Inspector Stoddard is on the case: The Man With the Dark Beard and The Crime at Tattenham Corner, by Annie Haynes

Back in April I read the first of the series by Annie Haynes featuring as her detective a certain Inspector Stoddart of the Yard.  The Man With the Dark Beard was published in 1928; the three remaining books in this series were published in 1929 and in 1930.   Book number three, Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (1929) was published posthumously, while the fourth, The Crystal Beads Murder, was completed by someone else before it was published in 1930, although Haynes had already been working on it prior to her death.  For the complete story you can read Lizzie Hayes' post about Annie Haynes on her informative blog, Promoting Crime Fiction. 

9781910570746
Dean Street Press, 2015
originally published 1928
185 pp

paperback

This is is tricky book to post about,  because any minor hints past the basic murder plot and subsequent investigation will absolutely give away the show here.  As it was, I had it pretty much sussed  before page 60,  but I do believe that's because it leans way more toward Victorian sensation fiction than a typical golden age mystery, and as I am a huge fan of sensation fiction, the plot was easy to figure out.  On the other hand, it is definitely a murder mystery, one which introduces Inspector Stoddart of the Yard, who will find himself investigating two murders before all is said and done.

It seems that Dr. John Bastow has something rather heavy on his mind when he asks his friend Sir Felix Skrine the following question:

"Suppose that in the course of a man's professional career he found a crime had been committed, had never been discovered, never even suspected, what would you say such a man ought to do?"

 He goes on to up the curiousity ante by asking what if the "hypothetical man" had "kept silence -- at the time," leaving the criminal to go on to having "made good." What then?  Skrine answers that Bastow ought to know his "duty to the community," when they are interrupted by the ringing of Bastow's surgery bell, and they agree to meet later to talk more about Bastow's dilemma.  Unfortunately, the ringing of the bell is not the only interruption that Skrine will have to contend with, because before the two can continue their chat, Bastow is found dead in his locked office, having been shot in the head.  Enter Inspector William Stoddart from the Yard.  There are very few clues onsite, except for the fact that Bastow had been writing a letter to Skrine about their prior conversation, in which he revealed that the "proofs" were in his Chinese box, which seems to have gone missing.  Also near the corpse is a scrap of paper which reads "It was the man with the dark beard."  What is also known is that Dr. Bastow disapproved of his twenty year-old daughter Hilary's plans to marry young Basil Wilton, Bastow's assistant, who just happens to have been the last person known to have seen Bastow alive, and who just happens to have been dismissed from the doctor's service shortly before the discovery of the body.

The concerned Skrine, who is "one of the greatest -- some said the greatest -- criminal lawyers of his day," also stands in loco parentis to Hilary until she comes of age, and to her disabled brother Fee as well. He offers them a cottage near his country house, taking them both away from the city.  As their father's executor, he also means to continue Dr. Bastow's wishes against Hilary marrying Basil, and eventually makes Hilary an offer that she will struggle against yet find it's one she really can't refuse.  In the meantime, Basil has his own issues, not the least of them the fact that he's found himself a suspect in yet another murder.  As Stoddart moves into the investigation of this second unnatural death, he has no clue that time is actually running out and that it's not only Basil's fate he holds in his hands.

 While I have to be honest here and say that The Man The Dark Beard was not as good as it could have been, because of too much focus on the sensation-fiction plot.  However, giving credit to the author, she obviously spent a lot of time in plotting what  turns out to be a truly nefarious crime, as that part of the novel came face to face with the detection in the case.   I had to look at the book from that particular vantage point, otherwise what's left is an all too-easy-to-solve mystery that offers very little challenge to the reader.

That is not at all the case in the next book, The Crime at Tattenham Corner, which I did not want to stop reading once I'd started it.  Again, some nice plotting from Haynes here, but this time the

9781910570760
Dean Street Press, 2015
originally published 1929
236 pp
paperback

actual mystery carries a lot more heft than her first Stoddart novel.  Stoddart and his "most trusted subordinate," Alfred Harbord, are called to Hughlin's Wood, "not a great many miles from Epsom," where a body has been discovered, face down in a foot of water in a ditch.  All that is known is that it is "a man of middle age" and  "evidently of the better class." It seems that the man has been shot in the head, and that a card in his pocket bears the name of a "man high in the financial world." Based on the name on the card, the monogram on the man's watch and a letter in his pocket, it seems that their dead man may be Sir John Burslem of Porthwick Square.  Burslem's valet is sent for, and on arrival, instantly makes the corrorborating identification.   The police immediately begin to wonder if perhaps his death on Derby Day has any significance, since his horse, Peep O'Day, was set to run and was odds-on the favorite for the win.  As it turns out, "an owner's death renders void all his horses' nominations and entries," leaving Peep O'Day's rival, Perlyon, set up to take the prize.  The owner of Perlyon is a Sir Charles Stanyard, who by some weird twist here, was once engaged to Burslem's widow Sophie, his second wife.   Stanyard takes the lead on the suspect list, but there is quite possibly another motive aside from the Derby.  It seems that on the night before his death, Sir John had inexplicably and quite hurriedly changed his will so that Sophie would inherit all, leaving out Sir John's daughter Pamela, "the apple of his eye," completely, followed by the strange disappearance of Ellerby, Sir John's valet, who was witness to the new will.   Before it's over, Stoddart and Harbord will find themselves deep in a convoluted web of mysteries that they must solve before they can solve the bigger mystery of Sir John's murder.

The Crime at Tattenham Corner is truly ingenious, allaying all of my fears about continuing the series after reading the previous book, and it is genuinely satisfying as well.   This time around I was almost finished before I cottoned to the author's scheme, but only a small part of it; the clever twists (and there are more than one) in the plot did not make it at all easy.  Haynes has quite a few tricks up her sleeve this time around, offering a mystery that will keep armchair detectives both  guessing and entertained.  Around the murder investigation there are strange happenings including a séance or two, hosted at her home by the very strange Mrs. Jimmy Burslem, Sir John's sister-in-law, whose husband is known to be trapising around Tibet looking at old ruins, while widow Sophie who never had a head for business, makes plans to run her husband's financial empire.  The main attraction, though, is most certainly Stoddart and his investigation.  He truly is a policeman who never gives up, no matter what it takes.  Wink wink.

So bottom line: The Man With the Dark Beard is okay, but for readers who have familiarity with the often-convoluted plots found in Victorian sensation novels, may be a bit on the easy side to figure out, while The Crime at Tattenham Corner is a definite yes, making me eager to get on to book three, Who Killed Charmian Karslake? asap.

Don't miss the excellent introduction in each book by Curtis Evans, whose crime fiction knowledge knows absolutely no bounds.

back to the 20s and my happy place again: Inspector French's Greatest Case, by Freeman Wills Crofts

9780008190583
Collins Crime Club/Harper Collins, 2016
originally published 1924
297 pp

paperback

With the sun beginning to set earlier now, there is nothing like curling up with a good cup of tea and a mystery that  delivers a bit of a one-two punch of a twist before all is said and done.  The hero of the day is Inspector Joseph French, referred to (behind his back, of course) by his colleagues at the Yard as "Soapy Joe," a moniker based on his reputation as being "quite a good fellow at heart."   In an introduction to this particular edition in which we "Meet Chief-Inspector French" written by the author in 1935 (and also found here at Classic Crime Fiction) we also learn that "Politeness is an obsession with him," and that

"He's decent and he's as kindly as his job will allow.  He believes that if you treat people decently -- you'll be able to get more out of them; and he acts on his belief."  

