The Auspicating Bone Counter Murders

"Calm down, doctor! Now's not the time for fear. That comes later."

- Bane (The Dark Knight Rises, 2012)

First of all, an explanation is needed for the unusual and archaic-sounding post-title I slapped on this review, which is nothing more than a contorted attempt at linking Agatha Christie's The A.B.C. Murders (1936) with John Rhode's The Murders in Praed Street (1928) – one of the first detective novels to examine the handy work of a serial killer.

John Rhode has a reputation for being a dry and dull writer, whose books herded flocks of insomniacs to dreamier pastures, but I think that reputation is undeserved. Back in 2011, I wrote jubilating review of Death on the Board (1937), in which I "defended" Rhode against the charge of being dull and have often praised The House on Tollard Ridge (1929) and Men Die at Cyprus Lodge (1943) – both handling the haunted house setting in a sober and rational manner. The Murders in Praed Street is basically an overdose of imagination peppered with out-right acts of super villainy!

The opening of the story depicts the shop strewn Praed Street, which has turned in recent years in a dreary traffic artery of London, and the people who toil there. There's the simple-minded, but hardworking, green grocer, Mr. James Tovey. The chatty tobacconist, Sam Copperdock, whose son, Ted, is friendly with Tovey's daughter, Ivy. And the herbalist, Ludgrove, is the confident of many of the secrets of the inhabitants of Praed Street.

After being lured from his home with a telephone call, Mr. Tovey collapses in the street with an unusual blade buried in his back. The old baker, Ben Colburn, buys a brand new pipe in Copperdock's shop and cuts his tongue on a poisoned crumb of glass lodged in the stem and dies a few hours later. A middle-aged poet, Mr. Pargent, died under similar circumstances as the green grocer. The only thing Inspector Whyland has to connect these deaths is that each victim received a white bone counter, about the size of a half penny, with red roman numerals etched on them in sequential numbering. But it gets better!

A former resident of Praed Street, Mr. Martin, who resided there as a receiver of stolen goods from only "the aristocracy of thieves," is lured back with a blackmail note and is poisoned in the small cellar of No. 407, Praed Street. The house was locked and bolted from within, windows securely fastened and the body blocked the door of the cellar – and all of the keys were accounted for. And even if we learned of the solution in the next chapter, it's still a bone-fide locked room mystery and there was even more impossible material. Another bone counter was found in someone's bedroom when the house was locked up and the key in possession of the owner. Not very difficult to solve, but I appreciated its inclusion nonetheless.

This is the point where Dr. Priestley enters the picture, but the analytical and cerebral is incredible dense here and that may be due to his personal involvement in the case. The murderer is easily spotted as was the then original, well hidden-and clued motive that will be viewed today as hackneyed, but you can't slam Rhode for coming up with it first. However, the background of the motive reads like an origin story of a hero (Priestley) creating a super villain (the murderer) and involves something that is still considered controversial today. I couldn't help but feel somewhat sorry for the murderer and Priestley came-off as a dick in that part.

Under its pulp-like exterior, The Murders in Praed Street has a lot of modern-day grim and grit. It's the Golden Age of Detectives' answer to The Dark Knight Rises and I just love how apt the opening quote of this post is for this book. Even the endings share some similarities. But for the villainy, Rhode seems to have tapped from the Sherlock Holmes canon. The image of The Black Sailor and the numeral warnings recalled the vengeful Jonathan Small from The Sign of Four (1890) and Rhode's love for deadly gadgets got echoed another one of Holmes' iconic adversaries.

My only quibble is that none of the victims made the connection themselves. It seems such an obvious thing to remember, especially in the face of a rising body count. Anyway, I was glad to discover that I had not become too jaded and was still able to enjoy the ride, even if it's one of the oldest, timeworn rides in the park.

Oh, and shame on you, Mr. Rhode. Writing about working class people and criminal folks, and addressing controversial topics while you're at it, when you're suppose to be writing posh thrillers with smart aleck dialogue or the gentry's plight. You were a man and published this book in 1928. What are scholars supposed to do with you? Do you think Curt Evans' book, Masters of the Humdrum Mystery: CecilJohn Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961 (2012), hawks itself? 

A Casualty of War

"All war is deception."

- Sun Tzu.

I can't remember if I brought this up before or not, but I have a soft spot for detective stories set during the dark years of WWII. The atmosphere provided by the black-outs, food rationing, air-raid drills and German bombers roaming the skies are often integral to the plot and offer up a picture of a time that now seems as far removed from our every day reality as a medieval castle under siege – even though there are still people around who lived through the war that tore the European continent asunder.

