Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce

Last month, I half-excitedly alluded in a short story compilation post, "Locked and Loaded, Part 3: A Selection of Short Impossible Crime and Locked Room Mysteries Stories," to a number of planned review of some obscure, out-of-print detective novels – carefully picked from Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991). Scavenger along the muddy banks of obscurity never guarantees you'll find something good or even moderately interesting, but my recent scavenger hunt resulted in the slimmest pickings to date.

Robert Brennan's The Toledo Dagger (1927) represents a breathtaking low in the genre's history and a textbook example why S.S. van Dine and Ronald A. Knox decided to put down some rules. E.G. Cousin's Death by Marriage (1959) attempted to bridge the gap between the traditional and modern schools with an inverted how-did-he-do-it plot, but a lack of clueing regarding the locked room-trick entirely undermined what Cousin tried to do. Anthony Lejeune's Mr. Diabolo (1960) gave it the good old college try, but over promised and massively under delivered. Surprisingly, the best one of the lot came from a mid-tier writer, Hampton Stone, whose The Girl with the Hole in Her Head (1949) ended up being a better whodunit than a locked room mystery. Yes, there was also August Blanche's prescient "Lars Blom" ("Lars Blom and His Disappearing Gun," 1857/63) and Masahiro Imamura's genre-bending Magan no hako no satsujin (Death Within the Evil Eye, 2019), but neither are listed in Locked Room Murders. So they don't count. But what to do when you run into a parade of mediocre or downright bad locked room mysteries? You simply return to an old favorite and hope it stands up to a second, usually more critical, examination.

I fortunately had a bit of luck last year when returning to some old favorites from the likes of John Sladek and Hake Talbot. So, following the aforementioned letdowns, decided to finally take a second look at one of my all-time favorite (locked room) mystery novels from the 1930s. But did a second postmortem yield different results? Let's find out! 

Leo Bruce's Case for Three Detectives (1936) introduced the world to the best comedic detective of the period, Sergeant Beef, whose bull-in-a-china-shop methods and "a look of rather beery benevolence" belies a startlingly rational mind with a capacity for common sense – played to great effect in his first of eight novel-length appearances. Something of an accomplishment considering Sgt. Beef is more or less a background character as he cedes most of the pages to the titular detectives and his perpetually embarrassed (future) chronicler, Lionel Townsend.

Lionel Townsend becomes involved in a murder case as a guest of Dr. Alexander and Mary Thurston during one of their weekend parties at their Georgian manor house. The other guests include Alec Norris ("an unsuccessful writer of novels very different from murder mysteries"), David Strickland ("some sort of protege of the Thurstons"), Sam Williams ("the family lawyer") and the Vicar, Mr. Rider, who "really does the most unbalanced things when purity's called into question." At the Thurstons' weekend parties, everyone talked a great deal and every topic under the sun is discussed. So, naturally, the dinner conversation turns to the topic of crime and detective with Norris doing most of the talking ("...he pretended to be contemptuous of the topic"). Norris posited that "literary crime is all baffling mystery and startling clues" whereas "in real life, murder, for instance, nearly always turns out to be some sordid business of a strangled servant girl." So "no premeditated murder could puzzle the police for very long," because "where there's a motive and the victim's identified, there's an arrest." That opinion is going to be tested that very night when a cry of terror is heard coming from Mary Thurston's bedroom.

They find the closed door to her bedroom double bolted, top and bottom, from the inside and, when smashing through the upper panel, they observe Mary Thurston's face ("more crimson than white") on a pillow – a clear cut across her throat. But when the door is broken down, nobody except the Mary Thurston's body is found in the bedroom. There's an unlocked window that can be opened, however, it overlooks a twenty-foot drop and an undisturbed flowerbed below. And ten feet to the window above. So how the murderer entered and left the room is a complete mystery. A locked room mystery! Just like that, the members of the house party find themselves in the middle of one of those blasted drawing room mysteries they had been discussing over dinner. But things get even better the next day. 

Early in the morning, those "indefatigably brilliant private investigators who seem to be always handy when a murder has been committed began to arrive." The first to arrive in his Rolls Royce is Lord Simon Plimsoll and his manservant, Butterfield, who brought along a small laboratory worth of photographic equipment. The second detective to arrive on the scene is M. Amer Picon, "a very curious little man," whose frail physique is topped a large egg-shaped head and speaks to Townsend with "more command of French" than he "had previously credited him with." The third and final detective is little round-faced priest, Monsignor Smith, who "a knack of saying the most disturbing things" or "whispering mystically." I think most seasoned mystery readers immediately recognize Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown in Lord Simon, Amer Picon and Monsignor Smith. Bruce created a trio of genuinely striking and splendid caricatures of the three most recognizable fictional detective of the era who contrast wonderfully with the "deplorable crudeness" of Sgt. Beef ("'Ere... 'ave you been blackmailing Mrs. Thurston?").

