The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) edited by Martin Edwards

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories (2018) is the third, wintry-themed anthology published in the British Library Crime Classics series, edited by Martin Edwards, collecting eleven festive stories about "unexplained disturbances in the fresh snow" and "the darkness that lurks beneath the sparkling decorations" – wrapped and presented to the reader like "a seasonal assortment box." This collection presents a wide variety of merry mayhem from the pens of some very well-known mystery writers to a few names who have only recently been rediscovered. But none of the stories have been, what you could call, anthologized to death. So let's pig on this suspicious looking, crime sprinkled Christmas pudding, shall we? Hmm, smells like bitter almonds! 

The collections opens with Baroness Orczy's "A Christmas Tragedy," originally published in the December, 1909, issue of Cassell's Magazine, which has a Christmas Eve party keeping an ear out for "the sound of a cart being driven at unusual speed." A sound that has lately become associated with a series of "dastardly outrages against innocent animals" in the neighborhood of Clevere Hall. So everyone is very keen to put a stop to these cattle-maiming outrages and the cart is heard that night, but this time it was followed by a terrible cry, "Murder! Help! Help!" Major Ceely, host of the party, is found on the garden steps with a knife wound between his shoulder blades. The local police gladly accepts the assistance of Lady Molly, of Scotland Yard, whose success or failure will decide the fate of an innocent man. Not a bad story for the time, but not one of my personal favorites. 

Selwyn Jepson's "By the Sword" first appeared in the December, 1930, issue of Cassell's Magazine and has claimed a place among my favorite seasonal mysteries. Alfred Caithness is spending Christmas with his cousin, Judge Herbert Caithness, who has an idyllic home life with a wife, Barbara, who's twenty-eight years his junior and a five-year-old son, Robert – who loves playing with his toy soldiers. So the perfect setting for an old-fashioned Christmas party, but Alfred has reasons to be more than a little envious of his cousin. He has loved Barbara ever since attending their wedding and sorely needs the kind of money Herbert has aplenty, which is why he decides his cousin has to go when he denies him another loan. So, inspired by the family legend saying that "a Caithness always dies by the sword," Alfred begins to plot the perfect murder with all the evidence pointing to an outsider. However, the entire universe, or the Ghosts of Christmas, appear to be against him as even the best-laid plans can go awry. A fantastic inverted mystery from the hoist-on-their-petards category.

John Pringle is perhaps best remembered today by his principle pseudonym, "Gerald Verner," who prolifically produced pulp-style detective and thriller novels during his lifetime. "The Christmas Card Crime," published as by “Donald Stuart,” originally appeared in the December, 1934, publication of Detective Weekly (No. 96). Trevor Lowe, a well-known dramatist and amateur detective, who you might remember from my reviews of Terror Tower (1935) and The Clue of the Green Candle (1938) is en route with his secretary Arnold White and Detective Inspector Shadgold to spend Christmas with a friend in a small Cornish village, but their train becomes stranded when the heavy snowfall blocks the line. So they have to walk back to the previous station along with seven other passengers, six men and a woman, but they have to go from the empty station to an old, gloomy inn of ill-repute. During the night, two people are murdered in short succession with the thick, undisturbed carpet of snow indicating "no one came from outside and no one has left from within." The only real clue Lowe has to work with is a torn Christmas card. A good and fun piece of Christmas pulp, but more memorable for its mise-en-scène than its plot. However, I have to give props for turning the last words of the second victim in a kind of dying message sort of pointing to the murderer.

The next two stories have been previously reviewed on this blog, here and here, but, needless to say, Carter Dickson's "Blind Man's Hood" (1937) and Ronald A. Knox's "The Motive" (1937) can be counted among the best stories in the collection. Both come highly recommended! 

Francis Durbridge's "Paul Temple's White Christmas" first appeared in Radio Times on December 20, 1946, but reads more like vignette than a proper short-short story. Paul Temple's dream of a white Christmas in Switzerland is granted when he's asked to go there to identify the main suspect in that Luxembourg counterfeit business he had help to smash. So not much to say about this one with only half a dozen pages and a razor thin plot. 

