Midsummer Murder, by Clifford Witting

 #16 on the Séptimo Círculo list, Clifford Witting's Midsummer Murder  brings me back to crime reading once again , although I had hoped to have read much more of that list by now. I've fallen so behind in everything that I'll likely spend the rest of the year catching up.  Oh well. 

Hodder and Stoughton, 1953

originally published 1937

184 pp

paperback

I went looking for older, contemporary reviews of this novel after finishing it, and in  googling "Midsummer Murder Witting" without the quotation marks, got thousands of results for Midsomer Murders.  I was a bit annoyed at first but then laughed because even though this book has nothing to do with Tom Barnaby and the gang from Causton CID, there is a character in this story who reminded me of Mrs. Rainbird from The Killings At Badger's Drift (which I recently read with a group on goodreads).  Not unlike that creepy lady who spied on everyone in her village in Caroline Graham's book,  there is a woman in this story who keeps a card file on everyone in her village.  I guess the Mrs. Busybody must be a reality in some villages; on the other hand, both Barnaby and the Inspector in this book, Harry Charlton, came to a point where information gleaned from these  respective sources became invaluable.  

Midsummer Murder is book number two in Witting's Harry Charlton series, which begins with Murder in Blue (1937).  I had to really go digging online for a copy of the edition of Midsummer Murder I have, but luckily, it seems that I won't have to work as hard to pick up the series opener, since the people at Galileo Publishers have seen fit to put that one back into circulation, to be released (at least here in the US) next month.  Pre-ordered, for sure, along with his Measure For Murder (1941, book #5).  His Catt Out of the Bag, book #4 from 1939 is already available for purchase, so I bought that one as well.  As all of this buying might reveal, I liked the lead character, Inspector Charlton.  I didn't particularly love the book itself, but the man intrigued me to the point where I would like to read more of his adventures in crime solving.  As for the novel, I was more than mildly annoyed with the underlying motive that connected all of the crimes (yes, there are more than one), which to me was tenuous, at best.   As an aside, anyone in 1953 who wasn't quite sure of the definition of that word could have easily turned to their Thorndike-Barnhart dictionary advertised on the back cover:

The story begins with a shooting in the Paulsfield Village square on market day, the first Tuesday of the Month.  Set between the wars in 1936, it was close to noon "and the tumult of the fortnighly gathering was at its zenith," including  all manner of livestock which "bleated, grunted and lowed," salesmen calling out their wares, a Punch-and-Judy show going on with a barrel organ for competition and construction complete with pneumatic drills.   It's a bustling, chaotic scene, and in its midst a bull escapes, and at that moment someone decides to let go with a gun and kill Thomas Earnshaw, the man cleaning the statue mid-square. 

frontispiece, the Square (oh! the map!!)

Inspector Charlton is called in to investigate, but finds an appalling lack of clues other than the bullet, a determination of the angle at which it had been fired into the victim, and sightings of a mysterious van that may or may not have something to do with the case.  All he can do at present is to talk to everyone around the square to see who might have a gun matching the murder weapon.  Progress on the case is little to none, and when a second person falls victim to the same fate, he reasons that  

"the murderer either had his intended victim playing right into his hands, or ... was waiting there like a watchful, blood-lusting spider for some innocent sacrifice to come along."

 Even worse, there is a third victim, and yet no one knows if these people had been randomly chosen or if there was some sort of link between the three in a "larger prearranged plan."  The killings have caused people to remain in their homes causing havoc for the shopkeepers, and while the police are starting to make connections, the question of who is responsible remains a mystery and leaves  the Paulsfield Sniper to remain at large.  