It was also a period that had the elements needed to furnish a story with an array of backdrops, characters, circumstances and motives unique to that point in history and these scenarios were explored in-depth by mystery writers, back then and now, in their stories. Case in point: John Rhode's The Fourth Bomb (1942).

Yardley Green is one of those sleepy hamlets, tucked away in the placid, slumberous countryside, which makes it an unlikely military objective for air raids from enemy bombers, however, one evening the dozing members of this community find themselves rudely awakened when an enemy aircraft drops a stick of bombs on them – which leaves two people wounded and one dead. The only fatality is a merchant in precious stones, Mr. Sam Gazeley, found in a ditch beside the crater of the fourth bomb and naturally the local authorities presume that the man was killed by the impact of the blast – and chalk his name up among the casualties of war.

But was Sam Gazeley a victim of an enemy attack or was he perhaps struck down by someone a lot closer to home? The situation at the bomb site seems to be favoring the former, but it quickly proves to be a problematic solution that is unable to erase every single question mark, that are doodled all over this case, when it becomes clear that a special belt, with small pockets filled with valuable diamonds, was not strapped around the waist of the dead merchant – and failed to turn up on what now turns out to be a crime-scene. As a result, Jimmy Waghorn is drawn into the case and he quickly comes into contact with a witness who spoke with Gazeley at the moment when the German aircraft began unloading its explosive cargo on Yardley Green!

Unfortunately, Waghorn is also tied to the Intelligence bureau, which does not give him the time needed to close the book on this investigation himself, but there's always his old friend, Dr. Lancelot Priestley.

The opening chapters were bursting with promise, demonstrating once again the dubious nature of the claims that John Rhode penned stories that could turn every long-suffering insomniac into a droopy-eyed Rip van Winkle, but this time that quality of story telling didn't sustain itself and the middle section can easily be summed up as a distribution point for providing his severest critics with ammunition. It was lethargic, repetitive, and, worst of all, just plain dull! The plot came into motion again when Dr. Priestley took over from Jimmy Waghorn, but that was when there were only thirty pages left to go and I was simply incapable of caring who had done in Gazeley (or what had happened to the diamonds) at that point in the story. Nevertheless, I have to admit that I rather liked watching the cerebral Dr. Priestley play the role of a modern day dues ex machina, logically explaining that what eluded mere mortals, and the final chapter was very well written – even if the ironic turn of events was rather predictable.

The Fourth Bomb is a classic example of a novel that should've been a novella at most. It has an excellent set-up and the solution is adequate, showing a rather clever crime made possible due to the wartime conditions, but everything that was uncovered in between them should've been condensed to one or two chapters – which would've made for a splendid novella instead of the bogged down novel that it is now.

Going over this review, I can't help but be surprised at how another disappointing read translated itself into a shoddily written review. Why can't I be better at this stuff?

Anyway, on a slightly unrelated note: I have found a solution to the ratio problem between GAD and Post-GAD reviews. I wedge this Golden Era between 1920 and 1950, but since I will partake in Bev's Vintage Mystery Challenge of 2012 I will simply copy her Gold standard by adding a decade to mine – which will immediately smoothen out the discrepancy in the ratio. Moving the goalpost: problem solved... for now. ;)

The Misadventures of the Ironmongers

"You're very difficult to convince, Professor."

"I’m only difficult to convince when the facts appear to me inadequate for positive proof."

- Death on the Board (1937)

Before we examine today's yarn of calculated murder, unmarked sins and cherished revenge, I have to begin with a shout-out towards William I. Lengeman III – who blogs over at Traditional Mysteries. When he opened up for business, the focus began to shift after a few weeks from book critiques to supporting fellow bloggers and now that he's back on track with the former I want to return the favor. So check out his reviews and drop him a line. Now that's out of the way, it's time to assume an air of feigned intelligence and began reviewing this book.

Your honor, ladies and gentleman of the jury, my client, John Street, has been accused of a most heinous crime. A monstrous atrocity in the literary world that's worst than mass murder or grand larceny. Yes, this man has been wrongfully, slanderously and maliciously accused of what John Dickson Carr described as the one unforgivable sin: namely, that of being dull. Well, my dear fatheads, I would like to enter Death on the Board (1937), published under the penname of John Rhode, as counter-evidence against these trumped-up charges. 

