Sun 15 Aug 2010
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: CHRISTOPHER BUSH – Dead Man’s Music.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[14] Comments
William F. Deeck
CHRISTOPHER BUSH – Dead Man’s Music. Howard Baker, UK, hardcover reprint, 1970. First Edition: Wm. Heinemann, UK, hc, 1931. US hardcover: Doubleday Doran/Crime Club, 1932.
An odd request to Durangos, Limited, sends Ludovic Travers, newly appointed director, to Steyvenning, Sussex. Claude Rook is looking for a man of “implicitly honourable confidence” who knows china and music and is quick-witted.
When Travers more or less satisfies Rook’s requirements, Rook gives him a musical manuscript with unclear instructions what to do with it. As might have been guessed, Rook turns up dead, maybe having been tortured and maybe having committed suicide. One of the several odd things about his death is that someone shaved him shortly after he died
Who was Rook? Why did he give the musical manuscript to Travers? What did the manuscript mean, particularly since it is not the piece Rook played for Travers?
Not one of Travers’ better cases, more a thriller than a detective novel. A library patron — I deplore this tendency but must give the lady or gentleman credit for perceptivity– has scribbled on the cover, “Not good.”
Not bad, either, but certainly a surprisingly weak selection to reprint, considering all the first-class novels that Bush has produced.
Bibliographic Data: If my count is correct, Dead Man’s Music is the 5th of 63 mysteries in which Ludovic Travers was the sleuth of record.
The first appeared in 1926, the last in 1968. Christopher Bush also wrote another dozen or so detective novels as by Michael Home in which Travers did not appear.
It isn’t clear in Bill’s review, perhaps, but Travers himself was a licensed (and therefore private) investigator, so unless I’m wrong about this, it’s strange that he’s not included in Kevin Burton Smith’s list of PIs on his Thrilling Detective website.
Three more of Bush’s mysteries are reviewed by Mike Grost on his Classic Crime and Detection website, where he suggests that alibis and stage trickery are often significant factors in his work.
August 15th, 2010 at 2:19 am
I wasn’t the scribbler, but I would agree with the assessment. Not my favorite Bush.
Travers transforms into a private detective in the 1940s, as I recall (and starts using first person narration); before that he seems to be an amateur detective. Bush seems clearly to have been influenced in this respect by the American hardboiled novel, though his books otherwise always remain pretty “soft.”
August 15th, 2010 at 10:34 am
Travers is a private detective in the same sense of Laurence Meynell’s Hooky Heffernan or Francis Durbridge’s Paul Temple (who in addition is a writer of mysteries like Ellery Queen), but not quite in the same sense we may think of here.
Curt
I would be willing to bet that Bush’s first person narration and Travers switch to private eye had less to do with the American school than the Peter Cheyney influence, which was huge in England in the 40’s when John Bentley dropped his amateur sleuth Sir Richard Herrival for pi Dick Marlow and Gerard Fairlie created his Johnny McCall.
Cheyney may not mean much on this side of the pond, but in England his influence was as great as Hammett and Chandler here. From the late thirties into the early sixties there is a whole army of Cheyney influenced eyes and spies in England and France, and most of them were directly imitating Cheyney and not the American writers he imitated.
I’m surprised how many Travers books I’ve read considering he never really caught on over here despite a long and successful career.
August 15th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Yes Cheyney was a big seller in England. And Chandler was giving the sub-genre greater prestige, with English critics as well, in the 1940s.
Bush had a stronger publication record in the US after WW2 than before, so maybe his change of style worked. He’s not my favorite in either incarnations, but I tend to find him duller after the war.
August 15th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Curt
No denying Chandler’s influence in terms of voice, style, and overall atmosphere, but most of the British writers of that period seemed to take a detour through Cheyney to the American style, or, like Ian Fleming, were equally divided between the influence of Cheyney and Chandler. Certainly the more literary (or pretentious) writers leaned toward Chandler, but weren’t doing the American style thriller.
But on a strictly unscientific basis I don’t really see the Chandler voice becoming common in British writers until the late fifties and into the sixties whereas Cheyney imitators were all over the place.
I’ve only read one or two pre War Bush novels so most of his work I’ve seen comes from the later period. Though I don’t recall them in paperback both Bush and Laurence Meynell were fairly popular in lending libraries and showed up as Detective Book Club selections.