As this is my first experience with Clifford Witting's mystery novels, I have no idea whether or not he does this in all of his books, but here he leads the reader on quite a merry chase through the police investigation before we realize at the very end that we've been had in a nice bout of misdirection.   And I was fine up until that point, enjoying the mystery, putting the clues together in my head and even taking notes while reading.  Normally the author's sort of "gotcha" moment is a good one, meaning that he or she has put together a story whose solution I never would have guessed because I was following the trail of red herrings.  And while that happened here, when the killer was disclosed it was so out of left field that I had to go back and reread certain chapters just to try to figure it out.  Still, it was fun up to that point so I can't complain too much, but somehow that final moment  just didn't seem fair.  Be warned that this book ends so abruptly that I was looking for evidence that some of the pages had been torn out of my copy.  

Not great, but not bad, sort of middle of the road with an interesting lead character.  In my mind, not quite as nicely done as the previous  Séptimo Círculo books, but still a good read.  

Magpie Murders, by Anthony Horowitz

 

9780062645234

Harper Perennial, 2018

495 pp

paperback

I hadn't intended on reading this book just yet, but after my post about The Shooting Party  one of my goodreads friends commented on the fact that people were wowing the use of the book-within-a-book format  in this novel while technically, as he pointed out in his review of Magpie Murders,  it had already been done by Chekhov over a century earlier.  His remarks, along with all of the high ratings for this book, did the trick and my copy came off the shelf.  

The aforementioned book-within-a-book is called Magpie Murders,  the newest and final installment of  author's Alan Conway's mystery series featuring his German detective Atticus Pünd.  Editor Susan Ryeland begins her tale by giving her readers a warning: "This book changed my life."  The changes she notes are not minor ones -- she  loses her job, "a great many friends," and she no longer lives in her "quiet and comfortable" flat.  She also states that "it was all down to that bastard Alan Conway," whose books she had "always loved," but not the man himself.   But before she can explain the why behind that statement, we are immediately plunged into the small, quiet village of Saxby-on-Avon, 23 July 1955, where a funeral is being planned for Mary Blakiston, who had fallen down the stairs at Pye Hall where she had worked as a housekeeper.  

Two weeks later, a young woman by the name of Joy Sanderling has come to meet with the great detective himself, asking him to come to Saxby-on-Avon to help clear her fiancé's name.  Robert Blakiston, Mary's son, has been getting the evil eye from many of the villagers after his mother's death,  and she is convinced that "they all think he did it."  She would like Pünd to "look into it" and to reassure everyone that Mary's death was indeed an accident, and "that there was nothing sinister going on."  Pünd turns her down, but later changes his mind when he reads an article in The Times about the death of Sir Magnus Pye.  As he says, "Coincidences do occur," but it's not likely that there would be "two unexpected deaths in the same house," so it's off to the village he goes, where he joins the Detective Inspector to investigate both cases.    

I have to say right here that I was intensely following this case, and then just as Pünd says that he has "everything I need to know" about the case and I turned the page, the story comes to an abrupt end and we're back in the now with Susan Ryeland.  "Oh no!  "I yelled out loud at this juncture, when I realized, along with Susan, that the last chapter is missing.  I hadn't figured it out at all, and by golly, I wanted to know who killed Magnus Pye.  But then things changed, as Susan discovers that Alan Conway was dead and that it looks like he'd left a suicide note behind.  Her boss, Charles, tells Susan that his copy was incomplete as well, and that there were no missing pages to be found anywhere.  Susan needs to find those pages -- the publishing house had not been doing so well and they "needed" Conway's book to "make a hit."   As she begins searching for the ending of Magpie Murders, she also decides that it might be worthwhile to do a bit of sleuthing herself, to see if indeed Conway's death had been a suicide.

While I had some minor grumbles about the writing here, including some of Susan's detecting skills and choices that seemed rather hollow and Horowitz's ego writ large on the page (mentioning probably every TV show he's written the screenplays for) that caused more than a few eyerolls, I still couldn't put this book down. But then the author does something unforgivable that made me take issue:  while Susan says that as an editor she doesn't care for "coincidences in novels" (and quite frankly, neither do I as a reader), that is precisely where Horowitz goes with this book.  Honestly, it felt like he'd written himself into a corner and had to do something to get her on trajectory to finish this story. 

