Fri 16 Mar 2012
PAMELA BRANCH – The Wooden Overcoat. Robert Hale, UK, hardcover, 1951. Penguin #1354, UK, paperback, 1959. Rue Morgue, US, softcover, 2006.
This is not the story I was expecting when I picked it up to read. I don’t what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.
Some background information first. According to Hubin, Pamela Branch wrote four mystery novels for Hale between the years 1951 and 1958. Of the two, both this one and Murder Every Monday (1954) feature the Asterisk Club, supervised by one Clifford Flush. (Confirmed from inside the front cover of this one.)
And to connect the first two paragraphs (in case you were wondering). the Asterisk Club is the most exclusive club in the world. Membership is by invitation only, and to qualify, you must be a wrongfully acquitted murderer.
Benjamin Cann qualifies. As he ponders the offer, he takes a room to let next door to the club, a two-family home. They are having trouble with rats. There is arsenic all over the house, as well as sticky boards to trap the vermin. Benji goes to bed and never wakes up.
Misunderstandings arise, and the police are never called. Attempts to rid themselves of Benji’s body go awry. Clifford Flush sends in reinforcements, the beauteous Lilli Cluj. The next morning she has joined Benji in the hereafter, wherever that may be.
Flush gets desperate. So do the couples next door. If one body is difficult, how does one dispose of two bodies that do not wish to be disposed of? And what of the rats? Mr. Beesum (Rodent Officer) thinks he will soon have them under control, but progress is being made very slowly.
Believe it or not, as hilarious as it gets (and did Alfred Hitchcock never read this one? — or considering The Trouble with Harry, although a different novel altogether, maybe he did), this is really a detective story as well. One more murder occurs before the killer is revealed, but I don’t think the police are ever aware of it. This is certainly one block of London to stay a long way away from.
May 1991 (slightly revised).
[UPDATE] 03-16-12. A long biography of Pamela Branch, along with a well-written overview of her mystery fiction, may be found here on the Rue Morgue website. They have reprinted all four of her books, making them very easy to obtain. (A nice copy of the Hale edition of Overcoat in jacket has an asking price on ABE of $750.)
March 17th, 2012 at 8:23 am
I have two of Branch’s reprints from Rue Morgue Press: THE LION IN THE CELLAR and MURDER EVERY MONDAY. I’m going to have to read MURDER EVERY MONDAY now that I know more about the Asterisk Club.
March 17th, 2012 at 11:29 am
Humor in fiction is a funny thing, as I’ve said before, but it’s true. Sometimes I’m not sure I should post these old reviews, when I many times don’t remember the books themselves very much at all (including this one, and it’s only 21 years old, the review, that is).
I called this one “hilarious,” though, and I’m sure I meant it. I’ll have to read it again (or I would in an ideal world in which I could).
But here’s what the Schantzes had to say about the author on their Rue Morgue website. After I read this, I was reassured enough to go ahead and post the review:
Pamela Branch was “the funniest lady you ever knew,†according to fellow mystery writer Christianna Brand. […] That wicked sense of humor permeated Branch’s four mysteries as well, leading contemporary reviewers to describe her first book, The Wooden Overcoat, as a “delightfully ghoulish souffle†(The Spectator) where “even the bodies manage to be ghoulishly diverting†(The Sunday Times) graced with “the gayest prose†and a “gloriously gruesome†touch (The Queen).