Fri 16 Oct 2009
MARGARET ERSKINE – The Woman at Belguardo. Doubleday Crime Club, US, hardcover, November 1961. UK edition: Hodder & Stoughton, hc, 1961. Paperback reprints: Penguin 2464, UK, 1966. Ace Star K-295, US, 1974; Bantam, US, December 1982.
Margaret Erskine (a pen name) was the author of some twenty-one detective novels written between 1938 and 1978, all being cases solved by (Chief) Inspector Septimus Finch, he being promoted somewhere along the way.
When reprinted by Ace in the 1970s, many of them were published as “gothic romances,” though I imagine those expecting a gothic romance when they bought one were rather surprised.
While there are some sound observations about people in The Woman at Belguardo, and some deft turns of phrase, what reading the book has done for me is to have convinced me all the more that writing a detective novel is one of the hardest things in the world to do, if the goal is to do it well – and which is why so many mystery writers today steer Far Clear of the Real Thing.
The plot first, though. A woman whose passion is life is obsessively tormenting the people in her life is (not surprisingly) found murdered in her home after returning unexpectedly from Europe with a new fiancé along with her, to the surprise of someone perhaps. (Someone more significantly surprised than everyone else, that is).
But that may not be the only reason someone saw fit to kill her (and the cover the Crime Club novel is awfully explicit, if you can make it out – her head is smashed in by a huge potted plant after she’s been strangled).
There are suspects galore, and Inspector Finch is hard pressed to follow all of the leads and make sense of them – most of them false ones, of course.
I suspect that Margaret Erskine knew little about police procedure, or if she did, she allows Finch a slip-up or two in this case, which is one or two more than I would have allowed. She’s also weak in identifying the characters immediately, and also weak in allowing questions answered later, not when then should have been, which is when they occurred to me.
But it’s the motive that seems the weakest to me, although I have to admit that it was foreshadowed quite well from the beginning — and who am I to judge the actions of a man who’s in a fit of rage? The essential clue, the one that clinches the case, though, seems especially poorly handled. It sits badly in my mind, and every time I try to think it through, the less well it sits.
When it comes down to it, keeping in mind my comments up above in paragraph two, there is little more in this detective novel but the detection.
Finch himself is a genial enough cipher. He handles himself well but with little indication of a personal life, makes small but quantum leaps of logic along the way, and I have the distinct feeling that I won’t read another of his adventures for another 20 or 30 years, which is how long it’s been since I read an earlier one.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:28 am
My experience with Erskine and the Finch books was the same as yours, although they might have been better if they were the gothics Ace disguised them as. If Finch had been any drier he would have blown away like dust.
You have to wonder why write a mystery if you aren’t going to work any harder at the form than Erskine, but from the number of Finch books she seems to have been popular.
I wonder, as with Carolyn Wells and Fleming Stone, if there isn’t something we are missing. There seems to have been an audience comfortable with her and with Finch. All her readers couldn’t be like us and dip into one every 30 years to see if they got any better. Someone was buying them on a regular basis for some reason.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I must have in excess of a dozen of Erskine’s books, all waiting for me to retire and find time to read them. I’ve been retired for more than a dozen yesrs now and still haven’t read one. You may have just convinced me that I needn’t bother. On the other hand, I may try a couple to see if I agree with you. I see that I lined them up chronologically on the shelves downstairs at one time and must have had some idea of reading them in sequence. Several of my copies are the gothic paperback editions that were numbered, but apparently not in the same seqence as the copyright dates!
I continue to read the short fiction of Dashiell Hammett and am currently reading Linda Davis’ biography of cartoonist Charels Addams as well, but I may just take one of the Erskines to read over lunch at the Tavern today. (I was also thinking of taking a William Haggard.) Sorry, Steve, I couldn’t alert you in time to drive out here to join me, but it sounds like you’ve had your share of travel for awhile.
With David, I have often thought that there must be something about Carolyn Wells and Fleming Stone that we are missing. I know someone who collects them and appears to enjoy them. They appear to have served as light summer reading several generations ago and made regular appearances as serials in pulps like Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine. I have shelves and shelves of them and have read several. Maybe it’s time to try another. Maybe I’m reading the wrong ones.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
David —
I think my review misled you a bit, since Erskine knows what she’s supposed to do in a writing a detective story and she works very hard at it. There’s a wonderful array of suspects; lots and lots of questioning and police work; lots of clues and false trails; and lots of motives and complicated relationships that Finch has to work his way through.
It’s just that the results don’t show all of the hard work that went into the writing of this book, nor do all of the parts make for a well-meshed, satisfactory whole.
As for my saying that Finch is a cipher, an absence of quantity, that’s maybe not such a bad thing, especially if you’re one of those readers who hate it when 90% of a detective novel is taken up with the details of the detective’s private life.
