David Goodis: Nightfall

0679734740
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1991
originally published 1947
139 pp

paperback

"The road he had selected could be the wrong road. Because there were many other roads. The road he had selected could be the wrong road. And it was as though he was in a car and he was going up the that road, and the farther he traveled,  the more he worried about it being the wrong road."  -- 94


A good Samaritan finds himself locked in a nightmare in this book, the third novel by crime author David Goodis.  He is a man who has experienced the grave misfortune to have been exactly in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.  He is also the subject of a three-city manhunt, wanted for murder and for bank robbery, and according to the evidence, is guilty of both crimes.  But Nightfall goes much deeper, examining two men who ponder the roads they've taken in their lives.

As the novel opens, it's a "hot sticky" summer night in Manhattan, and Jim Vanning, a WWII Navy veteran, now working as a freelance commercial artist at his home, is feeling the heat. As he stares out his window, "looking upon Greenwich Village, seeing the lights, hearing noises in the streets," he decides that he'd really like to get out and go talk to somebody. But he's also afraid to leave his place -- he knows for a certainty that if he goes out, "something was going to happen tonight."  His gut sense of danger proves correct -- a chance meeting with a young woman in a Village bar leads him right into the path of three very nasty characters who want something they think he has. The problem is, he doesn't have it, and has no idea where it might be, since his mind only sends him fleeting images of that part of his past.  Even when they rough him up and some memories start to surface, he still can't remember where the object is.

Recently discharged from the Navy, Jim Vanning decides that he's going to take some time before going to Chicago, where a job awaits him along with his dreams of someday getting married and starting a family. First though, he's going to go to Denver, and sets off from Los Angeles in his newly-bought convertible.  On the road, he comes across a station wagon that has just been in an accident, and being the good Samaritan that he is, he gets out to try to help. That is when Vanning's living nightmare begins, one that culminates in his life on the run.   He considers going to the police, but plays scenarios of being given the third degree over and over in his head and realizes that this could quite possibly make things much worse for himself and kill his dreams of a decent future.

While Vanning manages to escape his captors, he is still unknowingly under surveillance by the police.  He is being carefully and closely watched by Fraser, a family man whose career is riding on Vanning's successful apprehension. But Fraser is also trapped in his own way -- he has been watching Vanning for some time, feels like he knows him like the back of his hand , and although under pressure from the police in three different cities, he finds it incredibly difficult to believe that Vanning is capable of committing the crimes for which he's been accused. As he notes, "Talk about a paradox, this one takes the cake."  And then there's the small matter of the incontrovertible evidence which says that Vanning must have done it...

As the two storylines slowly come together, there is, of course, the question of the truth, but the true focus is on Fraser and Vanning, who just may epitomize the proverbial both sides of the same coin.

This is only the second Goodis novel I've read after Night Squad, but in comparison to other noir novels I've enjoyed, there seems to be something missing in the depth zone.  When Goodis is inside the heads of Vanning and Fraser, the story is engaging, but as the story starts moving ever outward to the love interest, or to the violence of the three criminals, something seems to get lost here.  It's not as dark as I would have expected given the author's reputation.  That's not to say I didn't like it, and other Goodis fans may feel free to disagree, but it just didn't pack the gutpunch I'd expected.

One more thing, which is more personal: I wrecked my Vintage copy (that I'll have to replace now) by slicing my thumb on a fan blade and picking up the book right after. I discovered only then that I was bleeding all over pages 62 and 63:

I was more upset at ruining my book than I was at all of the blood, but at least it's appropriate to reading crime fiction!

another book nobody's ever heard of: Death and the Pleasant Voices, by Mary Fitt

0486246035
Dover, 1984
originally published 1946, by Michael Joseph, Ltd.
208 pp

paperback

Now, here's something entirely different -- we're still in the English country house murder phase with Death and the Pleasant Voices, but at least it's a new take on an old theme.

