Obscure, yes, but oh so good: The Six Queer Things, by Christopher St. John Sprigg

978193910694

Valancourt Books, 2018

originally published 1937

222 pp

paperback

"... the whole web of horror behind them had been brought to light; but somewhere there still lurked the spider who had spun it all..."

The word sinister doesn't even begin to describe what happens in this book.  Originally published in 1937, The Six Queer Things is definitely not your average Golden Age mystery novel; in fact, I can honestly say that I've never read anything quite like it.  It is not only sinister, but it is also one of the most claustrophobic novels I've read from this period, and the author keeps you guessing right up until the last four pages before ending it on a most cruel note.   Before getting to that point, however, this story takes some unexpected and bizarre twists and turns, and the answer to who can be trusted here changes on a regular basis. The only times I put this book down once I started was for sleep and a session at the gym, and I had to make myself do both.  The best way to describe it is that it's like reading an ongoing nightmare from which there is little chance of escape.  

Marjorie Easton has been living with her uncle Samuel Burton since the death of her parents. He is described on the cover blurb as miserly, but Marjorie

"had had a long first-hand experience of absolute absorption in himself, his pettiness, and the supreme importance he attached to money."

She works as a junior typist, making only enough for personal needs with anything left over going to directly to her uncle.  He constantly reminds her of the fact that he had "fed, clothed and educated her," and that she owes him.  The bright spot in her life is her boyfriend Ted, but they can't marry until Ted feels he has enough money to take care of her properly.  Marjorie can't wait to get away from Uncle Samuel, so when she is offered a job that pays much more than she currently makes, she jumps at the opportunity.  The offer comes about as result of a chance meeting, and she finds herself in the employ of Michael Crispin, who takes her on as a sort of research assistant.  As it turns out, Crispin is a well-known medium, and along with his sister Bella, holds regular seances at the family home where Marjorie is expected to live while in their employment.   It is during one of these seances that Marjorie finds herself the object of a visit from the great beyond; soon Marjorie begins to believe that she herself has some psychic gifts of her own.   She sets herself apart from Ted to work on her psychic abilities, and Ted isn't too happy.  Worse, Marjorie's focus on her mediumistic tendencies leave her headed for a breakdown, further separating herself from Ted while she is under medical care.  But everyone's life is upended when Crispin suddenly dies just after a seance; from there this story takes on a life of its own as the police try to figure out who killed Crispin and why.  But this is, as I said, no ordinary mystery and while the police are doing their job, both Marjorie and Ted become locked into frightening nightmares of their own.

The New York Times review blurb quoted on the back of my book says that it is "Mystery and horror, laid on with a trowel," and that's about right.  It is filled with nice Victorian Gothic flourishes as well as contemporary policing, but at the heart of this story lies a most sinister plot with a villain who, even when "the whole web of horror...had been brought to light," still remains the unknown and mysterious "spider who had spun it all" from the beginning.

Hats off to Valancourt yet again for finding and publishing something quite out of the ordinary.  When I say that this book is unputdownable, I'm not kidding.  This book has it all -- a bit of meandering into the realm of the occult (and a sideways commentary on spiritualism in general by the author underneath it all),  a claustrophobic atmosphere that doesn't let up, and a strange mystery at the heart of it all  that will keep you turning pages because once things take that turn toward the strange nightmarish story it becomes,  you will absolutely want to find out what kind of mind it is that could dream up such sheer evil. And while it's probably not going to join the ranks of the greatest literature or greatest crime novel ever written, for me it all comes down to the fun I had while reading it. 

Don't blow it off because it's from the 1930s -- trust me -- you haven't read anything quite like it.

... and the first crime novel of 2017 is Death on the Cherwell, by Mavis Doriel Hay

9780712357265
British Library Crime Classics, 2014
originally published 1935
286 pp

paperback

This past July I read my first book by Mavis Doriel Hay, who wrote only three crime novels during her short stint as mystery writer.  I have yet to read her The Santa Klaus Murders, the last of her mystery novels, which is still sitting patiently on its shelf waiting for me to pick it up.  And while I wasn't a huge fan of her Murder Underground, I was really into Death on the Cherwell, which was not only fun, but also a story that turned out to be a good mystery with a number of red herrings and many possible suspects. I got it for Christmas this year and as it turned out, it was just the ticket for brain calming after having read more than one too-serious novel over the holidays.

 If you look at readers' thoughts on this book, more than one person has actually compared this book to a Nancy Drew story.  The truth is though that the only similarity between Death on the Cherwell and Nancy Drew is that a group of young women friends do a bit of sleuthing after a murder -- Voilà,, c'est tout. The comparison is just not right. In fact, in a very un-Nancy Drew sort of way, the book begins with four undergrad girls attending Persephone College, Oxford,  holding a secret meeting on the roof of a nearby boat house.  They've decided to form their own secret society, the Lode League,  the purpose of which is to curse the bursar, the not-much liked Miss Denning.  Just as the group rings are being passed out, along comes what looks to be an empty canoe.  The girls rush to bring it to shore and discover that the canoe is not only not empty, but that it's carrying the body of the very person they formed their League to curse.  Evidently she'd drowned, but as one of the girls, Sally, asks

"How can anyone drown in a canoe?"

Very good question, actually, and one that brings in Scotland Yard to investigate.  In the meantime, though, Miss Cordell, Principal of Persephone College, just dreads the publicity that this death is going to bring to the school -- publicity, as we're told, is her "bugbear:"

"Respectable publicity was bad enough, because newspaper reporters, however carefully instructed, were liable to to break out into some idiocy about 'undergraduettes' or 'academic caps coquettishly set on golden curls'.  But shameful publicity! A death mystery! That was terrible!"

Later, after having been initially questioned by the police, Sally realizes that "There'll be an awful tamasha about this," and decides that the girls should do all they can to "help try to clear up the mystery."  They need to discover the truth about things, "to find it out so that Persephone doesn't look silly."   That's not the only reason that the girls decide to get involved -- their fellow student Draga, a "Yugo-Slav," had already made her feelings about Miss Denning known after the bursar had, as Draga puts it, insulted her. The girls are concerned that if Draga somehow got brought into the investigation, they may have to "cover her tracks," since outsiders don't understand her Yugo-slav temperament. It's a fun little mystery story, and while my choice of suspect turned out to be the killer, it took me a while to figure it out since there are a variety of people with motives to knock off Miss Denning.

Careful readers will note a wide strand of misogyny running throughout this mystery novel.  At one point, for example, a few of the guy pals of our female amateur sleuths are talking, with the main question being that of why "most women get murdered." The answer for one of them is that "Some wretched man gets involved with too many of them and has to remove one or two." Hmmm.  Then, of course, there's one suspect whose family has a long, long history of hating women, and as just one final example (although there are many),  is that we are told in no uncertain terms that Cambridge in the 1930s has yet to offer real degrees for women students.

It's a good read, very easy to get through, and I had a much better time with this book than I did with the author's first novel.  Even though Hay reprises a couple of characters from Murder Underground, Betty (Sally's sister)  and her husband Cyril, thankfully Cyril's not the same twit here that was he was in that one.  About the only spot where this book starts to get boggy is while the Inspector takes his time to try to pinpoint alibis for all and sundry, but otherwise it flows very nicely. There are even a few comedic spots that brought out a chuckle or two, my favorite centering on the girls' secret late-night surveillance of a property belonging to one of the suspects.  But there's some serious stuff here as well, starting as the book comes down to the big reveal.  Nancy Drew it is definitely NOT and while people are certainly entitled to their opinions, well, that's a bit wide of the mark.