So the sergeant's future chronicler prefers to tag along with the three celebrated amateur reasoners of some repute as they unearth a treasure trove of clues, motives, faked alibis and hidden connections. They all apply their own characteristics, easily recognizable methods to uncovering those clues and questioning everyone involved. All the while, Sgt. Beef is in the background saying, "I know 'oo done it." Sgt. Beef tells Townsend he has already reported his findings to his superiors, but he was told to wait till they've had their say. I've never been able to forget his next few lines, "Well, I'm waiting. Only I wish they'd 'urry up about it. With their stepsons, and their bells, and their where-did-the-screams-come-from. Why, they try to make it complicated." I've heard echoes of those lines in my head every time a detective is playing up their part.

Now if this had been nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek treatment of the 1930s detective story and some of it's celebrated characters, Case for Three Detectives would have been the model for how to parody the detective story. Case for Three Detectives is not only a spot-on parody of Lord Peter, Hercule Poirot and Father Brown, but an accurate and very shrewd pastiche of Sayers, Christie and Chesterton.

Lord Simon, Amer Picon and Monsignor Smith all arrive at different conclusions and present their solutions, which are quite good and ingenious on the surface, but, if you're familiar with the originals, you'll notice how perfectly their false-solutions mirror those originals – incorporating favored plotting-technique, tropes and themes. Sayers believed "it was much more interesting to try to figure out how the crime was committed than who done it," which is reflected in Lord Simon's technical and clever explanation to the locked room problem. Amer Picon constructs his solution around, what else, the eternal triangle ("...beware of that little triangle. He is dangerous"). Monsignor Smith's solution is perhaps together with Knox's "Solved by Inspection" (1931) the best Chestertonian detective story not actually written by Chesterton. Nick Fuller rightly called the three false-solutions "very perceptive" and ended up making the story so much than some lighthearted ribbing of the detective story. What impressed me as much this time around is how he it makes sense here that the false-solutions outshine the correct one at the end.

Everyone loves a good false-solution, but, more often than not, the false-solution turns out to be a better, much more satisfying explanation than the correct solution (e.g. John Rhode & Carter Dickson's Fatal Descent, 1939). I've seen people complain that Sgt. Beef's correct solution is boring and lacks the radiant brilliance of the three false-solutions, but that always struck me as missing the point. Sgt. Beef is introduced as one of those uncouth, flatfooted and hopelessly out of his depth village policeman who prefers to be spending time at the pub drinking beer and playing darts. The story and particularly the ending would not have worked had he come up with a dazzling ingenious and original solution to the murder. Sgt. Beef is supposed to come to the right, uncomplicated solution through routine policework while the three detectives are "crawling about on floors, applying lenses to the paint-work, and asking the servants the most unexpected questions." That's the joke!

So, to cut a long, rambling review short, Case for Three Detectives has only gone up in my estimation and more than stood up to a second, critical examination. Bruce artfully intertwined a ribbing parody with a perceptive pastiche that both take aim at three of his already well established contemporaries and their creations. Bruce demonstrated great insight in his debut as he used all the funny characters, comedic bits and genre tropes to craft a clever and thoroughly entertaining detective story. A highlight of the 1930s detective novel full with rivaling detectives, false-solutions, faked alibis and an impossible murder that comes highly recommended. 

A note for the curious: if you loved Bruce's Case for Three Detectives, I highly recommend you also take a look at Knox's The Three Taps (1927) and Michel Herbert & Eugène Wyl's La maison interdite (The Forbidden House, 1932). They can be read as proto-types of Case for Three Detectives with rivaling detectives and multiple solutions. The Forbidden House even has a line echoing Sgt. Beef complaining about so-called detectives making things needlessly complicated.

Holiday Hang-Ups: "Beef for Christmas" (1957) by Leo Bruce

Rupert Croft-Cooke is best remembered as the mystery novelist "Leo Bruce" and signed that name to one of my favorite series of detective stories about "an engaging vulgarian," Sgt. Beef, who loves to drink beer, playing darts and embarrassing his long-suffering chronicler, Lionel Townsend – who's more of a stickler for conventions than the boorish Beef. Townsend often wondered how anyone "as ingenuous as Beef" could "match his wits against the subtle brains of clever criminals" and "defeat them." But this is the inevitable result of his involvement in any case he decides to take on.