He’s no worse than Poirot, for example, in terms of who his family is and who his friends are, off the force, and I think you could say that about most of the detectives in the Golden Age.
Overall, then, on a scale from one to ten, I’d give Carolyn Wells a 2.5, Agatha Christie a 10, and Margaret Erskine a 4.8 — or nearly twice as good as Wells, but still a little less than average.
Randy —
Another opinion about Erskine would be welcome, and if you do end up having lunch with her, yours would be fine. Do tell us more. Sorry I can’t be there!
From 1001 MIDNIGHTS, I see that Ellen Nehr has a review of GIVE UP THE GHOST, which Erskine wrote in 1948. I’ll post it next, but if anything Ellen was harder on her than I was, calling Finch “colorless” and Erskine’s fiction “an acquired taste.”
More later…
— Steve
October 16th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Erskine was considered for membership in England’s Detection Club in the late 40s/early 50s, but it appears the then current members decided not to extend an invitation to her. Elizabeth Ferrars was considered at the same time, but she did not become a member until 1958. I don’t believe Erskine ever did become a member.
I’ve had her on my “to read” list for years also.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
I read this at the start of the year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Excellent handling of misdirection and motive – quite Carrian.
John Rhode liked her (he proposed her for the Detection Club), so I’m not alone in enjoying her work! Torquemada praised her first book.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
As I said, obviously she had fans. I never found Finch or her particularly appealing, but as they say, that’s what makes horse races.
A lead character who is a cipher can be virtue in the right hand. Lew Archer or Inspector French — but in all honesty I don’t think we can call a character as colorful as Poirot a cipher. Cardboard perhaps, hollow, or even something of a clown, but a cipher for me usually refers to an almost faceless character, and whatever else Poirot has a face.
But I stand by my problems with Erskine and Finch, and in all honesty, John Rhode is not the highest recommendation I can suggest for any writer. While Rhode did manage a some good entries over his long career he also wrote some awful drivel. Some of the Priestly or Desmond Merrion novels would be hard going for the most forgiving of fans.
Still, that said, I suspect Erskine’s virtues were enough for her audience. We all have writers we are more forgiving of than the evidence may support. Criticism to one side it is a highly subjective matter.
October 17th, 2009 at 3:37 am
It’s not known how high John Street’s estimation of Margaret Erskine was when he proposed her (obviously, he thought her good enough for membership). After WW2, the Detection Club stood in real need of new members, which may have been a consideration on his part. Also the Club initially was still making some attempt to restrict new members to those men and women who wrote actual detection (which was rather the credo of the Club in the first place).
A fair estimation of Street’s estimation of Erskine would have to be based on the books she had written up until that point, which would exclude, for example, Belguardo. But the fact that she never became a member is suggestive. Either she was rejected or declined to join, and I suspect the former is more likely to be the case.
I don’t believe one can really compare Erskine with Street, whose technical skill in his best work is pretty incomparable. Though as I said I have not yet read Erskine. The only specific criticism of her I can recall came from Christianna Brand, I believe, who mentioned choppy sentences (I was doing an article on this matter, but I temporarily set it aside in the summer to finish my book).
October 17th, 2009 at 4:42 am
By this period Major Street was on something of a downturn. His best books in both the Priestly and Merrion books were in the past and well into the 1960’s he pretty much coasted on his reputation. That said I doubt Erskine ever wrote anything as good as Street at the height of his abilities.
I’ve probably been unfair to Erskine. She certainly isn’t as dull as Carolyn Wells, and as Steve points out her general technique is perfectly good, but as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there’s no there there. I really can’t recall one Finch book from another and only have the vaguest idea of the Inspector. Even a cipher should leave more of an impression than that.
By the end of the war the Detection Club was something of an anachronism, but I think they were wise to limit membership. Erskine was popular enough, but I don’t think she wrote anything near the standard or quality of membership of the Club.
If anyone knows I would like to know when the Detection Club ceased to be and who the last set of members were. It might give some insight into why Erskine was left out.
October 17th, 2009 at 4:53 am
Okay, I checked my material here, and this seems to be the sequence (I hadn’t gotten up to this in my draft article).
In 1953, Street sent two Erskine books to Anthony Gilbert for her opinion, and then she passed them on. I’m not sure how big an endorsement this was, my guess was he was sounding the other members out, but just how keen he was, who knows. Gilbert (not Brand) didn’t like them and criticized the choppy sentences. However, Mary Fitt did like them (though she thought the punctuation eccentric).
Up to this time, Erskine had written
And Being Dead 1938
The Whispering House 1947
I Knew Macbean 1948
Give Up the Ghost 1949
The Disappearing Bridegroom 1950
Death of Our Dear One 1952
My guess is that And Being Dead, being pre-war, was not one of the two books sent around (why such a long gap between books for Erskine, by the way).
