Murder, M.D. (1943) by Miles Burton

If you have read the 2023 post "The Hit List: Top 10 Fascinating World War II Detective Novels," you're probably aware of my fascination with detective fiction written, or taking place, during the Second World War – practically a subgenre at this point. There are even a few eerily prophetic mysteries, like Darwin L. Teilhet's The Talking Sparrow Murders (1934) and Theodore Roscoe's I'll Grind Their Bones (1936), but those written between 1939-45 remain the most fascinating. More than those prescient curiosities or the historical reconstructions. The WWII era detective story can easily fill a large, doubly stacked bookcase and half of them are still waiting to be rediscovered. So always keep an eye out for copies or reprints.

I don't recall who, when or where Murder, M.D. (1943) by "Miles Burton" was recommended to me as a noteworthy wartime village mystery. But whoever it was that recommended the book, thank you!

Miles Burton is one of the pseudonyms of the detective story's plot engineer, John Street, who's best known penname is "John Rhode" from his prolific Dr. Lancelot Priestley series. Street belongs to the once unfairly maligned, so-called "humdrum" school prioritizing plotting, particularly technical plots centering on murder methods, impossible crimes and unbreakable alibis, over characterization – appealing to puzzle fiends who want a tricky problem to pick apart. So even among us Golden Age detective fans, not everyone's a fan of Street's purely technical, plot-driven and cleverly contrived mysteries. Whatever its title might suggest, Murder, M.D. is a surprisingly Crime Queenish village mystery focusing more on the characters and storytelling than picking apart an ingeniously horrifying method for murder. The plot is still one of his best!

The backdrop of Murder, M.D. is the now sparsely populated village of Exton Forcett, "so many had left to serve in various capacities elsewhere," which also had to say goodbye to their popular village physician. When the war broke out, Dr. St. John Cecil joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and currently serves in the Middle East. Dr. Cecil arranged for Dr. Kurt Wiegler, a naturalized Austrian, to act as his locum, but the highly opinionated Dr. Wiegler is "constitutionally incapable of keeping his nose out of trouble and other people's affairs." Always threatening "to expose people" or "to inflict some unpleasantness upon them," openly stating he believes ninety percent of the villages suffer from "congenital idiocy" with the other ten percent being "deliberate criminals." So, despite being better than Dr. Cecil, his locum had made himself immensely unpopular as many villagers preferred to go the doctors in the neighboring villages.

Nobody is saddened when Dr. Wiegler's body is discovered on top of a boulder at the bottom of a gravel pit in Gallows Wood. Dr. Wiegler was a passionate birdwatcher and everyone at the scene guessed he had stumbled over the edge, while looking through his binoculars and plunged to his death. The coroner and jury at the inquest agreed with an accidental verdict.

Captain Desmond Merrion, one of the chiefs of the Naval Intelligence, is in the village on a short leave and confides to his host, Sir Mark Corringham, his believe Dr. Wiegler "was, in fact, deliberately murdered" – a fact deduced "on the evidence of a coat button and a couple of pine needles." However, they're more than happy to let sleeping dogs lie and life goes on the village as usual. Only notable things to happen over the following months, besides the war, are the arrivals of the surprising new locum and an unexpected, but very pleased, heir of the late locum. During this time, the new locum begins to suspect everyone in the village knew Dr. Wiegler had been killed, but nobody seemed interested in bringing his killer to justice. That sets up the second murder.

I think this second murder is one of the things distinguishing Murder, M.D. as a first-rate Golden Age detective story, because the second murder is not merely a plot-device to reignite interest during the second-half of the book. This second murder is unexpected and shocking with actual weight behind it. While the first murder was a relief to the village, the second murder is not nor is it going to be without consequences. Desmond Merrion is called back by Sir Mark to help out Inspector Arnold in weeding out the murderer. A problem requiring to timetable and map out everyone's movement, because the place where the body was found divides the suspects between the Cecils and the rest. Interestingly, they use blackout time to help piece together the victim's final steps ("however light it may be outside, the blackout has to go up at the time ordained"). So good, old-fashioned and solid detective work. But where Street really exceeded himself is the handling of the solution with a surprisingly well-hidden murderer.