As far as this particular case being his "greatest," well, I'll admit that I have no clue there, since there will be twenty-nine more cases for the Inspector to solve, the last published in 1957.  In this book, the series opener and the first French mystery I've read, he is brought in to solve the case of a murder of a Mr. Gething, the head clerk of diamond merchants Duke and Peabody.  The firm's safe is open, "three-and-thirty thousand pounds" worth of diamonds are gone, along with a thousand pounds in notes.  Despite a number of clues and a number of suspects, the case is anything but open and shut, and "days slipped by" without any progress, causing the Inspector no end of frustration.  It is a bafflement that will continue to dog French as the case takes him on a series of travels beginning in Switzerland, leading him eventually to a ship on its way to Brazil; he always seems to be close but at each step, just as he feels he's getting somewhere, he hits the proverbial wall as events transpire to put barriers between himself and a solution. 

original British cover, 1924, from The Passing Tramp

In Crofts' introduction he states that

"Anyone about to perpetrate a detective novel must first decide whether his detective is to be brilliant and a 'character' or a mere ordinary humdrum personality."

Speaking of "humdrum," in 1972, Julian Symons would write in his Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel that Crofts was

"not just a typical, but also the best, representative of what may be called the Humdrum school of detective novelists..."

of whom "most came late to writing fiction, and few had much talent for it."   His feeling was that they

"had some skill in constructing puzzles, nothing more, and ironically they fulfilled much better than Van Dine and his dictum that the detective story properly belonged in the category of riddles and crossword puzzles."  (118)

As Curt Evans explains in his book Masters of the "Humdrum"Mystery,   Symons was referring to a group of writers who "placed far greater emphasis on puzzle construction and adherence to fair play detection than on characterization and stylish writing," which he notes is "fair enough."   However,  Evans also notes that in his view, "Symons insufficiently values the great technical sophistication of the plots in the best works of these authors,"  and that

"this school of mystery fiction has been unjustly disparaged by Julian Symons and the many critics who have adopted his views."  (2012, Location 191).  

French may not be the most brilliant detective ever (and Crofts reveals in the introduction that "many people call him dull"), but he never lets go, remains completely methodical and detail oriented throughout, and he is not averse to listening to his wife's flashes of insight when she comes up with an idea that sparks the light bulb over his head that will move him another step along in his investigation.  "Thoroughness and perseverance" are qualities that the author has given his detective, and admittedly, French does not "leap to his conclusions by brilliant intuition."   In short, he's a regular guy, he gets things wrong, and keeps trying until he gets it right.   Personally, I found myself rooting for Inspector French along the way and actually feeling sorry for him as things continued to go wrong.  If you want dazzling detective, you won't find that here; Inspector French's Greatest Case has much more in common with police procedurals and Crofts had obviously spent a great deal of time meticulously plotting each step of this mystery. 

As far as the twist, I had actually figured this bit out but it was not too long before French himself did, so the experience was unlike when I read detective novels in which I guess things early on, which is a plus.  And "humdrum" or not, I quite enjoyed Inspector French and I quite enjoyed the book, enough so that  I've been slowly stockpiling these Harper editions so that I can look forward to more of Soapy Joe's cases in the future.

back through the time tunnel again with a classic: The House of the Arrow, by A.E.W. Mason, 1924

9780755117475
House of Stratus, 2012
originally published 1924
263 pp

paperback

"Did I not tell you, Monsieur, that we are all the servants of Chance?" 

Fourteen years prior to publishing The House of the Arrow, writer A.E.W. Mason had first introduced to the mystery/crime-reading world his somewhat eccentric detective Inspector  Hanaud of the Sûreté in his At the Villa Rose.  That one I just liked on an "okay" sort of level, mainly because of  Mason's proclivities toward what Martin Edwards refers to in his The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books a "lop-sided story structure," in which all too soon the culprit is made known and readers sit patiently (or not, depending on your makeup) waiting for the rest of the story to play out.    House of the Arrow thankfully poses a bit more of a challenge for the reader, so at least for me there was not one iota of frustration here.  This one I quite enjoyed, spending an entire day entranced with it and then finishing off the experience by watching the 1953 film (more on that later) before going on to order the next Hanaud novel, The Prisoner in the Opal (1928). 

just as an aside and an FYI,  while my copy is a hold-in-your-hands reprint edition, House of the Arrow is also available at Project Gutenberg if you lean toward the e-variety of reading:

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200961h.html

Before this story moves on to Dijon, France, it begins in the London office of the firm of Messrs. Frobisher and Haslitt, solicitors,  on the east side of Russell Square.  Among the other letters in that day's batch of mail is one written in an unfamiliar, "spidery, uncontrolled hand" postmarked Dijon.  Haslitt has a client there, a Mrs. Harlowe, a widow whose health is not so great.  The letter is not from her however, but from someone by the name of Boris Waberski,  Mrs. Harlowe's brother-in-law, who has a "great necessity" of part of the "large share" of the fortune he is certain he will inherit upon her death.  The letter is ignored, and three weeks later, Mrs. Harlowe's death is announced in The Times. Haslitt knows he'll hear from Waberski again, and sure enough he does, except that this time the news comes that Waberski has levelled a charge of murder against Mrs. Harlowe's "husband's niece and adopted daughter" Betty Harlowe.  It seems that Waberski's expectations were all for naught, since Betty has inherited the entire estate, and now he claims that she poisoned the widow on the night of August 27th.  The news does not come from Waberski directly, but via a letter from a friend of young Betty, Ann Upcott.  Frobisher and Haslitt are further upset by a telegram coming from Betty herself, which informs the two attorneys that she needs help right away -- it seems that "The Prefect of Police has called in Hanaud, "  and that she believes "They must think me guilty."   Haslitt sends Jim Frobisher to Dijon to look into their client's situation, but before Frobisher leaves, Haslitt says something to him that quite succinctly and tantalizingly  summarizes the rest of the story: 

"...remember, there's something at the back of this which we here don't know."

Truer words were never spoken, as Jim will come to discover as he makes his way to France and meets up with Inspector Hanaud, who accompanies him to Dijon to work on a case of some serious poisoned-pen letters in the area.   

original cover, from Project Gutenberg

The House of the Arrow is by no means your average murder mystery. First, there is some question as whether or not a murder has even been committed; when that issue is settled, the question of who may be guilty takes on a life of its own.  While Frobisher is somewhat in awe of Hanaud, his own feelings about the matter and his own particular personal interests often pit him against the Inspector, even as they work together to get to the truth and as Hanaud's discoveries lead to even bigger questions that need further answers.  In short,  Mason is not (thankfully) going to let his readers off the hook by making it easy this time as he did in At the Villa Rose.  I will say that after finishing this novel I read a couple of posts about this book in which a few people had figured it out, but for  me the solution was a surprise; even better than finding out the who  though was the path to the why and especially the how.   Pardon me for rambling here for a moment,  but I was just talking to someone  the other day about how old school I am with mystery stories, preferring the journey much more than the solution itself;  House of the Arrow affords that very pleasure.  

