Sat 13 Aug 2011
Archived Review: HILARY BURLEIGH – Murder at Maison Manche.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
HILARY BURLEIGH – Murder at Maison Manche. Hurst & Blackett Ltd., UK, hardcover; date not stated but known to be 1948.
Another one-shot detective novel from an all-but-unknown author today, but not a book, in my opinion, that’s nearly as successful as David Burnham’s Last Act in Bermuda [reviewed here ]. To begin with, to set the scene, so to speak, let me quote from early on in the affair, from page 13:
So all right, then. Both of the ingredients for a successful Golden Age Mystery are present, as touched upon in my comments on the Burnham book. Essential ingredient number one: A house (or even better, a manor) full of glitzy people, or an exclusive business establishment of some sort, or some other meeting place of the rich and famous.
Essential setting ingredient number two: When Gleba, Mache’s most beautiful mannequin (model) is found murdered immediately after a showing of a wedding dress (page 18) there has been only limited access to the salon and the dressing rooms behind. Only the people on the premises can be presumed to have been the killer.
One difference between this book and the Burnham’s is how early on the victim’s death occurs. Here it seems almost too soon, only eighteen pages in, and there has been no time to know anything about the girl, except that she wears clothes well. Thus there has been no time for the reader to react properly and have any feeling about such minor matters such as rationale, reason and motive.
In Murder at Maison Manche, matters like these are left to be revealed only gradually, but the major one (as far as I will reveal it to you) is that the wedding dress Gleba had been wearing just before she was killed was that of a woman in the audience with whose fiancé she (Gleba) recently had had an affair.
The detective from Scotland Yard who is quickly called to scene is Chief Inspector Tellit. He is described in detail on page 74 as a thick-set man dressed in well-cut and utterly uninspired clothes, ugly hands, far from good-looking but with an often kindly look in his deep blue eyes. In general, however, “he was considered a hard man†as far as crime and criminals are concerned.
This is far from his first brush with a mysterious death, you may also be interested in knowing, since on page 48, his assistant, Det. Sgt. Fry feels “content that he was once again with Tellit on a murder case.â€
Tellit is a man for keeping track of details, gathering together scraps of information and putting them together like pieces of a jigsaw, as we are told on page 101. Every so often the author (in the guise of Inspector Tellit) feels the need for a recap and a provisional summing up, a device that seems worn-out today, but it is one which this reader, at least, almost always finds welcome.
If this is not as gripping a detective yarn as David Burnham’s one was, it is for two reasons, the first being the huge amount of coincidence that is involved to put all of the actors on the scene at precisely the right moment, with the right means (a mysterious snake venom manufactured only in one lab in South America), the right motive and the right opportunity.
Secondly the pacing is oddly off. In particular, the book also seems to “end†at page 180, with 27 more pages to go, and another character, previously relegated to the background is needed to emerge to set up the “real†solution. One more coincidence, and usually for a suspension of disbelief, all that an author is usually allowed is one, or no more than two.
The right ingredients are present, in other words, but they get themselves muddled up a bit at the hands of an author whom I will call an amateur – without knowing anything else about her – in the finest sense of the word.
August 14th, 2011 at 10:43 am
This one is worthy of a post at my blog – home of the obscure and forgotten mystery writer. Could there be a new subgenre here? Hair salon mysteries! I can think of only two others: TURMOIL AT BREDE by Seldon Truss and THE CUCKOO CLOCK by Milton Ozaki. Both incidentally rather obscure mystery writers themselves. And do you know for certain that Burleigh was female? Hilary is one of those androgynous British names.
August 14th, 2011 at 10:58 am
While I was in the process of getting this old review ready to post, that reference to Burleigh being female caught my eye too. I don’t have access to the book right now, but I hope there was something on the jacket that made me say that.
Otherwise I have no evidence nor proof I was correct. And you’re quite right. Without it, all bets are off.
August 14th, 2011 at 3:19 pm
Thank you internet and Googlebooks.
I found a female Hilary Burleigh who was an actor and songwriter around 1909 and 1914. I don’t know if they are the same.
I found this Hilary wrote a second book HER HOUR OF TEMPTATION (PEARSON’S BIG THREEPENNIES NO. 51) 1937. That according to worldcat.org. No mention of author as a he or as a she.
August 14th, 2011 at 3:59 pm
Good work on this, Michael!
It’s not clear if the two you found are one and the same, or if either one is the author of MAISON MANCHE. All I can say is that they could be.
Going out on a limb here, aren’t I?
August 15th, 2011 at 4:39 am
If you look here:
http://www.crimefictioniv.com/Part_39.html
You will see that Hilary Burleigh was the stage name of an actress. She was also known as Hilary Hunt Lewis, she wrote one book in CFIV under this name(as H H Lewis) PEARLS AND PERJURY, published by Coker in 1950. The same two policemen appear in the Burleigh and Lewis books but not in BY WHOSE HAND a Mellifont paperback by H H Lewis published in 1956.
Another hair salon mystery DEATH UNDER THE DRYER by Simon Brett (Fethering Mystery #8)
August 15th, 2011 at 9:10 am
Jamie
Aha! All this information’s in the Addenda to Al Hubin’s CRIME FICTION IV, but it’s not yet included on the CD. It never caught my eye, I’m embarrassed to say.
Good work on the part of whoever uncovered all this. Might it have been you, Jamie?
— Steve