The series only has six novels and a smattering of short stories, which are mostly collected in Murder in Miniature and Other Stories (1992), but there were two short stories that remained uncollected until very recently.

"Beef for Christmas" was originally published in the November 8, 1957, issue of The Tatler and Bystander and was rediscovered by one of the obvious suspects, Curt Evans, who observed that the story would "grace any anthology of British detective stories" – a comment Martin Edwards, a writer and anthologist, took to heart. Edwards used the story to close out his anthology Silent Night: Christmas Mysteries (2015).

The story is fairly typical for a Christmas-themed mystery: Sgt. Beef is hired by "one of the richest men in the country," Merton Watlow, who's determined to spend all of his money before the grave calls him. Watlow has poured "a couple of Prime Ministers' salaries" into the upkeep of his opulent, fully staffed houses and overly expensive trinkets. Naturally enough, the family doesn't like it one bit. They're of the opinion that Watlow has to live on his interest for their benefit, which is a very vocal opinion within the family, but this only made him worse – turning his spending spree in "a sort of race." Recently, Watlow has been getting anonymous letters urging him to stop spending money or else!

Watlow decided to invite Sgt. Beef to come down to Natchett Grange to spend the Christmas holiday together with his family. I should mention here that Watlow gets a kick out of letting his relatives see him spend hundreds of pounds on a Christmas party. So what could go possibly wrong?

The kindred of their host consists of his nephew, Major Alec Watlow, along with his wife and daughter, Prudence and Mollie. There's his late sister's daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Siddley. And their feeble-minded son, Egbert.

As usually, Townsend is slightly discomfort by Beef's lack of manners, apparent alertness or showing "appreciation of the privilege" of being chosen by such an important man to clear up a problem in his household – even becoming embarrassed when he produced a bulky notebook and a stump pencil to take down names. However, the real shock comes after an evening of entertainment, complete with a stage, when they find one of the members of the household hanging from a rope in his room. But the victim is not who you expect it to be!

So this is a case of murder disguised as a suicide and the crux of the plot is a clever alibi-trick worthy of Christopher Bush and Detective Conan, which both have used variations on this particular idea to create cast-iron alibis for their murderers. The trick here is equally well-handled with some good hints, rather than out-right clues, how it was done. However, I can't help but feel that Bruce's take on this trick might have worked better had the plot been tooled as an inverted detective story.

Nonetheless, the plotted fitted nicely together and Beef was amusing as ever, which made this a good, fun and Christmas-themed detective story that can be used to kill half an hour with during those dark, cold days of December.

The Link in Between

"After all, most people... when confronted with a case of murder, have little but their knowledge of detective stories to guide them."

- Malcolm Warren (C.H.B. Kitchin's Death of My Aunt, 1929)  

Over the past six months, I reviewed a brace of mystery novels by Leo Bruce, Nothing Like Blood (1962) and Death at St. Asprey's School (1967), but they were about his secondary detective-character, Carolus Deene, who never reached the same heights as his original creation – a former village constable, turned private-investigator, named Sgt. Beef.

The boorish, beer-chugging and dart-loving sergeant is a personal favorite of mine, but Beef only appeared in eight novels and a dozen, or so, short stories. It's one of those great series that was too short-lived. Luckily, I still had two full-length mystery novels from this series residing on the mountainous region of my TBR-pile. So after two very uneven detective stories from the Deene series, I decided to eliminate one of the remaining Beef novels from my seemingly never-ending list of unread detective stories.

Neck and Neck (1951) is the seventh, penultimate, entry in this series and the plot offers a personal problem for the serious, long-suffering narrator, Lionel Townsend, who regularly gets ragged on by Sgt. Beef for his dearth of literary success or lack of confidence in his ability – which is why he has "to play second fiddle to all these other clever detectives."

Or so the sergeant assumes. But his personal biographer confides in the reader that he could no longer blind himself "to the fact that Beef was a genius." Townsend had known him first "as a heavy-footed policeman," blunt and boorish, whose methods seemed outwardly slapdash, but he had "prevailed too often to leave any doubt about his really profound cleverness." Now he wants Beef to apply his uncouth methods to clear up the murky circumstances surrounding the sudden passing of his favorite aunt.