Cyril Hare's "Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech" was originally published in the Evening Standard on December 23, 1949, which is another one of my personal favorites from this collection. Timothy Trent was brought up by his step family, the Grigsons, but Timothy was the only "one of that clinging, grasping clan" who "got on in the world" and made money – someone from that family has been annually blackmailing him. Every year, around Christmas time, he receives a payment notice signed by "From your old Leech." Timothy was actually surprised by the latest demand, because he assumed he had gotten rid of Leech last February. But here he was again. Or was it a she? Timothy goes to the Grigson family party determined to smoke out the blackmailer, but, once again, even the best-laid plans can go awry and here it comes with a particular dark, poisonous sting in the tail. An excellent crime story demonstrating why Hare was admired by both his contemporary brethren and modern crime writers like P.D. James and Martin Edwards. 

E.C.R. Lorac's "A Bit of Wire-Pulling" originally appeared under the title "Death at the Bridge Table" in the Evening Standard on October 11, 1950, which is another short-short. Inspector Lang, the old C.I.D. man, tells the story of the time he had to protect an important industrialist, Sir Charles Leighton, who received threatening letters promising he will be dead before the old year's out. So he accompanies him, incognito, to a New Year's Eve bridge party where's shot to death in front of Lang's eyes and the murderer apparently managed to escape. However, the sharp-eyed detective quickly begins to pick up the bits and pieces that tell an entirely different story. More importantly, he trusts the men he has personally trained. Lorac was somewhat of a female John Rhode, as she was very keen on technical trickery, but you can't help but feel the murderer was doomed from the start by employing such a ballsy method. A pretty decent short-short. Not especially memorable, but not bad either. 

John Bude's "Pattern of Revenge," another short-short, was first published in The London Mystery Magazine (No. 21) in 1954 and surprisingly turned out to be an impossible crime story set in Norway. The story is a retrospective of a rivalry between two men, Thord Jensen and Olaf Kinck, who vy for the attention of a beautiful woman, Karen Garborg, but one morning she found dead on the doorstep of her cottage – stabbed through the heart. There was "only one set of tracks in the fresh-fallen snow," single footprints alternating with deep pock-marks, "characteristic of the imprint left by a wooden leg." Olaf has a wooden leg and his fingerprints were on the knife. So he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but a deathbed confession shed new light on the murder and attempts to right a wrong. A very well done short-short and a truly pleasant surprise to come across this unusual take on the footprints-in-the-snow impossible crime. 

John Bingham's "Crime at Lark Cottage" was originally published in the 1954 Christmas edition of The Illustrated London News and brings a slice of domestic suspense to the family Christmas table. John Bradley gets lost on a dark, snowy evening while his car is on the verge of breaking down and ends up at a lonely cottage. There he finds a woman with her small daughter and asks to use the phone, but is offered to stay the night as there's not garage around who would come out to the cottage at that time of night in foul weather. But she appears to be frightened. And it looks like someone is prowling around the cottage. A very well done piece of crime fiction that would have served perfectly as a radio-play for Suspense.

The last story to round out this seasonal anthology is Julian Symons' "'Twix the Cup and Lip," but nothing he wrote interests me and skipped it. That brings me to the end of this collection.

So, on a whole, The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories is a splendidly balanced anthology with Dickson, Hare, Jepson, Knox and Stuart delivering the standout stories of the collection with the other entries being a little too short or dated to leave an indelible impression on the reader. But not a single real dud or over anthologized story to be found. Two things that tend to be obligatory for these types of short story collections. Definitely recommended for those cold, shortening days of December.

Death in White Pyjamas (1944) by John Bude

Last year, the British Library Crime Classics added a twofer volume to their lineup with a brace of John Bude's non-series detective novels, Death Knows No Calendar (1942) and Death in White Pyjamas (1944), of which the former is a locked room mystery that differed in one important aspect from his main series – a tricky plot with substance. The Detective Inspector Meredith novels I've read were well written, but the threadbare, scantily clued plots made them stories about a detective rather than proper detective stories. Death Knows No Calendar told a very different kind of story. So it was about time I got to the second novel in the volume, Death in White Pyjamas. 