I know that this novel gets sterling reader reviews, so it's probably just me being picky again.  On the plus side, this book kept me entertained for hours, and  I loved the 1955 story.  It's the modern one with which I have issues:   it's not nearly as well done, and ultimately ended in a kind of letdown for me mainly because of the author's choice here to depend on coincidence.  Not a good move in my mind, and I felt cheated. I also have to say that once the reasoning behind Conway's death was revealed, it didn't seem at all like a big deal and certainly not murder-motive worthy.  I will still recommend it, but as Susan Ryeland says at the beginning of the book, "Unlike me, you have been warned."

There's Trouble Brewing, by Nicholas Blake

 

9781912194025

Ipso books, 2017

originally published 1937

paperback

The back-cover blurb is short but succinct, and reveals that a local brewery owner loses his dog in one of the brewery's vats.  It will also go on to reveal that said brewery owner will later be found in the same vat (more on that later).   I'm not kidding when I say that my mind immediately flashed to particular episodes of Midsomer Murders, Inspector Morse, New Tricks and even Brokenwood in a variation on the theme (a fermentation vat for wine instead of beer).  I'm sure there are more that I've missed, but it seems that death in a vat is quite a popular way to go.  Of course, all of the above came long after There's Trouble Brewing,  which made its appearance in 1937.   This is the second novel I've read by Nicholas Blake after The Beast Must Die, both read out of series order.  There's Trouble Brewing is number three  in the series featuring Blake's Nigel Strangeways, and I'll confess to enjoying his The Beast Must Die, number four, much much more than this one.  

When Strangeways accepts an invitation to speak to a local literary society in Maiden Astbury (Dorset),  he has no idea that his stay there will last a bit longer than he'd intended. During dinner with his hosts, Herbert and Sophie Cammison,  which includes a bottle of beer from Bunnett's Brewery,  the conversation turns to the brewery's owner, Eustace Bunnett, or at least to his dog Truffles, who had been found dead in one of the vats at Bunnett's Brewery.  Later, after Nigel gives his talk on Caroline Poets,  Bennett approaches him and tells him that he is positive that Truffles had been murdered and that he is "exceedingly anxious to find out who did it."   He then makes a request than Nigel finds "bizarre," asking him to find out who sent Truffles to his untimely death.  Nigel doesn't want to do it, but having been warned earlier not to "sauce" Eustace Bennett and after one of the members of the society urges him to do it, as "none of us will get a moment's peace" until the matter is "cleared up,"  he agrees.   

At the brewery next day to begin his investigation,  he is shown around while waiting for Bennett, but everything comes to a halt when a body is discovered in a "pressure copper."  Well, not quite a body, but a "half-disjointed skeleton" wearing the "soaked and tattered remnants of a dinner-jacket and boiled shirt."  When certain other articles are discovered, rumor starts that the remains belong to "the guv'nor" himself.  While the police are brought in, Nigel stays on to help and soon discovers that there are any number of people who wouldn't have minded seeing Eustace Bennett dead for many reasons.  He was, apparently,  the most odious person in the small community, and it seems that nobody is sad that he's gone.   As Nigel himself says, "Eustace was a crook, a menace, and a stunger." 

probably my favorite cover image of this novel, from Coverbrowser

I very much enjoyed the writing here, and only after two books now I have become a fan of  Nigel Strangeways.  I like his wife Georgia who sadly makes only a brief appearance here -- they are perfect for each other.  And who doesn't love a story  in which  a character is so particularly  loathsome that no one's going to be shedding a tear when he or she is dead?   With the number of possible suspects and possible motivations that Strangeways uncovers here, it should have been a great read.   The thing is though that Blake gives away the show much too early here with a particular remark that I took notice of  that colored my thinking,  so that by the time Strangeways cottons on to the solution, I'd already been there and was just waiting for our erstwhile detective to catch up.  At  chapter thirteen where Strangeways is going over the timetable of the case and makes an important discovery, I was just about ready to skip  and get to the ending I knew was coming.  It's a shame when that happens, really, because this could have been a most intriguing mystery novel otherwise.   