The Corporate Body

The focal point of Death on the Board are the members of the board of directors of Porslin Ltd., a corporate imperium dominating and monopolizing the iron mongering business, which began as a small hardware store expending rapidly after the Wiggenhall brother took over the helm from their deceased father – and adopted an aggressive, cut-throat business model to drive local shop keepers into the ground. As a result of this take-no-prisoners stance, the map of the country is dotted with red specks indicating the locations of their branch stores. Unfortunately, for them, opulence comes at a price when it's obtained by drawing guiltless blood and one day the board members begin to drop one after another, stretched over a one year period, but until the fourth corporate body confirms an undeniable pattern they were filed away as deaths by misadventures.

John Street establishes here why he's the mechanical engineer of crime. These shrewdly plotted murders aren't subtle deaths that quietly suggest an accident, like a dive down a flight of stairs or a deadly hunting accident, but a grand scale booby traps like an exploding country estate and a burning bed that barely leave a thread of evidence in their wake – and he effortlessly shakes five of such tricks from his sleeve. This is the equivalent of a Dr. Gideon Fell novel featuring five seemingly impossible situations or Ellery Queen trying to decipher half a dozen dying messages within the ambit of one story!

The official police, represented here by Hanslet and Waghorn, are completely out of there debt with these lethal booby traps, but the cerebral Dr. Priestley reconstructs them without getting up from his armchair – aside from a trip to his upstairs, private laboratory for a scientific demonstration. Here's where the main interest in Street's works lies: crime isn't treated as a fine art, but as an applied science and that's in all probability how he acquired the label of being humdrum.

However, let me assure you that this is not a story that trots along by employing a smattering of gimmicks as a crutches, even though the diabolical murder traps do usurp the spotlights, but its also a well-written story with some fine touches of characterization. I was especially intrigued by the chapter in which Turnstead began to reminiscence on his early days with the company, when he was appointed as a manager of a newly established branch in charge of destroying a local merchant, while the vexatious Grimshaw was launching an embarrassing eulogy for their late founder. Say about his prose what you want, but that excerp was a fine example of good writing and aptly foreshadows the inevitable culmination of this murky plot. And no, that's not a spoiler. It's evident from early on that we're dealing with an avenger from the past, but the question is as who this person is masquerading and how the traps were set-up.

There's only one minor quibble I have to throw out here regarding the final fifty pages, which was basically a repetition of the previous two-hundred pages and began to drag you down a bit when the only thing you want to do is confirm your deductions, which, even without paying too much attention to the clues, should be entirely correct at this point in the story. If they 'd trimmed thirty or forty pages from this story it would've tightened the plot and made this book even better than it already was.

So, my esteemed and highly regarded collection of dunces and numskulls of the jury, I will not stand before you and claim with a straight face that the accuse was without his fair share of faults, but then again, who within the confines of the genre was? John Dickson Carr, who I affectionately refer to as the maestro, produced Patrick Butler for the Defense (1956) – a serious contender for the worst mystery novel ever written.

I therefore have the effrontery not to beg, but to tell you, to carve this into your minds when you're in that jury room deliberating: whether this man was a gifted novelist or a boring hack is completely subjective, but there's no denying that he was a mystery writer who had some interesting ideas to offer and therefore deserving of this retrial that should, if there's any justice in this world, lead to be finally released from biblioblivion. The decision is yours.


EDIT: don't be offended, the jury members I adressed in this post exist only in my beautiful mind! ;-) 

Death Can't Be Locked Out

"Death doesn't always leave his signature behind to be read infallible like your people profess to be able to read finger marks."

- Dr. Prescott (Death Leaves No Card, 1944)

One of the most prolific mystery writers, from those prosperous early decennia's of the previous century, was without a shadow of a doubt John Street – who primarily enjoyed a reputation as one of the champions of the so-called humdrum detective story under his pennames John Rhode and Miles Burton. He has a reputation for being a tediously dull writer whose books are the miracle cure for long-suffering insomniacs, but the few books I read under the John Rhode byline were anything but unimaginative, sleep inducing run-of-the-mill detective stories. The House on Tollard Ridge (1929) and Men Die at Cyprus Lodge (1943) were perhaps a bit dry in parts, but not tedious or dull – and it was actually interesting to see someone handle the haunted house setting in a sober and rational manner.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said about Death Leaves No Card (1944), published under the Miles Burton name, which has a solid enough plot and the locked room angle has its points of interests, but the uninspired story telling made this a real chore to plough through.

The story opens at the residence of Geoffrey Maplewood where one of his servants, Reuben Dukes, makes an attempt at breaking down a solid wooden bathroom door that separates them from Basil Maplewood – Geoffrey's entitled nephew who failed to resurface from his morning bath and has been unresponsive ever since. After the door finally yields, they extricated his stark naked body from the room, however, the only marks on his body coincide with the way he fell – and the cause of death is a complete mystery. A shock seems the most likely answer, but there were no electric appliances in the locked bathroom and it's one of the last households in neighborhood that isn't connected to the grid.