Death in White Pyjamas is in turn very different from Death Knows No Calendar and closely resembles a typical Ngaio Marsh novel with the first half focusing heavily on the characters as the story slowly builds towards the murder. Second half brings in the police to put the pieces together.

Sam Richardson is a successful businessman who amassed "a cool million" out of biscuits, but he grew tired of biscuits and sold his factory to hunt for a fresh stamping grounds. Sam finds what's he looking for when he meets a theatrical producer, Basil Barnes, whose the polar opposite of the friendly, generous and generally all-round nice guy, Sam Richardson. Someone who "could never listen to a hard-up story without putting his hand in his pocket." Basil is "slightly sinister" looking man, who you would expect to produce a revolver when he put his hands in his pocket, but "they paired off perfectly" and he convinces Sam to become a theatrical promoter – buying and converting an old cinema into the Beaumont Theatre. Theatrical background of the characters is another aspect linking Death in White Pyjamas to Marsh.

The members of the Beaumont Theatre playing a central role in the story, beside the promoter and producer, comprises of a grand old character actor, Willy Farnham, who has a chronic gambling addiction ("he'd gamble on anything—cards, billiards, horses, weather, bluebottles or cockroaches"). A "brilliant young ingénue from the provinces," Angela Walsh, who's "a sweet young creature" and made two men loose their heads. Clara Maddison is "the company's most tried and trying actress" as well as the doting aunt of a young and aspiring playwright, Rudolph Millar. Basil pretty much vetoed to put on his play, Pigs in Porcelain. Lastly, there's Deirdre Lehaye, a designer of stage sets, who's an ambitious woman with a mercenary mindset and works mercilessly on building "a four figure reputation." A nice way of saying that she "collected enemies with as much energy as less perverted people collect postage stamps." So a potentially explosive cocktail of clashing personalities and emotions.

Old Knolle is Sam's place on the outskirts of the village of Lambdon and every year, in early summer, he opened "the doors of his castle as a kind of theatrical rest-house for his company." Often the first rehearsals of the next winter season were held at Old Knolle. But this time, the family party atmosphere gradually disappeared underwent a change.

A sizable sum of money is filched from Sam's desk and opens up the thief to a spot of blackmail. Basil and Rudolph both fall in love with Angela, but it's Basil, "a man whose past reputation was something to shudder at, whose future behaviour was something to be dreaded," appears to be the one who's winning her favors – while Deirdre plays her dangerous little games in the background. This culminates when one of them is found dead in the artificial lake of Old Knolle dressed in white satin pyjames, which both baffles and intrigues Inspector Harting and Sergeant Dane. 

Kate, of CrossexaminingCrime, noted in her own review that the weakness of Death in White Pyjamas is "the strength of the characterization," which makes it very easy to identity the murderer and motive once the body is discovered. This is also another feature the book has in common with Ngaio Marsh. For example, Marsh's Swing, Brother, Swing (1949) has an excellently written and characterized first half telling you enough about everyone involved to immediately tell who, why and how the moment the murderer strikes. So the second half is undeclared inverted mystery in which you read how the police eventually puts everything together. 

Death in White Pyjamas more or less follows the same pattern with one notable difference. The how is not immediately apparent, or fairly clued, but figured it had something to do with that, because a contemporary of Bude used the same gimmick in another 1940s detective novel. It stood out to me. A somewhat crude, but effective, piece of gimmickry that reminded me of E.C.R. Lorac. I actually wonder if Bude took his cues from Lorac and Marsh as it mirrors their work so perfectly and vastly differs from his Meredith novels. 

Death in White Pyjamas has a very strong, character-driven first half admirably using characterization as clueing to give the reader more information than the detectives who arrive at scene after the facts, but this begins to work against it in the second, more labored and workmanlike part of the story – which he should have played as howdunit a la John Rhode. Only a lack of clues as to how it was done prevented this. It surely was an interesting read, not a very challenging one, but it was mostly a well done, character-driven mystery. However, if you get this volume, I recommend you begin with the superior of the two novels, Death Knows No Calendar.