Whether writing as John Rhode, Miles Burton or Cecil Waye, Street was always more interested in the how than who or why. So even in his best detective novels, the murderers and motives tend to be obvious (e.g. The Bloody Tower, 1938). Murder, M.D. is the opposite in what you would expect to the point that it almost seems deliberate. The story and plot has done away with what can be deemed his usual strengths to work and focus on what's generally considered to be greatest weaknesses: characterization, a well-hidden murderer and a good, not so obvious motive. Street delivered on the last two like he was Agatha Christie or Christianna Brand! Impressively, (SPOILER/ROT13) gur zheqrere fubhyq unir orra qbhoyl boivbhf, orpnhfr gung glcr bs punenpgre nyjnlf vaivgrf fhfcvpvba. Nal jevgre pnfgvat n punenpgre yvxr gung va gur ebyr bs zheqrere vf tvivat gurzfryirf n unaqvpnc (trg vg?) sebz gur fgneg. Vg jnfa'g fb boivbhf urer!

The finishing touch is the original, fairly clued motive complemented by Merrion's memorable exposure of the murderer cementing Murder, M.D. as a classic of the Golden Age village mystery and simply Street's very best detective novel read to date. Murder, M.D. deserves to be reprinted as it would be right at home in the British Library Crime Classic series. Until then, I recommend you pick up a copy, if one happens to come your way.

Murder at Monk's Barn (1931) by Cecil Waye

John Street was one of the more prolific mystery writers of the genre's heydays, producing nearly a 140 novels in two long-running series under two different pennames, "John Rhode" and "Miles Burton," but Tony Medawar discovered a third, previously unsuspected pseudonym, "Cecil Waye" – adding another four titles to his already impressive bibliography. Not that this revelation made copies any less scarce. 

Even during the current reprint renaissance, only a minuscule amount of Street's work has been reissued and honestly didn't expect the Cecil Waye novels to find their way back into print anytime soon. Dean Street Press decided differently and reprinted Murder at Monk's Barn (1931), The Figure of Eight (1931), The End of the Chase (1932) and The Prime Minister's Pencil (1933) back in February. Medawar provided these brand new editions with an informative introduction about this almost forgotten, short-lived series.

A noteworthy point of the Cecil Waye novels is that the detective duties are performed by a brother-and-sister team, Christopher and Vivienne Perrin, who Medawar described as private investigators in the tradition of the 1920s Young Adventurers – like Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. And, to my knowledge, there practically were no other sibling detectives during this period.

Anyway, three of the four novels are "metropolitan thrillers," but the first novel is a detective story "very much in the style of the John Rhode and Miles Burton books." What's more, the synopsis promised the unraveling of an impossible crime! There you have another title for that third, hypothetical supplement edition of Locked Room Murders. 

Murder at Monk's Barn opens on a cold, dark winter evening in the village of Fordington when Constable Burden returns to his cottage, but duty soon calls again as "a sharp report" brings him back out on the street. A parlor-maid comes running out of Monk's Barn yelling that the master's been shot in his dressing room. Upstairs, the constable finds the body of Gilbert Wynter, an electrical engineer, slumped in front of the dressing-table with a shaving mirror on it and "a bullet wound in the centre of his forehead." Someone had fired a shot from the garden through the window, which requires an "amazing accuracy of aim," but more on that angle in a moment.

The public opinion and local police, represented by Superintendent Swayne, have their sights on Wynter's second gardener, Walter Mintern, who was sacked on the Saturday before the murder. Walter took it very badly and loudly threatened in the public-house "he would get his own back," but Gilbert's younger brother and business partner, Austin, suspects "the whole damn gang" at Fordington of "a damned low-down plot" without exactly knowing why – determining him to find out who killed his brother. So he turns to two private investigators, Christopher and Vivienne Perrin, who have a knotty tangle to unsnarl.

One of the knots is that the murder is something of an impossibility. How did the murderer enter the garden, fired a shot from the shrubbery and escaped unseen with Constable Burden standing in the street within seconds of the shot being heard? How did the murderer knew where to aim? The shot was fired through a closed window with the thick, heavy curtains closely drawn and the bullet had left a small hole in it. So how could the murderer have shot Gilbert? You can't see "a shadow doesn't show through a thick curtain" much less "hit it with a rifle bullet."

You can always rely on Rhode to come up with a nifty trick, or gimmick, good enough to carry the plot and sustain the story, which is a bare necessity with Rhode as his murderers tend to be easily spotted. Murder at Monk's Barn is no exception to the rule. The murderer here is not difficult to find and a second murder removed any doubt, but, once again, you can rely on Rhode to make a second murder as distinctly interesting as the first murder. This time, Rhode used the second murder to show the reader how a plot-technician handles a box of poisoned chocolates and made a good attempt along the way to misdirect readers who had already caught on to the murderer's identity.