Do not miss Stephen Booth's excellent introduction (but do save it for last)  which puts a nice perspective on Hay's work and that of Dorothy Sayer, whose Gaudy Night was also placed in an academic setting.  While Hay's book isn't quite up to the Gaudy Night level of excellence (my personal favorite of Sayers' Lord Peter books), it's still quite fun and a great way to pass a quiet day. People into vintage crime, those who are following the British Library Crime Classics series, or those who are exploring the work of interwar women mystery writers will definitely find a good book here; it may also work well for cozy readers.  Plus, I love the cover art -- just love it!!

crime fiction from the UK

another winner from Pushkin Vertigo: I Was Jack Mortimer, by Alexander Lernet-Holenia

9781782271154
Pushkin Vertigo, 2015
originally published as Ich war Jack Mortimer, 1933
translated by Ignat Avsey
186 pp

paperback

"This man had messed up everything with his death." 

Ferdinand Sponer is a taxi driver in Vienna, "about thirty," whose only mistake was to pick up the wrong passenger.  Waiting in the taxi rank at the Westbahnhof, his turn comes up, and his passenger directs him to the Hotel Bristol.  After some time, he realizes that there are two Hotel Bristols, so he opens up the partition between front and back seat, and asks his passenger which one.  Receiving no answer, he asks again, and is met only with silence.  Sponer turns on the light inside the cab, looks at the man in the back seat, and realizes that "the man was dead." To his further surprise, since he hadn't heard anything at all, he discovers that the guy had been shot right there in his seat.  Sponer tries to tell the police, but panics -- after reporting a fake accident and unable to think straight,  he goes through what I can only describe as a serious lack of judgment, and then makes a fateful decision that will make his life a living hell over the course of the next couple of days.  Believing that if his passenger fails to show up at the hotel that the game would be up and he would be blamed, he decides Jack Mortimer will keep his reservation at the Hotel Bristol, just for one night.  Afterwards, Sponer figures, he can get on with his old life without anyone ever finding out what had happened. But, as we all know, the best laid plans and all that ...

I've seen this labeled as a thriller, and I suppose there are a number of thriller-type elements, but I got more of a noir sort of flavor from it -- the hapless Joe who's in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking for a way out of his predicament only to discover that he just may be trapped by his own choices.  The suspense picks up once Sponer decides that he will become Jack Mortimer, and as we discover exactly who Jack Mortimer actually was,  all manner of things happen that send Ferdinand's life spiraling out of control.  But, as we're told,

"One doesn't step into anyone's life, not even a dead man's, without having to live it to the end,"

and with our poor taxi driver, that just might be the case as he finds himself smack in the middle of a collision course between the past and the present.

from Quixotando

I watched the film (1935, German with English subtitles) this morning, and while not as suspenseful as the book, the movie itself is pretty good.  It starts pretty slowly, introducing the main players, and instead of letting the tension build in discovering the past history of Jack Mortimer we get that whole shebang near the beginning. It takes the actual discovery of the dead man in the back seat of the taxi to get things rolling, but from then on, it's one of those movies where you don't want to miss a second.  A few noticeably surreal scenes at times make it stand out, as does the main character spiraling into panic mode when he realizes that absolutely no one is going to believe that he has nothing to do with his passenger's death.

Both book and movie are definite yesses.  Alongside the main story in the novel, by virtue of Sponer's job as taxi driver, we are privy to the sights, sounds and smells of interwar Vienna as he travels through the city; class distinctions are also nicely detailed here.  As a character study, it also works quite nicely -- again, my focus in reading is on people, looking for what drives them to do what they do, and I was not at all disappointed.  Evidently, though, my high opinion of this novel isn't shared by a lot of readers, who in general give it an average overall rating mainly because of the plot.  Well, this book is a prime example of what you miss when plot and "story arc" are the only things you care about.  Trust me, there's nothing average about this book at all -- it's another fine example of an old book that has been largely forgotten, and thanks to Pushkin Vertigo, it's now widely available.  Once again I'll say that I do understand that crime from 1930s may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I seem to be encountering a lot of these old novels that are really, really good and which definitely ought to be part of every serious crime fiction reader's repertoire.

Recommended to all crime readers, but most especially to readers who love these old books as much as I do.

another British Library Crime Classic, and it's a good one: Murder of a Lady: A Scottish Mystery, by Anthony Wynne

9781484205712
Poisoned Pen Press, 2016
originally published 1931
297 pp

paperback

"...there's something wrong with this house."

The thing I enjoy most about locked-room mysteries is, of course, waiting for the solution to materialize.  Up until that point,  I am mentally watching for anything that might be a clue as to how a locked-room murder was pulled off.  This time, there was nothing to give it away, and I had to wait until the last few pages for the answer.  Clever it was, indeed; I never would have guessed.  Yet not all action takes place within the confines of a single locked room -- two other equally puzzling murders happen right under everyone's noses with no suspect in sight. So here you've got a bonus:  a locked-room mystery and an impossible-crime story.

Set in Scotland, Murder of  a Lady was written by Anthony Wynne, the pseudonym of Robert McNair Wilson (1882-1963).  When he wasn't writing histories (12) or wasn't practicing medicine, he spent time writing crime novels --  with some 28 titles under his mystery-author's belt. This particular book is number twelve of his Dr. Eustace Hailey series; Hailey is not only an amateur detective but he specializes in mental diseases. I'm sure I'll cross paths with Dr. Hailey in the future -- it's sad that for some reason Poisoned Pen Press in association with the British Library didn't publish his first crime novel, The Mystery of the Evil Eye aka The Sign of Evil.  Seriously, why start with number twelve?  Pet peeve, and anyone who knows me  knows it drives me crazy.

The first victim in this story is an elderly woman, Miss Gregor, who according to everyone, doesn't have an enemy in the world; she is praised for having spent her life "in service."   Yet, this paragon has been found murdered in her locked bedroom (windows locked as well, of course) so at least one person seems to have wanted her out of the way.  But why? With a house full of suspects, trying to narrow down the who would seem to be a daunting task, especially since the only clue to be found is a herring scale.   As Dr. Hailey surveys the scene, he is met by Inspector Robert Dundas, who has been tasked with solving Miss Gregor's murder.  It's important to him: the case is the chance of his life, so he tells Dr. Hailey that he does not want his help, and that there "must be no independent lines of enquiry" going on. Hailey agrees to abide by Dundas' rules, and it isn't long before Dundas admits defeat and comes back 'round to Hailey. However,  circumstances lead to another police inspector being brought into the case -- and he's certain he has all of the answers. Dr. Hailey, though, isn't so sure.

While the locked-room/impossible-crime components will probably be enough to please any vintage-mystery reader,  I always go right to the human element in crime novels, and the dynamics at work in this household are perfect for examining what's in the minds of the people who live there. As the quotation with which I started this post states, "there's something wrong with this house," and Wynne gets to the dark heart of exactly what that something is.  It takes a while to get there, but it is definitely worth the read time.

*Some Must Watch, by Ethel Lina White

World Publishing Company
Forum Books Motion Picture Edition, 1946
256 pp
originally published as Some Must Watch, 1933

hardcover

This book was so much fun to read and it hit all of my classic mystery reading buttons --  an isolated family home, a murderer on the prowl and all of it set against the proverbial dark and stormy night, complete with banging shutters and an elderly bedridden woman predicting doom and gloom.  How could it possibly be any better???