August 15th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Bush’s stuff after WW2 is very restrained compared to other writers, but it’s a definite change in form, with Travers going from a Lord Peter type to to an English private tec. He remains very much a gent however. Bush usually gets classified as a “Humdrum” in fact, though I don’t quite agree with that. His books on the whole don’t seem as technically strong as Crofts or Street or Connington.
Laurence Meynell was better at aping the tougher style, I think. He’s not bad at all.
August 16th, 2010 at 11:04 am
Curt
Some of the later Meynell’s are closer to novels than mysteries, and well written at that. Crime may play a minor role and Hooky sometimes shares the spotlight with other characters who are better drawn than many in the genre and source of quite a bit of social commentary.
In that Meynell reminds me a bit of the later Allingham or one or two of the non Strangways Blakes in that he pushes the boundaries of the genre (and there isn’t always a murder, or even much of crime in Hooky’s cases) — though Hooky remains pretty much the same throughout the series. I always felt with Meynell I was reading a skilled writer and not just a good mystery novelist.
I’m not sure I ever thought of Bush as a humdrum exactly, and I agree he doesn’t have the technical skills of Street, Crofts, or Connington at balancing those complex plots. That said, I don’t think I read any Bush novels as dull as the worst of Major Street, but none as good as the best either. Reliable is the word that comes to mind when I think of Bush and Travers — not a bad thing to be remembered for.
August 16th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Meynell wrote straight novels as well. He’s quite varied–too varied, maybe, for his own good (people tend to like similarity in an author).
August 16th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Curt
You are likely right about Meynell. I think genre fans — especially mystery fans — are sometimes uncomfortable with writers they perceive as overachievers. There is almost fear at times that someone is going to slip something past us and do something literary.
You can’t help but wonder if Eden Phillipots might have had more success as a mystery writer if he hadn’t been branded as an important regional novelist.
Certainly during the greatest part of the Golden Age there was a kind of appreciation for what I can only think of as ‘level of competence’ writers and books — not the masters exactly, but reliable capable writers who book after book managed to write mysteries that reached a certain ‘level of competence’ and stayed in that narrow confine over the years.
I wonder if at times most of the critics understood then, or understand now, that there is a certain level of comfort food appeal to all genre fiction. No small number of readers want the same kind of experience from genre fiction they want from episodic television. It doesn’t mean we don’t love the brilliant books and writers, just that on a day to day, book to book, basis we are looking for that ‘level of competence’ instead of genius.
August 16th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
There’s some food for thought there. Did readers in the 1940s read Christopher Bush in between books from Agatha Christie, say, given the recognized level of competence from the latter, or were there readers who actually preferred Christopher Bush?
Feel free to substitute any two authors of your choice, one from the A list, the other from the B list.
August 17th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Steve
I think its a bit of both re your question. I’m sure Bush and other ‘humdrums’ had their loyal fans who preferred their work, but I’m sure too that there were readers who read a Bush or two (or ‘humdrum’ of your choice) between Agatha Christie, Sayers, Carr, Allingham, Marsh, and the like.
There is a long list of perfectly good ‘level of competence’ writers (on both sides of the Atlantic) from the period who never really shined, but did produce good books consistently over a long period, had their loyal readers, and who are more or less forgotten today. Many of them were big in the lending library and book club circuit but didn’t get paperback exposure, or at least not much. Many of the Brits in that class aren’t well known here, but had successful careers in England.
The appeal of many of today’s cozies and many writers like Iris Johansen and J. A. Jance, is that comfort zone they create for their readers. Guys have the same comfort zone just different writers, but I do think in the Golden Age there was a plethora of writers in mystery fiction who fit in that special niche and mined it for long successful runs.
It’s harder today, but in genre fiction in general you can still make a good career as a writer in what used to be called the mid-lists (obviously Johansen and some of the others are best sellers).
August 17th, 2010 at 4:14 pm
Bush’s publisher referred to Bush having a guaranteed Bush audience year after year. And he was still being published in the U. S. with his last book (1968 or 1969?). Anthony Boucher used to complain in the 1950s that new British writers weren’t being published while “tired” writers like Bush and Rhode still were.