The story opens with an urgent telegram from Townsend's brother, Vincent, who appeared previously in Case with Rings and Ropes (1940). It informs him that their "Aunt Aurora died suddenly this afternoon," but the telegram is quickly followed by a telephone call, in which Vincent shakily tells his brother that the doctor refuses to sign a death certificate and a police doctor is now on the case. There were also several policemen at the home of their aunt.

Apparently, Aunt Aurora "felt terribly ill just after lunch," excused herself, but "by tea-time she was dead," which did not sit well with her doctor and he called in the police – who shared his suspicion and an investigation was started – eventually revealing "a large quantity of morphia" in her system. So she was undoubtedly murdered, but the only viable motive to kill this beloved woman was her money.

The bulk of her money was divided between Lionel and Vincent, while a distant cousin, Hilton Gupp, had been cut out of her will. This came as both a surprise and shock to Gupp, because he really needed the money. However, Gupp has an apparently unshakable alibi. Some of the other beneficiaries included a thousand pounds for the Misses Graves, "Aunt Aurora's great friends," who were living well above their means and the local vicar, obsessed with the restoration of church murals, for which Aunt Aurora left five hundred pounds to the St. Luke's Restoration Fund.

So Townsend decides to call in Beef and this gives Bruce an opportunity to do a bit of knocking on the fourth wall. Vincent reproachfully remarks how surprise he is at his brother for trying "to make a detective-story-fan’s holiday out of Aunt Aurora's death" and, sarcastically, added that "it will make an excellent novel." After all, Beef usually get to the bottom of it.

After his arrival, Sgt. Beef approaches the case with his brash oafishness and blunt questions. For example, he asks the family solicitor, after the funeral, in the presence of everyone else how money "there was in the kitty" and hinting he may need "a new biographer in any case" – since Townsend is as much as suspect as anyone else. It would not be the first time the narrator turned out to be the murderer. However, where Beef genuinely shines in this outing is as the only person to notice an obscure link between the poisoning of Aunt Aurora and "a little affair in the Cotswolds."

Before he even appeared in the case, Beef told Townsend he was working on a second case: an unpleasant bibliophile, collector and publisher, Edwin Ridley, was found hanging from a beam in his gloomy home. At first glance, it seemed to be a case of suicide and this worried his brother, a clergyman, because Ridley had taken out a large insurance and this was supposed to go into a trust fund for the children of his clergyman brother – which would not be paid out if it turned out that he taken his own life.

So the Reverend Alfred Ridley engaged the services of Beef, but it was the police who figured out the publisher was strangled first and then hung up on a rope.

There are more than enough potential suspects: Ridley used his small publishing house to wrench money from aspiring authors by letting them share in the printing costs, but the result was usually no more than a handful of cheaply printed and badly bound volumes. This spelled the premature death of many literary careers. One of these young writers, named Greenleaf, attempted to kill himself over such a "gag" and this makes him an obvious suspect.

But that's not all: the secretary of the victim discovers someone has been "monkeying with one or two of the more valuable books" from his late employer’s collection.

So there are more than enough potential motives to go around on this second investigation and Beef suggests Townsend makes "one book of the two of them" by letting both cases run neck and neck. Having parallel investigation, which eventually come together, is not an unusual approach to plotting a mystery novel (c.f. Robert van Gulik), but the hidden connection that links both murders is the crux of this plot – which made for niftily constructed plot.

Granted, the idea did not originate with Bruce, but Neck and Neck is a good, early example of this plot-device. Only thing that can be said against is that modern readers probably will not be entirely taken in by the trick. You can both guess and deduce the identity of the murderer and how the murders were connected. Nevertheless, Neck and Neck is a genuine detective story with a fine plot and nicely written, which effectively ended on a serious and human note. Overall, this made for a pretty good read from one of my favorite series of detective stories. 

Sadly, I've only one Sgt. Beef novel left on the big pile: Case Without a Corpse (1937). Guess I'll save that one for next year or so.

Cat's Cradle

"You see... assuming this to be murder, we have to go look for a motive."

- Dr. Gideon Fell (John Dickson Carr's The Case of the Constant Suicides, 1941)

As was noted in my review of Death at St. Asprey's School (1967), I suffer from a chronic lack of enthusiasm for Leo Bruce's secondary series, revolving around the sleuthing activities of a history teacher, named Carolus Deene, which always struck me as the antithesis of his Sgt. Beef stories – an excellent series of bright, humorous and clever parodies of the detective story. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you'll find the dark, moody and plodding affairs of the Deene books.