I started “I Knew Macbean” and it’s not bad (interestingly, it has a police character named Bratton, recalling Rhode’s Bratton Grange, and employs a hearse in the opening scene, as in one of the Rhode thirties books), thought the sentences indeed are rather choppy!
My impression of the Erskines is that they do veer more to the romantic side, with goings-on among great families in decaying mansions, supposed ghosts, etc. They have rather an antiquated feel from what I’ve seen. Of course, as David indicated, those pricelessly silly Gothic paperback reissues don’t help!
Someone should do a piece on those things. Apparently the Dark Shadows Gothic craze in the late 60s-early 70s was so great that publishers were desperate to Gothicize even relatively orthodox English detective novels. So suddenly we get this procession of cheap paperbacks, each with a cover illustration of some terrified, pretty young ingenue wandering around in the moonlit night on the lawn of some great mansion! I imagine purchasers frequently must have been disappointed with what they found between the covers.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:06 am
David, the Detection Club is still with us (Martin Edwards recently was inducted as a member), though it no longer makes a pretense of believing in the necessity for detection in a mystery. In the sense that it no longer believes in the necessity for a member’s belief in the founding credo, it’s rather like the Anglican Church, I suppose!
I think the Street books started declining in general after 1945 and the decline grew steep after 1953. Having written so many books and getting older he normally no longer was making much of an effort beyond reeling off a basic plot situation. I devote 180 manuscript pages to Street in this book I’m near finishing (hope I get to keep that much!), but I don’t mount a strong defense of his later work (though I pick out a few better titles).
October 17th, 2009 at 5:10 am
Oh, Nick, I see you compare Erskine to Carr. Yeah, that thought occurred to me too just from the “spooky” milieus the book covers seem to stress.
October 17th, 2009 at 5:52 am
Curt
Nice to hear you spend so much effort on Street. He really is neglected, and while I am not a great admirer, some of the Priestly and Merrion books are quite good — though I would mark a down turn as early as the early war years in some cases. I look forward to learning more about him and his books. I’ve read some quite good ones as well as some pretty bad ones.
I did manage to check out the Detection Club and was glad to see it still was around, but looking at the membership I really don’t think Erskine was membership material. Just compared to the quality of the members listed even after some of the rules were relaxed I don’t think Erskine quite reached that level. Though to be fair she might have a good position in the second rank of British mystery writers of her era.
The gothic craze spilled over into the bodice ripper craze to some extent and we got a good many books with covers that sold one thing and interiors that were about another. That said, there were some lovely covers from the period whether they reflected the contents or not (and to be fair when did that ever bother most paperback publishers?). I’ll admit though you had to be fairly discerning sometimes to know what you were getting (in a related matter Hard Case is releasing Conan Doyle’s Valley of Fear with a hardboiled cover and you have to wonder the reaction of some of their readers who may never have heard the theory that the book is an early proto hard boiled novel)
I’m not sure the gothic covers for the Erskine books were really all that much a diservice to her. She may even have gained a few readers who would not have purchased her work if it had been marketed as a more mundane type of mystery.
There are far too many secret panels, hints of witchcraft, and the like in her work while missing the genius of Carr and others at handling that sort of thing.
I suspect those secret panels prejudiced much of the Detection Club more than the choppy sentences if truth be told. It was probably easier to blame the choppy sentences just in case a secret panel showed up in one of the critics later books or those of a colleague.
I didn’t mind the atmosphere and romantic business in Erskine so much as the fact that she never really did much with it. I suspect that was what her fans read her for though, and if she filled a niche more power to her. I never condemn a writer simply because their work doesn’t appeal to me. And I would like to know whether Erskine particularly cared if her books were thought of as fair play mysteries or if she got into the Detection Club.
As for Finch, while he remained a cipher he wasn’t a particularly likable one. He always seemed to have an unhealthy appreciation of other peoples troubles, even for a policeman. I don’t mind unlikable protagonists, but gray, drab, and unlikable is hard to overcome.
Knowing Erskine seems to have written the books in part to thumb her nose at somewhat snooty relatives she may honestly not have cared, and the books may have been exactly what she wanted them to be — choppy sentences and all. I don’t recall them as being bad so much as unsatisfying and just not particularly interesting. Those gothic covers may actually have been a fairly brilliant piece of marketing in her case.
As for that ten year gap in her career, judging from the dates I have to wonder if the war might have cut into her output (depending on her sales the paper shortage alone could have effected her publishing, and it would be a few years after the war before that changed)? Also, according to Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers she seems to have changed agents at the end of 1942, not signing with a new one until 1944. That could well play some role in the mystery — or the lack of them.