The blogger at Vintage Pop Fictions notes that 

"This novel includes just about every ingredient that critics of golden age detective fiction love to mock... On the other hand, the ingredients that cause critics to gnash their teeth are exactly the ingredients that fans of golden age detection (like myself) adore. To a true fan the more outlandish these elements are the better and in this instance they're delightfully outlandish." 

I couldn't have said it better.   Count me as "a true fan," who thrives on the "delightfully outlandish."  

movie poster, 1953, from Rare Film

The film, on the other hand, was a bit of a puzzler.  The way the film is shot gives it a noirish vibe,  but having read the novel, it lacks the elements that make the book both mysterious and suspenseful.  I get creative license and all that it encompasses, and I did enjoy the film for what it was, but I was left with the feeling that there could have been much more to it than what I saw.  I will say though that I immediately checked to see if Oscar Homolka had reprised his role as M. Hanaud; like Bruno Cremer is for me the Maigret, Homolka is the perfect Hanaud, capturing Mason's character's eccentricities so well.  I can only imagine he'd read the novel beforehand to do it so well.  

Holmoka as Hanaud, on the left, from Mystery*File

This book runs rings around its predecessor and I recommend it to readers of Golden Age detective fiction, for readers who like puzzle-style mysteries in general, and to people like myself who enjoy a good yarn that is cleverly constructed, one that takes a number of twists and turns along the way.     Remember, though, it is a product of the early 1920s, so perhaps it may be a bit verbose for modern readers getting to it for the first time.  Then there's Hanaud himself -- he can be both annoying twit and genius crime solver at the same time, so it takes a patient reader at times to get over his personality.  It is, however,  perfect for someone like me who, as noted earlier, enjoys the path much more than the end of the journey.   

The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith, by Patricia Wentworth

9781911413097
Dean Street Press, 2016
originally published 1923
208 pp

paperback

It's been eons since I've read a novel by Patricia Wentworth, and like most of her fans I spent many hours devouring her Miss Silver mysteries. The intro to that series, Grey Mask, was published in 1928, but Wentworth had already written and had published a number of mysteries beginning five years earlier.  The Astonishing Adventure of  Jane Smith is the first of these, but unlike the author's Miss Silver novels, the "impecunious and intrepid heroine" of this story is in her early twenties.   

Young Renata Molloy has been a sleepwalker since her childhood, and as this story begins, she has inadvertently and unfortunately made her way into a meeting being held in her father's London flat. She is discovered just as one of the members of this insidious anarchist organization  happens to mention "Annihilation of the whole human race!" and of course, they want to know what she's heard.  In another part of the city, Jane Smith is sitting on a park bench counting out all the money she has left in the world, some two shillings and eleven pence, when she is approached by a young man, Arnold Todhunter,  who has mistaken her for the woman he loves, Renata Molloy. The resemblance between the two is uncanny, but it turns out that Jane and Renata are cousins; they are not at all close,  but their mothers were twins and as Jane puts it, "I have always understood that we were very much alike."  They are enough alike that Todhunter tells her of his discovery of Renata being held prisoner in her father's flat, and that according to Renata, she can't leave because her captors will only track her down, "find her and kill her."   Todhunter is to leave for Bolivia within three days and would like to take Renata with him, so he comes up with a most bizarre idea.  Would Jane consent to taking Renata's place in the flat (he can sneak her in via the fire escape) so that Renata would be safe from her "position of deadly peril?"   Jane, who has visions of "the workhouse" once her money runs out, agrees to the plan.  Luckily, she has the foresight to call on an old friend, Henry Luttrell of Scotland Yard CID, before the switch is made.  Also fortunate for Jane, she is no coward, not averse to taking risks,  and she has an amazing ability to think on her feet when necessary.  She will definitely have to call on those skills once she is moved from London to a house in the country, where her "astonishing adventure" truly begins. 

from AbeBooks, first edition cover

 The novel is a combination of mystery and spy story, with some romance added in on top of the action. There are secret passages to be explored, lots of government and villainous intrigue, secret formulas, and  strange people coming and going.  Meanwhile Jane as Renata is still in the precarious position as to whether or not her captors plan to eliminate her for what she may have overheard, but  she's not about to just let it happen without doing something.  No timid rabbit here. 

I had absolutely no clue that this book was going to be as much fun as it was, truly what I'd call a rollicking adventure. As for the mystery (which for me came down to identifying a certain personage), well, as it turned out, I was patting myself on the back not too far into the story thinking "can it be any more obvious?" then feeling like a total dope when all was actually revealed.  Let's just say that I was right, but I was wrong all at the same time,  always a positive. Above all, it was great fun for a few hours, and I am eager to get hopping on all of the non-Miss Silver adventures I've missed. 

Definitely recommended for those fans of Golden Age mystery fiction who are looking for something quite outside the norm. 

an Annie Haynes double feature: The Bungalow Mystery and The Abbey Court Murder

If you are asking yourself the question "who the hell is Annie Haynes," you're probably not alone. I had never even heard of this author prior to this year, when somehow I landed at the crime and mystery section of the website of Dean Street Press while looking up lesser-known women writers of the Golden Age period.  Oh lordy -- no one can imagine how excited I was to find not one, but several women whom I'd never heard of before.  Several clicks later and my library now has quite a few Dean Street Press paperback novels with more to be picked up in the future.  But as usual, I digress.

 In 1923 author Annie Haynes made her debut with The Bungalow Mystery; by 1929 after twelve novels  (one published posthumously and the last one completed by an unknown author and published in 1930), she died of heart failure, which as Lizzie Hayes wrote at her blog Promoting Crime Fiction, was quite possibly connected to the rheumatoid arthritis she had long suffered, a disease which ultimately caused her severe pain and left her crippled.  Three of her books featured Inspector Furnival, four more starred a certain Inspector Stoddart, and the remainder were written as nonseries mystery novels.   Hayes also notes that

"... in 1923 a major newspaper regarded Haynes as one of the two most significant British female crime writers, with only Christie to rival her.  Dorothy L. Sayers, whose first detective novel was also published in 1923, does not get a mention."

 These particular editions of The Bungalow Mystery and The Abbey Court Murder are, according to the back-cover blurb, "the first printed in over 80 years,"  so that already gives them a thumbs up as far as I'm concerned; having read both of them back to back, they get another thumbs up for sheer entertainment value. 

The Bungalow Mystery  begins  as Dr. Roger Lavington of Sutton Boldon,  already having a bad day, is summoned to the house next door, "The Bungalow."  When he arrives he finds the tenant, Maximilian von Rheinhart, who lives there in a "hermit-like preference for his own society," dead on the floor.  His pockets have been "rifled," so while the housekeeper believes it may have been suicide, Lavington is positive that the man has been murdered.  He sends her for the authorities, and in her absence, he is surprised to find a young girl hiding behind a curtain, who begs him for help and asks him to let her go.  As we're told, her "appeal had touched a soft place in his heart," so he takes pity on her and sends her over to his own house as he waits for the police.  It doesn't take the police too long until they realize that there is most definitely a woman in the case, based on clues left behind.