 This book was written by Mary Fitt, AKA Stuart Mary Wick, both pseudonyms of Kathleen Freeman (1897-1959), a classicist who, in a field that belonged more or less to men, "used her excellent brain to make the Greeks intelligible and accessible to every man and woman in the English-speaking world."  When she wasn't working for the war effort, she turned her hand to writing mystery novels as well as ghost stories, some of them featured in The Second Ghost Book and The Third Ghost Book, anthologies edited by none other than Lady Cynthia Asquith, whose own ghostly tales are often featured in old ghost-story anthologies. Death and the Pleasant Voices is her tenth novel out of nineteen to feature Superintendent Mallett, who plays only a small role here.

Death and the Pleasant Voices itself starts out like a ghost story, in that the narrator of this tale is driving through a blinding rainstorm, complete with lightning. Coming to a fork in the road, he takes the wrong turn and before he can turn around, he discovers he's arrived at a mansion of "dark grey stone."  The door is opened by a manservant, who seemed to expect him, not even asking his name.  He is greeted by a young woman, Ursula Ullstone, who refers to him incorrectly as "Hugo," and introduces him to the others in the room. The narrator is actually Jake Seaborne, and as he proffers his real name, discovers that one of the party knows his brother. This is Sir Frederick Lawton,  a "great surgeon" and Jake's brother's hero.  Jake is also a medical student, now on a short holiday.  As Lawton escorts Jake to another room for a little chat, Jake hears Ursula ask "But where is Hugo?" , a question that will be answered quite shortly upon Hugo's arrival.  It seems that Hugo is the son (via first marriage to a high-caste Indian woman) of the late Mr. Ullstone (the father of Ursula and her twin brother Jim), and up until three weeks prior, no one in the family or in the household had even heard of him.  Strangely though, Hugo is now the owner of  Ullstone Hall, the now-deceased Mr. Ullstone having made him his heir after refusing to ever allow him to come into contact with the rest of the family. Obviously they've never seen Hugo, since they all mistook Jake for their half-brother.  The problem, as so neatly outlined by Sir Frederick, is that

"...all these people who thought themselves securely in possession for the rest of their lives are now going to be dependent upon the caprice of this young man. And as none of them has ever had to earn a living, none of them will have the slightest idea of what to do if Hugo decides that he doesn't want their company." 

In short, the Ullstone family destiny is in the hands of a complete stranger.  Jim and Ursula were left an annuity of three hundred pounds a year, "a sum that to most the inhabitants of this island would seem to give freedom from financial anxiety fro the rest of their lives," but Hugo has the bulk of the estate.  Lawton is there as a "sort of buffer" for Hugo against the family; he must leave and is overjoyed that Jake has arrived, and asks Jake if he wouldn't mind staying until Lawton returns to act in the same role. Because of Jake's connection to Lawton, he agrees -- and ultimately Hugo arrives.  That's when the first hint of trouble raises its head -- and before long, three people will end up dead.

Death and the Pleasant Voices is a novel about people, each with their little secrets and lies they have to maintain -- while the plot is decent enough, the heart of this book exists in its characters.  As an example, Jim and Ursula have  "conditioned" by their upbringing to never have to bother with the mundane task of working to make ends meet; their house guests are sponges who are there for long periods of time, one of them, a physician, has more or less given up on his practice, leaving it in the hands of his locum, for a life of leisure and secret love. The author makes a critical point here that not everything one sees is the way it actually is -- and it is the characters who eventually enliven this theme as the story progresses.   The book also  has a lot to say between the lines -- the author writes about class, about prejudice, about family relationships, about the roles of women and the follies and foibles of love -- but  considering that the book was published in 1946, there's surprisingly very little, in fact nothing, said about the effects of the war that had concluded just a scant year earlier. Frankly, to me, this is quite a surprising omission.  Everyone seems to have gone about his or her business somewhat unscathed after such a horrific war -- there is no rationing, the family still employs servants, and it's almost as if the war danced around this little slice of the English countryside.

It's a good enough little read; coming in at just over 200 pages, it will definitely give a crime reader a few good hours of entertainment, and I can attest to the fact that there is a true puzzle to solve here. I thought I had guessed the culprit by page 80 and as things progressed, I realized not only was I wrong, but my choice was not even close.  As usual though, if it's too easy, it's no fun.  Definitely a keeper, Death and the Pleasant Voices is book #6 in my ongoing obscure women crime writers project, and I would recommend it.

well, that's time I'll never get back: Sound Alibi, by Maribel Edwin (from my obscure women crime writer project)

Hillman-Curl, Inc., 1938
288 pp

hardcover

"...a shot in the dark sounds to me like murder. That's what comes of reading thrillers." 

