VAN WYCK MASON – The Singapore Exile Murders. Pocket 129, paperback reprint; 1st printing, December 1941. Hardcover edition: Doubleday Crime Club, 1st printing, June 1939. Hardcover reprint: Sun Dial Press, June 1940.

VAN WYCK MASON Seeds of Murder

   Widely respected for his historical fiction, Van Wyck Mason (1901-1978) is equally if not better known for his roughly two dozen book length adventures of Captain Hugh North, a American agent working for a government outfit called G-2. The first of the latter was Seeds of Murder (1930), the last being The Deadly Orbit Mission (1968).

   A complete list of all Mason’s books can be found on his Wikipedia page, along with a photo and a short biography.

   Thirty-eight years is a long time to be writing spy fiction, a run that I suspect few authors can match. The setting of The Singapore Exile Murders is obvious, I should think, and the date of publication (1939) is just as important — the entire city is on edge with news of the seemingly unavoidable oncoming war streaming in non-stop from Europe.

   One of the more important characters in the book is suspected by being an agent for the Japanese, and the local Japanese fleet is decidedly on maneuvers, but Hitler and the events ongoing in France, Hyde Park and Czechoslovakia seem to be causing the most jitters.

   From page 155 of the Pocket edition:

   Portents of increasing tension hung still heavier in the air. Police in silent and watchful squads of four stalked along streets eddying with a restless, polyglot crowd. On the horizon in the direction of Tanglin and the Naval Base, searchlights played, raking the hot, starry sky with tenuous, silver fingers. Newsboys, hoarse with excitement, rushed about waving extras printed in English, Chinese, Malay and Sanskrit. Before glaring clusters of naked electric bulbs illuminating native shops, dark-faced men argued and gesticulated. Lights glowed, too, in the official offices in the Fullerton building, and quantities of chit coolies ran errands as if the devil were after them.

VAN WYCK MASON Singapore Exile Murders

   A lively disquiet filled North. What the devil could be going on at the other end of the cables and the radio stations? Of only one thing was he sure: The breath of war beat hot on Singapore.

   Here’s another sample of Mason’s writing, this time from page 163. This scene takes place at the home of a wealthy Dutch resident of Singapore, and one of the men and women most interested in the formula for a new lightweight metal alloy that Leonard Melville, the man everyone is looking for, has discovered:

   For many years Cornelis Barentse’s rijst-taffel would remain in Hugh North’s memory as an outstanding gastronomic triumph. The company, brilliant and pleasantly stimulated, were twenty-two in number. They ranged themselves in comfortable armchairs the length of a long table glowing with sea roses and orchids of half-a-dozen varieties.

   Barentse’s huge dining room was lavishly but tastefully decorated in Javanese mode. Intricately carved ceiling beams gleamed with gold leaf; faces hideous and comic looked down from scarlet-and-gilt corbels supporting them.

   Malay weapons — tulwars, pikes, krises, shields and daggers — with filigrees of gold and silver were arranged in a panoply along one wall. Small censers dangled from the four corners of the room and expelled lazy spirals of fragrant smoke. Huge lamps of bronze filigree cast on the diners an ample light which was very flattering to the complexions of the women. Dozens of candles drew flashes from the gleaming silver service, and many crystal glasses were arranged in groups before each place.

VAN WYCK MASON Singapore Exile Murders

   Of course there beautiful women involved — two of them, in fact — and North has to balance his own search for Melville between them. (There would have been a third, but she dies early on in the book, in what was for me quite an disturbing turn of events, but I think it was Mason’s way of letting the reader know not to take anything for granted.)

   North himself is very much an earlier generation’s James Bond, US style, without the same license to kill, but perhaps it was an authorization that was purely tacit. In a similar sense, he’s an agent who’s pretty much left on his own, a la Edward S. Aarons’s Sam Durell, with lots of exotic locales included in fine detail. (See above.)

   After a fairly tense few opening chapters, as North’s plane is forced down in a horrendous storm somewhere en route to Singapore, the middle portion of the book is a textbook example of how to fill lots of pages with action and twist after twist without anything actually being accomplished.

   The ending is a considerable improvement in comparison, but to me, the grand finale was still rather flat — not pancake style, to make a totally inappropriate simile — but neither did it push the overall effort over the top. About average, then, overall, with parts of this eve of World War II spy adventure novel that are far better than that.