Catching up in double time: The Shooting Party by Anton Chekhov and Mr. Digweed and Mr. Lumb, by Eden Philpotts

Since I was last here there's been more calamity here at casa mia,  but things are starting to look up and life is moving on in a more positive direction.  Unfortunately, the setbacks mean I'm behind in my crime/mystery reading so today it's a double feature: The Shooting Party, by Anton Chekhov from 1885 and a more obscure title from 1933, Eden Phillpotts' Mr. Digweed and Mr. Lumb. Both of these books offer an interesting puzzle worthy of armchair detecting, making for hours of reading pleasure; as posted at internationalcrimefiction.org,  what ties these two books together and what appealed to Borges and Bioy Casares in putting together their list of novels in the Séptimo Círculo collection are the "mysteries, puzzles, tales of logic and clues" that are  "hidden behind surfaces of respectability."  That is certainly the case here.  

 

9780140448986

Penguin, 2004

originally published 1885

translated by Ronald Wilks

199 pp

paperback

As John Sutherland says in his introduction to this edition of The Shooting Party,  while readers are used to a "dash of internationalism" in the twenty-first century, excluding Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment,  the Russian novel has not been a "strong presence" in the realm of  detective fiction.  Like many fine mystery stories of yesteryear, The Shooting Party started out as a feuilleton in serial form, and given the fame of Anton Chekhov and his later dramatic works, has remained "unjustly ignored."  A shame, really, because the mystery itself is quite good, and as Sutherland also notes, the book is "an accomplished crime novel in its own right."  I tend to agree with him when he says that "few who start reading the work will be tempted to lay it down," because that's precisely what happened with me.  

April, 1880.  A man walks into a newspaper office, hoping for an appointment with "the Editor."  After identifying himself as Ivan Petrovich Kamyshev, former investigating magistrate, he asks the Editor to read his manuscript, and if possible, to publish it. The subject, Kamyshev says, is "love, murder," and he calls it From the Memoirs of an Investigating Magistrate,  swearing that the story "happened before his eyes," -- in fact he was both "eyewitness and even an active participant." The Editor isn't quick to bite, citing the readers who have "for far too long now... have had their teeth set on edge by Gaboriau and Shklyarevsky" and are 

"sick and tired of all these mysterious murders, these detectives' artful ruses, the phenomenal quick-wittedness of investigating magistrates."

The particular story under consideration is called The Shooting Party, and eventually the Editor agrees to read it, telling Kamyshev to come back in three months' time during which  he'll make his decision.  What follows is the story-within-the-story, as the Editor offers Kamyshev's story for the reader's "perusal" after reading it,  assuring that it is "a page-turner."   That it is, and it begins as the local magistrate, here named Sergey Petrovich Zinovyev, goes to visit his old friend Count Alexei Karneyev at his country estate that has for some time been in a state of decline.  Karneyev's world is largely defined by debauchery, and Zinovyev is quickly sucked in to that space of drinking and partying, where an orgy is not an unusual event.   But the estate is also where Sergey Petrovich meets the beautiful Olenka, daughter of the forester Skvortsov, now living in a state of madness from perpetual drinking,  and is immediately drawn to this "girl in red."   The problem is that the same is true of  Urbenin, a widower with two children serving as Karneyev's estate manager, and the Count himself.  Olenka, who has "aristocratic pretensions," surprises everyone with the news that she has agreed to marry Urbenin, setting off a chain of events that will end in murder one fine day during a shooting party on the estate. Motives are plenty, as are suspects, but the question of the actual murderer has to wait until the very end.   