Back home again, Lavington hits on a safe way to get the woman away while the police are watching The Bungalow; she makes her escape but the good doctor is later stunned to hear that an unidentified  woman carrying "certain evidence" on her person related to Rheinhart has been killed in a horrific train accident that also made an invalid of one of his old friends, Sir James Courtenay.   The story picks up again two years later.  Lavington has moved away from Sutton Boldon to be nearer to Courtenay where he makes a startling discovery; in the meantime, the word is that the police have some new evidence in the Bungalow case. 

In the introduction, Curtis Evans states that Haynes' novels

"retain, in stripped-down form, the emotionally heady air of the nineteenth-century triple-decker sensation novel, with genteel settings, shocking secrets, stormy passions and eternal love all at the fore..."

and that description is completely spot on.   At the same time, underneath the secrets, passions and eternal love, and I'll add good old male chivalry to the mix, The Bungalow Mystery  is at its heart an intricate, well-plotted mystery that does not get resolved until the finish when all is revealed.  I will also say that there are a few surprises along the way, and that skimming should be totally out of the question while reading this novel since even small details are relevant.   I won't say why, but after a second read,  I had a greater appreciation for Haynes' ability to  pull off quite a nice sleight of hand here, a sort of literary misdirection definitely deserving of major kudos.

Speaking of sensation novel material,  The Abbey Court Murder was also published in 1923; it is the first of three novels to feature Inspector Furnival of Scotland Yard, and it's a definite page turner to the very end. 

It begins at a wedding, as happily-married Lady Judith Carew and her husband Lord Anthony are leaving the church after the ceremony.  There, she gets a nasty surprise on recognizing someone she had thought long dead, and her entire world changes in that moment.  The man demands that she meet him later that night at 42 Abbey Court; there is no way she can refuse because the man has information about her past that her husband Lord Anthony does not know and that she does not want him to know.  The Carews are scheduled to attend a dinner that evening; she tells Anthony to go on as she fakes a headache to keep her at home.  As soon as her husband leaves, Judith grabs one of her husband's revolvers and  makes her way to the appointed rendezvous, but things go tragically wrong and someone is killed.   Judith finds her way home, but lives in abject fear that her presence at the murder scene will be discovered;  her doctor suggests rest and quiet, so the Carew family makes its way to the family home, Heron's Carew.    And that's when things really start popping.  Not only does Judith have to worry about being found out, but there is also a matter of  young Peggy Carew's new admirer, a certain Lord Chesterham whom nobody but Peggy thinks will make a suitable match (and with good reason ...); Judith also has suspicions about Anthony's cousin Lady Sybil Palmer who has recently become a widow and goes digging around to find out any dirt on Lady Carew, and of course, the appearance of Inspector Furnival, whose superiors at the Yard are putting pressure on him to make an arrest in the matter of the Abbey Court Murder.

I couldn't turn these pages fast enough. I am a huge, huge fan of sensation novels, and I can't get enough of this stuff!    I will say that I guessed the who here once a major clue was revealed but it's okay ... I was actually more interested in getting to Lady Carew's secret and waiting to see how the good inspector was going to finish off his case. 

Both are fun vintage novels and I believe I'll have to go pick up the others here shortly.  If these two early books are indicative of her work, I'm in for a lot of serious entertainment.  While they won't be for everyone,  readers of these old mystery novels will enjoy them, as will anyone interested in the resurfacing of an obscure writer brought once again to the light.

Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers

9780062307545
Bourbon Street Books, 2014
originally published 1923
213 pp

paperback

"Enter Sherlock Holmes disguised as a walking gentleman."

As much as I prefer the less unsung mystery/detective story/crime novels of the past, there comes that time when I just can't pass up the more well-known novels of this particular era, especially when the author's name is so familiar to nearly everyone, mystery reader or no.  And while I wouldn't call Whose Body the best in the series (that will come down the road a bit later), it is most certainly worth reading as it introduces one of the best-known characters of mystery's golden age, Lord Peter Wimsey. 

Just a wee bit about Sayers' creation before moving into the novel itself.  In his work on Sayers,  James Brabazon,  author of Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography (Charles Scribner and Sons, 1981) picks up a quotation of hers from  "How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter," from Harcourt Brace News (Vol. I, July 15 1936: 1-2) where she reveals in a sort of tongue-in-cheek fashion that she had been "thinking about writing a detective story," when in walked Lord Peter:

"complete with spats, and applied in an airy don't-care if-I-get-it way for the job of hero." (120)

 Martin Edwards, writing in The Golden Age of Murder (Harper Collins, 2015), says that Sayers "reasoned" that

"A detective who was not a professional police officer ... needed to be rich ... and to have plenty of leisure time to devote to solving mysteries.  She conceived Wimsey as a caricature of the gifted amateur sleuth, and found it amusing to soak herself in the lifestyle of someone for whom money was no object..."

She also

"endowed Wimsey with criminology, bibliophily, music and cricket as a favourite recreations. He is a Balliol man, equipped with a magnifying glass disguised as a monocle, a habit of literary quotation and an engaging, if often frivolous, demeanour." (19)

We also learn in Whose Body? that he  is also someone whose "young mind had been warped in its young growth by 'Raffles' and 'Sherlock Holmes'," and whose "career as a private detective"  was "hampered" by a public-school education. But there is much more to this "frivolous" man which doesn't crop up here until well into the story, when, as I remarked somewhere after finishing this novel, just as he's really getting on your nerves there comes that one moment when you suddenly realize just how very human Lord Peter Wimsey actually is. 

from OUPblog

A call from his mother, the Dowager Duchess of Denver,  alerts Lord Peter to a most unusual crime.  A dead man, wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez, was discovered in the bathtub of the mild-mannered architect Thipps of Battersea.  Later, after having a look at the flat in Queen Caroline Mansions and incurring the wrath of Inspector Sugg,  Wimsey returns home and is called upon by his friend and Scotland Yard detective Charles Parker, who tells him a story of the disappearance of financier Sir Reuben Levy.   As it happens, Levy had gone missing on the day he was slated to attend "a most important financial meeting and do some deal involving millions."  Parker had taken his own look at the man in the bath, thinking it might be Sir Reuben; on discovering that indeed it was not, Parker remains puzzled at the man's disappearance.  He welcomes Lord Peter's interest in the case, and it is not too long before our hero comes to realize that perhaps the two just might be related.  First, though, he and his almost Jeeves-like valet Bunter must wade through what will turn out to be a mess of red herrings before the case(s) can come to a successful close.

What absolutely has to be my favorite cover:  1948 Avon paperback edition; artwork by Anne Cantor from Moment

Most unfortunately, once you reach a certain point, the identity of the criminal is way too easy to figure out, but I think you have to consider the fact that,  as Edwards notes, the author was generally "more interested in describing the culprit's methods of carrying out and concealing the crime."  In this sense, I was actually more interested in Lord Peter and Bunter to actually mind too much, and despite knowing ahead of time the who, the how, I felt, was rather ingenious.  And also under the heading of most unfortunately (and I would add uncomfortably), I'd forgotten exactly how demeaning Sayers' descriptions of  Jewish people were at the time.   Otherwise, I'm quite happy to have read it again, and as I have the entire series here, I'm sure Lord Peter and I will meet once again in the near future.

and we say goodbye to 1922 with The Lyttleton Case, by RAV Morris

9780008216245
Harper Collins
originally published 1922
212 pp

hardcover

I know it will take some doing, but anyone who plans to read this book ought to skip the dustjacket blurb and move right on into the text.   Once again, and to my great dismay, whoever wrote it has given away one of the elements of the plot.  Seriously? Who does that?  For shame.

