Wed 8 Sep 2010
A Review by Curt Evans: CAROLYN WELLS – The Furthest Fury.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
CAROLYN WELLS – The Furthest Fury. J. B. Lippincott, US/UK, hardcover, 1924.
After over a half-dozen attempts I have finally found a Carolyn Wells mystery I like. It’s called The Furthest Fury. Character drawing is adequate to good, Wells’ “transcendant detective” (as he is called here) Fleming Stone is present for about half the book — actually detecting — and the solution is acceptably fair to the reader.
David Stanhope’s visit with friends in the Connecticut hill country village of New Midian soon plunges him into mystery as two comparatively recent citizens of the village, a man, Nevin Lawrence, and his widowed sister, are murdered in their own house, both shot to death.
Potential suspects include the hotheaded son of Stanhope’s wealthy friends, who was running for country club president against Nevin Lawrence on a “wet” platform; the son’s girlfriend, a mere daughter of the local dressmaker; the peppery maid, who inherits under the wills; the local spinster music teacher, a gossip and busybody of the first order; the strange, white-faced man Stanhope noticed on the train to New Midian; and possibly even the landlord and landlady and various summer residents of the local genteel boarding house, “Gray Porches.”
Along with the far-too-bumbling local police, Stanhope investigates the brutal crimes; but he finally is compelled to call on Fleming Stone, who answers all questions after some genuine detection. Stone leaves his theory of the crime in a sealed envelope early on during the course of his investigations — and he was dead-on accurate, of course!
The atmosphere of the once-peaceful little New England village is fine — it’s a convincing sort of American Mayhem Parva. Additionally, there’s some well-portrayed generational conflict between a father and son, an appealing (not cloying) lower-class damsel, a fine “character” of a maid, and a memorable gossipy spinster. The solution is quite interesting, and the reader may well deduce it.
All in all, The Furthest Fury is a fine book, well worth reprinting. The silliness omnipresent in so many of Wells’ post-1920 books is not present, nor is the book stilted and dated in the Victorian manner like many of her earlier mysteries. And, best of all, the tale is fully fair play, the first such, actually, that I have read by Ms. Wells. Well worth reading!
September 8th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
This either proves the old saw about an infinte number of monkees and a typewriter, or that even Carolyn Wells had one good book in her.
Nice to know Fleming Stone actually did a little detective work once in his career.
September 8th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
I’m not saying it’s “Stone’s Last Case,” but given my experience with the other ones, I was surprised I actually liked it. I’d like to see it reprinted, just to give people a taste of Wells at her most competent. I still think it will help if you have a fondness for period cozies.
The solution was interesting enough that I wanted to talk about it, but felt constrained by the fact that I was advocating that people actually read the book.
This book has actual fair play detection and is not so silly as others by her I have read. Of course it’s that silliness makes for Bill Pronzini’s “alternative” classics. I’ve sent Steve another review of a Wells–The Umbrella Murder–that is a real alternative doozy! But The Furthest Fury answered the question for me anyway whether Wells ever wrote any decent “straight” mystery novels. We now have one, anyway!
I’m reading one now, The Crime in the Crypt, that is actually not bad so far, so we will see. I have another around the house I will try, The Sixth Commandment, but will hang it up for now after that one. I think I’ve read ten by her now and only one I enjoyed, so we are talking a pretty slim ratio of non-alternative goodness!
September 14th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
[…] back on in recent weeks, and much more favorably, was The Furthest Fury. You can read his review here. […]
April 21st, 2020 at 9:08 pm
[…] is one of Wells’s most solid detective stories. Not enthralling, but solid.(Curt Evans, relieved to find one Wells he liked, considers it “a fine book, well worth […]