So the entire plot rests on how these murders were committed and they were designed to hold it up, but it should be noted that despite the strong how-was-it-done element, it's not a humdrum affair at all – much more lively than your average Rhode or Burton novel. You can ascribe that to having two 1920s-style Bright Young Things as detectives and they added another complication to the case. Austin and Vivienne began to fall in love the moment the police directed their attention at Austin's beautiful motive, ample opportunity and a non-existent alibi, which made her rush towards the solution ahead of her brother. She pieces together the solution from physical clues (e.g. pottery shards) helped by her understanding of human nature. A very well done combination of the intuitionists and realists approach and one of the many details that made this such a rich and rewarding read.

In many ways, Murder at Monk's Barn is a typical Dr. Priestley or Desmond Merrion novel with the how being more important than who-and why, but the detective-characters make all the difference here in both presentation and storytelling. So even with all the familiar touches and usual craftsmanship, Murder at Monk's Barn has something new to offer to readers already familiar with Rhode, but readers who'll be getting their first taste of Rhode can get an idea what to expect (plot-wise) from his other series. If you like what you read, I recommend you track down copies of The Bloody Tower (1938) and Invisible Weapons (1938).

The Bloody Tower (1938) by John Rhode

The Bloody Tower (1938) is the 32nd novel in the Dr. Lancelot Priestley series and has a plot fulfilling John Rhode's own requirements expected of a good detective story, "painstaking workmanship" and "accurate expression of fact," but the most attractive facet of the story is it was perhaps inspired by the work of his friend, John Dickson Carr – similar to how Rhode influenced Carr's The Man Who Could Not Shudder (1940). You can easily make out the contours of a Carr-like detective story when glancing at the skeletal structure of the plot.

The Bloody Tower is set in the now gloomy surroundings of "the ruined grandeur" of the once splendiferous Farningcote estate.

Sometime in 18th century, Thaddeus Glapthorne constructed Farningcote Priory with the stones of a ruined monastery and erected  "a cylinder of masonry" on the highest point of his land. An inscription carved above the lintel of the iron door prophesying, "while this tower shall stand," so "long shall Glapthorne dwell in Farningcote." One of his less fortunate descendants has religiously clung to that promise.

Simeon Glapthorne is an elderly, invalid man who lives in the bare, but habitable, central block of the Georgian house with the now closed, disused wings lying in ruin – empty rooms, broken windows and missing tiles. Every piece of furniture and book in the house was sold until there was hardly "a stick left." A significant portion of the estate consists of unproductive woodlands, some wasteland known as the warren and Farningcote Farm is leased to a dairy farmer, Thomas Chudley. So what little money comes in "almost exactly balances" the interest on the mortgage.

You can say the place has lost some of its shine over the centuries, but the old, wheelchair-bound man clings to the place and lives there with his oldest son, Caleb. A frayed, shabbily dressed butler, Bill Horning, who has been with the family for over fifty years and his bibulous wife and cook, Mrs. Horning. A younger son, named Benjamin, refused to take part in the struggle against "inevitable ruin" and became an engineer aboard a steamship. Where he dreams of a life together with his first cousin, Joyce Blackbrook, in the engine room (gross). So there's no apparent reason to suspect anything, but a tragic accident, when Caleb's body is found in the warren with part of his face blown to pieces. A burst shotgun, or parts of it, were found lying next to the body.

Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, of the Criminal Investigation Department, happened to be in Lydenbridge and talking with Inspector Appleyard, of the local constabulary, when the apparent gun accident was reported – who invites Waghorn to come along. And they soon discover there's more to the exploding shotgun than a mere hunting accident.

As their investigation progressed, Waghorn decides to consult that "queer old stick," Dr. Lancelot Priestley, who has retired and spends his days stirring up "the very devil in scientific circles" with controversial articles and attempting to satisfy his "hunger for human problems." Something the police is more than willing to help feed, but, at this point of the series, Dr. Priestley has become an armchair oracle and leaves the practical detective work to Jimmy Waghorn and Superintendent Hanslet. So he only makes a couple of brief appearances before drawing his conclusions in the last chapter.