Ronald Arthur Vincent Morris, the author of The Lyttleton Case, never wrote another mystery novel after this book's publication; with no follow up, as Douglas A. Anderson notes in the introduction to this edition, the novel "lapsed into obscurity."   Indeed -- I'd never heard of it until I started collecting volumes of Harper Collins' reprinted Detective Club novels.  Trust me, the ending is a complete surprise which I didn't see coming.  When the editor of the original detective story club edition says "the secret is well kept and the reader is left guessing, almost to the last page," he or she was not exaggerating.

the collection, so far, with more on the way....

Two mysteries begin this novel.  First comes the disappearance of wealthy financier James Lyttleton, who goes off to work as usual one day and is never seen again.  Telegrams sent to his daughter Doris  from various locations keep her posted about where he is, but after a wire from New York, he is not heard from again.  Doris' fiancé, journalist Basil Dawson, decides to travel to the Big Apple to try to locate him, but he is presented with a set of baffling clues that lead nowhere.  Turning over what little he has to the NYPD, Dawson returns to England to give his information to Scotland Yard, and to wait along with Doris for Lyttleton's return.   The second mystery unfurls as James Candlish, Chief Inspector of the Yard's CID,  a man who has a "passion" for natural history, has started his annual vacation time, which he's spending in  "an exploration of the flora and fauna of the Southshire Downs."  After a "most satisfactory morning's work," he takes some time next to a stream to have lunch and to write down his observations in his notebook, but his idyllic moment is disturbed with the discovery of a man's body.  The Coroner observed that the dead man was between twenty-eight and thirty-five, he'd died of natural causes, and had been in the water most likely four to five days.  Even though there isn't much to go on, when Candlish returns from his holiday, his interest in the case never wanes.  He is also put in charge of the Lyttleton case, and as the investigation progresses, a few too many coincidences crop up for his liking.  There are so many coincidences, in fact, that after reaching the halfway mark, I thought that it was game over and that I had it completely sussed, but no.  So a word of advice -- when you think you know what's what, you may want to think again. 

Around the mysteries to be pondered in this novel, there are a number of interesting people who caught my attention, beginning with James Candlish.  He tends to take a Zen approach to solving crime:

"He had found by experience that by dismissing his work entirely from his mind for a while, he was able to return to it with renewed energy, clearer perception, and deeper insight. In fact, as he sometimes told his cronies, it was only when consciousness was wholly taken off a subject, that the subconscious mind was given a chance on working on it."  

Then there's Police Constable Hutchinson, "a diligent reader of detective fiction," who smokes "shag" like his idol Sherlock Holmes when contemplating a problem.  In his room he has a violin, a syringe ("that rather as a reminder of his great prototype than for actual use"), and a dressing gown, all in emulation of his idol. His current reading project is  Freeman Wills Crofts' The Cask (1920)  but he's also a huge fan of Gaboriau's Lecoq and of Poe's M. Dupin.  In the introduction to this novel, Anderson notes that the mentions of these various detectives exemplify the author's "familiarity with the detectve fiction genre," but it also gives the story a bit of a comic interlude.   Finally, Miss Doris Lyttleton made my favorite character list -- she is not only portrayed as a modern woman but for reasons I cannot divulge, she turns out to be a first-class heroine in her own right.

The themes that recur throughout the novel  are pretty obvious so I won't go into them, and there's more than one foray through London streets and environs which added to the story.  And while I genuinely enjoyed The Lyttleton Case, the mechanics of the solution seem to take forever in the telling at the end.  On the other hand,  it really is,  as Anderson notes, quoting Barzun and Taylor, a "well-written, slow, carefully plotted puzzle."  It's also highly entertaining which is never a bad thing.  Recommended for fans of vintage crime; cozy readers would enjoy it as well with the caveat that this book was written in 1922 so it's not nearly as fast paced as most modern cozies. It really is a shame that Morris never wrote another crime novel -- given how enjoyable is his one and only, a second one would have been more than likely top notch indeed.

back in my mystery happy place once again with an Edgar Wallace double feature

Two books, both written by the same author in the same year, 1922.   An iffy proposition, running the risk of getting something same old same old with the second after reading the first.  Luckily, that was not the case here.

Edgar Wallace was a highly-prolific author; he wrote so much in fact that I didn't even bother to count the total number of works in his bibliography to give here because there are so many.  And given my penchant for crime/mystery fiction, one would think that I would have read one of his books by now, but no.  The Angel of Terror and The Crimson Circle are the only two of Wallace's novels I've read, although his books take up nearly one entire shelf in my British reading room.  

9781842326589
House of Stratus, 2001
originally published 1922
209 pp
paperback

Also known as The Destroying Angel,  The Angel of Terror begins in the courtroom at the end of the Berkeley Street Murder Trial as the judge is about to pass sentence on one James Meredith, who had been convicted of murder.   The jurors and the judge could not but believe the story told by Meredith's ex-fiancée and cousin Jean Briggerland, and ultimately the judge sentences him to death.  His sentence is commuted to a long prison stay, but his attorney and friend Jack Glover knows that Briggerland gave false testimony for what she would consider good reason.  As his cousin,  she will inherit the bulk of James' fortune, since according to Meredith's father's will, if James had not married by age thirty, the money  would go to his aunt and her "heirs and successsors," aka  Jean Briggerland and her father.  His 30th birthday is coming up quickly and   Glover comes up with a bizarre plan to keep the money out of Briggerland's hands:  he has selected a young woman named Lydia Beale,  who is deeply in debt and is struggling to survive to become Meredith's bride.  Seventy-five summons of judgment against her for her father's debts have overwhelmed her;  she will get a huge sum of  money up front, and never has to have any sort of dealings with Meredith.  As the book's back blurb notes, "it is a proposal she cannot afford to ignore."   Glover temporarily springs Meredith via a medical excuse allowing him to escape long enough for the nuptials to be performed.  Lydia becomes not only Mrs. Meredith but also the widow  Meredith all within a matter of moments.  Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, James had written his own will prior to the marriage, so on his death, Lydia receives his estate.  But now that she has Meredith's fortune, the Briggerlands become her heirs, and as Jack Glover so rightfully states, "--there's going to be hell!"   Truer words were never spoken.

In this story, there is absolutely no question of the identity of the "Angel of Terror."   We know from the outset that Jean Briggerland is  one of the most cold-blooded, evil-minded and absolutely mercenary women villains who has ever graced the pages of a crime novel. She is a woman who openly states that what she fears more than death is a "life without money."  However, because of her beauty and her great acting abilities, no one but Jack Glover believes she could possibly be guilty of anything, that she has no qualms about killing, and he will do what it takes to keep Lydia out of her clutches. 

The Angel of Terror was fun, but a bit farfetched considering that Lydia remains clueless for the duration of the novel.  I was looking at what readers said and time and time again they come back to Lydia being either hopelessly naive or absolutely stupid, and in all honesty her character can become a bit exasperating.  However,  I found the story to be more about whether or not justice will ever be served, a point on which the reader will have to make up his/her own mind at the end.