Ethel Lina White (1876-1944) was a prolific novelist, with a 17-book career starting in 1927 with The Wish-Bone.  Some Must Watch is her sixth novel, and it's a good one.  I'm almost sorry I didn't wait for the proverbial dark and stormy night to read it since it would have been the perfect backdrop for this book.  The action here takes place over the course of one stormy night, set in a family home called The Summit  "on the border-line between England and Wales."  It's  twelve miles away from the nearest village, and twenty-two miles from the nearest town; a "three-storied house, with two staircases..."  As one might imagine, the Warren family has trouble finding or keeping domestic help, since no one really wants to live in such an isolated place.  That's not the case with Helen Capel, though -- she seriously needs a job after "some months of enforced leisure" and employment suits her just fine. And unlike some characters in  Victorian novels,  she's not there hoping for a "potential husband" -- she plans to keep investing in Savings Certificates, since as she says, "she believed in God -- but not in Jane Eyre." Helen is joined by Mr. and Mrs. Oates, the couple who help to keep things running at the Summit, as well as the Warren family: Professor Sebastian Warren, his sister Blanche who doubles as housekeeper, the Professor's son Newton and his wife Simone, and the Professor's elderly but feisty mother Lady Warren.  As we discover about her,

"The household was waiting for her to die, but she still called the tune. Every morning, Death knocked politely on the door of the blue room; and Lady Warren saluted him in her customary fashion, with her thumb to her nose."

Also in attendance on this particular night is Stephen Rice, who's come for help from the Professor as he prepares for a civil service job, and last but not least, Nurse Barker (whose last name as it turns out, is quite appropriate), who has been hired to help take care of Lady Warren.

The opening of this novel is very well done, setting the tone and the atmosphere for what's to come.   Helen is just returning from a long walk as day is about to slip into night. She still has some way to go before reaching the house, and while she's making her way back through the dense grove that sits between her and the Summit, murder is on her mind.  Four of them, to be precise -- "credibly the work of some maniac, whose chosen victims were girls." The murders started out in the town, moved to the village, and the last victim had been killed in another "lonely country-house, within a five-mile radius" of the Warren home.  In short, the killer is getting closer and much more bold, moving from a "street murder" to actually going inside a house to make his move. Thinking about these murders spooks Helen to no end, and as she comes closer to her goal, she actually believes she sees one of the trees move.  Feeling relief as she enters into safety once again, it isn't long before the house is thrown into upset: the doctor taking care of Lady Warren announces that another murder has just occurred, this one committed very, very close to home.  The Professor puts the house on lockdown -- no one in and no one out.  But the night is only just beginning ....

And right now I so want to do that evil villain laugh, the  "muah-hah-hah-hah-hah" reminiscent of the old Shadow radio show opening because this is just that type of book.  And while I thought it was clever and well paced, with ratcheting tension that continues throughout the night making me flip pages in a frenzy, I see that some readers weren't so crazy about it.  Well, it sort of goes with Ethel Lina White territory that there are a lot of psychological observations from the characters in her work, so here the talky parts didn't bother me at all. Personally, I think the dynamics among the characters are just as much a part of this story as the mystery, so I quite enjoyed it. And the thing is that when it comes to the film, all of that is missing, which is really a shame.

In fact, I have no idea why the powers that be who made this film changed it as much as they did because to me it really was a letdown after having read the novel.  First of all, they took Helen's character (played by Dorothy McGuire) and made her unable to speak and I still haven't figured that one out.  Second, there is very little quality interaction among characters, since they've stripped the whole thing down to the point where there are only a handful of people involved; the nurse's role between book and film is pretty much left out entirely.  Not only that, but for me, there was way more suspense and tension in the novel than the movie gave off, to the point where not too far into the movie Mr. Film Critic guessed who the killer was, something he never does and something  I didn't do while reading the book.  So if you've only seen the film, you're missing out on so much more.

If anyone can come up with a cool design for Ethel Lina White fan club t-shirts, let me know. I'm really starting to appreciate and enjoy her work with every book of hers I read.  Some Must Watch is definitely another boo-yah! read for me. I only wish the weather had been bad so I could have crawled under the covers spooked out by thunder and lightning while reading it.

from the British reading room: Murder Underground, by Mavis Doriel Hay

97807122357258
British Library Crime Classics, 2014
originally published 1934
286 pp

paperback

"The annals of murder are riddled with coincidence."

Between 1934 and 1936 British author Mavis Doriel Hay (1874-1979)  published three mystery novels, with Murder Underground as her first, followed by Death on the Cherwell in 1935 and The Santa Klaus Murders in 1936.   This is my first book by Hay, and while I found it a bit underwhelming, it certainly won't be my last.

Miss Euphemia Pongleton has been murdered, strangled with her dog's leash and left on the stairs going down to the Belsize Park underground station. There is a man in custody for her death, but no one at the Frampton Private Hotel (the boarding house where Miss Pongleton lived) can believe he actually committed the crime.  In fact, the denizens of the house have much more sympathy for the accused than they do for the dead woman, who was rather eccentric, cheap, rather "tiresome," and known to have "loved a sense of power."  While the police are called in to investigate, in this book the Inspector in charge has only a minor role, arriving late to the story.  The focus is really on the efforts of the people at the Frampton who try to discover who really killed her. In the meantime, someone else has his own reasons for wanting to conceal what he knows, and ends up causing more than a lot of confusion in the case.

Considering how very much I love these old books and British murder mysteries in general, overall this one was, like Miss Euphemia Pongleton, a bit tiresome.  What I enjoyed about it was the focus on the boarders, who have their own theories on what happened.  The best scene takes place at the beginning of the story, when all are together in one room, waiting to be called individually to talk to the (somewhat invisible at this point) police Inspector. There we discover that while these people feel sorry that she'd met with such a terrible end, they're also realistic, with one woman noting that

"It would be hypocritical to pretend that any one of us is overwhelmed at the removal of Miss Pongleton."

This conversation is very lively, with a novelist, Mrs. Daymer, applying her "expert" knowledge of the police, of investigations, and of the victim herself while "surveying the possibilities of the situation." The other boarders voice their own opinions or come up with logical questions that are discussed in turn, each one speculating on motive, means and opportunity.    But when outside of the boarding house, someone decides to gum up the works to protect himself and starts covering up his own movements and  telling a series of lies, the story quickly gets tedious, making the novel  tough to get through.  Talk talk talk, very little in the way of action until the book is nearly finished.   I read several reader reviews where people had said that they got bored enough to flip to the end, but really, it's so incredibly easy to figure out that no one should have had to do that.  For me the question was one of waiting it out to see how long it took before things are set right, and exactly how that was going to be accomplished.

While I won't sing the praises of this novel, I do still plan on reading her other two, so maybe they'll be a bit better.  However, as an example of the work of a previously-obscure woman mystery writer of the Golden Age, Murder Underground is very much worth reading.

*Detour, by Martin M. Goldsmith

9781617209321
Black Curtain Press, 2013
(originally published 1939)
145 pp

paperback

"...like the lions and the spiders and the snakes, the female human is more vicious than the male..."
                                             -- (103)

Toward the end of this book we find the main character musing  about how great things would be if "our lives could be arranged like a movie plot," and how MGM does a "much better job of running humanity than God." As he says, "Things are plotted in straight lines," and

"There are never any unexpected happenings which change everything about the hero but his underwear." 