So you might expect the story to be one of Rhode's technical how-was-it-done stories, but, surprisingly, "the mechanism of the crime" is settled early on in the book with a visit to a local gunsmith. What we're given instead is a very clever and evenly paced whodunit with an ever better executed historical plot-thread, which revolves around a coded message left by Thaddeus Glapthorne in the family bible. A cipher linking bible verses to odd, hand-drawn shapes of balloons, crescent moons, circles and squares. If you put the book aside and take the time, you actually have a shot at decoding the message. Something I didn't do myself, but someone with a mind for codes and puzzles could do it. And how it related to the old, gloomy tower demonstrated why Rhode was the Engineer of Death! This excellently done plot-thread is also the reason why I tagged this review as historical mystery. It's really that good!

Technically, the who and the cleverly disguised motive were equally well done, but the observant, cynically-minded armchair detective will have no problem fishing both of them from the small pool of suspects – which weakened the partial false-solution following in the wake of an unexpected death. A character who I didn't expect to die in this Carrian detective novel.

I don't remember who exactly made this argument, but someone posited Rhode's primary weakness was his unwarranted expectation that his readers would take anything he told them on blind faith. But when we open a detective novel, we become a very suspicious and uncharitable lot who give the stink eye to even the most innocent looking characters or actions. This is what made the murderer and motive standout in The Bloody Tower.

Nonetheless, the easily spotted murderer and lack of a strong how-was-it-done type of killing, The Bloody Tower stands as one of Rhode's better and most readable detective novels. A sobering, realistic take on the atmospheric, Gothic-style mysteries of doomed families and old, long-lingering curses laced together with an ingenious historical plot-thread. I unhesitatingly recommend it to everyone and particular to readers who are new to Rhode. You might not get to know Dr. Priestley, but it shows, in more ways than one, what Rhode could do with the detective story.

Vegetable Duck (1944) by John Rhode

John Rhode's Vegetable Duck (1944) is the fortieth title in his lengthy, long-running Dr. Lancelot Priestley series and has been praised by many readers as a particularly clever, crisply written detective story with an ingeniously contrived method for poisoning a piece of vegetable marrow – making it a veritable chef-d'oeuvre of the series. So imagine my disappointment when this supposedly five-star mystery turned out to be a pretty average, middle-of-the-Rhode entry in the series.

I've only read an infinitesimal fraction of the Dr. Priestley series, but Vegetable Duck is a second-tier title compared to The House on Tollard Ridge (1929), Death on the Board (1937), Invisible Weapons (1938), Men Die at Cyprus Lodge (1943) and Death in Harley Street (1946). However, my dissatisfaction has more to do with the excessive, undeserved praise than with the story's inability to live up to it. But it has negatively affected my reading.

So this is very likely going to be a short, poorly written and disappointing review, because I have not all that much to say about it. The reader has been warned.

Vegetable Duck begins with the return of Charles Fransham to his London service flat, Mundesley Mansions, who, earlier in the evening, had been lured away from his diner by a mysterious, unaccountable telephone call – leaving his wife to enjoy a dish of vegetable duck with potatoes, gravy and cheese. And in case you're wondering, vegetable duck is "a marrow, not too big, stuffed with minced meat and herbs" and "baked whole." A dish that was not only a personal favorite of Letitia Fransham, but also turned out to be her last meal. She's found in the dinning-room, unresponsive, when her husband returns. The doctor who examined the body suspects Mrs. Fransham had died from "the effects of a powerful dose of some vegetable alkaloid" and alerted the authorities.

Inspector Jimmy Waghorn, of Scotland Yard, is placed in charge of the case and initially focuses his attention on the husband as the primary suspect.

Charles Fransham tells Waghorn he had been called by a man, named Corpusty, who introduced himself as an employee of a private-detective he had hired and wanted to meet him immediately, because there had been developments in the case – only Corpusty never turned up. And when Fransham returned home, he found the body of his wife in the dinning-room. Yes, this is very reminiscent of the murder of Julia Wallace in 1931 and mentioned a number of times throughout the story. The Wallace Case had captivated the imagination of many mystery writers of the time and Dorothy L. Sayers even dedicated a chapter to the case in The Anatomy of Murder (1936).

Fransham had hired a private-detective because he has been receiving anonymous letters with shotguns drawings on them. An obvious reference to a fatal shooting incident that had killed his brother-in-law, but there are many people, such as the now retired Superintendent Hanslet, who are convinced Fransham had shot his brother-in-law. Simply made it look like an unfortunate hunting accident.