9780755114818
House of Stratus, 2001
originally published 1922
220 pp
paperback

    Of the two, The Crimson Circle was much more to my liking because it has that pulpy feel to it that I love so much.  Who wouldn't love a book about a secret crime organization and a detective that uses "psychometrics" to help his clients?  It also happens to have one of the most twisty endings, where not one but two surprises await the reader.   This one also got the silent "bravo" in my head after I'd finished it.

Private detective Derrick Yale is called into the home of James Beardmore, who has received four letters from "The Crimson Circle" demanding one hundred thousand pounds.  Beardmore has no fear of the Crimson Circle, but perhaps he should have heeded that fourth letter, since he later turns up dead.  But Beardmore is only one of many victims of this shady organization:  it seems that many members of the upper class have been blackmailed with the threat of death looming if they do not pay.  In each occurrence, something is left behind with the sign of a red circle, and the victims take the warning seriously enough to give the Crimson Circle exactly what is demanded.   Exactly who is the mastermind here is what Chief Inspector Parr has been tasked with discovering, but so far, his efforts have yielded few, if any, results.  Now his bosses have thrown down the gauntlet:  "if he cannot run the organization to earth he must send in his resignation."

Parr knows that the Crimson Circle  "had agents in all branches of life and in all classes."  None of them, however, knew the identities of the others nor their "chief," and each had his own "function to perform."  We, the readers know who some of these people are, including the beautiful Thalia Drummond, a known thief who eventually becomes Yale's secretary.   Time is ticking for Parr, so  he joins forces with Parr  to unmask the ringleader, while one man already knows who he is.  To say more is to spoil but jeez Louise, this was a lot of fun.

from IMDB

I liked it so much, in fact, that I watched the English-dubbed film from 1960 after finishing the novel.   The movie, of course, is not quite as good as the novel, but still manages to get the basics correct, although the shockers from the book don't play out as well on screen.  Of course, it could be that I already knew the ending, so there's that.

Overall, both books were fun reads, but I enjoyed The Crimson Circle a whole lot more than I did The Angel of Terror. One thing they both have in common besides the year in which they were written are strong women who take center stage.     Readers of old pulp fiction would certainly enjoy The Crimson Circle, or anyone who is exploring the work of Edgar Wallace certainly could not go wrong starting with this book which is definitely the better of these two.  I'm sure I'll be back for more Wallace novels in the future.

back to the 20s again (finally!) with The Red Redmaynes, by Eden Philpotts

I am beyond proud to have three different sets of initials I can tack on to the back of my name, and then there's the one I'm not all that proud of: QSP, or queen of sporadic posting. Hopefully I can get my act together again (although I blame life, not myself here) and get back into the business of journaling my reading. 

0486242552
Dover, 1982
originally published 1922
377 pp
paperback

Eden Phillpotts was an incredibly prolific author (he wrote all manner of fiction, plays, etc. outside of the crime genre, but you can see his detective works here, both under his own name and that of Harrison Hext); he was a friend of Agatha Christie's, and The Red Redmaynes was also admired by Jose Luis Borges, ending up at number 39 in his A Personal Library project that he never had the chance to finish. 

About this novel, Barzun and Taylor have to say that it is a "classic detective story that has never received due recognition".  (427)  Looking at what a number of readers have to say about it, it's certainly not one they're falling over themselves to praise.   I not only had fun with it, but part of the draw for me is that it is so very different  than other crime/mystery novels I've been reading as I've been flipping through the history of mystery and crime fiction, and quite frankly, I enjoyed it immensely.   This story begins with a CID detective on his holiday who suddenly finds himself in the middle of what appears to be a kidnapping and a murder.   Not having come to Dartmoor "to catch murderers, but to catch trout," he is determined to stay out of things, until he is summoned by the victim's wife, Jenny Pendean, who had heard that he was in the area and now asks for his help.   According to the local policeman, "it's all pretty plain sailing, by the look of it," but for Mark Brendon, it will be anything but, as he steps into one of the strangest mysteries of his career, one that will take him from Dartmoor to Cornwall to Italy and into the lives of the four Redmayne brothers, Jenny's uncles, one of whom has been accused of the crime.    When Brendon has done all he can but things go south anyway, an American named Peter Ganns steps in to help. Gann's "strong suit," he notes, is his "linking up of facts," and he is only too quick to point out that Brendon had it all wrong from the start.  While Brendon isn't exactly pleased at being told about his mistakes, time is of the essence and the two must work together to prevent another tragedy. 

While this is anything but your standard 1920s British murder mystery, it's not without its flaws, and the biggest one of all is that  after a while it is only too easy to figure out what exactly is going on here. While there were several inner eyeroll moments, I will admit that this time around I didn't mind that so much --  the whole story is so very strange, and so out of the ordinary  that it completely merits following it to its conclusion.  It was also nice (although admittedly frustrating towards the end)  to see a detective with his own flaws  -- while Ganns seems larger than life at times, Brendon on the other hand is very much a person who is only too human. 

The Red Redmaynes is a novel I can certainly recommend to readers who like their crime stories a bit more on the out-of-the-box, stranger side.  There will definitely be more Phillpotts novels coming to my shelves in the near future.

Dr. Mabuse, by Norbert Jacques -- pure, unadulterated pulpy goodness.

9780988306271
Bruin Books, 2015
originally published 1921 as Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
translated by Lillian A. Clare (1923)

On the deck of a ship traveling between his home and Lake Constance in Switzerland, the author, Norbert Jacques,  happened to sit across from a man who, as David Kalat notes in his The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse (2005), "never moved, never spoke," and caused Jacques to feel "anxious, afraid." There was just something about the man which "cut to the core of Jacques' being,"  that made him not only want to flee, but to also wonder "What was it about this man that exuded some power?"   The journalist in Jacques made him scrutinize this man carefully, studying "his eyes, his forehead, his stature."  It came down to one question for Jacques:

"Was he a hero, or a villain?" 

According to Kalat,

"In this mystery man, who sat motionless and silent all the while, Norbert Jacques read all that was wrong with modern-day Germany"

and on his return home he sat down to "hammer out" Dr. Mabuse der Spieler in a mere fourteen days. It would sell 100,000 copies in its first year, and would go on to sell over a half million copies, making it  one of the bestsellers of its day.  (16)  Kalat says about this book that it depicts

"a criminal Führer who exploits social decay to his private advantage. Under a variety of disguises and assumed names, he has broken free of the traditional class divisions and invaded the previously insulated enclaves of the decadent upper class." (14)

Despite the title, however, the central focus is on the character of the public prosecutor Wenk.  Just as an FYI, Lillian Clare wrote in 1923 that Wenk's actual position was that of Staatsanwalt  word  for which it "is almost impossible to find an English rendering that conveys its full meaning," but for our purposes here we'll continue on with public prosecutor, or as he's also known, the state attorney.   Jacques sets his story in his present-day Weimar Germany, a time during which Wenk believes the nation is "diseased and rotten." It is a time during which money

"was a key that opened all doors, the wearing of a fur coat could conceal any calling, and a diamond scarf-pin shed luster on any character. A man could go into whatsoever company he desired." 