Where I would distinguish the better humdrums from “level of competence” writers is in their heyday (usually the 1930s) some of their puzzles were really superior. I think that counts for something in a detective novel! People not interested in puzzles tend to be dismissive of that aspect of the detective novel (“anyone can write a puzzle,” they say– but it’s not true!).
August 17th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Curt
By ‘level of competence’ I just mean writers who could be counted on for a certain set of skills, and who even excelled once in a while. Even among the humdrums there were stars and individual books that were outstanding, and many of them did excel at the puzzle element.
As the Golden Age progressed the puzzle element became less important, but some of us still enjoyed it, though I do think in some cases the puzzle became too mechanical and all the maps, layouts, timetables, and such ended up like one of those Dennis Wheatley Crime Files.
August 18th, 2010 at 4:35 am
There were poorly written and very mediocre mysteries in those days, just as there are today, I would imagine. I know modern mystery writers always say that mysteries today generally are better written than they were in the Golden Age (this is what was said in the Golden Age as well, in reference to Golden Age mysteries versus pre-Golden Age mysteries).
I don’t whether that claim is true or not. I wonder what percentage of the mystery authors first published in the last twenty years or so will be published after their deaths? What percentage will be avidly sought ought by collectors? Will it be a much higher percentage that we have seen with Golden Age writers?
Your comment about maps and timetables raises an interesting point in my mind. How many Golden Age books really had these things? Symons wrote that they became an embarrassment and had to be dropped, but I don’t know. One Sunday Times reviewer (and mystery writer), Milward Kennedy, complained in the mid-30s that there weren’t enough of the things. Surprisingly few novels by John Street, for example, actually have them, even in the twenties and thirties, when such thing were supposed to be common as dirt. I love the things myself and wish there were more of them (well, not timetables so much)!
What I dislike are the mystery absolutists, whether of the pro-puzzle or anti-puzzle type. I can’t see why one can’t have and enjoy both!
August 18th, 2010 at 9:31 am
I don’t mind maps and timetables as such save where they became a crutch or so complicated the rest of the book became secondary to them. Though I can’t agree with Milward Kennedy. As for time tables, much as I love Crofts, some books read more like a math problem than a mystery novel thanks to them.
Like you I enjoy a mix, a bit from column A and something from column B.
I suspect fewer of today’s writers are going to fall into that still read and collected category when they are gone simply because I don’t think readers today have that passion for the genre that existed in the Golden Age.
The popularity of the mystery really was a phenomena in that period. Some of the writers became celebrities and their creations household names. Just the number of cartoons from that NEW YORKER collection that are mystery oriented is striking.
And it was pretty much across the social board. The maid in the parlor was likely reading the same Agatha Christie as the master in the library just as here the Wall Street banker and his cook were likely both reading the new Philo Vance. Though likely in both cases the master was hiding that he was also reading Sax Rohmer.
Though there is hope. Whatever you think of them the Stig Larsen phenomenon shows that mysteries can still catch readers attention and draw them in (and THE DA VINCI CODE is as much a mystery as anything).
It may not be fairplay Golden Age mystery, but it is still firmly in the genre.
But as to whether the writers will be remembered it is hard to say. There aren’t many of the big sellers right now that I read, and even some of the ones I do aren’t favorites. About the only writers who I can think of who are playful and entertaining enough to ‘collect’ might be Preston and Childs. Their Pendergast is as close to a favorite sleuth I have right now short of Boris Akunin’s Erast Fandorin.
Other than a few old favorites still writing my current must read list includes Arturo Perez Reverte and Alan Furst, but not many straight mysteries. I read them, but not avidly or slavishly the way I once had a long list of must read writers.
Off hand I can’t think of a mystery series (not spy or action or whatever) I go to the bookstore and think “oh there’s a new ” ” I have to read that one, the way I once would have. The closest I would come to that would be something like Carrell’s Kate Stanley books or maybe Nevada Barr. But even there the compulsion is gone.
But I don’t know if that is them or me. I do know many fans are still devoted to their favorites, there just isn’t a broad a fan base as their once was. The Golden Age (as golden ages tend to be) was a perfect storm of writers, publishers, price, distribution, social conditions, and other factors that made it all fall into place. I don’t think that will ever be repeated or could be.