So there are more than enough potential leads to follow up on and then there's the genuinely clever method for introducing a lethal dose of digitalis into a piece of vegetable marrow. A problem clevery explained by Dr. Lancelot Priestley over the dinner-table and also solved the puzzling problem of damp, water-damaged envelope. Sadly, Dr. Priestley is only peripherally involved and acts more as a soundboard to Waghorn than as a armchair detective. Nonetheless, the poisoning method Dr. Priestley laid bare was as cunning and inventive as the unusual poisoning method from Gladys Mitchell's little-known The Man Who Grew Tomatoes (1959). But the poisoning of the vegetable marrow also happened to be the only aspect of the plot that lifted the story, ever so slightly, above average. Only very briefly.

Vegetable Duck has some good detective work with several interesting plot-threads, but, as a whole, the story has nothing to justify the inordinate amount of praise it has received over the decades, because the murderer really sticks out and can easily be pointed out the moment this character enters the story – becoming even harder to ignore when a second murder is committed. While the murderer's identity is obvious, you're not given sufficient clues to work out any of the (other) problems for yourself. So, even as a howdunit, you can hardly label it as a perfect, five-star mystery novel.

Admittedly, the book was not as poorly plotted as The Milk-Churn Murder (1935) or as dull a story as Death Leaves No Card (1940), but neither was it anywhere near as good or brilliant as any of the earlier mentioned titles. My unmet expectations killed any possible enjoyment I might otherwise have gotten out of it. Not entirely fair, I know, but I went into the story expecting a monument of the series. Evidently, this happened not to be the case.

Anyway, I have complained and rambled on long enough. Vegetable Duck didn't work out for me, but there's more where that book came from and will simply lift another John Rhode title from the big pile in the coming weeks or months. The Robthorne Mystery (1934), Mystery at Olympia (1935), Death at Breakfast (1936) and Nothing But the Truth (1947) all look very promising. So stay tuned.

Invisible Weapons (1938) by John Rhode

Major Cecil John Charles Street was simply John Street to his personal acquaintances and is remembered by mystery readers as either "John Rhode" or "Miles Burton," two of his pennames that were signed to over a hundred detective novels, but Street was tarred and feathered as a humdrum writer by the detractors of the cerebral detective story – which likely played a part in obscuring Street's work after his passing in 1964. At least until recently, that is.

This decade has blossomed into a renaissance era for the traditional detective story and an ever-expanding band of long-neglected mystery writers are finding their way back into print.

John Bude, Christopher Bush, E.R. Punshon, Harriet Rutland and Roger Scarlett are just a handful of examples of mystery writers who have recently been rescued from biblioblivion, but, now that humdrum is no longer a derogatory term, J.J. Connington and Freeman Wills Crofts also reappeared in print. Crofts is even shedding his undeserved, completely slanderous, reputation as the writer who cured insomnia.

Street is considered by many as the headmaster of the humdrum school, but is lagging behind Connington and Crofts when it comes to getting his work reprinted. British Library reissued The Secret of High Eldersham (1930) and Death in the Tunnel (1936) and Ramble House printed new editions of Death Leaves No Card (1940) and A Smell of Smoke (1959) – all four of them published as by "Miles Burton." A pseudonym Street used for his secondary series-characters, Desmond Merrion and Inspector Arnold.

However, Street is best remembered, if remembered at all, for the detective novels he wrote as "John Rhode" and they, too, are finally starting to reappear in print!

HarperCollins is currently reprinting an entire series of obscure, long-overlooked mystery novels as Detective Club Crime Classics and Rhode's primary series-characters, Dr. Lancelot Priestley, is part of the lineup! Brand new editions of Death at Breakfast (1936) and Invisible Weapons (1938) have already hit the shelves, which will be followed later this year by The Paddington Mystery (1925) and Mystery at Olympia (1935). So the mystery readers who love meticulous plotted detective stories have something to look forward to!

Invisible Weapons was released only a week, or two, ago and immediately snatched a copy for my personal locked room library. Yes, this is one of Rhode's altogether too rare excursions into the impossible crime genre and the apparently inexplicable murder from the first, of two, parts of the story would have been right at home on the pages of a Carter Dickson novel. You can even make a case that the first murder here is, kind of, a relative of the two impossible slayings in The Unicorn Murders (1935), which looked like the work of the legendary (invisible) unicorn – except that Rhode offered a different explanation. And the overall story was, as to be expected, more down to earth.

The story begins with Constable Linton of the Abberminster Police going around to the home of Dr. Thornborough, aptly named Epidaurus, to discuss a local nuisance, Alfie Prince, but the doctor is not home and the constable is asked to wait for him in the consulting-room. And there he hears how another unexpected visitor arrives at the home.