In fact, it is in a gambling club that the novel opens, with a game of vingt-et-un with unlimited stakes.  It is also here that we meet Dr. Mabuse, who is a man of many disguises with seemingly unlimited powers of suggestion that can make his victims do pretty much anything he wishes.  We first see him in action during this game, as one of the players, who is "not really a reckless player" begins to play badly and takes "unreasonable risks" that cause him to lose.  Afterwards, he remembers very little of what had happened during the game, and can't even remember that he was the one who brought the man to whom he had lost to the club.    Some two weeks later, "the circles to whom the life of the day is only a wearisome burden till the hour of play arrives" share stories about the stranger who "simply loaded himself with money wherever he chanced to play," drawing the attention of the public prosecutor, who believes that these are not isolated events, but part of a much a bigger pattern, even though people in the clubs could swear that no wrongdoing had taken place.  He gets his own chance to play against "The Professor," aka Mabuse in yet another disguise, at which point Wenk gets his own taste of Mabuse's immense powers and a sense of just how dangerous this man is.   However, when the public prosecutor is knocked out and his belongings are stolen, including his notebook with all of the information he's gathered about the case, the real game of cat-and-mouse between the two begins.

While the pursuit is on, we learn much about Mabuse, including the fact that he plans to use his monetary gains from gambling, drug smuggling, human trafficking and other crimes to realize his dream of establishing an empire in "the primeval forests of Brazil," where he plans to be the absolute ruler of the Empire of Citopomar.   He is

"self-sufficing. What were men to him? He scattered them at will. Yonder, however, in the future, in Citopomar, there would be none who could oppose him."

Wenk's efforts in trying to catch Mabuse take on a greater sense of urgency as people around him are  murdered, but when Mabuse falls for and puts in his power a woman who happens to be the object of Wenk's own affection, the Countess Told, Wenk pulls out all the stops to find and stop him.  As I've said to a few people, Mabuse's powers out-Svengali Svengali, but on some level he is quite aware of his true inner self. He tells the Countess at one point that he is a "werewolf," that he "sucks man's blood."  As he says,

"Every day my hatred burns up all the blood in my veins, and every night I fill them again by sucking the blood of some human being. If men caught me, they would tear me into little bits." 

  Mabuse, however, has no intention of being caught.

from the film by Fritz Lang, at Fandor

 While I wouldn't call Dr. Mabuse great literature, it is great fun, and it also gives a glimpse into the decadence the Weimar era is known for.  The cat-and-mouse game isn't a simple one; Wenk will find himself beyond frustrated as he gets close but realizes that Mabuse seems to have all the luck.  Then there are a couple of scenes that employ some crazy inventions that Ian Fleming would have been proud of.  But it is best as a look at the "diseased and rotten" society Wenk speaks of.  The gambling clubs are here the very seat of decadence -- in chapter seven, for example,  Wenk and his companions find themselves at a gambling establishment known as the "Go-ahead Institute," where in case of a police raid, a black knob can be pushed that does away with gambling apparatus, turning instead into a decadent club complete with a

"quartette of nude twelve-year-old children were to be seen dancing, upon a new stage, to the strains of fiddles and harps"

 with a "change of programme every week..."  Yikes!

Read at a time when I desperately needed fluff, the book kept me entertained for hours (I read it straight through, actually without putting it down), of course rooting for Wenk the entire time to take down Dr. Mabuse and save the Countess.  This is the stuff of pure unadulterated pulp, but here with purpose.  Even if you don't care about the Weimar era, it's still a good, fast-paced read that will keep you turning pages.

I'd recommend it to serious pulp readers who aren't looking for fine literature but rather a good time.  I can only imagine reading this book in its original serialized form -- my sweet pulpy goodness-loving  self would  have had a field day as each episode came to some sort of cliffhanger and I eagerly awaited the next installment.

"There the monster lies..." Master of the Day of Judgment, by Leo Perutz

9781559703345
Arcade Publishing, 1975
originally published as Der Meister des Jüngsten Tages, 1921
translation by Eric Mosbacher
154 pp
paperback



"Human vileness remains, and that's the most lethal of all lethal weapons."


I am a bit hesitant in terms of posting  about this book as a crime novel -- it actually sort of defies genre when all is said and done, moving into its own literary territory.  While there are a number of mysteries to be found here,  the author has something quite different in mind as the central focus of this story.   Master of the Day of Judgment is most brilliantly constructed, so much so that as that last page is turned,  you may more than likely find your sense of what is real and what is not being thrown completely off kilter, causing you to go back to the beginning and to read it through a second time.  And when you've finished it that second time, the nature of the title comes into focus more clearly as it dawns on you what the author meant here.

It is at the beginning, the "Foreword instead of a Postscript" that we are introduced to our narrator.  Gottfried Adalbert Baron von Yosch explains that he has just finished chronicling the "whole sequence of tragic events" which had occurred over a certain five-day period in September, 1909, "everything that I wanted to forget and cannot."   He makes a point of revealing that as he wrote, his memory had "distinctly and vividly preserved a mass of detail"  including "trivial" bits of conversation, what was going through his mind at the time, and "minor events of the day." He especially remembers what arrived in the mail on 26 September, a day that "stands out clearly" in his mind for reasons we don't yet know, including  things he did the rest of the day, what was in the newspapers, etc.;  everything is so minutely described so that there should not even the slightest hint of doubt that he is trustworthy in the account that is about to unfold.   However,  there's a bit of a hiccup in that vivid memory of his, as he notes that he thought that things had occurred over a period of "several weeks" and then later, he finds himself thinking that it was "inexplicable" that he has moved one particular event to mid October.   Cue red flag, raised eyebrow. 

One of the Baron's remembrances of September 26th is a "brief item in small type" about the failure of a bank; while he'd been able to get his money out in time, he realizes that he might have warned his acquaintance actor Eugen Bischoff that he should do the same, but had instead kept silent.  He offers his reasons for keeping mum, adding "Why meddle in other people's affairs?" but again the eyebrow is raised wondering what there is between these two men that caused him not to offer a friendly word of advice.  At this point, in my mind, Baron von Yosch himself has become the first mystery to be solved here, but then he slowly begins to shift the focus away from himself by offering a prelude as to what is about to be unfolded about the "sinister and tragic" five days that began on the 26th.  It seems that he and others ("we"),  found themselves involved in

 "the pursuit of of an invisible enemy who was not of flesh and blood but a fearsome ghost from past centuries"

by following a "trail of blood" leading to the opening of a "gateway to the past."  Even more cryptically, he mentions "the book," and  "that fearful trumpet red" which he hopes that "no human being ever again set eyes on." 

1930 first American edition, from Abe Books

From there, the Baron's account launches into the start of those sinister events, beginning with  a small friendly musical concert among friends at the home of Eugen Bischoff,  and ending in the actor's death.  [Just as an aside, this technically isn't a spoiler since it's in the blurb on the back cover of the novel.]     The Baron is invited to play his violin there by a mutual friend of both, Dr. Eduard Ritter von Gorski, who mentions that Bischoff has no idea that the bank has gone under and that he's lost everything, and no one is telling him about it because Bischoff has enough on his plate at the moment without knowing of his financial ruin.  But once there among his friends Bischoff, his wife Dina, her brother Felix and a newcomer named Solgrub, the Baron casually asks Bischoff if he's seen the morning paper, which he knew they'd hidden from him, drawing disgust from the others at the gathering.   A bit later, Bischoff leaves their company; the Baron goes out for a walk in the garden where he meets up with Dina on his way back, and as they're talking,  the entire household hears Bischoff scream the Baron's name.  As they're wondering what's happening, the sound of two gunshots follows immediately afterward; von Yosch leaves Dina and makes his way to the garden pavilion where he discovers that Bischoff has been shot.  By now, everyone except Dina has arrived, in time to see the dying man throw the Baron a "grimace of blazing hatred."    Suspicion immediately falls on the Baron due to a "silent witness" found at the scene; although clearly a suicide,  Felix speculates that Yosch drove him to it, a feeling shared by everyone present except the newcomer Solgrub, who believes the Baron's claims of innocence in the matter and his oath made on his honor.  He realizes that  Bischoff's suicide makes no sense and that there is something seriously wrong here; he reasons that if he can come to understand exactly why the actor took his own life, then he may be able to prove that the Baron was not behind it and sets out to investigate.  The trouble is that the Baron doesn't have much time since Felix holds the threat of exposure over his head, so he decides to do some investigating on his own.