That is all I will reveal about plot; anyone who prefers the element of surprise and reads anything about this book that takes plot and the possible identity of the who any further will end up kicking himself or herself in the long run.  And while it may not be one of the best crime novels I've read, it is certainly very much worth the read -- this may have been one of Chekhov's earliest works, but he is a master of characterization here which is much more important than the crime or its solution.   He wrote this in the 1880s, while Russia was still under Czarist rule, but he seems to have keen, almost uncanny insight into the future of class and social structure (including the roles and expectations of women)  in an empire that in just a short while will be completely transformed.   Definitely recommended.  

My copy of  Mr. Digweed and Mr. Lumb, complete with chipped corner on the dustjacket where it looks like someone took a bite out of the skull, is the first American edition, published by Macmillan in 1934.  The first British edition was published by Hutchinson in 1933, but I can't seem to find a cover image anywhere.  

Two men of completely opposite temperament and circumstances live in separate houses on Heathfield Chine, west of Wellbrook-on-Sea in Hampshire.  Mr. Benjamin Digweed of The Anchorage, a "man of very modest means" with a love of gardening, tends to keep to himself enjoying the company of others only occasionally with his neighbor Mr. Martin Lumb of The Haven, and Lumb's factotum Higgs.  Mr. Lumb, who travels to London now and again, has no money worries, is an avid collector of  and an expert on Aviation Issue stamps.  The two dwelt in "perfect amity" so when Mr. Digweed disappears, Mr. Lumb is shaken and calls in the local police.  Two days had gone by with absolutely no word, and the clincher comes when the housekeeper arrives and finds the door of the Anchorage locked, leaves, returns the next day and there's still no one home.  The policeman (and narrator of this story) is Sergeant William Cartright, who catches the case since his superior is away temporarily; on hearing Lumb's story Cartright makes his way to The Anchorage where he finds a note indicating that a desperate Digweed has fallen on hard times, with no money left to live on and no means of supporting himself, and has thus decided to end it all.   The police accept the obvious, but a bit later Mr. Lumb "smelled a mystery" when he discovered that every bit of Mr. Digweed's clothing remained in his house and when the boat he was going to use in his suicide was discovered in an unexpected place.  While the police begin to look into Mr. Lumb's worries there's another death, but this time it's Cartright's bride-to-be and her father who take charge. 

Again, not the greatest example of a 1930s mystery ever, but there's just something about Phillpotts' ability to put together a good yarn and to provide a challenge that appeals.  Eden Phillpotts may not be a household name in the realm of mystery reading, but I've now read two of his books (this one and The Red Redmaynes) that were both engaging and fun, definitely requiring concentration because the solutions don't lend themselves easily.  I will say that at some point while reading this one, I wrote a note with my theory and stuck it on a certain page where the light bulb started to blink on over my head, only to discover later that I was partly right but mostly wrong.  While there is definitely police presence in this novel, it is not what I'd consider an early procedural, since the crime is actually solved by someone else using intuition and logic;  while they do work on the case, the policemen become somewhat of a captive audience as the solution is revealed to them.    Recommended.  

Laura, by Vera Caspary

 read in March

9780743400107

ibooks, 2000

236 pp

paperback

I meant to post about this novel some time ago, but in between my reading of the book and now, there's literally been an avalanche of things going on here that have required my focus elsewhere.  I also had  to really consider how to talk about this novel,  sort of mentally pulling my hair out over how not to give too much away, which is no easy feat.   Let's face it -- if you've seen the movie then you're already aware of the surprises in store,  but I am going to try to  avoid mentioning any spoilers here just in case. As a result, this will be reading journal post light. I hadn't seen the film until I'd finished reading the novel (just standard operating procedure), and while I enjoyed the movie very much, for me reading the book is the better experience by far.  

Like most crime/mystery fiction I enjoy reading, Laura is a complex,  twisty and suspenseful story that moves beyond the realm of standard whodunits into the more literary zone where human nature is put under a microscope.  And oh my -- the range of psyches in this book definitely merit close examination.   At the center of this story is Laura Hunt and the people in her immediate orbit, and then there's the detective on the case who discovers her only after she's been murdered. 