Robert Fransham is Mrs. Thornborough's uncle and claims to have received an invitation to come down, from London, to discuss a private matter, but the Dr. Thornborough never wrote such a letter and now Fransham failed to emerge from the cloakroom – where he was washing his hands. So the constable has to batter down the locked door and inside they find the body of Fransham stretched on the floor with an inexplicable wound in his forehead. The cloakroom had been locked on the inside and the only window had a small, open panel of frosted glass, which looked out on upon the carriage-way and the outside of this window was protected by stout iron bars. Framsham's chauffeur, Coates, was in full view of the carriage-way and swears nobody had entered the carriage-way at the time of the murder.

Superintendent Yateley favors Dr. Thornborough as the murderer, but he has no way of proving it. The cloakroom had been locked on the inside and no murder weapon had been found there, which makes the use of a projectile unlikely. So he calls upon Scotland Yard to figure out how the murder was committed and Superintendent Hanslet assigns young Inspector Jimmy Waghorn to the case. Waghorn represents here, somewhat, of a weak link in the overall plot.

Steve, the Puzzle Doctor, of In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, was one of the first to review this new edition and observed that Waghorn's fluctuating intelligence is on full display here. I agree.

Waghorn showed competence when questioning people, gathering information and even making an important discovery in the wall that faced the window of the cloakroom, but was unable to put two and two together to work out the murder method – a nifty, innovative new take on an old trick. A seasoned armchair detective will have no problem imagining how the locked room trick was worked when learning the shape of the wound in combination with the situation within that cloakroom. So why Waghorn didn't catch on is a little baffling.

Still, I had fun in the first part putting together, what turned out to be, a false solution largely based on Fransham personality, his (family) back-story and a worn greatcoat from the First World War. I began to warm to my own theory as it began to take shape, but, at the end of the first part, Waghorn admitted defeat and threw the towel in the ring.

The second part of the story concerns the death of Sir Godfrey Branstock, who was found dead in his own wine cellar during his birthday party, but the peculiar link here is that Sir Godfrey was the next door neighbor and landlord of Fransham! And we all know that can't be a coincidence.

At this point in the story, Dr. Lancelot Priestley, who made a brief appearance in the first half of the book, becomes more active and helps Waghorn and Hanslet with figuring out how both murders were pulled off. Priestley gives an after-dinner demonstration how the murder weapon in Fransham case could have a vanished from a locked room using a calf's head and his explanation for the murder of Sir Godfrey shows why Rhode was the genre's engineer of crime.

On a whole, the logical explanation fitted together very nicely. Not just how the murders were committed, but also the identity of the culprit and how the crimes were linked together, which turned out to have a (somewhat) original motive for the murder of Fransham – giving his death a shade of tragedy. I also liked the matter-of-fact ending in which Rhode stated that the murderer was committed to trial, found guilty by a jury and "condemned to death." I wonder if the murderer was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint. Anyway...

You can place question marks behind the feasibility of the murder methods, but the ingenuity of the plots is one of the hallmarks of Rhode's detective-fiction and is what makes them so fun to read. Bush and Crofts were craftsmen who constructed and destroyed cast-iron alibis. John Dickson Carr found out ways to accomplish the seemingly impossible and Rhode was a technically-minded writer who used the marvels of modern science and mechanics to shed people of their mortal coil. Invisible Weapons is a good example of his technical prowess and ingenuity. Highly recommended to everyone who loves pure, plot-oriented detective stories.

I hope HarperCollins, or any publisher out there, continues to reissue his work, because there many titles within his immense body of work that need to be reprinted as soon as possible. Personally, I would like to see Death at Low-Tide (1938), Murder, M.D. (1943), The Three-Corpse Trick (1944) and The Cat Jumps (1946) getting reprinted, which are part of the Desmond Merrion series. As for the Dr. Priestley novels, I would very much like to see Dead Men at the Folly (1932), The Corpse in the Car (1935), The Bloody Tower (1938), Vegetable Duck (1944) and Twice Dead (1960) appear back into print. So, if any publisher is reading this, you would do all of us a great service if you can get those reputed gems on our bookshelves. I believe Steve, the Puzzle Doctor, wants to talk with you about getting Brian Flynn reprinted. 

So far my rambling review and I'll be returning to Bush for the next one. 