Sound Alibi is book number five in my ongoing project of discovering and reading the work of obscure/forgotten women crime novelists, and it was not, I repeat, not a pleasurable experience.  Had I not been so set on finishing it I probably would have put it aside, and moved on to the next book. But stuck with it I did, it's over and well, as I said at the outset, that's time I'll never get back. This book actually gave me a headache. It  was so slow and so repetitive that at one point I remember thinking a fork in my eye would have given me less pain.

First things first. The history:

About Maribel Edwin there seems to have been not a whole lot written.  When I googled her, one of the links I found was a pdf of an old journal called The Bookman. A small article in the December, 1933 edition reveals that Maribel Edwin was the daughter of  "the late" Sir J. Arthur Thomson, who evidently died that year. Thomson was a scientist, a naturalist; from what little I can gather.  Writing under the pseudonym of Maribel Edwin, the daughter  seems to have followed in her dad's love-of-nature footsteps, writing children's stories grounded in nature, several nature books (including a yearly publication called Nature's Year), and apparently, since she wrote this book, she must have also dabbled a little in mystery, although I've done a lot of looking and have yet to come up with any more crime/mystery novels she's written.

  Sound Alibi was written in 1938 and was a part of the original Hillman-Curl Clue Club, started in 1937. I LOVE finding these old books!

 This made me laugh: a so-called detective story readers' "bill of rights" which promised the following:

"1.  A Clue Club Mystery must have an exciting plot which is intrinsically interesting aside from the actual solution of the crime."  (this one didn't)

2.  All characters must be well-drawn flesh and blood people whose prototypes can be found in everyday life.  (okay, I'll go along with this one)

3.  The actual perpetrator or perpetrators of the crime or crimes must be prominent characters introduced early in the narrative.  (check)

4.  All purposely misleading circumstances must be carefully avoided.  (okey-dokey)

5.  The crime or crimes must be solved by logical deduction derived from material clearly presented to the reader without the aid of supernatural devices or psychic power."  (check)

Too many years have gone by for me to get my money back (and let's face it, they're probably LONG out of business anyway).

Then, a promise:  "Under this imprint Hillman-Curl, Inc., publishes each month outstanding mystery novels by distinguished writers.  The sign of the skull is a guarantee that the book is original and well-written." So I quickly checked the spine and sure enough, mine has a skull.  Again. Too late to sue for misrepresentation.
The best thing about this book was finding  this website I've been quoting from -- there are a LOT of other books I need to find and to read, if only to see if Sound Alibi was a fluke. Perhaps there were some really good mysteries/crime novels that were part of the Clue Club and this one was an aberration.

 But now, onto the book itself. Sound Alibi is another mystery novel written in the interwar years, and is also another example of the good old "English country house" murder.  The head of household at Dolphin Court is Dr. Quintin Grey, who is renown for his studies on heredity, specializing in "the inheritance of criminal tendencies."  Grey has been blind for several years now, and since coming to Dolphin Court (left to him by a wealthy uncle), he spends much more time dealing with flowers than criminals. He does, however, have a soft spot for rehabilitated criminals, and often helps to find them work. On a day when daughter Jenny has brought home a friend, Philip Westland, Grey's secretary Cuthbertson (aka "Stuffy) keeps telling Grey that he needs to have a word, but Grey is too busy and tells Cuthbertson that he'll see him at 9:15 that evening.  But Cuthbertson never gets to tell Grey whatever it was that was on his mind, because just as Grey is about to go and find him, a shot rings out and Cuthbertson is dead. The remainder of the novel is of course, the investigation into his murder -- and as the Inspector is going about his business, it seems that everyone at Dolphin Court has a very "sound alibi."  The Inspector has a long list of suspects to go through, and as he starts his questioning, it becomes apparent that each and every person at the house is holding back his or her share of secrets.

