Wed 14 Apr 2021
An Archived PI Mystery Review by Doug Greene: W. A. DARLINGTON – Mr. Cronk’s Cases.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[10] Comments
W. A. DARLINGTON – Mr. Cronk’s Cases. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1933. No US edition.
As someone who fancies himself a detective but bumbles through his cases, Mr. J .W. Cronk is the British equivalent of [Ellis Parker] Butler’s Philo Gubb, [George Barr] McCutcheon’s Anderson Crow, and [Percival] Wilde’s P. Moran. Although Cronk’s cases are not so mystifying as those of Gubb and Moran, his adventures are far more sensitively and sympathetically told.
Crank’s youthful ambition had been to become a private detective, but he gradually settled down to a life as a lawyer’s clerk. In his 50s, however, two events combine to make him decide at long last to become a professional sleuth: an inheritance frees him from depending on a regular salary, and he overhears a typist describe him as “a little old dried-up stick.”
His new career does not begin auspiciously: children follow him about as he investigates, and he mistakes an accident for murder. But in his second adventure, though, the criminal leads him around by the nose, he stumbles across stolen diamonds, and the Countess of Piecehurst praises him to her aristocratic friends.
Soon he begins to get commissions. Unfortunately he continues to solve most of his cases purely by chance, but Scotland Yard thinks that his air of naive vagueness is a mask to fool criminals. Cronk is, in fact, not naive, and his knowledge that his success is not due to his abilities nags at him.
In the final story, however, Cronk actually discovers, by investigation and reasoning, how a necklace disappeared from his old office. His former employer remarks: “Queer fellow you are, Cronk. Here you are, a detective who’s made himself a name… but to listen to you, one might think it was your very first case!” “Yes,” Cronk replies in the final line of the book, “you might, mightn’t you?”
In short, unlike Gubb, Crow and Moran, Cronk is not merely a comic figure. We sympathize with his bumbling and we are pleased when he emerges as a real detective. (W. A. Darlington, the author of Mr. Cronk’s Cases, was a humorist who wrote a series of lively books about Private Alf Higgins, who in Alf’s Button discovers that the brass buttons on his uniform were made from Aladdin’s Lamp, and in Alf’s Carpet makes slippers from a Magic Carpet. Mr. Cronk’s Cases is more restrained than the Alf books.)
Bibliographic Note: The book, Darlington’s only entry in Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, consists of nine untitled stories. There is only one copy currently offered for sale online, and luckily that seller provided an image of the cover, sans jacket.
April 14th, 2021 at 6:51 pm
I have belatedly added the first names of the authors of the characters Doug used as references in this old review. I assume they are all but forgotten now, and I thought the more I could do to help put his point across, the better.
And to that, I should also add that I had to look all three up to make sure I had their names correct!
April 14th, 2021 at 8:06 pm
An inteeresting and obscure sleuth.
April 14th, 2021 at 8:47 pm
I don’t know about you, David, but this review is as close to owning a copy as I’m ever going to get.
April 15th, 2021 at 7:42 am
Thanks(?) to this review, I’m close to buying a copy of the book, depending on how I do in the Lotto today.
April 15th, 2021 at 10:56 am
The one I cribbed the cover image from will set you back something like $80. In the interim, another copy has popped up on eBay, but that one’s in the $120 range. Almost affordable, wouldn’t you say?
But most certainly, yes, winning at Lotto would help.
April 15th, 2021 at 11:01 am
I have discovered that one of the stories has been reprinted in the May 1951 issue of EQMM, which of course does very few of us any good, either.
April 15th, 2021 at 2:43 pm
More. Here are the titles of several of the stories, and their earlier publication, as learned from the online FictionMags Idex:
The Gravel-Pit Murder (ss) The Strand Magazine Jun 1932
The Guggenheim Emeralds (ss) The Strand Magazine Jul 1932
The Mystery of the Inverted Receivers (nv) The Strand Magazine Aug 1932
The Confidence Trick (ss) The Strand Magazine Sep 1932
Mr. Cronk at Sea (ss) The Strand Magazine Feb 1933
Peace and Quiet (ss) The Strand Magazine Aug 1933
The Affair at the Hotel Splendide (ss) EQMM May 1951. [Earlier periodical publication?]
April 23rd, 2021 at 10:02 am
Luminist Archives has some EQ’s, including this one: http://readitfree.org/PU/EQMM.htm
April 23rd, 2021 at 11:08 am
Wonderful, Bill, many thanks! A resource in general I had not known about before.
February 25th, 2022 at 5:26 pm
I got a copy here in the UK for just £8 on ebay last July. Reading it now and enjoying it greatly. I’ve also got hold of Darlington’s other humorous and magical fiction, including the Alf’s Button series. All great fun.