On a final, related note: I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for a reprint of Bude's other long out-of-print locked room mystery novel, Death on Paper (1940). Please, BL, help me get one step closer to crossing off every title in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) and Brian Skupin Locked Room Murders: Supplement (2019).

Death Knows No Calendar (1942) by John Bude

Some years ago, I reviewed three, once very obscure, mystery novels by John Bude, The Cornish Coast Murder (1935), The Cheltenham Square Murder (1937) and Death on the Riviera (1952), which were well written and amusing enough, but thinly plotted and flimsily clued – striking me as stories about detectives rather than detective stories. So my interest in Bude had waned over the years until the British Library announced a twofer volume with a hard-to-find, long out-of-print locked room mystery was scheduled for 2020! Well, that was enough to get me back on board. I'm easy like that.

Earlier this year, the British Library released Death Knows No Calendar (1942) together with Death in White Pyjamas (1944) in a single volume and these novels promised to be very different from his Detective-Inspector Meredith series. Very different.

Death Knows No Calendar is one of only two of Bude's impossible crime novels, preceded by Death on Paper (1940), which is listed in Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) with a murder inside a locked studio and an inexplicable disappearance. A pretty little puzzle posing a challenge not to one of Bude's intelligent and sympathetic policeman, but an affable and enthusiastic amateur detective, Major Tom Boddy, who gorged himself on detective stories – accumulating "a vast knowledge of time-factors, alibis, motives, ballistics, moulage, photo-micography and police procedure." Major Boddy is assisted by "a small bird-like man," Syd Gammon, who had once been his batman. And he plays his role in helping to find the key to this locked room puzzle.

Lydia Ardunel is an accomplished painter and one of the leading lights of the village, Beckwood, but she's a woman of "twisted values" who moved through "the world perfectly aware of the spells she cast over others less gifted."

Five years ago, Lydia seduced the preacher, Reverend Peter Swale-Reid, whose soul and religion has been torn apart over his mistake. Always living in fear that his parishioners suspected and secretly looked upon him as a hypocrite unworthy to be their spiritual guide. Stanley Hawkinge is a simpleminded, but an honest, hardworking farmer, who had "burst into a great erotic conflagration at the age of twenty-eight" and had been pathetically devoted to Lydia for ten years – until he met someone else. Something that did not sit well with Lydia. Lastly, there's Lydia's husband, John Ardunel, who used to be an actor and his marriage to Lydia had "hauled him at a single pull out of obscurity and poverty," but deep down he hated his wife with "a cold and calculated hatred."

So there you have all the ingredients for a nice little murder mystery! A victim practically tailor-made to be murdered. A cozy circle of potential murderers equipped with motives and alibis. A whole series of strange events in the parish preceding the murder. One evening, Major Boddy hears the news that Lydia has been found dead in her studio, following a gunshot, with a Colt. 45 by her side. The door was locked on the inside with the key stuck inside the lock. The window was securely locked with the curtains drawn and the fixed skylight can't be opened. So, on the surface, it looks like a clear case of suicide, but a closer examination of the wound and position of the gun opens the possibility of murder.

Nonetheless, the locked situation of the studio convinced the jury to return a verdict of suicide at the inquest and gives Major Boddy a freehand to begin playing amateur detective.

Major Boddy not only has to figure out who of the small group of suspects shot Lydia, but how he get, or out, of the locked studio. A peach of a problem sweetened when they're all armed with "impregnable alibis" and one of the suspects goes missing! And there are more problems and puzzles on the horizon to contend with. Such as a car that vanishes practically in front of Major Boddy and an ingenious, mechanical crime/alibi very late into the story (murderer is already known by then).

So you can probably understand why I liked Death Knows No Calendar so much. It has a lively amateur detective who brings the same kind of energy to the investigation as Anthony Berkeley's Roger Sheringham. A galore of alibis reminiscent of Christopher Bush and John Dickson Carr's dedication to the locked room mystery, but plotted with the technical know-all of a John Rhode novel and Death Knows No Calendar actually reminded me of Invisible Weapons (1938) – which share some (superficial) resemblances when it comes to tricks and structure. This book gives you something, usually the best, from all those writers.