Now, I do not mind that a darker, grainier and plodding mood replaced the light-hearted and comedic approach in Bruce's second series. That's not my (main) bone of contention with these stories.

It is that, whereas the Sgt. Beef novels have pleasantly paced, naturally flowing narratives, the story progress in the Deene stories stagger, from one chapter to another, like a rusty automaton – which could have been a forgivable offense if it weren't for a severe deficiency of originality. I've read three books from this series and two of them have plots that leaned very heavily on recycled or even "borrowed" material, but this is, reportedly, par for the course for this series.

In the comment section of my review of Death at St. Asprey's School, Nick Fuller, who blogs (far too infrequently) at Escape to Adventure, opined about the Deene series that they are, at best, "very small beer" with dreary settings, plodding interviews and "gimmicky plots cribbed from better writers." Not exactly what a publisher is looking for in a potential cover blurb! I also found it slightly discouraging, but there was one specific book I wanted to sample, no matter what, for which I had a very obvious and predictable reason: the story in question was listed by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1991). Hey, I said it was obvious and predictable.

Nothing Like Blood (1962) is the eleventh Carolus Deene novel and this time the tangled mess of trouble is brought to him by an old friend of his mother, Helena Gort, who "had been one of those adventurous women who made arduous journeys in dangerous places" and "wrote lively books about them," but her temporary residence at an English seaside guest house proved to be one of her strangest experiences – where everything appeared to be rather sinister.

The place is called Cat's Cradle and the house is a long, plain-looking structure perched on a rocky headland, looking out over the sea, which has its cliff-side on the eastern side of the home. It was recommended by acquaintances of Helena Gort, who had a very comfortable stay, but when Helena arrives she finds all of her fellow guests on edge.

Some of them were very jittery and "an atmosphere of suspicion and intrigue" permeated the air. The source of all of the unspoken suspicion and unease seemed to sprang from the death of one of the guests, a Mrs. Mallister, who had passed away two months previously of heart disease. It was hardly an unexpected passing: Mrs. Mallister "had been under a sentence of death for some time" and she had been on her deathbed for days when the end finally came. So everything seemed above board, but was there anything more to her death? After all, there are "heart attacks and heart attacks." Or so the rumors go!

Leo Bruce

Well, Helema decided to keep a diary and the first half of the story consists of these diary entries, which are used to flesh out the problem, setting the stage for an impossible murder and introducing the characters, but the characterization is a bit of a weakness in this one – because all of the characters are defined by their eccentricities or lack thereof. There is, for example, a retired colonial bishop, named Grissell, who has the habit of lapsing into anecdotes, but can never remember whether his stories happened in such places Basutoland or Bloemfontein or Zanzibar or Zesfontein. It's somewhat annoying when used as a recurring and defining personality trait.

The diary entries cover chapters 2 to 9 and ended when the story began to drag itself out, which was also the point when Bruce introduced the locked room angle of the plot. It was a sure-fire way to get my attention.

A pair of holiday-makers from a nearby camp decided to take out a rowing-boat for a spot of moonlight peddling, but when they came close to the house they saw one window "lit up like a stage" and a woman was seen smoking cigarette on the stone balcony – when, all of a sudden, she took a dive over the edge. Right on the rocks below. Nobody else was seen on the stone balcony, the door to her bedroom was locked and the only key was found on the body. So, as to be expected, the Coroner's Inquest returned a verdict of suicide, but the explanation that proved this apparent suicide to be murder was surprisingly clever, original and well clued. A very simplistic trick, but one that's clever and fresh.

I expected an entirely different kind of explanation based on the presentation of the crime and the series reputation for cribbing plots, which made me settle down for a solution that was very similar to those from an episode from the Cabin B-13 radio program, namely "The Bride Vanishes," and The Whistling Hangman (1937) by Baynard Kendrick. As a consequence, I also settled down on the wrong culprit, but this may've, somewhat, saved the book for me. My very mundane, dime-a-dozen explanation was proven completely wrong by a far more competent solution that showed a bit inventiveness and was very well clued. It was even hinted at how it was possible that the murderer appeared to be invisible to the witnesses. The way in which the supposed suicide was tied to the apparent natural death was also somewhat off the beaten track.

So these (connecting) parts of the overall plot were pretty good, but, sadly, they're stuck in an unengagingly written, slow-moving and mediocre novel, populated with cardboard characters, which made for a very average and uneven mystery novel. Simply put: the plot deserved a better story.