The Fourth Alternative

"To every reasonable theory of the cause of his death they raised some technical objection."

- Inspector Arnold (Miles Burton's Death Leaves No Card, 1944)

Earlier this month, "Puzzle Doctor," who blogs over at In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, announced he was embarking on a month-long Rhode-a-Thon, called #IReadRhode, which came shortly after my review of Death in the Tunnel (1936) and was swiftly followed by a blog-post about that book's immediate predecessor – namely the slightly disappointing The Milk-Churn Murder (1935).

Well, I had done my miles on the Rhode less traveled, but Death in the Tunnel and The Milk-Churn Murder both came from the Desmond Merrion series, published under the byline of "Miles Burton," and it had been a while since I read one of his Dr. Lancelot Priestley novels. So, I reasoned, why not use this convenient excuse of a Rhode-a-Thon to return to Rhode's work for a third time this month. The book I ended up with has been praised by the likes of Jacques Barzun for its clever, innovative and unique plot: Death in Harley Street (1946).

Death in Harley Street opens in the study of Dr. Lancelot Priestley, "an eminent if somewhat eccentric scientist" who "had adopted as his hobby the whole theory of criminal investigation," where a small clutch of his friends had assembled: a retired Superintendent Hanslet, Superintendent Waghorn and an elderly, successful general practitioner, Dr. Oldland – who found himself in a comfortable state of semi-retirement. It was not the first time they gathered in that study and it was tradition for Priestley to enthrone himself behind his desk, "apparently in a state of complete torpor," to listen to the problems of the police.

As the equal eminent Dr. Oldland remarks on this occasion, it's usually the pair of coppers "who take the floor and hardly let a chap get a word in edgeways," but on this particular evening he wants to hear Dr. Priestley's opinion on the strange death that befell one of his colleagues.

Dr. Richard Mawsley of Harley Street, "the leading authority on glandular diseases," was alone in his consulting-room when his butler, Phepson, heard a dull thud and the rattle of a door handle, which was followed by the faint, muffled sounds of movement from the adjoining dispensary. Suddenly, there was "a blood-curdling cry and a sickening crash." Dr. Mawsley was discovered on the floor of his dispensary, "writhing in agony," with the coat sleeve and cuff of his left forearm rolled up, which revealed a fresh puncture mark and near him lay the pieces of a broken hypodermic syringe – on the bench stood a phial, the rubber cap torn off, which bore a label identifying its content as strychnine.

Evidently, the gland specialist had been injected with a lethal dose of poison, but how this came about seems to be an unanswerable question.

Suicide appears to be out of the question: Dr. Mawsley was a reserved, self-centered man who loved to see his wealth accumulate and on the evening of his death he received incredible good news from a visiting lawyer. One of his first patients had remembered him in her will and he found himself the recipient of a generous, entirely unexpected legacy. A legacy to the tune of five thousand pounds. The lawyer, who was the doctor's last visitor, left him in the best of spirits, which is another strike against the possibility of suicide. Murder is equally improbable for a litany of reasons, but the most obvious ones are that there were no signs of a struggle or an opportunity for a nebulous murderer to enter (and leave) a room that was under constant observation.

So everyone, including the courts, settled for the easiest possible explanation, namely accidental death, but, as Oldland remarked, for "a medical man of his experience" to "make such a mistake was extraordinary" – even though it appears to be the only answer that made remotely sense.

Well, Dr. Priestley agrees that the case is exceptional and states that the circumstances exclude accident, suicide or murder and "a fourth alternative should be sought," which got him permission to reopen the case with Jimmy Waghorn as his legman. First the thing you’ll notice from the subsequent investigation is that Rhode gave more than his usual consideration to characterization and in particular the personality of the dead doctor.

At his best, Dr. Mawsley was considered as a man of "all head and no heart." A man widely respected in the medical world as one of the best gland specialist of his time, but this respect never extended to the person behind the reputation. At his absolute worst, he was considered to be "an inveterate fee-snatcher" and he had no interest in seeing people whose primary source of income was a weekly pay envelope, which resulted in the unnecessary death of several people.

So combine this piece of well-done characterization, especially by Rhode's own standard, with the baffling premise, as well as its clever and original explanation, and you got a potential classic on your hands, but what keeps the book from attaining a place in the first ranks of the genre is the conversational-style of the plot – which gave the story the pace of a dying snail. I do not believe the pace should take anything away from the shimmering brilliance of the plot, but there's no getting away from the fact that Death in Harley Street is an incredible slow moving story and you should keep that in mind.