  This book is a true whodunit in every sense of the word.  The identity of the killer is not revealed until very near the end (which is a plus), and I didn't guess the solution (a double plus) because of a series of red herrings and a shortlist of suspects as well.  Thankfully the puzzle is a good one, but it's the getting to its solution that killed me. If ever there was a book that could labeled as "dull" it's definitely this one, and I don't often have that experience while reading these old novels. I wanted to skim so badly, but figured I'd miss something, so I stuck to it. However, after finishing it, I can easily say  it's a skipper, meaning even the most ardent fan of these old, obscure mysteries could go through life, never read it, and he/she wouldn't have missed a thing. I find that a little sad, actually, since up to now I was having such a great time with these old forgotten books.  

"to allow those people an existence, a life" -- Escape, by Dominique Manotti

9781909807556
Arcadia Books,  2014
originally published as L'evasion, 2013
translated by Amanda Hopkinson & Ros Schwartz
161 pp

paperback

"If I want to try and salvage our past, there's only one thing left for me to do. Write novels."

In the little bio blurb at the front of this novel it says that Dominique Manotti's

 "gritty Euro noir novels tell the story of France's modern social evolution, for better and worse..." 

and personally, I think it's most excellent that crime fiction provides the means by which she can do this.  I was speaking to someone just the other day about how crime novels, when done well,  serve as the perfect vehicle for illuminating  a country's social, economic and political issues.  Here, in Escape, the author looks back to Italy's "Years of Lead," and to a contemporary (late 1980s) community of political refugees, now emigres in France, and one woman in particular who is prompted by the publication of a novel to seek out the truth.   There are really two major points in this novel: truth and perception,  both sides of the same coin, if you just think about this for a moment. It is an excellent book, one that will keep you fascinated as you work your way through the maze of different realities within.

In Escape, Filippo is a young prisoner in Italy whose cellmate and "only friend", Carlo, has spent hours and hours talking to him about his past as a member of the Red Brigades. Filippo is on scene doing his job in the bin room (that's garbage cans for American readers) when Carlo makes his escape. Thinking it's probably better to escape with him than to risk more time for aiding and abetting, he joins his friend in a dumpster that's being hauled out and finds himself free.  The escape has been well planned -- a car is waiting, a man and a woman are there to take Carlo away. Instead of allowing Filippo to join them, Carlo eventually hands him a bag and an address in Paris and tells him they're parting company and that Filippo should find Carlo's Paris friend, Lisa Biaggi, and tell her what happened.  Filippo feels "orphaned," and that Carlo's ditched him, but decides to go to Milan via mountain paths, through the "godforsaken landscape,"  finally reaching the city of Bologna. There, while sitting at a cafe, he reads that Carlo has been shot and killed during a bank robbery in Milan, and he also finds an earlier paper that states that Filippo, "common prisoner" was a "key accomplice in a meticulously planned jailbreak," and that he could possibly be held accountable for the two deaths that occurred during the bank robbery.  Off he goes to Paris, where Carlo's friend Lisa gets him a job and a place to live, but then wants nothing more to do with him. After a while, the tedium of being a night watchman starts getting to him, and he starts thinking: first about Lisa, who blames him for Carlo's death, and then about her friend and his landlady, Cristina, who doesn't know he exists:

"For those two women, Carlo's a prince and I'm a piece of shit. They helped me because Carlo asked them to. Fair enough. But Carlo doesn't belong to them. They don't know him. The closeness of being in jail, the breakout, the dangers, the ordeal we went through together, that's our story, Carlo's and mine, not theirs. 

Filling in Lisa's face into one of  his doodles, he thinks

 "Before Carlo died, as he set off for his final battle, he said to me, "Tell Lisa."  I've got to tell it. How? Put my trust in Carlo, listen to my memories, let his words come out. And when I have my whole story nice and tight...Those two will come to understand that Carlo is mine, not theirs, and that he never did belong to them. A story of men."

Night after night Filippo works on that story until it becomes not only a novel, but a bestselling one that exceeds the publishers' expectations. It's a novel that embellishes Filippo's own role vis à vis his friend Carlo and creates a "Carlo faithful to himself, more real, a Carlo he could legitimately love."  It also transforms  Filippo into a hugely public persona, a larger-than-life figure who as time goes on, will draw the attention of opposing factions, leading to some startling consequences.