John Street was the mechanical engineer of the detective story, who was particular inventive when it came to constructing deadly contraptions, and the solution to the locked room is a fine example of that talent, but not one that will give the reader much trouble in figuring out how it was done. The question of the murderers identity and motivation suffer from the same transparency. However, it's not that the construction of the plot has any serious faults, but that it resembles the skeleton frame of a building before construction is completed. It's interesting from a technical point of view, but not very habitable and that pretty much sums up this book for me.

This impression of incompleteness was further strengthened by the nonappearance of Desmond Merrion, created for the Miles Burton penname, who simply dispatched a telegram informing Inspector Arnold that he is indisposed by the flu and that he won't be joining the investigation – which is the equivalent of Inspector Cramer tackling a murder case all by himself because Wolfe and Archie aren't around Inspector Japp tracking down the ABC murderer on his own because Hercule Poirot has indigestion. 

Plot wise, this book is still a fairly competent entry into the locked room sub-genre, but the ho-hum storytelling also makes it a decidedly unexciting one – and not a book that you'll likely finish in one sitting. I guess I should've gone with one of the John Rhode titles instead, which has been a source of considerable embarrassment to me for the better part of a year. A while ago, I accumulated several, hard-to-get, titles from the Dr. Priestley series whose pleas to be read have been falling on deaf ears ever since acquiring them. But rest assured, shame hangs like a noose on my conscience.

Well, this was a rather short and negative review, especially after such a long and exuberant book critique posted earlier today, but I finally wrapped up this story and had to put this out while I was still semi-conscience of the solution – because this, for me, is a very forgettable story. So check out the review of The Last Chance, if you haven't done so already! 


Update: Patrick's review of Death on Sunday (1939) pointed out that John Street hated the name Cecil. Sorry, John! It won't happen again.

Swapping Sleuths

"However, there is, as you have shown, a friendly readiness amongst the members of the Detection Club to help the weaker brethren, so I have written to one or two of our friends to ask them to tell me what, in the opinion of their sleuths, the solution is."

- Milward Kennedy.

There are moments when I wish there was a grain of truth in the popular surmise that human beings are endowed with an immortal soul. I have a practical reason for this longing: to have a bargaining chip when summoning Old Scratch to negotiate a business deal. Because getting an opportunity to travel through a tear in the time-space continuum to meet a bunch of detective writers from the previous century, while cheaply buying first editions and solicitation autographs, is totally worth the hazards of eternal damnation. But the joke would undoubtedly be on me, as I would freeze-up like a shy schoolgirl who's just been approached by her first crush.   

Me: * shoves a copy of The Hollow Man and a pen in John Dickson Carr's face *

JDC: Do you want me to sign this for you?

Me: * nods *

JDC: What's your name?

Me: J-John...

JDC: Ah, a fellow John. Nice to meet you, John! What's your surname?

Me: D-D-Dickson…

JDC: Huh?

Me: D-Dickson Carr!

JDC: Your name is also John Dickson Carr?

Me: * just points at JDC *

At this point he slowly, but surely, starts backing away from me as my under lip starts to quiver and Lucifer impatiently begins tugging my sleeve, like an eager child who just acquired a new toy and can't wait to get home to start playing with it, and that's how I would've squandered a divine wish that could've granted me world domination or the answers to the question of life, the universe and everything. Unfortunately, this scenario, which is definitely worth an eternity of third-degree sunburns, is just a pipe dream – and the only opportunity I will ever have at soaking up the atmosphere of a meeting of the original Detection Club, is reading their round-robin novels. Well, you have to be grateful for what you get and this week I immerged myself in their second joint-effort, Ask a Policeman (1933), but this time I will leave the introduction to the review to someone else: one of the original collaborators! 

Ms. Gladys Mitchell has the floor:

"I was engaged in only one of the collaborations, which were for the benefit of club funds. Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L. Sayers exchanged detectives and, of course, Anthony's manipulation of Lord Peter Wimsey caused the massive lady anything but pleasure. Helen Simpson took over Mrs. Bradley in exchange for Sir John Saumarez. We two, I am glad to say, got along famously and it is to her that I owe, as you know, Dame Beatrice's second name, Adela."

This is an excerpt from an Question and Answer session, conducted by B.A. Pike, entitled In praise of Gladys Mitchell, and can be found in its entirely at Jason Hall's The Stone House – a website fully dedicated to the life and work of this unorthodox, alternative Queen of Crime.