As you probably gathered from this padded review, the conversational approach Rhode took to the plot and writing makes it kind of hard to make any pointed observation. Not without giving something of importance away. I mean, I noticed one part of the solution, which did not involve the fourth alternative, strongly resembled the plot of an Agatha Christie novel, but naming that specific book would probably give away the identity of the murderer and motive to a perceptive reader.

But rest assured, the book is well worth the attention of fans of vintage mysteries and if you happen to be one of those readers, like yours truly, who loves to play armchair detective than you'll enjoy trying to figure out what the fourth alternative is. In that case, the slow pace of the book might even be a positive attribute, because it gives you the time needed to consider all of the evidence.

For my next read, I have selected a detective story with a plot that reportedly contributed a piece of military strategy for the Allied invasion of Nazi occupied Europe.

A Barrel Full of Red Herrings

"A quarrel is like buttermilk: once it's out of the churn, the more you shake it, the more sour it grows."

- proverb 

On the tail of my review of Death in the Tunnel (1936), the Puzzle Doctor announced his embarkation on a month-long Rhode-a-Thon and Vintage Pop Fictions posted an enticing review of Death at Low Tide (1938), which managed to immediately lure me back to the works of John Street – who penned over a hundred of plot-driven mystery novels as "John Rhode," "Miles Burton" and "Cecil Waye." Initially, I wanted to read one of his Dr. Lancelot Priestley novels, but ended up settling for the book that preceded Death in the Tunnel.

The Milk-Churn Murder (1935), alternatively known as The Clue of the Silver Brush, began very promising as the opening chapter painted a charming picture of rural dairy farming in "the small hamlet of Tolsham." A place called Starvesparrow Farm, owned and run by the short-tempered Mr. Hollybud, is used an example to illustrate how the milk is transported from the local farms to the dairies for processing.

But one day, the working routine is broken by a sensational and gruesome discovery that "set the police a problem which at one time it seemed they would never solve."

The break in routine came when a lorry-driver from the dairy picked up an extra, unaccountable milk-churn from Mr. Hollybud's farm and at first glance the content seems to be pig-wash, but the "curious liquid" turns out to be something more disgusting than simple pig-wash – a pottage of milk, water, formalin and the dismembered body parts of a man. Only the head was missing! There were also an assortment of particulars found in the churn: a sharpened, ivory-handled carving-knife, an old leather wallet, horn-rimmed spectacles without lenses, a railway guide and a key to a hotel room, which were wrapped inside a blood-stained flannel vest. Some of these items also had initials scrawled on them, namely "A.L.S."

Chief Constable of Wessex immediately put in a call for assistance to Scotland Yard and that same afternoon Inspector Arnold from the Criminal Investigation Department arrived in the vicinity, but there's barely a chapter between his primarily investigation and him sending an invitation to his friend, Desmond Merrion – who has made a name for himself as an amateur detective. Here's where the story slowly began to sour for me.

Merrion comes to the conclusion that "the murderer is a pretty cunning bloke," but is also "one of those people who can't resist the temptation to gild the lily" and seems to be very "fond of red herrings," which he seems to have dragged across every trail they uncovered.

However, the first problem is that Merrion seems a bit too omniscient when it comes to separating the manufactured pieces of evidence from the real ones. Or when correctly guessed there might have been as second person who left bread crumbs for the police to find. It also makes you wonder why the murderer did not simply drove the innocently looking milk-churn to a quiet, remote and rarely frequented spot in the English countryside and simply buried it, but that would have been entirely forgivable as the investigate parts of the story were not bad – which seems to be the best parts of the Miles Burton books.  

What I have a problem with is that the murderer turned out to be an unknown element in the story and only made an appearance when this person was identified, but the story did not end there. Unmercifully, the plot began to drag itself out and two additional bodies failed to sustain or renew my interest in the story. One of the murders was suppose to make it very personal for one of the detectives, but the personal note of the second murder was not done very convincing and the final murder, presented as a suicide, was very frustrating – because it stretched the story out over another chapter. Even the inspector eventually remarked that he was "sick to death of this infernal case."

Considering the renewed interest in Rhode/Burton, I really wish I had a better story to report back on, but this is what I found and it simply was not that good. I might take down a third Rhode/Burton title later this month and hope it'll even out this negative review, but The Milk-Churn Murder is a title that can only really be recommended to completists.

Hopefully, I'll have something better for my next blog-post.