Wed 4 Aug 2021
Two Deaths on the Air, Reviewed by Doug Greene (VAL GIELGUD and MAX AFFORD).
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
VAL GIELGUD & HOLT MAXWELL – Death at Broadcasting House. Inspector Simon Spears #1. Rich & Cowan, UK, hardcover, 1934. US title: London Calling. Doubleday, hardcover, 1934. Film: Phoenix, UK, 1934; released in the US as Death at a Broadcast.
MAX AFFORD – The Dead Are Blind. Jeffery Blackburn #2. John Long, UK, hardcover. Ramble House, 2007.
These may be the first two books to remove someone from this Vale of Tears at a radio station; at least Gielgud and Marvell in Death at Broadcasting House say several times that it had not been done previously. Whatever the case, both books benefit greatly from their settings.
Gielgud was head of radio-drama at the BBC from the late 1920s through the early 1960s. The first murder in Death at Broadcasting House is dependent upon a knowledge of the studios and the corridors at the then new BBC headquarters in London, At bit player in a drama, “The Scarlet Highwayman,” is murdered in the middle of the performance. Fortunately, his dying words fit in so well with the plot of the play that no one interrupts the broadcast.
Enter Inspector Simon Spears of Scotland Yard, who is faced with a prickly collection of actors, directors, sound-effects men, and writers. A recording — a “blattnerphone” — of the play has been preserved, and Spears is able to identify the sound of a mysterious watch during the broadcast.
Other clues include a torn copy of the script, some misplaced gloves, and an old playbill, Finally, Spears identifies the murderer, who responds by flinging himself from the BBC’s roof, The detective is not particularly memorable, but he is quietly competent and, except for a ridiculous explanation of why the murderer leaves blackmailing letters behind, all the clues hang together.
Max Afford was an Australian radio dramatist and Production Manager who wrote several novels about Jeffrey Blackburn and Chief Inspector Read. Afford had a viscous writing style; perhaps this example from his earlier Death’s Mannikins will suffice:
It is tempted to reply, “who cares?”, and toss such a book aside, but it’s worth swimming upstream through Afford’s prose to get to his ingenious plots.
And The Dead Are Blind is certainly ingenious. As in Death at Broadcasting House, the murder occurs in the middle of a broadcast, but this time it is an impossible crime, as it is proven that those in the same studio could not physically have been responsible.
The plot has many elements, including a clever scheme of sending messages to criminals by hiding key words in the script, an elderly aunt who does not die conveniently, film actors, poisons, and an exceptionally clever solution.
Jeffrey Blackburn occasionally comes close to the superciliousness of Philip MacDonald’s Anthony Gethryn, who may be the most annoying of all fictional detectives. When Blackburn talks to himself, he uses such language as:
And when he arrives at the solution, he exclaims to his roommate Inspector Read:
But unlike Philip MacDonald, Afford could find such effusions funny. Read responds, “The voice of the imbecile is heard in my bedroom,” And imbecile or not, Blackburn is a good detective.
Both Death at Broadcasting House and The Dead Are Blind belong with such books as Sayers’ Nine Tailors in which plot is perfectly integrated with setting.
August 4th, 2021 at 7:25 pm
Maybe it is the background in radio, but Afford and Gielgud always seemed to handle the drama aspect of the classical detective novel a bit better than many better puzzlers, a bit like Philip MacDonald who you reference above.
It’s not that the other writers are dull, but there are a handful, perhaps lesser because of it, who don’t fear throwing a bit of the Thriller into a more or less classical detective story.
I’ve read both of these, and for their flaws, they are, as you point out good mysteries perfectly suited to their settings.
August 4th, 2021 at 8:05 pm
I love murder mysteries set in radio studios. So much so that they go to the front of the “to be read/watched†queue, bumping out more “worthy†items. I have found both the movie and radio play of Death at Broadcasting House, both of which will be read, seen by this time tomorrow.
Also I liked the review so much I found out who Doug Greene was. So many of the books on my to be read list (or actually read list) have come from his reprinted reviews. And Wow, a book entitled “Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas G Greeneâ€. I bet there is no purple prose to swim upstream against.
August 4th, 2021 at 8:08 pm
By the way, according to Wikipedia, Val Gielgud was Sir John Gielgud’s older brother. And an important figure with the BBC
August 4th, 2021 at 9:21 pm
That was the question which was on my mind. Fun factoid for sure.
August 5th, 2021 at 10:23 am
For a picture of a blattnerphone and some history behind it, go here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/hnj413KZQx2FKn6nCLnUJA
August 6th, 2021 at 1:53 pm
I seem to remember, once finding on the BBC webpage for radio dramas, next to the re-airings of Paul Temple and Lord Peter, an excellent radio adaptation of Death At Broadcasting House. I believe it was a vintage, pre 1960’s dramatization that used the actual locations mentioned in the novel. The program was not a re-staging. Like has been done with a couple of the missing episodes of the long running Paul Temple series. In the novel, there were different studios set up to provide different types of reverb and echo, which the actors would move between during the presentation. So that characters could sound like they were in a field or in a cellar. Not only a good mystery, but was also a record of how the BBC produced their radio dramas. Which they still do to this day. The Charles Paris mysteries are great.
August 6th, 2021 at 9:46 pm
I haven’t read THE DEAD ARE BLIND, but years ago I had the Crime Club edition of LONDON CALLING, and I remember it being pretty good. But I preferred DEATH CATCHES UP WITH MR. KLUCK, set in a barely fictionalized version of New York’s Radio City. A much-hated sponsor is bumped off and the murder is solved by a know-it-all engineer and a female ad-agency rep. The novel is credited to “Xantippe” but is the work of Edith Meiser, who at various times was story editor for both the SHADOW or SHERLOCK HOLMES radio shows. Her novel also was the basis for one of Universal’s Crime Club movies, DANGER ON THE AIR (1938).