Well, I'm not sure if and when I'll return to the Carolus Deene series, but my next Leo Bruce is going to be one of the last two Sgt. Beef novels on my TBR-pile, which are Case Without a Corpse (1937) and Neck and Neck (1951). Hopefully, I'll pick something better and easier to write about for my next review. Don’t touch that dial!

Archery, Blackmail and Chalkboards

"There's something very convincing about a bow and arrow, but really, when you come to think of it..."

- Sgt. Beef (Leo Bruce's "I, Said the Sparrow," collected in Murder in Miniature and Other Stories, 1992)  

Rupert Croft-Cooke was the birth name of "Leo Bruce," writer and satirist, who penned a string of clever genre spoofs about a beer guzzling and darts playing village constable-turned-private investigator, but the novels about Sgt. Beef covered only a small portion of his total work – eight novels and a smattering of short stories stretched out over a period of sixteen years. Bruce was far more prolific with his secondary and lesser-known series about a schoolteacher and "a free-lance amateur" in the game of detection, Carolus Deene.

Deene took on the detective duties in twenty-three mystery novels, which were published between the mid-1950s and the early 70s, but they're a far cry from the inventive, tongue-in-cheek parodies of the genre that made up the Sgt. Beef series. They're more attuned with the darker mood and morose tone of the genre post-World War II.

Some years ago, I sampled one of the volumes from the Deene series, Death in Albert Park (1964), but I was repelled by the gloomy ambiance, plodding storytelling and a plot that was lifted from a rather famous mystery novel – i.e. Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders (1936). Granted, I probably should not have read Death in Albert Park on the heels of Bruce's masterpiece, Case for Three Detectives (1936), but fact remains I was disappointed enough to angrily dismiss the entire series as bottom-of-the-barrel material.

I found an old comment on the GADetection Group, by Curt Evans, responding to my dismissal of the series by stating that in his view "reading the Deene books would be desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel" and how "Academy Chicago does not publish barrel scrapings" – followed by an assurance that "some of the Deenes have ingenious twists." Well, this was not the only instance in which someone, whose opinion on the detective story I hold in high regard, pleaded in favor of this series. So why not finally take that postponed second look at the series. I wanted to read something by Bruce and reading a Carolus Deene novel would prolong the inevitable end to the Sgt. Beef series, of which there only two more left on the big pile of unread detective stories.

The novel I picked to reacquaint myself with Carolus Deene was Death at St. Asprey's School (1967) and there were two reasons for that: I love a scholastic setting as much as a shipboard or war-time mystery and the plot description promised something along the lines of Gladys Mitchell's Tom Brown's Body (1949).

St. Asprey's Preparatory School is a private and expensive boarding school for young boys of high repute, but, lately, a chain of "ugly and frightening events" has plagued the place. Several of the students, "serious youngsters of twelve and thirteen years," swore they saw a figure they variously called "the Monk, the Old Friar or the Abbot," who has been described as a bearded man in gray passing through the dormitory like a ghost – while "mumbling Latin." Footsteps had been heard at night and lights had been "seen moving about the grounds."

Ghosts, lights and footsteps are something the teachers could have coped with, but soon the "satanic figure" became more "hostile and corruptive." Six rabbits were brutally battered to death in their hutch and a fox terrier puppy got its throat cut in the stables. It was obvious to everyone "some tragic event was pending," but nobody could have foreseen it was an attempt at murdering one of the teachers!

Colin Sime is one of the assistant masters and is very popular among the boys, but not with his colleagues in the common-room and he, miraculously, survives tumbling down a narrow, worn-out spiral staircase in an old church tower – which escaped only with a broken leg. However, Sime swears he was pushed and an aspiring killer could potentially ruin the reputation of the school. So they call in an expert to take over Sime's classes.

Carolus Deene is described as a slim, adolescent looking widower in his forties and the owner of a large private income, which made teaching and playing detective merely occupations to kill time "because he could not live idly." He had already established a reputation for himself as an amateur sleuth by the time the St. Asprey's School business presented itself, because it's asked of him if he could elucidate the matter without a murder. Usually, a murder or two before Deene successfully reaches the end of an investigation.

Sadly, for the victim, Deene is unable to prevent a second and far more successful attempt on Sime’s life: who's found propped up in his bed, in front of an open window, with the shaft of an arrow embedded in his throat. Interestingly, the practice of archery provided the best aspects for both the plot and storytelling. Archery is all the craze at the school and everyone is practicing it, which made sure there were enough people around when the deadly arrow was loosened, but there were also interesting scraps of background information on the sport – complete with the obligatory references to both Robin Hood and William Tell.