Death Knows No Calendar is purely a how-was-it-done with the murderer's identity becoming more, and more, obvious with each passing chapter and emerges long before the final chapter comes around. A lot trickier is destroying this person's alibi or figuring out how Lydia was killed while all alone inside a locked room. And proving it! Major Boddy has to conclude that the murder was the work of "a deft and brilliant artist in crime" who created "a murder de luxe."

Admittedly, the schemes and tricks hatched by the murderer are, perhaps, too workmanlike and mechanical in nature to be artistically labeled de luxe, but the whole plot is a fine example of good, old-fashioned craftsmanship without getting the story bogged down in technical details.

So, all in all, Death Knows No Calendar was the polar opposite of my previous encounters with Bude. A clever, resourceful and engagingly written detective novel with a crammed plot that left me wanting more! Needless to say, you can expect a review of Death in White Pyjamas before too long.

A Bolt from the Blue

"What was that somebody said about a bolt from the blue and death coming out of the sky?"

- Father Brown (G.K. Chesterton's "The Arrow of Heaven," from The Incredulity of Father Brown, 1926) 

Ernest C. Elmore was a theatrical producer, stage director and playwright, who wrote half a dozen fantasy novels, but abandoned both the stage and the fantasy genre to become a prolific writer of detective stories – which he did under the alias "John Bude." Over a period of twenty-five years, the penname of John Bude appeared on the book covers of thirty mystery novels. A literary legacy that, until now, consisted entirely of very rare, often expensive and highly collectible editions. So these detective stories were long overdue for a second trip through the innards of a printing press!

Thankfully, the British Library Crime Classics, an imprint of the Poisoned Pen Press, have made a dedicated effort to pull his work from the bog of obscurity, five of them so far, of which two have been reviewed on this blog – namely The Cornish Coast Murder (1935) and Death on the Riviera (1952). I found them both to be pleasantly written and highly entertaining mystery novels, but the plots were, alas, not of the same grade as the writing or characterization.

However, the latest book to make a reappearance in this series of reissues, The Cheltenham Square Murder (1937), received some good notices and the plot sounded solid enough. I was not entirely wrong in my presumption.

The Cheltenham Square Murder is Bude's fourth mystery novel, but only the third one to feature his series character: Superintendent Meredith of the Sussex County Police. During his third recorded case, Meredith finds himself in a textbook example of the proverbial busman's holiday. Meredith is invited to spend a portion of his holiday in the company of a well-known crime writer and personal friend, Aldous Barnet, who wants draw on the expertise of the superintendent for the book he's writing. As luck would have it, Barnet's sister went abroad and she placed her home at the disposal of her famous brother. So he could work in peace.

The home of Miss Barnet is situated in Regency Square, one of the iconic squares of Cheltenham Spa, "that famous and lovely town," which exhales "an atmosphere of leisure, culture and almost rural tranquility."

Regency Square consists of ten houses, "erected in the form of a flattened U," but the architecture of these exclusive looking abodes is not uniform. However, the effect is not disharmonious and gives the impression "of a quiet, residential backwater," where old people can grow becomingly older, undisturbed "by the rush and clatter" of the modern world – which has left them nothing more than "the memories of a past epoch." As noted in the opening chapter, outward appearance can be very deceiving and the inhabitants have their fair share of problems. Problems that range from small annoyances to the kind of intrusions that could bring someone to murder.

The scene of the crime

Some of the small annoyances consist of "a minor war" about an elm tree, which divided the square in two camps: one side wants the tree removed, while the others wants to the tree to remain where it has stood for over a century. Other irritations include the insistent hymn-singing of the Watt sisters, the yapping of Miss Boon's pack of dogs and the eternal ringing of Dr. Pratt's telephone-bell, but the real trouble can be found in the household of Arthur West – who was deserted by his wife, lost most of his money and had to put his house up for sale. There are two people at the heart of West's precarious situation: a retired stockbroker, Mr. Edward Buller, who made money off his bad advice to West and a really villainous character, Captain Cotton, who had been swarming around his wife.