In this book, though, Alex Roth finds his life turned upside down precisely due to a number of "unexpected happenings" that detour him away from his dream of a decent life with the woman he loves.  Detour is a compelling, dark novel and the film based on this book is also really good, considering that it was made on a shoestring budget and took only a few days to make.

Briefly, Alex Roth is thumbing his way across the US from New York to Los Angeles to reunite with his singer girlfriend Sue Harvey. Although Roth had worked hard training to be a classical violinist, he ends up instead in a club in New York city playing with a band.  That gig ended one night when a customer decided to make a pass at Sue and decided to "pat her fanny," causing Alex to see red. It also caused him to lose his job. A month later, just days before Sue and Alex had planned to be married, Sue decides to hotfoot it to Hollywood to take her chances.  Alex, down to his last fourteen dollars, is sort of stuck there, but eventually he too decides to head west to see Sue and to try his own luck in the movies, a la "Heifetz or Kreisler."  So off he goes, and makes it as far as Texas before the money runs out. There he does a "Jean Valjean," stealing food and in turn ends up in jail for a month.  Back on the road once more, Alex is somewhere on Highway 70 in New Mexico when a car stops to pick him up, and it's then that, as he informs us, we have "reached the part where all the mess begins."

And oh, what a mess it is!  Alex's immediate problem is bad enough and great fodder for noir novels, but once he reaches California (alone, but I won't say why), things spiral out of control when he runs into one of noir fiction's most evil femme fatales, Vera.  In one of the best lines in this novel, Alex describes her as being  "like a frozen stick of dynamite; you never knew when she was going to blow," a perfectly, spot-on accurate characterization.   She knows something that puts Alex completely in her power, and the reader spends quite a bit of time in Vera's dark, claustrophobic existence.   But Alex's story is only part of this novel, since Sue's story takes up part of this book as well, the two narratives alternating throughout the book.   Considering how much Alex loves her,  Sue's story, especially her feelings toward Alex,  comes as quite a surprise -- and also allows her to take on the role of femme fatale in her own right. Sue even admits it, noting that she's

"recognized myself to be a weapon, every bit as formidable as a knife or a gun, and liable to do untold damage unless kept in check." 

Between Sue and Vera, the darkness and the snares close in quickly around the men in their lives and just doesn't let up.  Not for one minute.

So we have deadly women, life's plans taking a huge detour for pretty much all of the main characters in this novel, and an overwhelming fatalistic atmosphere all combining here to make for an incredible book, which in my opinion definitely falls squarely into the noir camp.  As I'm fond of saying, it's one of those books that reminds me of watching a train wreck, where you just know beyond a shadow of a doubt that something terrible's going to happen, but you just can't take your eyes away from what's coming. Considering the short length of this story, it grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go. I have to say though, that in real life,  the odds would have to be pretty much astronomical in terms of Vera's first meeting with Alex and the threat she's holding over Alex's head, but then again, coincidence, fate, whatever you call it,  is a huge part of the story, I think in this novel.  I think Alex's film counterpart says it best when he notes that "That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you." 

Tom Neal, Ann Savage in the 1945 movie

And now to the film, which I really enjoyed, by the way. Reviews are available everywhere you turn, so I won't go into it, except to say that between book and movie, Sue's narrative somehow doesn't make it onto film, leaving the renamed Alex (now Al Roberts) and Vera in the main frame.  For movie purposes, though,  it works and works well.  The opening sequence is just dynamite -- with Al in a roadside diner somewhere looking scraggy as they come and holding on to his cup of coffee.  The music starts on the juke box and it just happens to have been Al & Sue's song, which sends Al deep into his memory, letting us know exactly how he's come to be where and who he is at the moment. And it just gets better from there. I know there's another later version, but I think I'm going to give it a miss since this one was just so good.

Once again a yes/yes book/movie. More importantly though, I'm having so much fun with this page-to-screen thing -- reading books and watching movies I might not have picked up otherwise.  So it's a win/win for me too.  And while I get that not everyone shares my enthusiasm for old novels from seventy-plus years ago, I just love this stuff, and above all I've been noticing that there are some things that come down from generation to generation without much change.

a little belladonna with your bovril broth? The Deadly Dowager, by Edwin Greenwood

9781943910380
Valancourt Books, 2016
(originally published 1934)
233 pp

paperback

"There's only one thing that matters, ... and that is the Family."

So sayeth the grande dame Arabella, Lady Engleton of the de Birketts, a family whose "fortune -- or misfortune" came into being with a reward from none other than Thomas Cromwell during the reign of Henry VIII.  Flash forward a few centuries, and meet the entire de Birkett clan, and do it quickly before something terrible happens to them.

Arabella, now 83,  has for the last 65 years of her life devoted her energies to restoring the de Birkett's fallen fortunes, with very little in the way of results.  She's pinned her hopes on her young grandson Henry, age 20, whose mother died when he was three, and who's been in Arabella's care ever since.  Her goal is to

"somehow set the Family on its feet again, enable Henry to wear his coronet in the House of Lords and look his peers in the eye without the stigma of poverty hanging round his head like some disreputable halo."

So, as the novel opens, Arabella seems to have hit on a marvelous scheme for ensuring that Henry will be well provided for and that the de Birketts will continue to maintain their place among their noble peers.  She has called a "Family conclave," bringing anyone connected by blood or marriage (however tenuous that connection may be in some cases) together at their home in Mount Street, London.  Her idea: to insure all of their lives up to twenty thousand pounds. That way, when the policies mature, young Lord Henry should find himself with well over forty thousand pounds to "sustain his position in the world and his dignity in the House of Lords."  God help anyone who doesn't agree, like poor old Uncle Alfred, who is "leaving his little bit to charities," because death has a funny way of making an appearance -- along with a new will leaving it all to Henry.    And the body count begins to rise, slowly but surely. I mean, seriously -- they all should have figured out that this was just a very bad idea.

One would think that the "deadly dowager" would be happy at this juncture, but no, that's not quite all that is up her sleeve.  While young Henry's fortune is being planned (and, if you'll pardon me,  executed), Arabella has other plans for her young grandson that involve marrying into a wealthy family to better secure the de Birkett position and lineage. The problem is that Henry's already in love with Dora, and well, to the Lady Engleton, his choice is simply not acceptable.

So now people may be thinking "oh great. You've just wrecked the whole plot, the whole storyline, the whole book, in fact," but the truth is that I  haven't given away any more than the back-jacket blurb reveals. The fun is actually in waiting to see what our dear, deadly Arabella is going to do next, as well as the truly ingenious characters in her orbit.   As Mark Valentine has written in his introduction to this novel,

 "Greenwood took care to provide an (as it were) full-bodied supporting cast" 

aside from "the book's eponymous assassin," and the resulting ensemble makes for great fun, as does the lovely satire on class in 1930s England.  There is also budding romance here which normally I don't care for, but here it works and is another reason for all of the out-loud chuckles coming from me that kept coming the entire time I was reading this book.  There is a great one liner from the New York Times contemporary review of this novel that pretty well sums it all up:

"Quite the jolliest crime story that has come our way in many moons."

I know murder isn't supposed to be funny, but well, sometimes it's just refreshing that way.

While the 1930s may not be everyone's favorite period for crime reading, The Deadly Dowager was just plain absolutely delightful -- farcical, yes, in its own way, but I defy anyone to read this and not laugh at some point during this novel. Crime light, indeed -- a perfect summer read to toss in the beach bag, lay back and totally enjoy.  I just loved it.