The method for the murder is a reworking of a short story from Bruce's very own Murder in Miniature and Other Stories (1992) and the idea had been previously explored by G.K. Chesterton and John Dickson Carr, but the trick was competently presented and pulled off in this version. Surrounding this trick is a rather common place, garden-variety plot: a blackmailing victim who received his comeuppance, but my main complaint is how the interesting plot-threads, ghostly figure and animal killings, were relegated to the background – instead of being played up to their fullest in order to dress-up and distinguish a simplistic, standard and shopworn plot. Like the archery elements and snippets of school life did for the story, which were my favorite parts of the book.

So, to cut this already overlong review short, I would say Death at St. Asprey's School was a better reading experience than Death in Albert Park, but I still would not place it anywhere near to the Sgt. Beef series. I probably should have read one of the titles that were actually recommended to me, such as Furious Old Women (1960) or Nothing Like Blood (1962), but they were not within reach of my covetous claws. However, I'll keep them in mind for when I'll return to this series, but, for now, I'm still a Beef kind of guy. 

With a Hint of Gloom

"Alice soon came to the conclusion that it was a very difficult game indeed."

- Lewis Carroll ("The Queen's Croquet-Ground," from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 1865)

"Leo Bruce" was the penname of Rupert Croft-Cooke, who authored a series of inventive, tongue-in-cheek parodies of the detective story starring a ginger mustached, beer guzzling and pub-sports loving village constable turned private-investigator – the inimitable Sgt. Beef.

Cold Blood (1952) is the seventh and last full-length case Lionel Townsend recorded for Sgt. Beef, which ended the series with a dramatic finish and a wink.

Townsend observes in the opening chapter how the Ducrow-case seemed to have changed Sgt. Beef. The "old chuckle was still heard at times," but their meddling at the "gloomy house" with its "overpowering atmosphere of watchfulness and evil" left its marks on the psyche of the sergeant – becoming more earnest and "a little bit afraid."

However, in spite of its serious coating, the story is plaided with usual humorous remarks and comedic references. When they first read about the Ducrow affair in the newspaper, Townsend remarks Beef needs "a great deal more than successful detection" to be a famous detective. He must stand out and be different. Which can be accomplished by simply resembling a crocodile every couple of pages, "like Mrs. Bradley," or "talk like a peer in an Edwardian farce" like Lord Peter Wimsey.

A similar, wonderful conversation takes place between Beef and his client, Theo Gray, who engages him to find the murderer of Cosmo Ducrow, but the sergeant wants to know why he came to him and wanting the best man for the job isn't accepted as an answer – because there are some better known and better written up detectives than Beef. 

Well, the answer is that Hercule Poirot "was engaged on another case," Albert Campion was "not interested" and a rejection from Beef would've put Gray on "on the phone to Inspector French." It's passages like these that helped Bruce in becoming a fan-favorite, because mystery geeks love reading this type of genre-related, referential-type of humor.

Anyhow, Beef and Townsend learn that Cosmo Ducrow was "worth half a million," which he inherited from his father, but was described as a neurotic, hermit-like recluse – who was "shy to the point of misanthropy."

Ducrow buried himself in a small, Kentish village in a gloomy-looking, Georgian house surrounded by a small, but trusted, circle of intimates. There is a younger wife, Freda, who used to be his nurse. A nephew, Rudolf, alongside with his wife and Theo Gray is a long-time, live-in friend and there's a Major Gulley – who's in charge of running the estate. The group of rounded out by the servants and one of them is a murderer.

One early morning, Cosmo's body is found near the croquet lawn with the back of his head pulverized and besides him lay a croquet mallet, which "had been used to give him three or four terrible blows." The evidence and local police favor Rudolf as the murderer, which adds a hint of doom to the already present gloom.  

Initially, Sgt. Beef barrages the facts and people in the case with his typical, blunt approach and "cryptic statements" that "only grow more obscure" upon questioning, but soon comes to the conclusion that more than his reputation is at stake on how he handles the case. 

The case comes to a conclusion on a tension-filled evening when Beef arrives drunk and too late for an appointment at the Ducrow-home, which ends in a deadly rendez-vous on the rooftop of the house and the scene will give fans of Jonathan Creek and Sherlock a serious case of déjà-vu. Well, now I know where the idea for this gambit originated.