All of the above is just the beginning of  more yet to come that will move this story from the mystery behind Bischoff's suicide  into another realm entirely, as the Baron's narrative reveals how it is that the players move onto that "trail of blood" to find the "gateway to the past" alluded to earlier.   As the story begins to shift yet again, it becomes obvious that  Perutz hasn't quite finished with his readers -- there are even more surprises to come.

Reading this book as a conventional mystery story just isn't right.   Master of the Day of Judgment  also appears on Karl Edward Wagner's list of thirteen best non-supernatural horror novels, but it's not exactly horror story either.  In fact, I'm finding it a bit difficult to attach a genre label to it since, as the blurb notes, it blends "suspense and the fantastic," but in the long run becomes something completely different.   It's one of those book that tends to mess with your head and delightedly so; I love challenging, reality-questioning novels like this one. Not for everyone, for sure, but I had a great time with this story.   Then again, I also loved Perutz's Saint Peter's Snow (which is even more hallucinatory and mind-boggling than this one) so I'm not surprised.    

1921, continued: The Dark Geraldine, by John Alexander Ferguson

Well, just crap.  The only photo I can find of the original dust jacket cover of this book has the bookseller's card in the picture at the bottom right hand corner.  Otherwise, once again, I have only the bland, very matter-of-fact cover from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprints.   I mean, if you can reprint an entire book it shouldn't be that much trouble to give it a decent cover. 

9781120874566
Kessinger Publishing Legacy Reprints, 2010
originally published 1921 by John Lane
308 pp
paperback

Here's the photo of the original dustjacket:

from AbeBooks

and, at $200 plus $21 for shipping, it's no small wonder that I ended up with more or less generic cover  version.  It really doesn't matter in the long run, since a) I'm not a collector and b) the text is the same.

John Alexander Ferguson (1871 - 1952) was born in Perthshire, Scotland.  I came across a reference that took me to Google books and Ferguson's Gang: The Maidens Behind the Masks by Anna North-Hutton (2013) that has some pretty valuable information about the author.  Thanks to the magic of kindle unlimited, I went to Amazon and downloaded it.  [And pardon the tangent, because that's how my brain works, but as a sort of relevant aside, there's another book I downloaded called Ferguson's Gang: The Remarkable Story of the National Trust Gangsters, in which I discovered that the "maidens behind the masks" were a group of women concerned with the destruction of rural Britain  (especially the Lake District) and took action, so I'll look forward to seeing Ferguson's actual connection with this ladies.]  Anyway, according to Anna North-Hutton, Ferguson was a member of the Scottish clergy, and it was during his time as Chaplain at Eversley School in Folkestone that he began writing his books.  He was also a playwright and editor of "several books of one act plays" published by Penguin (88).   In 1939 he left the school and moved into Duimarle Castle near Culross, where Macbeth killed his wife and child.  Later, in 1946 he went back to Hampshire into a house he had been renting to someone else; he died in December of 1952.

Ferguson wrote a number of mystery stories, most of them featuring private detective Francis MacNab (noted by Haycraft as the author's "likeable Scotsman").  I have four MacNab books on the shelf, Death Comes to Perigord (1931),  Night in Glengyle (1933) The Grouse Moor Murder (1934), all  reprints (the last two came from Coachwhip), and a 1928 Dodd edition of The Man in the Dark, all sitting here unread.   I would love to have a copy of Murder on the Marsh but at over a grand, that's not happening.  Anyway, after I'd finished The Dark Geraldine,  I was wondering if the "McNab" of this story was the same as the MacNab of his other books, so I turned to Hubin for answers.  His Ferguson entry for The Dark Geraldine shows that he isn't quite sure if  they're the same, with a brief note in that reads

"FM (A different character than in the other FM books?")

Here he is a constable who helps out the two main characters here and there, getting them out of a major tight spot in one case.

The action in The Dark Geraldine occurs in the small, "somewhat of a backwater" village of Gart, "lying tucked away in a fold of the West Perthshire hills."  The story is narrated by Peter Graham, a "recently qualified" lawyer working for attorney Robert Lawson.  As we're told, he remembers very clearly the events of the day that this story begins, because it was the last time he saw Lawson's client Colonel Duncan before he died.  As the Colonel was leaving, something strange happens -- a man walks in needing money and sells the Colonel a "curious metal figure," an "idol" he says is from Mexico.   No one in the office makes too much of this transaction, and the Colonel goes on his way. However, "two nights and a day later," it seems that the Colonel's body had been found in a ditch very close to his house, with a broken leg and a head wound made by a stone.  Unable to get help, he died there from exposure.  Lawson's entire demeanor changes  after he hears the news, and later, after the office is broken into, his anxiety rises while his mental state goes quickly downward.   He invites Peter to dinner one evening saying that he has something to show him, and "a queer tale" to tell, but later, before Peter could even get his hat on, he was brought unexpected tidings of Lawson's death.    Lawson's sister lets Peter know that her brother had recently become like a "hunted man," a "silly notion" according to Peter's co-worker Allan Macgregor, a sentiment with which Peter agrees -- that is until he receives a strange letter through the office mail box entitled "The Dark Geraldine," directing him to place "it" at a certain place at a  certain day and time.  Peter has absolutely no clue what the message means, nor what the "Dark Geraldine" might be.

novel frontispiece, my photo

The Dark Geraldine is actually quite a fine thriller, and tonewise, it reminded me a lot of the early spy novels written by John Buchan.   The story takes off as Peter and Macgregor realize that the deaths of the Colonel and Lawson may not have been random events, and as they go in search of  "the thing called the Dark Geraldine,"  for which someone is obviously "ready to shed any man's blood."  In the meantime they encounter a host of strange characters, none of whom Peter is willing to trust with his life.

While it may seem a little confusing at times, especially coming down to the ending, I found it to be well written, well plotted and intelligent; careful readers who make their way slowly will find  connections throughout the story.  Like the main characters, I had my own suspicions about the trustworthiness of the various characters who make their way into Peter and Allan's orbit, making the story not only a good thriller, but along with the nature of the Dark Geraldine itself,  a good mystery as well.  The novel also has its more lighthearted moments so that you get a break from the constant tension.  I could say more but anything else coming from me would likely give away too much, so we'll leave it there.

Crappy cover or no, it's what's inside that counts, and this is a good one.  Now I really need to get busy reading more of Ferguson's books, so I'd say there's a high probability I'll be talking more about them later.  Recommended.