Tue 19 Oct 2021
An Archived Review by Maryell Cleary: JOANNA CANNAN – Death at The Dog.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[9] Comments
JOANNA CANNAN – Death at the Dog. Inspector Guy Northeast #2. Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1940. Reynal & Hitchcock, US, hardcover, 1941. Rue Morgue, US, trade paperback, 1999.
Six weeks after the beginning of World, War II, a rural squire is found dead in his local pub, The Dog. Mathew Scaife was hated by just about everyone who knew him, so the consensus of public opinion was that it was good riddance and too bad.
It couldn’t be put down to natural causes. His son, Edward, and Edward’s wife, are unhappy because the squire won’t come up with the money to modernize the farm on which they live with him; Crescy Hardwick is upset because he has given her notice to vacate the cottage she has fixed up and loved.
His other son gets along neither with him nor with the upper class villagers. Bert Saunders is also being turned out of his home. Two: other local couples are suspects mainly because they were in the lounge bar when he was killed.
Detective-Inspector Guy Northeast, C.I.D., is delegated the tasks of sorting out these and other motives and finding an intelligent murderer who must also have access to nicotine, a car sponge, and a horse. Northeast is himself an interesting character who has had run-ins with the local police force in a previous case, and in this one is fascinated by an older woman.
Carefully drawn characters, good local background, and a skillful murder method give this mystery high marks. I shall look around for others by Cannan.
Bibliographic Update: There was one earlier case for Inspector Northeast, that being They Rang Up the Police (Gollancz, 1939), that perhaps being the one Maryell refers to in this review. As for the author, she wrote a total of thirteen mysteries between 1929 and 1962; of these, five were cases solved by Inspector Ronald Price.
October 19th, 2021 at 7:46 pm
I was taking a break from the British village mystery when this was reprinted. I should probably try to find something by Cannan based on this review.
October 19th, 2021 at 8:05 pm
Maryell certainly made this one sound interesting. Rue Morgue reprinted both this one and They Rang Up the Police. They were sending me review copies for a while. I’m going to check and see if I have either one or maybe even both. Otherwise I think Cannan’s books are going to be awfully pricey.
October 19th, 2021 at 10:05 pm
For considerably more on the life of Joanna Cannan and her detective fiction go here:
https://jiescribano.wordpress.com/2020/03/23/joanna-cannan-1896-1961/
October 20th, 2021 at 8:10 am
I’ve read one of her books, the very good (as I remember it) MURDER INCLUDED (aka POISONOUS RELATIONS and THE TASTE OF MURDER). Her three daughters were also writers, and one, Josephine Pullein-Thompson, wrote several mysteries.
October 20th, 2021 at 8:18 am
Just checked, and Amazon has a “boxed set” of the 5 Insp. Ron Price mysteries (MURDER INCLUDED among them) in a Kindle edition for $8.99. Price is described as “tedious” and “unlikable” and “stupid” by Barzun & Taylor, with smart underlings who do the thinking, so you make the call. They are available individually for $2.99 or $3.99 each, and the two Guy Northeast books (the one reviewed here and THEY RANG UP THE POLICE) are available at $2.99 each.
October 20th, 2021 at 9:52 am
Thanks, Jeff. I almost never look for Kindle editions, but I think I’ll take advantage of the fact that I have one. A Kindle, I mean. For what it’s worth. I found one site that compared Price to Joyce Porter’s Dover, which wasn’t intended to be a recommendation, I don’t think.
October 20th, 2021 at 7:40 pm
Inspector Price isn’t as boorish as Dover, but he is definitely meant to be a buffoon and a figure of fun, a conceit I find kind of tiresome when used for the lead character in a detective novel? I liked Murder Included, but more in spite of Price than because of him, and I haven’t felt terribly compelled to seek out any of the other novels.
October 20th, 2021 at 8:14 pm
I’m with you on that, Kacper. A buffoon as a lead detective might be OK for a one-off, but it would be a hard go for me a second time around.
I’ll game for one on a Kindle, though. If/when I do, you’ll read about it here.
October 21st, 2021 at 7:47 pm
Open Library has this one. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL26332182M/Death_at_The_Dog_an_Inspector_Guy_Northeast_mystery