* back to the movies we go: No Orchids for Miss Blandish, by James Hadley Chase

9780615336268
Bruin Books, 2010
203 pp

paperback

Rant.

After finishing this book, I went back to the front pages where there is a "note to the reader."  There I learned that this edition "is yet a further update for the latest generation of readers," and I was appalled.  I thought this was a new publication of Chase's original novel, but no.  It's been revised.  So here's my question: if people in "the latest generation of readers" pick up this book, knowing that  was originally published in 1939, why in the hell would they need an "update"? Also published in 1939: Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath -- does that now need an update to make it  more appealing to "the latest generation of readers?" I think not, she says.  But the story continues, since in my quest to discover the actual text from 1939, I read three more versions of this novel before finally finding the original.  One version even had televisions in it!  The horror!  And, as if that wasn't frustrating enough, I then watched two film versions of this novel -- the original "No Orchids for Miss Blandish," from 1948 which made me want to launch things at the TV, and "The Grissom Gang," another adaptation of  this book, from 1971. That one was almost okay in terms of following the novel, but on the whole, for me sort of missed the boat coming down to the ending.  Frustrating experiences all around.

- end of rant -

The book, though,  stands as a  monument to bleak, raw, and downright depressing crime fiction  -- anyone expecting to find any amount of happiness in this book is definitely not going to want to read this novel.  I think I was in shock by the time I turned the last page, but, actually, overall I thought it was great.  No sappy sentimentality or smiley happiness here, none at all. Zero, zip nada.

When a gang of crooks kidnaps an heiress in the process of a botched robbery,  their dreams of easy money are thwarted when a rival and much tougher, more deadly gang steals their victim. Miss Blandish becomes the hostage of the Grisson Gang, led by Ma Grisson.  Ma (likely modeled after the infamous Ma Barker), has "for the past three years ... built up the reputation of the gang," but among other gangs, the Grissons were  still viewed as "good third-raters."  She knows that the kidnapping of Miss Blandish would turn the gang into "the richest, the most powerful and the most wanted public enemies of Kansas City," building its clout -- at the same time, the half million the Grissons will be getting from Miss Blandish's wealthy father is also nothing to sneeze at.  However, complications ensue when her son Slim takes a shine to Miss Blandish and wants her for himself.  Slim, who used to torture animals for fun as a child, began to "develop homicidal tendencies" by the age of eighteen.  The only person with any amount of control over Slim is Ma, who "won't face up to the fact that he isn't normal," since she is "blinded by a mother's love."  When Slim decides that he loves Miss Blandish and won't give her back, things within the Grisson gang start to change.  Ma's not happy  -- she's jealous of Miss Blandish for one thing, and for another, she truly believes that "more gangs have come to grief through a woman than through the cops."  Just how prophetic her statement will prove becomes evident throughout the rest of the novel.  One the other side, the story follows the efforts of former reporter now private detective Dave Fenner, who's been hired by Miss Blandish's father to find his daughter.   That's all I'll say about the novel for now, except that this is one of the most raw, most twisted novels I've ever read, and despite the apparent misogyny found within this book (it was the 30s, after all, so I can sort of overlook it), I enjoyed it.

So - now to the films.  First, there's the original version, made in 1948, which, if I hadn't read the book before seeing the movie, I would have had trouble believing that the two were related. What really misses in this movie is that it comes across as some kind of strange love affair (and not of the Stockholm Syndrome variety, either) between Slim and Miss Blandish rather than a psychological story of a psychopathic captor and his captive.  I mean, seriously -- I was okay with it up until the point where Miss Blandish has the opportunity to walk away but she chooses to stay (a truly WTF moment) --  that's when it all went sideways for me, and it didn't get any better as the movie progressed.

The second version, "The Grissom Gang"  (1971)  is a bit more faithful to the novel, even though the family's name is Grisson, not Grissom.  It's also much more true to the period (and with no British actors badly faking American accents); however, there are still some major changes that were made in the storyline.  The biggest one comes at the end, which fails (in my opinion) to capture the flavor of the originally ending of the novel, which was just downright pathetically tragic.  However, between the two movie versions, if someone's looking for the one which more or less captures the main thrust of the novel, this is the one I'd recommend -- the portrayal of Slim in this one was just brilliant, more or less the way I pictured him while reading the book.

Not for cozy readers, for sure, but any true pulp/vintage crime addict like me will want to experience this book. Once is enough, though.

another dynamic duo during dedicated down days, this time from Valancourt Books: Wax, by Ethel Lina White and Gilded Needles, by Michael McDowell

 Valancourt Books publishes old crime fiction, supernatural fiction, horror fiction and long-ago forgotten novels, and they've kept me entertained ever since I discovered they existed. My shelves are teeming with their books, precisely because I crave the obscure and because I haven't yet met a Valancourt  novel I didn't like.  Two more books now join the vacation reads:  Wax, by Ethel Lina White and Gilded Needles, by Michael McDowell.  They are two totally different animals -- Wax is pure vintage British mystery while Gilded Needles is more of a dark, historical crime novel of revenge set in New York in 1882.  Gilded Needles gave me a case of the willies and as I noted somewhere, caused me to pretty much stop breathing during the last 1/4 of the book.  Wax, on the other hand,  is more along the lines of a whodunit set in a most incredibly creepy atmosphere that doesn't let up throughout the entire novel.  Both, though, gave me the most intense satisfaction, which is all I can hope for when I'm enjoying vacation time.  I only brought a limited number of books with me, so I got very lucky with these two.  

First up is Wax, by Ethel Lina White, probably best known for her novel The Lady Vanishes. 

9781941147597
Valancourt Books, 2015
187 pp
paperback

Sadly, this particular version is not available in the US, but I bought mine at Book Depository and it was here in no time. Luckily,  Kindle readers  can get a copy for about six dollars.   It is an old novel originally published in 1935, and as soon as I opened it to the first page, I found myself already soaking in atmosphere.  At two a.m., Mr. Ames, who along with his wife serves as a caretaker for the old waxworks museum just outside of the small town of Riverpool, wakes up and remembers that he may have left a candle burning in "the Horrors."  When his wife goes to investigate, she gets a creepy vibe from the wax figures, "a company of -- poisoners" whom she felt "resented her presence," since "At this hour, the gallery belonged to Them." Her fear drives her home in a hurry, where she tells Mr. Ames that

"...those figures were up to some business of their own. And I felt in my bones that it was no good business either." 

Seriously -- what a cool opening!   The Waxwork Gallery was built in 1833, and had been "almost unlucky almost from its beginning." Evidently, the builder had hanged himself in the Hall of Horrors, then in the next decade a dead "tramp" was discovered there.  In the 1890s, a prostitute was murdered there in the alcove, "wherein was staged -- appropriately -- the final tableau in the career of Vice."  Moving the show into the 20th century, the body of a "commercial traveler" was discovered, this time with Virtue as a companion.  Opening the door of the Waxwork Gallery reveals a dimly-lit space with panelled walls draped with black velvet, coated in dust. Some of the figures have seen better days; for example, Mary of Scotland is wearing moth-eaten black velvet and is described by Mrs. Ames as being "germy" and in need of replacement.