In telling this story, Caspary uses a series of first-person narratives, utilizing, as A.B. Emrys reveals in her essay "All My Lives: Vera Caspary's Life, Times, and Fiction" (which does not appear in my edition, but as an afterword in my Feminist Press edition of Caspary's Bedelia, 198), "the Wilkie Collins method of multiple narrators."*   These begin on a Sunday with the account of  well-to-do (and quite snobbish) columnist, collector and aesthete Waldo Lydecker,  as he finds himself grieving over the "sudden and violent" death of his friend Laura Hunt the previous Friday night. Violent death  indeed -- Laura  had been shot at close range on Friday night in her apartment, the buckshot also severely damaging her face.  On that last day of her life, she  had announced to her fiancé Shelby Carpenter (to whom she was supposed to have been married the next Thursday)  that she would need  "four or five days of loneliness" before the honeymoon, especially after having launched her latest successful advertising campaign.   She still planned on having her weekly dinner with  Lydecker that evening, after which she would catch a train to Connecticut where she had a house, returning on Wednesday.  But for some unknown reason, Laura  had canceled her dinner date;  evidently she had changed her mind at the last minute.   Assigned to the case of Laura's murder is Detective Mark McPherson, the second narrator, who had learned from Lydecker that if he wants "to solve the puzzle of her death," he must first "resolve the mystery of Laura's life."   

In attempting to do so, McPherson listens to what the other men in her life have to say about her, but he also develops a personal interest in Laura as well. He comes into the case viewing her as "just a dame" until his interest grows slowly into obsession, taking his time, for example, to go through her apartment, touching her clothes and possessions as a way to understand her.  It is mainly through the gaze of each of the men in this novel that we see Laura, but the author has also included a narrative in which we discover her true nature, that of a "modern" and fiercely independent person concerned about being her own woman, having "given so much of everything else," but always withholding herself, with too much to lose otherwise.  While the story does eventually reveal the "who," in my opinion, it is the question of why that is much more pertinent:  what exactly was it that made Laura a target for murder? 

original 1943 cover from Wikipedia

I did say that I would not post any spoilers, but the truth is that I could seriously go on forever about this book because there is so much to tell.   Unfortunately, that would involve spilling much more about the characters, about the story and about the twists involved throughout, and that's not going to happen here.   I did feel that the author sort of tipped her hand in one very telling scene making it easy to figure out the who far ahead of the actual solution, which was a bit disappointing, but in the long run Laura is a definite no-miss, and not just because of the crime element -- it is much more a study in character that brings out a number of issues that remain pertinent today.   

Don't miss the film, although quite honestly the book is so much better.

As I said, reading journal post light. 

*9781558615076

Feminist Press, 2005

Death Casts a Long Shadow, by Anthony Gilbert

Well just crap.   I've been using the list of books from the Séptimo Círculo collection as my main crime/mystery reading guide this year; only four books in and thanks to my own stupidity, I read the wrong book.   I was going to read Anthony Gilbert's The Long Shadow, written in 1932, and completely neglected the date (and obviously the real title)  and bought his Death Casts A Long Shadow, from 1959 (originally published as Death Takes a Wife).  It's no surprise; here at casa mia our 2020 hasn't ended yet with what feels like a quarterly extension.    So today I went to double check what title was up next, and discovered my mistake.  I feel really stupid for being so careless, and now of course, I can't find a copy of the 1932 book anywhere.  

from emojiterra

Moving on, putting aside this morning's long facepalm session,   I'd finished reading Death Casts a Long Shadow earlier this week.  Anthony Gilbert, one of the pseudonyms of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, aka Anne Meredith (Portrait of a Murderer: A Christmas Crime Story) and J. Kilmeny-Keith, wrote a whopping fifty-one novels featuring Arthur Crook, and this book is number thirty-four.  I seriously hate starting this late in the series but it is what it is. 