This novel is very much about the nature of truth, controlling the narratives of truth, and about perception. The history behind the Years of Lead are still highly controversial, and throughout the novel the author examines how political maneuvering and collusion among different right-wing groups, the secret service and others led to terrorist acts that were blamed on  left-wing groups like the communists, the idea being that if there's enough violence and death in the streets, people will have had enough and call for more conservative elements to maintain order. Great for conservative politicians and for economic "progress," but the real facts are kept under tight control and history is rewritten, while the truth is buried.

At some point, though, the reality needs to be "salvaged." And how better than in a novel? It's a brilliant idea on Manotti's part, and I have to say that while Escape is not a conventional crime novel in any stretch of the imagination (a huge selling point for me), it's an excellent story that fuses past with present, reality with lies, politics and the personal.  It also makes me want to go read everything Manotti has written in the crime arena. Super book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

obscure darkness brought to light: A Dark Corner, by Celia Dale

9780571246557
Faber and Faber (Faber Finds), 2008
originally published 1971
155 pp

paperback

The best way to describe this book: stomach churning.  A Dark Corner is #4 in my ongoing project of finding and reading obscure women writers, and it is easily available in paperback from Faber, it has been reproduced as as part of the publisher's excellent Faber Finds series.  And so far, it's been the darkest and most edgy novel of the four.  Actually, I had no idea at that I was going to be so completely devastated by this novel when I first picked it up. Oh my god -- to say that this book is dark is an understatement.  I like dark as a rule, but I'd just read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and Stephen Gregory's The Cormorant, both of which are beyond disturbing, so it's been darkness on darkness on darkness, which even for me is too much all at once.

Arthur and Nelly Didcot  live in a small but respectable house on London's Wardlow Road.  On a dark rainy evening,  Nelly is summoned to the door where she discovers a young man named Errol with a terrible cough. He's got an ad for a room in his hand, but he has mistakenly come to the wrong street, looking for Wardlow Crescent.  Nelly, though, takes pity on him and brings him in for a cup of tea and a warm up by the fire. Errol has a fever and Nelly just can't bring herself to send him on his way.  When Arthur comes home and Nelly tells them they have a house guest, Arthur's not too happy, but allows Errol to stay. Soon the temporary arrangement becomes more permanent, and Nelly's happy -- she's a shut in, she'd lost her son when he was a teen, and her affection for Errol begins to grow. Arthur also seems to get used to the arrangement, taking Errol around with him on his Sunday walks and showing him the "project" he's been working on for years in the privacy of his den that no one, not even Nelly has ever seen.  Errol returns Nelly's affection, but how he feels toward Arthur eventually becomes an entirely different story.  The dynamic between the two literally pushes Errol into the titular "dark corner" from which there may be no possible escape.

The darkness in this book, believe it or not, has nothing to do with the number of dead bodies that are literally piling up, but with what actually goes on behind closed doors in that house on Wardlow Road. A Dark Corner is a story that reveals the secrets that hide behind the facade of respectability; it also asks the question of  how a seemingly normal person who prides himself on his high moral and ethical standards can turn out to be a monster who is free to roam the city streets.  As a warning to potential readers,  this book contains a lot of racist content, but it is not done maliciously, instead reflecting a psychotic sickness lodged in the mind of a truly evil and demented person.

What happens in this novel literally made me squirm on several levels and actually left me unable to sleep after finishing it. However, the worst part of the entire novel is the message that literally  anyone might turn out to be the human monster of this book and we may not even have a clue.

definitely NOT for the faint hearted.

out today -- The Devil in Montmartre: A Mystery in fin de siècle Paris, by Gary Inbinder

9781605986470
Pegasus, 2014
256 pp

arc -- my grateful thanks to the author and to the publisher for my copy

The truth of the matter is that books like The Devil in Montmartre used to be my go-to favorites for a very long time -- historical crime fiction, set in a specific time period in a specific place. I  read so many novels in that subgenre that I burned myself out after a while and had to move on to something else entirely -- in fact, I can't even remember the last time that I made an active decision to read a period crime novel.  Now after reading this one, I remember why I used to enjoy them so much.  Plus, any book with Toulouse-Lautrec as a character definitely has my vote.  Even though it's very much lighter than my normal fare, it's still quite good. 