When young Sonia Thompson comes to town to take a job at the local newspaper, the Gallery is the first place she visits, and thinks she sees two people come to life. Mrs. Ames tells her that she herself saw no one, so Sonia puts it down to an illusion.  However, she's not at all comfortable -- as we are told,

"She saw the Waxworks, not as harmless dummies, but as malign agents in a corrupt traffic..."

and feels as if the walls themselves were rocking in the "rushes of darkness."  She was, in short, "filled with horror of the Gallery."  As Sonia begins to acquaint herself with the people of Riverpool, she is warned away from the wax museum more than once -- sage advice, as it turns out, since a body is discovered there.  But it's not just the Waxworks that give Sonia the willies, since she soon finds herself wading knee deep into closely-held secrets that no one, absolutely no one, wants revealed and people who will go to great lengths to keep these hidden.   Sonia can't help herself though -- after all, she is a reporter and she wants to discover exactly what is going on in this small town.  She decides that there is only one way to get to the truth, and that is to spend a night on her own inside the Gallery.

Yowie zowie -- what a fun book!  What sets this book apart from a number of other works of the time is the The Gallery, which as I noted earlier, is the focal point of this book, and is in its own way, connected to pretty much everything that goes on in the town. It is not as taut as I generally like my mystery novels to be, and it took a while to get to used to the author's sort of rambling style. On the flip side, what I discovered is that although it seems like there is a wee bit o' the babble going on here, there are important clues to be uncovered throughout the story, so there were places that I went back to in order to pick up what I'd missed.  I have to say that I was hooked immediately, and that the novel turned out to be a fun read with a quite an ending.   Vintage crime readers will definitely enjoy this one, as will readers looking for something just a bit off the beaten path.  I will be revisiting Ethel Lina White later this year, as I plan to read her Some Must Watch (aka The Spiral Staircase) as well as her The Man Who Was Not There, both of which became films in the 1940s.

And now, moving right along to part two of this post, Gilded Needles is one of the darkest, creepiest tales of revenge that I've ever had the pleasure to have read.

9781941147917
Valancourt, 2015
paperback, 284 pp

The setting of Gilded Needles is New York, 1882.  The first thing that struck me on opening the book was the most excellent panoramic view of the city as the old year changes into the new.  The author provides us here with a glimpse across the spectrum  into what's happening at that moment, giving us a peek at the lives of  "... the poor whose poverty was such that they would die of it," the "criminals whose criminality was no final guarantee against the poverty they tried to escape," the "mildly prosperous and moderately respectable," and finally, for the "very rich who needn't trouble themselves with respectability." But most importantly for the purposes of this book, there is the "Black Triangle," a "little space that lies west of MacDougal, between say Canal and Bleecker Streets."  It is a place where "horror festers," located "within half an hour's walk of the most fashionable houses of the city."  It is in this small slice of the city that "Black" Lena Shanks and her family run their criminal enterprises; everything from illegal abortions, receiving stolen goods, selling dead bodies, you name it.  However, the denizens of the Black Triangle aren't limited to the poor or the criminal -- it is also a favorite locale for the more "respectable" citizens on its outskirts for gambling, picking up prostitutes, and whatever other pleasures they desire that are definitely not found say, in Gramercy Park.

It is just one of these "respectable" people who sets this story in motion.  Young Benjamin Stallworth is having his fun slumming in the Black Triangle, when he notices Lena.  She recognizes his eyes, remembering the time when a certain Judge Stallworth sentenced her husband to death and had her children taken away while she also went to prison.  In the meantime,  the Judge and his son-in-law, Duncan Phair, have decided to build their political and social clout by trying to take down the criminals and exposing the "evils" of the Black Triangle, publicizing their efforts in the newspaper.  But while the plan seems to be working, one particular event sends Lena and her family over the edge, and now she's looking for revenge.  And it definitely isn't going to be pretty.  The novel goes back and forth between the Shanks family and the Stallworths, who really don't help themselves with their own arrogance and their lack of understanding of human nature.

Gilded Needles is written in a way that reminds me so very much of the 19th-century "city mysteries" novels I've read,  exposing the city's dark, seamy underbelly and scratching off the veneer of respectability.  McDowell has captured the style of this sort of old novel while making it his own; he is one of the best dark fiction writers whose work I've had the pleasure to have read.  Gilded Needles  is one of the most horrific non-horror stories I've read in a while -- bleak, very Dickensian and well, let's just say that it's definitely not for the faint of heart.  At the same time, it is absolutely one of those books that once picked up will not easily be put down, and to be honest, I was still shaking after I'd  finally turned the last page.   I highly, highly recommend this one -- a definite no miss for readers of dark fiction and historical crime fiction.

and we're back, with a Pushkin Vertigo double feature: The Murdered Banker and The Hotel of the Three Roses, by Augusto de Angelis

I have just loved the Pushkin Vertigo books I've read so far, enough to where I've preordered every single book with this imprint that I don't already have. One I had to go to the UK to buy (not physically, obviously), but I'm good through December of this year. I hope this imprint goes on for a very, very long time -- much like my favorite press Valancourt Books, PV is bringing back some old vintage crime stories that have either been long forgotten or frankly, novels which I've never heard of.   The crime novels by Italian author Augusto de Angelis are a great example of a series I didn't even know existed; I've read two now and really, really, really want to read more.

The Murdered Banker and The Hotel of Three Roses both absolutely  hit the spot while sitting out on my hotel balcony last week during my vacation. Written in the 1930s, the mysteries in these books for me are highly satisfying, but they are also notable for their explorations of human nature. In the first one de Angelis introduces his main character, Police Inspector Carlo DeVincenzi, Commissioner of Public Safety in Milan, whose raison d’être as a police officer is "an interest in human justice."  However, de Vincenzi often finds it difficult to solve his cases because of reluctant witnesses who may tell a part of what they know, but for their own reasons tend to hold back on information that would actually allow DeVincenzi to do his job in a timely manner.  In the two I've read, de Angelis has characters who have been heavily burdened with secrets; his people run the gamut from starving artist to wealthy financiers, each with his or her own conflicts, desires, weaknesses and strengths,  which if not actually having some bearing on the solution of the crimes,  still offer a picture of what made people tick at a certain time in a certain place.  

9781782271703
Pushkin Vertigo, 2016
paperback, 187 pp

"...above all, there's an interest in human justice, which I believe in and which I must uphold..."

Any time a mystery novel opens in the fog, I do a little happy dance since I know that what's coming is going to be hazy, murky, and a bit of a challenge in terms of seeing things clearly.  This is definitely the case in The Murdered Banker,  where a "bituminous lake of fog" has settled on Milan, making it nearly impossible to see anything.  The opening scene captures two men "moving across the piazza," as "ghostlike shadows." As it turns out, one of these men is the main character Inspector Carlo de Vincenzi, who is heading into the station just after midnight.  After a while de Vincenzi settles in to read his book, Lawrence's  The Plumed Serpent (not Pirandello, as someone else guessed).   While inwardly musing about why he's a cop, and why he'd become the Commissioner for Public Saftety, he is joined some time later, about 1:30 a.m., by his friend and former classmate Gianetto Aurigi, who has just come in after a night at La Scala seeing Verdi's Aida.  He had watched the opera in the box belonging to Count Marchionni and his family; Marchionni is Aurigi's future father-in-law, as he is engaged to his daughter Maria Giovanna. He claims he's been walking around since and that his wandering had brought him to the station to see the inspector.  But soon he opens up with his financial troubles, revealing that he needs "half a million" -- it seems that he owes this sum to someone, and that it is due that very day.  He can't tell Marchionni without facing the prospect of losing his bride-to-be. While they are talking, the phone rings, calling de Vincenzi to a crime scene. After he hangs up, the inspector instructs Aurigi to remain at the station and leaves an officer to ensure that Aurigi doesn't leave. The reason is not that the inspector wants to continue the conversation when he returns, but that the crime he's been called out to just happens to have occurred in Aurigi's apartment.  As he begins his investigation, it all adds up to Aurigi as chief suspect, but through his "intuition and psychological impressions" the Inspector knows that he's the wrong guy.  As other suspects are brought into the case, each with his or her own secrets, de Vincenzi realizes that if he doesn't get to the truth of the matter, the innocent may be caught up in the "machine that will grind them up." His mission -- to save the innocent, and to bring the guilty to justice.