Anyhow, what's even more interesting than the ensnarement of the murderer is the classical nature of the solution, clues and, generally, how the entire plot hang together.

Cold Blood was penned and published in the twilight years of the Golden Age, but Bruce even included a "Challenge to the Reader," which states that Townsend had "scrupulously told the reader all Beef knew" and how "the reader may like to try his hand at finding the answers to the puzzle" – without resorting to "cheating" or "reading or looking into the remaining chapters."

During the first half of Cold Blood, I suspected Bruce was, as they say in England, taking the micky out of S.S. van Dine, but he was actually tipping his bowler hat at his brethren across the pond.

So, all in all, Cold Blood is a very accomplished, classically-styled mystery that harked back to the best from the 1930-and 40s and a better send-off than some of Beef's more well-known and famous colleagues, who had "been written up better," received. Recommended! 

The Bludgeoning Method

"One dumb-bell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell. Picture to yourself the unilateral development—the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson; shocking!"

- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Valley of Fear, 1915)

From the very first paragraph, Case with Ropes and Rings (1940) plunges diligently in what readers have come to expect from Leo Bruce and Sgt. Beef: a high spirited, but intelligent, tongue-in-cheek treatment of the detective story, while obliterating the fourth wall.

"This isn't a love story... it's a detective novel," is one of the clues that Beef is more than aware of his status as a fictional character, but his long-suffering and under appreciated chronicler, Lionel Townsend, has become anxious about his job – as three months has passed since they had a case and Beef is starting to enquire about the book rights.

A headline in the Daily Dose finally spurs Beef into action. Lord Alan Foulkes, second son of the Marquess of Edenbridge, who was being educated at the prestigious Penhurst School, was found hanging from a beam in the gymnasium on the morning after having won the School Heavyweight Boxing Championship. Coincidently, Townsend has a brother, Vincent, who teaches at Penhurst, but they've never been particular close and Lionel has to absorb some backhanded abuse over the course of the investigation. Like when his brother suggested that Beef should've approached someone with a genuine gift for writing prose, such as Aldous Huxley, which gave Beef a swelled ego.

The first part of Case with Ropes and Rings follows Beef and Townsend around Penhurst, as the former (poorly) pretends to be the temporary School Porter, but the "bludgeoning method" of Beef doesn't make it easy on the formal-minded Townsend – and neither do the students give him a break. I particularly liked the scene with the boy asking "Ticks," which is his nickname for Townsend, if they are still on the old game and follows it up with:

"The detective racket... you're both nosing round after someone to pin a crime on, aren't you? God, how that sort of thing bores me! All these fearful women writers and people like you, working out dreary crimes for half-wits to read about. Doesn't it strike you as degrading?"

Well, I never! And as Townsend said, "one can scarcely expect schoolboys to appreciate the subtlety and depth of modern detective fiction" and one has "only to quite the name of Miss Sayers to remind you of what this genre has already produced." This all sounds perhaps more fun than it is, but there's a well thought out, expertly knotted plot at the heart of the story and an abundance of suspects that are being questioned – which gives room to the reader for a spot of theory building.

The second portion of the plot deals with an identical death in Camden Town gymnasium and the background stands in stark contrast with the supposed suicide of Alan in a prestigious bastion of knowledge and education. A young and professional boxer, Stanley Beecher, was found swinging from the rafters, but it has handled as a homicide as the case is surrounded with all the "paraphernalia of low life" – from criminal associates to ties to Spanish Nationalists and the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

It's an unlikely combination of characters, events and background to produce two identical deaths, but Bruce, evidently, knew his way around a plot and brings everything together coherently. I'd place Case with Ropes and Rings alongside the best in this series, which includes Case for Three Detectives (1936) and Case for Sergeant Beef (1947). Needless to say, I quite enjoyed this one.

Bruce was a mystery reader's mystery writer and you'll probably enjoy the Sgt. Beef novels the most, if you have more than a passing acquaintance with the Golden Age detective story. Bruce is the kind of mystery writer you grab when you've come to the starling realization that you've gone through every Agatha Christie novel, while burning through the remaining Crime Queens like an inquisitor in a medieval witch hunt, and your supply of yet to be read mysteries by John Dickson Carr and Nicholas Blake are dwindling. That's the excuse moment, you can start adding Leo Bruce to your wish lists and TBR piles.

Finally, the opening was quote was the only sports-related mystery quote I could think of/find.