anyhow, The Judas Kiss is a fun and quite an interesting read in spite of the weak, but cheerful, ending and loved slipping so foolishly over the red herring Adams expertly placed along the trail.

Finally, another word of warning for the reader, there's an amusing bit towards the end about a stolen plot of a detective novel and a character who reads the ending of a mystery before reading the entire story, because he wants to know as much as Sherlock Holmes does when he begins reading (fair enough). However, I fear this portion of the story could've revealed the method for the impossible poisoning from Carolyn Wells' Raspberry Jam (1919-20), which I still intend to read after positive comments from Curt Evans and Mike Grost. How do I know without having read the book myself, you ask (again). Well, if it's true, than Adams was less than subtle about it. 

I have previously reviewed Herbert Adams' The Writing on the Wall (1946).

The Death of a Newshound

“If you watch the news and don't like it, then this is your counter program to the news.”

- Jon Stewart.

Last week, I came across a small market and took a brief detour to roam pass its stands, and before long, I was perusing the contents of a stall crammed with boxes that were stuffed with old secondhand books. I began to dig through the boxes, but only found skepticism mocking the hope I had of stumbling upon a serendipitous discovery and was ready to give up when I noticed that the last boxes were brimming with English-language pockets – and moments later I walked away with Herbert Adams' The Writing on the Wall (1946) and Josephine Tey's The Singing Sands (1952). A buck each! O frabjous day!

I was quite content with my purchases, two paperback editions of vintage detective stories in excellent condition for a mere pittance, but it got better when Mike Blake, a fellow member of the GADetection Group, congratulated me on finding this edition of The Writing on the Wall, as it's a pretty rare one, which isn't even offered up for sale on the internet – and hardcover editions range from about $25 to $70. Of course, this made it unthinkable to let this book languish on my to-be-read pile and even put a little-known, but promising, locked room mystery back on the shelves to take a closer look at this collector's item.

The Writing on the Wall has a premise that appears to confirm the stereotypical image a lot of contemporary readers have of British detective stories from the first half of the previous century: a newspaper mogul, Sir James Norland, invites the editors of his newspapers to his country home, The Brambles, to discuss how their periodicals can influence the shaping of a Brave New World after the last devastating war. The exchange of ideas between the newspapermen, on how this world will take shape, is one of the highlights of this book and some of their sentiments still ring through today. If you are interested in history, this portion alone makes it worth tracking down a copy.

It's not just business talk, at least, not every conversation centers on the newspaper industry as the magnate has also invited Lady Diana and her mother, Lady Mellowfont – an impoverished marchioness. Sir James has found a loophole that could resurrect their dried-up bloodline of nobles and in exchange he wants Lady Diana to marry his son, Peter, and produce a son, his grandson, who will be a marquis. Unfortunately, for Sir James and Lady Mellowfont, their children have given their hearts to someone else and Peter manages to upset his father when he turns up with his love, a dancer named Ambrosine, but the reason for being upset, according to Sir James, is that Ambrosine is his illegitimate daughter and thus his half-sister.

Well, if that does not set the stage for an old-fashioned homicide I don't know what will and the murderer does not let the reader down: the crumpled remains of Sir James are found the next morning at the bottom of the stairs, but it was not a fall that killed him but a whack over the head and not with the proverbial blunt instrument. I want to toot my own horn here for identifying the unusual murder weapon as soon as the doctor gave a description of the wound and couldn't believe how on the stop my observation was when the item was mentioned a few chapters later in a descriptive passage. Anyway, the home was also burgled, the butler drugged and Peter Norland was nowhere to be found on the premises. Enter Inspector Farnell, who does a swift and competent job in clearing up the burglary, based on a cupboard with a key on the inside of the door and a floor littered with biscuit crumbs, but the murderer of Sir James Norland remains as elusive as ever until Roger Bennion arrives on the scene.

Major Roger Bennion brings more answers than questions with him and makes a few astute deductions when examining that fateful collection of stairs, but this has one drawback that always annoyed me: it made the police appear as incompetent idiots, which is the last thing you could accuse them of in this book. But that's how it came across. Inspector Farnell may have done his part and nipped the burglars in the bud, but they weren't even half as sharp as their own tools and when Bennion crossed the thresh hold to wrap up the case with only a quarter of the book left to go, well, that simply does not reflect well on the good inspector. However, the only real complaint, plot-wise, is that Bennion resorted to a bluff to draw out the murderer. It was a clever and logical bluff, but I prefer to watch the detective trap a killer in what I have seen referred to as “A Prison of Logic.”

Anyway, that's a minor quibble in what was an intelligently written, if at times ordinary, detective story with a clever, but ultimately, simple plot, subtly placed clues and more than one eager attempt at confusing the reader by dangling a red herring in front of them – which made for a rewarding and satisfying read. From logically explaining how it came that a bunch of thieves and a murderer marked the same house on the same night for their nefarious activities to the effective motive that was fitting for their Brave New World. Granded, The Writing on the Wall may not be a classic of the genre, but anyone giving it less than four stars has no regard for antiquated craftsmanship. 

John Norris from Pretty Sinister Books reviewed two of his books earlier this year: The Secret of Bogey House (1924) and The Crime in the Dutch Garden (1931). Herbert Adams seems to have been a very competent and prolific mystery writer and I want to read more of him!