So you can almost understand when the news reaches that a murder has occurred at the home of Buller, but the true surprise comes when everyone learns the victim is Captain Cotton and the manner in which he died. After all, it did not occur very often that a policeman was confronted, these days, with "the dead body of a man with an arrow embedded in the back of his head." The shaft had entered the room through an open window and the murder weapon, in this instance, does not decrease the pool of potential suspects, because the square is teeming with fervent (amateur) archers – half of them members of the Wellington Archery Club.

This aspect of the plot reminded me of Leo Bruce's Death at St. Asprey’s School (1964), which uses a similar craze for archery, at a boy's boarding school, as a convenient excuse to use the classic bow-and-arrow as a murder weapon. It saddles the detectives of both books with a similar type of problem: who was in a position to loosen the fatal arrow and, in the case of this story, how did this person manage to lug around a cumbersome, six-feet bow. But we're getting ahead of the story.

First of all, the congenial Inspector Long is the man officially assigned to the case, but he's aware of Meredith's past successes and of the opinion that "two heads are better than one," which makes for a pleasant makeshift investigative duo. Long and Meredith have a mish-mash of case to untangle: such as unearthing all of the potential motives and figuring out who knew Cotton was dropping by Buller. Or if the murderer took out the wrong man by accident. However, the wall safe in Cotton's home was opened and sifted through after his death and this puts both policemen on a small trail of blackmail. They also have to consider if the felled tree had to make way, so the murderer could have a clear shot, and who had access to the empty home of West.

So, all of this, makes for a pleasantly busy and engaging mystery novel, but the strongest and weakest point of the plot is the how-aspect of the murders: there are two identical murders, which pose a number of questions to Meredith and Long, but they clever and deceptively presented – only smudge on this is the lack of fair play. You can figure out who the murderer is, but the, admittedly clever, methods this person employed can only be really guessed at. I made a fairly accurate stab in the dark, but only because a pair of short stories, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and R. Austin Freeman, kept popping into my head.

Well, I guess John Bude was one of those writers who wrote stories about detectives instead of detective stories. Regardless, I still found The Cheltenham Square Murder to be a pleasantly written, well characterized and reasonably plotted. It was perhaps not one of the fairest mysteries ever conceived, but the plot was noticeable cleverer and stronger than those from the previous two I've read. So I was not entirely dissatisfied with the end result and would recommend new readers, if they're interested, to start with this one.

Hidden Under the Sun

"But, man alive, don't you feel it in the air? All around you? The presence of evil."

- Stephen Lane (Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun, 1941) 

At the end of my blog-post about Death of My Aunt (1929) by C.H.B. Kitchin, I asked if anyone, based on the review, could guess my next read, which, logically, was Richard Hull's The Murder of My Aunt (1934), but Ho-Ling made a clever and perceptive prediction about this blog-post – based on a pattern he had observed.

Lately, the book titles of the mystery novels I reviewed followed an alternating pattern, which goes as follows: John Rhode's Death in Harley Street (1946), Basil Thomson's The Milliner’s Hat Mystery (1937), Alan Melville's Death of Anton (1936), E.R. Punshon's Four Strange Women (1940), C.H.B. Kitchin's Death of My Aunt and Richard Hull's The Murder of My Aunt. So, following this sequence, the subject of this blog-post should have "death" in the title.

First of all, I had not created this pattern with intent or purpose, but I’m enough of an obsessive-compulsive autist to go along with it and lifted John Bude's Death on the Riviera (1952) from the big pile.

The first detective story I reviewed this year was Bude's debut novel, The Cornish Coast Murder (1935), which had all strength and weaknesses one expects to find in the apprentice work of a promising, first-time novelist – such as an engaging writing style, interesting character and an obvious appreciation for the genre. But the plot also suffered from one or two imperfections. One of them being a disappointing lack of fair play.