Nurse Helen Wayland has decided after some brief ribbing from her friend Miles Gordon that she needs a change in assignments from elderly patients "more prone to qualify for a death certificate" to a "case with some prospects of survival."   So when Blanche French slips on the stairs in her home,  breaks a leg and refuses to go to the hospital, she calls the agency to request the nurse who'd looked after her earlier when she was down with a bad case of the flu.  Unfortunately, that wasn't possible, so Helen is sent instead.   The French marriage had started out well enough with wealthy Blanche  helping Paul in his legal career and providing for his every need,   but over the  "nearly ten years"  that Paul and Blanche had been married, her "sense of insecurity"  had caused Blanche to become overly needy, resenting Paul's time away from her for any reason.    

When Helen arrives, Paul falls for her at first sight, and over time she begins to feel the same for him.  One Wednesday night, when it's nurse's night off,  Blanche and Paul have a raging argument; later that same night Helen and Paul meet  and are seen together by the French's housekeeper, Mrs. Hoggett.  With everyone back at the French home much later,  "the night exploded in tumult" as Blanche ends up dead, having been shot.   An inquest is held, and it looks as though Paul might have had a hand in Blanche's death,   but based on the evidence given at the inquest, there is "insufficient proof" to charge him and he goes free.  All of this is just preamble -- we haven't yet come to the meat of the story.   

Paul and Helen are caught up in the wake of the scandal that follows; they go their separate ways and after a year as things seem to be dying down,  find their way back to each other in London and marry.  But things go horribly wrong once Mrs. Hoggett, now a shopkeeper in a seedy part of the city,  comes back into the picture, threatening to tell a completely different story than the one she provided at the inquest unless she's paid to keep quiet.  Murder rears its ugly head once more, and the investigation into this death will unearth, as the cover blurb notes, "an intriguing network of facts" for Arthur Crook,  the "intrepid detective-lawyer" who has agreed to take the case.  

 It's an intriguing and ingenious puzzle that is worked out over the course of this novel; the author also offers up a bit of sleight of hand that merited a silent "bravo" toward the end.  And while I don't want to go too far here,  let's just say that aside from the crimes in this story, the author also  spends a lot of time thematically on examining different types of love that have the power to either make or break a marriage.    Then there's this: when Crook reveals all about the case at hand, I actually said out loud "but what about" ... (and trust me, if you read this book you'll have the same question running through your own head throughout your time with this novel) and the answer appeared on the next page.  Voila -- perfect sense of timing.

I have no other experience with the character Arthur Crook to know how Death Casts a Long Shadow fares alongside the other novels, but this one had me unwilling to set the book down for any reason. Once again I find myself saying that someone really needs to republish these old books; this one was quite cleverly done so I can only imagine that the others might be just as good or even better.  

definitely recommended for those who are into older British mysteries and older mystery fiction in general. 

"Criminally Addictive" -- The Abductor/The Bank With the Bamboo Door, by Dolores Hitchens

 

9781951473273

Stark House, 2021

275 pp

paperback

According to the Stark House website, this new two-in-one volume from prolific but still  somewhat neglected writer Dolores Hitchens is scheduled to be released sometime this month.    I am beyond grateful to Stark House for my copy; these people are the best!   

The two novels offered here are The Abductor, from 1962 and The Bank With the Bamboo Door, from 1965.  Let me just say that Hitchens doesn't mess around in either of these books -- at gadetection we're told that Hitchens "wrote a large number of lightweight mysteries, mostly in the cozy tradition," but that's certainly not what's going on here.  Not at all. 