De Vincenzi believes that a crime, when "not a crime of passion," is "a work of art! A work perversely and criminally artistic," and it's obvious to me that De Augusto's writing reflects this idea.  At the same time, it's not so artistic that the whodunit element gets lost -- The Murdered Banker is a solid mystery story that is not only enjoyable, but also very well laid out in terms of buried secrets that could easily serve as motive, creating a group of possible suspects whom de Vincenzi must eliminate one by one to solve the crime.  He takes his time getting there, but that also is part of the author's craft -- creating the reluctant witness who doesn't want those secrets to come out at any cost.  By the time the actual culprit is discovered, it's a rather eye-opening moment, something I look forward to in any mystery novel.  Here it's done right, and done well, although sometimes the writing itself can be a bit overdone, but a) it's the first in a series which is often touchy, and b) the crime and the investigation are both so well plotted that it's forgivable. 

De Vincenzi is definitely not your ordinary police inspector -- he works, as noted above, through his impressions and his gut feelings. His reading material speaks volumes about who he is as a person -- Plato's Eros, for example can be found in his desk drawer at work. As a policeman, though, it's all about feeling "the poetry of this profession" -- as he notes

"because I am perhaps a poet, ... I feel the poetry of this profession of mine, the poetry of this dusty grey room, of this shabby old table, of the poor old stove, whose every joint suffers in order to keep me warm. And the poetry of the telephone! The poetry of the nights of waiting, with the fog in the piazza coming right up into the courtyard of this old convent -- now home to the police station, housing criminals in place of saints! Of nights in which nothing and everything happens, because in this huge, sleeping city, even as we speak, there are infinite dramas, even if they're not all bloody. Actually, the worst ones don't end in shooting or with a knife." 

He has this ability to size up situations and people, and often sets things up like a stage director, moving his characters here and there, putting different people together to see what happens, etc. etc. until conditions are just right for him to see everything  -- you know, that moment when the fog lifts and things are visible once more.

It is a fine start to a series that so far I am really enjoying.

Moving on to the second book (although seventh in actual publication order),

9781782271710
Pushkin Vertigo, 2016
220 pp
paperback

we come to The Hotel of the Three Roses, the blurb of which promises a "chilling gothic mystery" and "bloody drama." It is an example of one of my favorite sorts of mystery tales in which a tragic, horrific past comes flying back full throttle into the present, and oh, what a chilling tale there is to tell here. 

It's 1919, and Inspector De Vincenzi has received a very strange anonymous letter about things at The Hotel of the Three Roses, "an unknown third-rate hotel...not the kind you just just stumble upon," in Milan: 

"...A horrible drama is brewing, one that will blow up if the police don't intervene in time...the devil is grinning from every corner of that house."

 De Vincenzi is asked by a colleague if he thinks it's a joke, but the Inspector  realizes that "precisely because it is so ridiculous,"  there is something strange going on and that indeed it is definitely not a joke. Just to be on the safe side, he gets the lowdown on the people who are staying there at the moment.  Then, as if on cue, he receives word that there is a dead man at the hotel, one of the five on whom he has gathered information.  Feeling "profoundly disturbed," the Inspector had a "vague presentiment that he was about to experience something dreadful."  After beginning the official investigation into the death, which looks like a suicide, he realizes that it is actually indeed a murder.   The main question for De Vincenzi going into this investigation is precisely this: "Who was Douglas Layng?  And how had this young Englishman ...come to be killed in Italy?"   He realizes right away that this is no ordinary crime, and  that "He would have to battle with the devil. Flush him out, give chase." He also knows that "only the psychological aspects of the crime can reveal the truth."  But before he can devote his full attention to the Layng murder, he finds a clue that warns that  Layng's death just might be the opening salvo in "the beginning of a series." And sure enough, there's another murder. Time is of the essence, and De Vincenzi must solve this one quickly, since as he realizes,

"His adversary was the sort who never misses a chance, and never loses."

However, as in The Murdered Banker, he is again confronted by a hotel filled with suspects, each of whom is reticent to share his or her secrets.

The Hotel of the Three Roses is a fine mystery story with its roots in the past.  Here the inspector finds himself "groping around in the darkness," trying to fit all of the little snippets of clues he's gathered before anyone else becomes a victim.  He also has to figure out how the people currently at the Hotel of the Three Roses are tied together, making for a solid piece of detective fiction.  Once again, though, it's his need for justice that pushes him toward the truth.  As he says,

"What's done is done, unfortunately. The dead don't come back. But human justice does exist, and it must act to defend society." 

Much of this novel is based on the idea of justice -- maybe not in the way that De Vincenzi thinks about it, but justice all the same. Sadly, I can't really say how this is so,  because I don't want to spoil anything for the next reader.

 This book was extremely satisfying for me in terms of the mystery itself, the variety of characters and especially in terms of the process of crime solving.  Again -- often a little overblown writing-wise here and there, but as with The Murdered Banker, the mystery is intense and good enough that the writing just isn't that much of an issue.  I am growing rather fond of the Inspector, so I hope that Pushkin Vertigo continues the series and that more of  de Angelis'  books continue to be  translated for eager readers like myself who love  vintage crime.

both books are definitely recommended!!

In which "Meddlesome Matty [nearly] came to a bad end" : Murder in Stained Glass, by Margaret Armstrong

9780993235702
Pepik Books, 2015
originally published in 1939
182 pp

paperback

Murder in Stained Glass is the opener of a new series called "American Queens of Crime", issued by Pepik Books. Claire Theyers, the owner and director of this small press, has stated that "only quality fiction" that she's read and "truly enjoyed makes it into the series." Bravo for her -- and good for me, since like Ms. Theyers, I am constantly on the lookout for books from authors whom, as she notes, are "long forgotten about and their stories gathering dust in bookshops and charity stores."

You can read a brief post about Margaret Neilson Armstrong's amazing career here;  now, onto the book itself.   Murder in Stained Glass is absolutely delightful. As the novel opens, the main character, self-proclaimed spinster (although only in her "late forties") Miss Trumbull notes the following while looking back over the events of this story:

"It's like the nursery rhyme about the old woman who milked the cow with the crumbled horn. If the weather hadn't cleared I wouldn't have gone to stay with Charlotte Blair; I shouldn't have been on hand with my eyes wide open when things began to happen; I shouldn't have been forced to play the part of innocent bystander -- a dangerous part when bullets are flying about; and as I should have known nothing about the case, except what I read in the newspapers, I couldn't have been of the smallest use to anybody concerned." 