The year is 1889, and it's only two weeks before the closing ceremonies of that year's Expedition Universelle. A year earlier, London had been in the grip of fear because of the horrific acts perpetrated by Jack the Ripper.  So when a female torso is discovered in a city sewer, the police want to catch the murderer as quickly as possible to stifle any rumors that the Ripper has crossed the channel and set up shop in Paris. The chief inspector of the Sûreté,  Paul Feraud, knows that he needs his best man for the job -- and that just happens to be Inspector Achille Lefebvre.  Only thirty, Lefebvre is "a new breed of detective," one who believes wholeheartedly in applying modern investigative techniques in his work. And he's going to have his work cut out for him.  But he gets lucky:  the autopsy report reveals a startling clue that points Lefebvre in a particular direction even though someone is doing his level best to put the frame on someone else, and the report of a missing woman gives him a potential lead on who the victim might be.  He has to work quickly, though -- while he's working hard to make sure he gets everything right, his rival in the police department has his own ideas about how to bring a quick end to the case, one that could definitely incite mob violence in a city where the divisions caused by the Dreyfus affair are still fresh and are still on everyone's mind.  

The Devil in Montmartre is set in the Paris of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, where the whirling skirts of can-can dancers mesmerize the customers of the Moulin Rouge, where the small boîtes serve as meeting places for professionals and street people alike, a place where art and artists flourish. The author easily captures this atmosphere and the beautiful parks with their gardens visited by tourists from America and England; in contrast to the beauty and excitement of the city, he also takes his readers into dirty back streets and alleys and out into areas controlled by the city's criminals, places that most visitors to the city never see. It's also very obvious that the author put in a LOT of time on research, especially in the area of police work and contemporary investigative methods.  Putting that together with his character construction,  it's impossible to believe that this is his first mystery novel. And anyone who's ever read what I write here knows that I'm not averse to saying exactly what I think, so that's high praise.  Trust me -- I've read enough first novels to feel qualified to judge. On the other hand, and this is probably more on my end rather than his since it isn't all that obvious, I figured out the who quite early into the story. I wasn't overly keen on the romantic parts either, but that's a personal thing and an area where I tend to find myself in the minority.   However, I will say that the book made for fun reading. 

Hopefully there will be a sequel some day, but in the meantime, The Devil in Montmartre should especially appeal to fans of historical crime fiction or historical fiction in general. It's lighter than my normal crime preferences, but there is definitely  a good central mystery to be solved, and even though a headless torso may make some people maybe want to think twice about picking up the book, the violence is not anywhere near graphic nor is it overused or used gratuitously in any way. That in itself is commendable these days.  I think Mr. Inbinder has done a fine job here with his first book. I hope it's the first of many. 

another one from the vault: They Rang Up the Police, by Joanna Cannan

0915230275
Rue Morgue Press, 1999
154 pp
originally published 1939

paperback

"The bother about detective stories is that they're not the least like life."


They Rang Up the Police is Book #3 in my ongoing quest to read books by obscure women crime writers -- both novels and authors that have been either forgotten or never heard of in the first place.  In the case of all of three, it's been the latter for me. So far I've been batting a thousand in my choices: first with Dorothy Bowers and more recently, Marjorie Alan, and now with They Rang Up the Police, which is a most unusual mystery novel published in 1939.

Marley Grange in rural Oxfordshire is the home of the Cathcarts. Unlike the older families living nearby, the Cathcarts do not have roots in the area, but rather had  "made their money," a fact that sets them apart in the local class scheme.  Living at Marley Grange are Mrs. Grace Cathcart and her daughters,  Nancy, Sheila and Delia.  There was a Mr. Cathcart at one time, but old Humphrey is "at rest now," a situation that Mrs. Cathcart prefers, since there is

"... no stamping in the dressing room, no snores, no clearing of a smoker's throat, no arguments about the number of blankets, no sounds, no movement, no will but her own."