The Abductor begins as young teacher Miss Moynton is out on the playground at the end of the school day, and notices a "patch of darkness" that she takes to be a shadow near some shrubbery at the edge of the school.  Thinking it might be some errant child, she walks toward it; as she gets closer she hears someone calling a name: "Marion ... Marion ... Marion!" When she asks who's there, a man takes off running. Concerned that he  had been calling out to one of the students, Marion Charles, she brings the matter to the attention of the principal, Mr. Dobbs, whose first thought is that they don't want to cause panic at the school.  She  also visits Marion's mother to find out if she had asked someone to pick up her daughter at school, but Mrs. Charles is neither curious nor alarmed by Miss Moynton's story and thinks perhaps that her elderly uncle had "escaped from his nursing home," but assures the young teacher that Uncle Eddie is harmless and "timid."    Reporting her findings to the principal the next day, Dobbs is convinced that "there was no longer any need to worry," and the school day goes on.  Miss Moynton is assigned to give a demonstration, so a substitute, Marion Kennick,  has been called in.  Out on the playground late in the day, as the students are playing at sports, Mrs. Kennick is convinced she hears her name being called, and looks up to see one of Miss Moynton's pupils out walking alone near the shrubbery. What happens next makes it clear that  Mr. Dobbs' assessment may have been somewhat premature, since, as the blurb notes, "Marion Kennick is kidnapped with one of her students."

original 1962 cover, from Goodreads

 I have to admit that I don't particularly care for novels involving child abduction, so I was a bit iffy at this juncture.  What I discovered however is that what happens next is anything but your standard kidnapping story, as Hitchens delves into the lives of the main players here, setting up a high level of suspense and asking serious questions about moral choices and responsibility along the way.   As the story winds down it definitely becomes an edge-of-your-seat reading experience that lasts until the very end of this very twisty, taut story.  

original 1965 cover, from Amazon

On to the  The Bank With The Bamboo Door, which is set in a "town full of secrets," the exposure of which for the people in this book would be devastating.   In Marlie Renick's case, she stands to lose much more than the beautiful house she now  lives in with her wealthy husband Warren, especially if the prestigious  neighborhood's "Old Hens" find out.     Doctor Roland Ferrie also has a lot on the line as he finds himself "in a damned spot" that he blames on his  own foolishness; his wife Janie also hides a life-altering secret that she's not quite ready to disclose to anyone.  Then there's James Griffin, whose interest in Karen Evans and the gardening store she runs with her friend Lisa Kim conceals far more than his need for fixing up his weed-filled back yard.  As more than one person reveals in this story,  their woes can be traced back to a single source, without whom their lives would be far better off.  

Reading this book is like being a spectator at a plate-spinning act, wondering how in the world someone manages to keep them all going at the same time without at least one crashing down.  I would think that it's difficult to juggle so many storylines, but from the very few books I've read by Dolores Hitchens, I've noticed  that one of her strengths as a writer is in her ability to begin with several different elements of plot and keep them under control individually even as they begin to merge together. Here not only does everyone have secrets but there's also the matter of the "bank with the bamboo door," where a robbery took place in the past; word has it that not all of the money was found and that what was left might just still be there behind that bamboo door.  And then, of course, there's a murder that absolutely no one is sorry about.  

In both books in this volume however, it is really her focus on small-town people that makes all the difference, and there she is a master.  I tend to focus more on human nature than on plot when reading crime,  so she's a great fit for me.   It wasn't until after I'd finished this volume though that I understood why she is so very good at what she does,  discussed in the informative introduction by Curtis Evans. After a brief look at Hitchens' life while growing up and then as an adult,  he makes a great case for her "tangled family life" making its way into her novels.  He especially notes the "myriad dillemas" faced by the women in The Bank With The Bamboo Door as well as the relationship between young Marion Charles and her mother in The Abductor.   Both books go far beyond just straight plot, so that you get caught up in the lives of the characters before you.   While I liked both of them very much, I will admit to being a bit more caught up in the suspense of The Abductor, and more focused on the outcomes of the people than the plot  in The Bank With The Bamboo Door, but  both are, as Evans notes about "Hitchens' crime concoctions," most certainly  "criminally addictive."   One caveat: it was often cringeworthy reading references to Chinese people in the second book, so beware.  

I hope Stark House is planning to publish more of Hitchens' novels in the future.  They won't be for everyone, but I love them.  Absolutely.