But the weather indeed cleared, and Miss Trumbull went off to Bassett's Bridge, Connecticut,  to visit her rather moody old school friend Charlotte Blair. Truth be told, she isn't that fond of Charlotte, but the lovely young girl living with "Cousin Charlotte," Phyllis Blair, is another story.   The three of them make their way to the workshop of artist Frederick Ullathorne, who has just finished a lovely (albeit somewhat flawed) stained-glass window destined for a New York cathedral. Phyllis and Ullathorne's son Leo are an item, and provide delightful company for our heroine.  A week goes by, and although she's having a lovely time with these two young people, Miss Trumbull starts thinking that she'd "had about enough of a peaceful country life," and is ready to return to the city.  But her plans are delayed when "our peace broke with a vengeance" --  to everyone's horror, news arrives that bones have been discovered in the kiln at the glass shop.  Unseen by the others, Miss Trumbull watches young Leo pick up something out of the ashes; later it is revealed that it is a dental "appliance" belonging to his father.  At the inquest, the coroner offers his opinion that "for some sordid reason" "a great genius was taken away at the height of his fame."  As the rumors fly as to who may have done away with Mr. Ullathorne, Miss Trumbull decides that she has to do something because suspicion is quickly mounting against young Leo.  She knows that something is not right and has some leads of her own to follow even after returning to New York, but she is warned more than once that her role as "Meddlesome Matty" might land her in jail or even worse.

The blurb on the back cover of this book notes that "If you like Agatha Christie then you'll love Miss Trumbull," and while this book may definitely appeal to Miss Marple fans, Miss Trumbull is a delight on her own.  She is quite independent, both in terms of money and personality, and doesn't let little things like an attempt on her life or potentially dangerous situations get in her way.  In contrast to her friend Charlotte, whom Phyllis describes as a "gloomy old lady in black and rather severe," Miss Trumbull is full of life and energy, well respected and a hit with the youngsters.  The novel also has one of the best twists that I must say I never saw coming -- and in this book, there are a number of potential suspects as well as a few well-placed red herrings that will keep any reader guessing.  Yes, it's a bit dated but once in the mindset of the period, it became a fun, interesting and delightful read.

a cracking-good yarn: Darkness at Pemberley, by T.H. White

04862336137
Dover, 1978
originally published 1932, Victor Gollancz
286 pp

paperback

Not to be at all confused with P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley, White's novel takes place over a century later than Austen's original and opens with a sort of locked-room puzzle. I have to say that in this case, the words "cracking good yarn" came to mind after I'd finished it; it's definitely not perfect by any means, but it's definitely a good, old-fashioned tale that kept me turning pages.

Darkness at Pemberley is quite different than most novels of this time -- the book opens with two deaths at a college (a disclaimer for which White wrote in his original book, reprinted in this edition) behind locked doors.  It looks like a murder-suicide and Inspector Buller ("in many ways a strange man"), who is investigating the crime,  is told by his superior at Scotland Yard to ask for that verdict at the upcoming inquest. The evidence supports this judgment on the face of things, but Buller is deucedly unhappy -- he senses murder but can't quite piece together how things were done. However, the question of whodunit and how is ultimately revealed to Buller by the clever murderer himself, who lords it  over Buller since there's absolutely no way to prove a thing.  Buller quits the force and accepts an invitation from his old friend Charles Darcy to come to Pemberley for a visit.  End of part one.

Part two picks up with Buller at Pemberley, and we learn some interesting information here. This Lord Darcy had been in prison for a couple of years for cocaine smuggling, although he was tricked into getting involved.  His social downfall and the scandal had also caused all but the most faithful of servants to leave Pemberley. Buller has long been enamored of Miss Elizabeth Darcy, Charles' sister, but his ideas about social class leaves him afraid to act on his feelings.  Most importantly, though, Buller has related the story about the murderer to his friends.  Charles, who doesn't always think before he acts, takes it upon himself to seek out said killer and give him a warning that he'll kill him within a week.  Bad idea, since now Buller realizes that the murderer will be coming after Charles to try to kill him; he also knows that it will be yet another murder that will never come to justice.

Darkness at Pemberley is anything but a ripoff of Austen's original; it is also a most unusual story.  Justice is at its heart, as is the fact that readers are left thinking about exactly what kind of people we're dealing with here as the main players come up with their own plans as to how to set things right.  It is a really good study of character and social class of the time, number one; number two, as I mentioned at the beginning, it's also a cracking good yarn.

I've seen several negative reader reviews but I genuinely enjoyed this book -- it's anything but run of the mill or formulaic and while a lot of readers were left cold, I thought there was enough excitement in it to keep it from being anything but boring.  It's certainly one I'd recommend to readers of vintage British crime. If you're expecting a riff on  Pride and Prejudice, as some readers obviously were, the book might seem disappointing; otherwise, going into it with no expectations might just be the way to approach it. It was actually surprisingly good.

A Shilling for Candles, by Josephine Tey -- a reread

0684842386
Scribner, 1998
originally published 1936
238 pp

Having just recently finished Jennifer Morag Henderson's excellent biography of the author,  Josephine Tey: A Life (which I'll be talking about here very shortly),  I find myself completely in agreement with her -- the more a Tey reader understands about her life, the easier it is to appreciate  and to understand her work.  I wish the biography had come out sooner; now I feel like I ought to go back and reread more of Tey's crime novels for better perspective.

A Shilling for Candles begins with the discovery of a body on the beach. At first the young woman's death is assumed to be suicide, but based on his observations and an important clue left behind, Inspector Grant from Scotland Yard thinks differently. This should be an easy mystery to solve, since Grant has a ready-made suspect, but that person ends up fleeing.  While the suspect is being hunted, Grant realizes that there are many odd things about the death and life of the dead woman that need to be investigated, but trying to keep things quiet turns out to be impossible since the deceased is popular film star Christine Clay, who had gone into hiding to get away from the world. To say that this is a complicated case is an understatement.  While the hunt is on for his main suspect, Grant finds himself having to examine different lines of inquiry that move him into the shallow world of celebrity, the dead woman's personal history, religious strangeness,  and they even take him into the realm of out-there astrology before the truth is at last revealed. And I have to say, I seriously didn't see that ending coming -- a complete surprise.

Getting back to why knowing something of Tey's life helps to put things into better perspective as a reader,  as I read A Shilling for Candles, I could easily see how much of Tey's experiences had an impact on her character creations.  As just one example (without giving anything away),  Tey had made lifelong friends among a group of women in the theater world, women she'd come to know in her work as  playwright Gordon Daviot.  One of these women was Marda Vanne, whose fictional counterpart Marta Hallard turns up in more than one Tey novel as an actress friend of Grant's.  As another example, when Christine Clay's will is read, it turns out that she's left money to the National Trust, "for the preservation of the beauty of England."  Tey did the same in her will.  Plus, there's the added focus of the pitfalls of fame and fortune in this novel that may play off of Tey's own reluctance to be in the public limelight.

[Sidebar: Tey also worked as a screenwriter and even had this book adapted as a Hitchcock release entitled "Young and Innocent," which I will be watching this evening.]

This is my second time with this book, and I got much more out of it this time around than the last, which is generally the case with me; I think the huge difference was that this time I also had more insight into the author herself.   I have to be honest -- so far my favorite of the rereads has been her The Franchise Affair -- in my very humble opinion, it's among the best of her mysteries and A Shilling for Candles doesn't rate as highly as that one.  That doesn't mean it's not good, just less enjoyable for me personally.

Recommended to people who enjoy vintage crime, but do be aware that many of Tey's ideas in this novel do not conform to modern PC sensitivities. Frankly, I don't really give a fig about whether or not a book written in the 1930s conforms to today's standards of "correctness", but I have read reader responses that include complaints about this issue, so you've been warned.  Overall -- a good read, not great, but it was fun getting to the end.