Death on the Riviera was written two decades after the publication of The Cornish Coast Murder and Bude had evidently grown as a novelist in those intervening years. As Martin Edwards observed in his introduction, Bude was "at the height of his powers" when he wrote Death on the Riviera and "the assurance with which he blends the plot-lines" reflects "his experience and confidence as a writer" – which is demonstrated here in the way Bude knotted the ends of two separate plot-threads together. Essentially, the book consists of two novellas with a conjoined plot and a shared cast of characters, which is always an interesting approach to tell a detective story (c.f. Robert van Gulik).

The first plot-strand brings Bude’s series character, Detective-Inspector Meredith of the CID, to the golden beaches of the French Riviera, where "the blue waters of the Mediterranean" lapped "at the sun-drenched coastline," but he's not there for a relaxing holiday.

Detective-Inspector Meredith and Acting Sergeant Freddy Strang are en route to the warm, glittering Mediterranean to extend a helping hand to the local authorities, represented by Inspector Blampignon, which concerns a ring of counterfeiters operating along the coastline. The gang left a trail of false banknotes and they had been largely exchanged for British pounds, but that's not the only link to England: all of the forged notes bore "microscopic details of craftsmanship" that read like the signature of Tommy "Chalky" Cobbott – one of the best "engraver of notes." He seems to be the beating heart of this organization.

I found this particular plot-thread to be somewhat reminiscent of Basil Thomson's The Milliner's Hat Mystery, in which the English and French police are breathing down the necks of a gang of smugglers.

The second plot-thread leads to the doorstep of Nesta Hedderwick, called Villa Paloma, which puts a roof over the head of several family members, acquaintances and even a live-in artist – who creates monstrous, post-modern atrocities in his attic-room. Or so everyone assumes. But he's not the only one who’s not exactly been telling the truth: secret marriages, unwanted pregnancies and the counterfeiting case all hover in the background of the villa, which often read as one of those daytime soap operas. A comparison that was also made by the Puzzle Doc. However, this eventually resulted in a very classic murder when someone goes missing and a smashed, faceless body is found at the foot of a cliff.

Well, I have to praise the author here for respecting the intelligence of his audience in regards to the defaced features of the victim. As one of the characters states, "whenever a corpse turns up in a crime story with its face battered beyond recognition" you can safely assume that "it isn't the corpse you think it is," which is acknowledged by them as "a well-worn double-cross." I also appreciated Bude attempt to find a new angle to tackle this problem, but, overall, the explanation was fairly simple and basically it was a short story that was absorbed into a full-length novel. It's also why I remained on the surface of these two cases, because they're extremely simple and lightweight.

The book as a whole is very well written and fun to read, but the plot-threads lack complexity. So there's not much to go on about without giving those few essentials away. Well, there's one thing that should be mentioned: both plot-threads contain borderline impossible material. One of the objects that hold the police's interest in the counterfeiting case is a hidden printing press, which turns up in a place that had been previously searched without result. The hiding place was one of those so-called "invisible cubbyholes" that can also be found in "Nothing Up My Sleeve," a radio-play by John Dickson Carr, and "Cache and Carry," which is a short story by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller from The McCone Files (1995). Unfortunately, it was not used for an impossible crime sub-plot, which could have added some substance to the counterfeiting case.

Same goes for the semi-impossible material in the Villa Paloma murder case, but that one is a lot harder to describe, because, again, I run the risk of giving too much away. It concerns something a witness saw and this plot point could have been cobbled into an impossible crime, but Bude evidently decided to keep things plain and simple.

Nevertheless, Death on the Riviera is a very readable and enjoyable detective story, but not one you should read if you want to be baffled by a particular ingenious or complex plot. Otherwise, this one can be recommended for what it is and perfect for people who want something to read while launching in a beach-chair.

On a final note, I hope Poisoned Pen Press will consider reissuing Bude's Death on Paper (1940) and Death Knows No Calendar (1942). Why these two? Oh, no particular reason. What's that you say? They were listed by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders (1991)? Well, I had not noticed that myself, but that would be pretty good reason to reprint them as well.