The book opens with a brief exchange between the for me unfamiliar Milward Kennedy and the plotting machine known as John Rhode, in which Kennedy asks his colleague to produce a dark and murky plot for a title, Ask a Policeman, that was presented to him by his publisher – and the follow-up is a novella-length chapter recounting the shooting of Lord Comstock, an unpalatable newspaper mogul, at his country retreat. The rag king was an expert in jacking-up the circulations of his papers by viciously attacking the establishment and on the morning preceding his murder, three representatives of institutions under siege by his publications, the government, the police and the church, visited his retreat. This makes it a very sensitive and high-profile case and with the police filling in the role as one of the suspects it's decided up on, from above, to give a few notable amateurs free reign over the investigation.

This novella-length chapter demonstrates that John Rhode is undeserving of his reputation as a dullard and sleep-inducing writer. Even with such authors as Gladys Mitchell and Anthony Berkeley waiting in the wings, ready for the opportunity to seize his pen, he contributed one of the best chapters of this collaborative effort – sketching a mystifying problem with some touches of dry humor that his fellow clubmembers had a lot of fun toying around with.

Helen Simpson is the first one who gets a shot at clearing the mystifying problems that befogs the death of the hated newspaper magnate, but instead of Sir John she has Gladys Mitchell's Mrs. Bradley at her disposal – whom she promptly dispatches to the scene of the crime. I think her, and mine, solution was the most evident one as we both fingered the same person based on the significance of the police constable who was run over with a car after the killing. But the best part of this chapter is perhaps the way in which she captured the essence of the character she borrowed and how she touched upon nearly every familiar element from Mitchell's books – from the involvement of a young teenager, a niece who coincidently had a fling with the secretary of Comstock, to the diary notes at the end and a plot thread that is left dangling in the wind. Not bad if you're limited to a mere fifty pages!

Up next is Gladys Mitchell's interpretation of Helen Simpson's Sir John Saumarez, who's an acclaimed stage actor basking in the spotlights of success, however, this is my first acquaintance with the character making it impossible to judge the accuracy of Mitchell's portrayal. The solution he proposed was probably even more blindingly obvious than the previous one, but he gave away a first-rate theatrical dénouement with the best seats in the house reserved for his readers. I have to hunt down one of Simpson's detective novels featuring Sir John for an encore.

Anthony Berkeley is the only one of the quartet of crime writers who managed to upstage the instigators of this book, Milward Kennedy and John Rhode, with his marvelous and amusing rendition of Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter. There's a delightful scene in which they discuss the appropriate attire for an appointment with an archbishop who's under suspicion of murder! And to top it all off, he comes up with a solution that points to one of the least likely suspects of the lot as the person who pulled the trigger of the gun with a deadly precision.

Dorothy Sayers' take off on Anthony Berkeley's Mr. Roger Sheringham is equally amusing, but one wishes that as much attention was bestowed on constructing a clever solution from the given clues as on exonerating the archbishop from every suspicion – who she turned into a Machiavellian schemer cleverly maneuvering the paper tycoon into one of his own traps and saving his church from further abuse. The solution is uninspired, forgettable and actually had the flip through the chapter to be reminded who the murderer was supposed to be.

The final chapter is for Milward Kennedy, who is confronted with the daunting task of explaining away the solutions presented by the sleuthing foursome and wrapping up the case – and his approach to this conundrum turns the book into a parody that's very similar to Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) and his critical commentary on Mrs. Bradley, Sir John, Wimsey and Sheringham is hilarious! However, I still haven't decided whether I loved or hated the way in which he explained everything, but it's a perfect illustration of "the blinkin’ cussedness of things in general" at the expensive of the four brilliant amateur sleuthhounds.

In summary, Ask a Policeman is a fascinating experiment, but one that derives its interest mainly from watching a troop of famous detectives taking a stab a the same murder case and how they behave when someone else is in charge of them – while the murder at the summer retreat quickly lost its appeal by a abundance of coincidences and a lack of overall consistency. It's not the howling success that their first round-robin novel, The Floating Admiral (1931), was, but if you're a fan of any of these writers or characters the book is well worth your time – and it's one of those rare crossovers that gave me that pleasurable tingle down my spine! I love and adore crossovers and it gives me an immense pleasure knowing that Mrs. Bradley, Sheringham, Wimsey and even Sir John inhabit the same universe.  

A note of warning: avoid the recent reprint by The Resurrected Press who took gross liberties by altering the text. More details here.