RONALD KNOX – Still Dead. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1934, Pan #223, UK, paperback, 1952. US edition: E. P. Dutton, hardcover, 1934.

   Ronald Arbuthnott Knox typifies many British writers and readers of detective fiction in that period between the World Wars we call the Golden Age of detective fiction.

   Although in her recent short genre survey, Talking About Detective Fiction (2009), mystery doyenne P. D. James has written that it was Dorothy L. Sayers in the middle 1930s who made detective fiction intellectually respectable (with such “manners” crime novels as The Nine Tailors and Gaudy Night), in fact intellectuals were attracted, both as readers and writers, to detective tales at the very beginning of the Golden Age (roughly 1920), because of those tales’ ratiocinative appeal as puzzles.

   For these individuals, the intellectual appeal of detective novels lay in the quality of their puzzles, not in any attempts on the part of their authors to ape the mainstream “straight” novel with compelling portrayals of social manners and/or emotional conflicts. Indeed, too much emphasis on such purely literary elements initially was often seen by common readers and more lofty genre theorists alike as detrimental in detective novels, because such an emphasis distracted readers’ minds from cold analyses of clues in their attempts to solve mystery puzzles.

   One of the major literary standard-bearers for this now obsolescent view of the detective novel was an undoubtedly intellectual mystery fan and mystery writer, Ronald Knox.

   Knox, a son of the Bishop of Manchester and an Eton and Oxford educated classical scholar who converted to Catholicism in 1917 (soon becoming a priest and one of England’s most prominent and articulate Anglo-Catholics), published his first detective novel, The Viaduct Murder in 1925.

   Two more detective novels appeared in the 1920s (The Three Taps, 1927, and The Footsteps at the Lock, 1928), as well as Knox’s famous Detective Fiction Decalogue, wherein he laid down rules for the writing of detective fiction (all of which emphasized the puzzle aspect, or “fair play”).

   On the strength of these accomplishments, Father Knox was invited in 1930 to become a founding member of the Detection Club. Three more detective novels would follow — The Body in the Silo (1933), Still Dead (1934) and Double Cross Purposes (1937) — before Knox gave himself completely over to his religious scholarship.

   Less donnishly facetious than the 1920s tales, The Body in the Silo and Still Dead are commonly considered to be Father Know’s best detective novels, though oddly, they are two of the most difficult to find.

   (AbeBooks lists the following number of copies for each Knox mystery title: Viaduct Murder, 27; Three Taps, 20; Footsteps, 35; Silo, 7 — all in German or French; Still Dead, 17 — though 12 of these are Pan paperback editions ranging from thirty to fifty dollars; Double Cross Purposes, 12.)

   Both novels are worth reading for fans of the pure puzzle sort of detective novel, having rigorously fair play problems that even include numbered footnotes giving the pages where clues were earlier given. My preference goes to Still Dead, for its Scottish setting, over Silo, with its more hackneyed (but perennially popular) country house locale, though admittedly this is a purely literary consideration.

   Still Dead concerns the death of Colin Reiver, the thoroughly undesirable heir to the Dorn estate in Scotland. Colin’s dead body was glimpsed by one of the estate’s employees, but had disappeared by the time he had left for help and returned to the spot with others.

   Two days later, however, the body reappears at the same spot (still dead, hence the title). Colin is pronounced to have died from exposure, but is that really true and, either way, why were morbid shenanigans played with the corpse?

   If Colin was murdered, there is no shortage of suspects. There is another employee, a gardener, whose child was run down by a drunken Colin (the latter was exonerated in court on the strength of false testimony from an Oxford friend). There are several family members, including Colin’s own father, Donald, as well as Colin’s sister, brother-in-law and cousin (truly, nobody liked Colin). There’s a family physician and also a leader of an odd religious sect to which Donald Reiver adheres.

   The police write off the case (all to the good, since Father Knox evidently knew nothing about police procedure), but insurance investigator Miles Bredon (Knox’s series detective in five novels and a single, classic, short story, “Solved by Inspection”) is called in, because the question of when Colin actually died bears directly on a crucial insurance settlement (the dissolute Colin was heavily insured in his father’s favor and the Dorn estate is sadly diminished).

   Still Dead starkly reveals both Father Knox’s strengths and weaknesses as a detective novelist. Positively, the fair play cluing is exemplary and reading the solution is quite enjoyable. Negatively, human interest is minimal and the plot moves very slowly.

   Aside from a gentrified old lady at a hotel, Colin Reiver’s military martinet-ish cousin and a eugenics-professing doctor, none of the characters has a semblance of interest. Even these three aforementioned characters don’t come to life as they might have, given the basic material.

   To be sure, Knox provides a little lightly humorous verbal byplay, courtesy of Miles Bredon’s wife, Angela (she always seems to accompany him on his investigations, despite having a child — or children, Knox is inconsistent on this point — at home). Yet Miles and Angela are no Lord Peter and Harriet, despite having preceded them into print as a mystery genre male-female duo by three years.

   I found Still Dead rather more slow-moving than novels by Freeman Wills Crofts or John Rhode from this period, because Bredon’s investigation is peripatetic. Knox’s fictional works lack the relentless narrative investigative drive we see in mystery tales by those other, “humdrum”, authors, who focus so resolutely on the problem. Nor is Knox’s problem itself, though well-clued, as interesting as the alibi and murder means conundra presented by Crofts and Rhode, respectively.