Die Like Thunder

"Detectives never guess... they draw exact deductions from given premises."

- Bobby Owen (E.R. Punshon's Ten Star Clues, 1941) 

Writing as "John Bude," an English theatrical producer and director by the name of Ernest C. Elmore penned and published thirty detective novels over the span of nearly twenty-five years – all of which are reputedly to be very rare and highly collectible.

Fortunately, the British Library has reissued a handful of books from Bude's impressive body of work: The Cornish Coast Murder (1935), The Lake District Murder (1935) and The Sussex Down Murder (1936). Death on the Riviera (1952) is scheduled for release in March of this year.

These brand new editions are introduced by Martin Edwards, an accomplished crime writer and genre historian, who observes that Bude's debut novel contains several clues that help to explain his growing popularity more than half a century after his death – which has partially to do with a "writing style" that is "relaxed and rather more polished than one would expect from a first-time novelist." I also believe Bude's poorly masked love for the detective story played a part in being embraced by a contemporary and appreciative reading audience, which is especially noticeable in the opening chapter of The Cornish Coast Murder.

Reverend Dodd, Vicar of St. Michael's-on-the-Cliff, Boscawen, has a tradition Monday evening ceremony with Doctor Pendrill. They smoke and have metaphysical arguments, but the true purpose of their weekly tradition is to indulge in their vicarious, but perfectly commonly, "lust for crime stories." Every week, they borrow and share pieces of crime fiction from the local library and Reverend Dodd compiled an interesting selection for their latest meeting: Edgar Wallace, "the new J.S. Fletcher," J.J. Farjeon, Dorothy L. Sayers and Freeman Wills Crofts – some of them I have yet to read myself. I guess that's why I've never been able to shake off the feeling that I have only scratched the surface of the genre.

Anyway, Reverend Dodd and Dr. Pendrill are provided with an opportunity to put all that accumulated knowledge from fiction into practice when a phone-call comes in for the doctor.

The local squire of the small, isolated village of some four-hundred souls, Julius Tregarthan, was found dead in his study: someone had fired several shots under the cover of a raging thunderstorm and one of the bullets "went clean through the brain." It's a strain on the brain of the local police force, Constable Grouch and Inspector Bigswell, because viable suspects, motives and evidence are thinly spread around.  

Firstly, there's a niece, Ruth, who was nurturing an intimate friendship with a local writer and World War I veteran, Ronald Hardy, but her uncle disapproved of the friendship. An admittedly weak motive, but one that has to be taken seriously by the police after both Hardy and his service revolver disappeared – coupled with the obvious prevaricate behavior of Ruth. Secondly, a local black sheep and village bad man, Ned Salter, who had been imprisoned by Tregarthan and evicted from his cottage was seen arguing with the victim on the day of the shooting and there's gambling servant who had a monetary motive.

However, it's the Reverend Dodd who figured out answers to several of the most nagging questions blocking the path to the entire solution, which include the "strange lack of footprints on the cliff-path" and a logical explanation for "the widely scattered shots" that "starred the glass" of the study-windows.

I can only praise this part of the story for being both original and logical, but the overall quality of the story was marred by a combination of two flaws: the murderer is a minor character that hovered in the background and the motivation of this person was never properly hinted at. That left me with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I enjoyed the smooth writing, the characters and some of the ideas, which was somewhat reminiscent of E.R. Punshon, but the ending felt like an absolute cheat. I wish I could end this review on a far more positive note than this, but the ending was what it was.

So if you, like me, attach some importance to the Golden Age rules of fair play, you'll probably end up a little bit disappointed that The Cornish Coast Murder did not sustain itself as a proper, fair play Golden Age mystery right up till the ending. However, I agree with Edwards that, as a debut novel, it's an extremely well written and characterized novel. There have been A-list contemporaries of Bude who fared far worst in their first outing. So I'm still tempted to explore his later work as well.

Well, that's the first review for 2016 and I'll be dipping in some impossible crime material for the second one, which should come as a complete and utter surprise to you. Anyhow, I wish each and every one of you all the best for this year!