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.

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.