October 17th, 2009 at 6:18 am
The Gothics craze probably led to some good books being reissued that probably never would have been otherwise. I just think those covers with the fearful young ladies wandering around at midnight in their filmy white nightgowns get a little monotonous!
And silly in some cases. They even did it to Phoebe Atwood Taylor, who from my reading seems as far removed from that sort of thing as can be. Erskine at least often seems to have genuinely decaying aristocracy in genuinely decaying mansions!
I will have to actually read Erskine (I’m talking a lot for someone who has not read her), but I wonder whether she was a sort of cozy writer for a lot of people, with some mild chills thrown in. Maybe like Patricia Wentworth. I’m on my third “Miis Silver” Wentworth right now (the first one I actually like), by the way. She seems like a softened version of Christie, which obviously has its audience, since she has stayed in print all these years.
Am also reading Raymond Chandler short stories, which makes an odd pairing with Wentworth!
I may post a Wentworth review, since we’re doing English authors at the moment.
October 17th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Among some of the books I recall being reissued with gothic romance covers are Bram Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm, Monk Lewis The Monk, Collins The Woman in White, Dorthy MacArdle’s Dark Freehold (The Univited), and quite a few horror novels. of course an argument could be made they were gothics (certainly in the true sense of the term), but you have to wonder what someone seeking a standard romantic gothic novel made of Stoker’s Lair or Lewis The Monk?
For that matter quite a few of Christie’s Mary Westamacott titles were issued with gothic covers, and some publishers even tried marrying the spy craze with the gothic with ‘Romantic Spy Thrillers’ from writers like Albrand, Gainham, Evelyn Anthony, Ann Bridge, and Eva-Lis Wurrio.
I suppose we should be grateful that they drew the line at hard boiled mysteries and westerns with gothic covers. Still, considering the general low state of cover art on paperbacks today I miss all those forbidding castles, wind swept hills, ancient ruins, darkened mansions, threatening clouds, swirling fogs, and young things in diaphonous gowns, trenchcoats, and the like running from some unseen ‘orror on their heels. Overdone as they were they livened up the paperback racks as much as those scantily clad ladies on the hard boiled mysteries, or the inevitable cowboy and his horse, and in the hands of a Bob McGinnis, Harry Bennett, Jeff Jones, Bob Abbett, or Tom Holland the cover was sometimes worth buying the book for.
October 17th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I was away from the computer most of today and came home to discover this long and delightfully digressive discussion had been going on in my absence. Thanks, gents! And I agree with everyone!!
October 18th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
I didn’t actually get to lunch with Erskine on Friday (The Tavern was packed and I couldn’t get a table), but I did pull the earliest title in my collection (The Voice of the House, 1947) from the shelves downstairs and it is now on my to be read pile. My copy is an Ace paperback and Inspector Finch Gothic #12. The blurb on the back cover begins “The black Melafaunts they were called … black haired and black tempered …” and concludes with “Inspector Septimus Finch becomes an unwilling guest of the aristocratic and cursed Melefaunt family, where every member is foresworn to vengeance and haunted by the Voice of the House.” Golly!!!!
I finished reading the Charles Addams biography and learned he drove a silver Audi in his later years … the same color and model of car I currently drive. He was found slumped over the wheel, the victim of a heart attack. The funeral was held in the New York Public Library.
October 19th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Erskine update: I’ve been looking at those late 40s/early 50s titles and I can’t say I’m impressed. The sentences are irritatingly short. There’s an effort to build up atmosphere, but the characters are all exterior: you don’t really feel like you’re getting to know them. The plots all seem to be based on deep, dark family secrets. The detective is featureless. Pretty blah all round. They sound better in their blurbs.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I think Erskine probably filled a niche for her readers — there is nothing particularly challenging in her work, the elements are familiar and Finch what you might expect him to be. You could likely read Erskine over an evening or two without putting the effort into it that a Christie or Marsh took.
We all have writers that we use as intellectual comfort food. A literary burger and fries rather than a gourmet meal, but sometimes you want that burger and fries. I suspect those elements we find annoying in Erskine were a big part of her appeal — right down to the short choppy sentences.
Still, because she filled a niche doesn’t mean she still does, or that more discerning readers need to read her work other than to say they have read one or two and gave her a chance.
Sometimes these reviews lead the reader to a good book or even a great book, and sometimes they warn you off something you would be better off to avoid.
With a writer like Erskine I think either end is possible. There are still readers out there who might enjoy her work, but for most of us it’s nice to be reminded why we stopped reading her after a handful of books. In her day she was likely quite successful in the lending library set which for many years was a major source of income for publishers with solid mid-list authors on the rolls on both sides of the Atlantic.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:12 pm
[…] books when they appeared in the US — there being another Inspector Finch who appeared in Margaret Erskine’s books. This being the first in the series, it’s interesting to see that Finch […]