The sisters are all homely spinsters, the youngest 38, and Delia, the eldest at 43 is "the most worldly of the Cathcarts, and is referred to as "the man of the family."  Sheila is "the highbrow," while Nancy is lovingly known as "our home bird," the sort of woman who would rather stay home and sew.  It is a harmonious household,  so it seems, and Grace has worked hard to bring up her daughters "to be as courteous and considerate to each other as they were to strangers."  The sisters address each other as "darling," and Delia carefully watches over her siblings and runs the household capably, taking care of every problem down to dealing with the servants.  She also hunts and breaks in horses.

As the heat ratchets up in the summer, Delia has taken to sleeping outside in a secluded area of the yard next to the house in a small camp bed.  One night she goes to her "mannish" bedroom, puts on her "serviceable striped silk pajamas and a woolen dressing gown," and heads on outside for a good night's rest.  The next morning, Delia has disappeared. The rest of the family is in a dither, and after Nancy drives around the country lanes to look for her, they decide to call around to see if anyone's seen her. When that proves to be futile, "they rang up the police." Then they make a strange discovery: Delia's suitcase is missing, along with a blue-flowered dress, her hat, and a pair of shoes.  The police, represented at first by local Superintendent Dawes, sees a love affair in the disappearance; the rest of the women quickly shut that idea down.  After Dawes, described as "common," and  an "ordinary policeman" by Nancy, bids them goodbye, Mrs. Cathcart decides they'll just have to find Delia themselves. In calling around to Delia's acquaintances, they discover that another local resident is missing --  a Captain Willoughby of Lane End Farm, a horse-riding friend of Delia's.  Could there be a connection?  Grace has had enough -- and she pulls some family strings and gets the attention of someone at Scotland Yard.  Inspector Guy Northeast, whose career literally hinges on solving this case, is called in to get to the bottom of Delia's disappearance.

While my description of the story in  They Rang Up the Police may make this book sound like yet another novel in the English country murder mystery tradition, it is really anything but. Yes, there's a grand house with servants, stables, and a tennis court, and yes, there are a number of clever red herrings built into the story to keep the reader guessing.  However, the hedges that keep Marley Grange out of public view off of the main road also hide something else that is more sinister (okay, I know this word is way overused, but it fits) than what's normally found in the standard, garden-variety, traditional-genre tropes.  Unfortunately, the gut punch comes at the very end of the book, so I can't really go there.

Aside from the cringeworthy, nails-scraping-a-chalkboard Cathcarts, Cannan has populated her novel with some very bizarre characters one doesn't normally find in a book like this one. My favorite is Gerda Willoughby, a would-be artist, philosopher, self-proclaimed member of the intelligentsia whom the Inspector refers to as "Yet another Ancient Mariner," and "quite tiresome enough to drive a man from home without the incentive of an affair with another woman." In modern parlance, she's a total flake, and her antics are laughworthy but also sad because of how they reflect her sense of alienation among the people in this society. There's a socialist chauffeur, his boss who is a grumpy old curmudgeon, a drunken veterinarian who hides secrets of his own, and the list of suspects goes on.  Cannan also has a winner in her Inspector Guy Northeast, a farm boy who did not want to be a farmer, but who instead had dreams of being a Mountie in the RCMP.   After leaving home, he finds a supporter in an aunt who encourages him to follow his dream of being a policeman. After some minor successes, he finds himself on the promotion track and achieves the rank of inspector at Scotland Yard.  However, he bungles an otherwise open-and-shut case so he's on the receiving end of all of the cases that his superiors at the Yard find too dull to take on themselves, and his career is definitely at risk by the time he takes up the case at Marley Grange. At times in this case he displays a definite nostalgia for farming, mostly because as a farmer no one is around to tell him what to do. He has to deal with the likes of the local policemen who can't fathom that anyone of the upper crust might possibly be involved, that the answer to the strangeness of any of the female characters is due to "sex repression," and that more likely than not, it's going to be a member of one of the working classes who is guilty.  Once again, class difference is a major theme that runs throughout the entire book.

Without giving anything away, it is ultimately the psychology behind the crime which, along with the unusual character makeup,  makes this book extremely readworthy and sets it apart from the work of Ms. Cannan's more well-known and more popular contemporaries.  When all is said and done, all of the zaniness leading up to the ending fades away into a heartbreaking sense of sadness that left me feeling sympathetic rather than antagonistic toward the offender, something that rarely happens, but in this case just feels right.