   In the blurb for Still Dead, Father Knox’s English publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, called Knox “a master of the English language.” Indeed, Knox is a very good writer; yet his strength as a writer is that of an essayist, not a novelist. Scattered throughout Still Dead are some fine scenic descriptions, pithy observations on religion and interesting digressions on the fate of England’s aristocracy, the nature of English gardens, chess, books, caves, hotel, etc., but, while they are interesting in themselves, by themselves they do not sustain the dramatic situation desirable in a crime novel.

   Of course Knox would counter that he was merely trying to provide readers with a good puzzle, and this is a perfectly reasonable point. Admittedly, Still Dead is a good puzzle. Yet the basic material here — a dissolute gentry heir having killed a young child while driving inebriated — is interesting enough to have deserved a more serious treatment.

   Knox’s handling of the material is too much on the dry side, even in the final chapter when the philosophical implications of the problem are discussed by the characters (though this is a good discussion).

   Indeed, just a few years later Nicholas Blake (the pen name of poet Cecil Day-Lewis) took a rather similar plot and injected it with real human pain and suffering, in The Beast Must Die (1938), a tale much better-remembered today than Still Dead.

   Even Agatha Christie, one feels, would have made a more compelling tale of Still Dead. There seems to me to have been an evident reluctance on the part of Father Knox to grapple with deeper emotions in his detective novels. (One sees this quirk as well in the half-dozen mild mystery tales by a Knox contemporary, Anglican minister Victor Whitechurch.)

   Despite these reservations on my part, Still Dead is well worth reading for admirers of classical British mystery. If you can find a hardcover copy (as least this is true of the British edition by Hodder and Stoughton), you also will find a beautiful endpaper drawing of the Dorn estate and a dramatic frontispiece of stark Dorn House, both by Bip Pares, as well as that footnoted clue page guide.

   The Pan paperback editions of Still Dead from 1952 that booksellers want thirty to eighty dollars for lack these graces, so charmingly redolent of the Golden Age detective novel, when many writers in their mystery tales unashamedly emphasized puzzles.

Editorial Comment:   In my review of Knox’s The Three Taps earlier on this blog, I included his list of the “Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction,” also referred to by Curt.

MARY PLUM – State Department Cat. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1945.

   Touch the cat, aptly named Trouble, that wanders the State Department halls, and bad luck ensues. The last Department employee who did so was assigned to Australia and was never heard from again.

   George Stair, about to take his oral exam for the Diplomatic Corps, touches the cat and fails the test. He also has secret papers stolen from him, is hit with the ever popular blunt instrument, and suffers various other unpleasantnesses while dealing with a would-be Latin-American dictator and a Nazi spy.

   An occasionally amusing thriller that will probably appeal only to those interested in the Washington, D.C., area, and maybe not to them. Still, it’s far better than Plum’s mysteries featuring John Smith.

MARY PLUM. 1904?-1991?    Series character: John Smith [JS].

      The Killing of Judge McFarlane (n.) Harper 1930 [JS]
      Dead Man’s Secret (n.) Harper 1931 [JS]

      Murder at the Hunting Club (n.) Harper 1932 [JS]

      Murder at the World’s Fair (n.) Harper 1933 [JS]
      State Department Cat (n.) Doubleday 1945
      Susanna, Don’t You Cry! (n.) Doubleday 1946

      Murder of a Redhaired Man (n.) Arcadia 1952

Note:   The first four books are all also Harper Sealed Mysteries.   Of Dead Man’s Secret, an online list of novels taking place in Illinois says: “Most of the people at Gray Manner’s house party are glad to see Rook Chilvers get what’s coming to him, but no one is willing to admit the murder. As the case develops and evidence implicates first one guest then another, even the cool, logical John Smith, a professional Chicago detective, seems puzzled.”

MAX LONG – The Lava Flow Murders. Series detective: Komako Koa #2. J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1940.

   After an expository overload in which the characters are introduced in quick succession, the first third of the book is spent on detailed descriptions of a volcanic eruption and the attempts of plantation policeman, Komako Koa, and the plantation owner, Tucker, in evacuating the visitors who have recently arrived from a yacht in the harbor.

   They are also told to avoid a heiau (sacred Hawaiian shrine) to Pele. But two members of the party mock nearly everything to do with traditional Hawaiian beliefs and culture. One of those mockers, a brash woman, enters the heiau and is seen arguing with someone who the visitors believe is the embodiment of Hawaiian goddess Pele.

   The woman is almost immediately discovered dead — her head crushed by a coconut. For some reason the mainlanders actually believe that Pele is responsible and there is a lot of silly melodrama with people running around crying out to beware of Pele.

   None of this makes any sense. Koa takes advantage of this and rather than telling everyone that he knows the woman was murdered he lets them indulge themselves in superstitious gullibility. Irresponsible of a policeman and a bit contrived on the part of the author. But without that the rest of the story would not follow.

   Meanwhile, the volcano continues to erupt and encroaching lava flows continue to threaten the characters as well as the ranch house where they are staying. Then another person is hit on the head with a coconut and yet another person disappears.

   Soon it appears that a homicidal maniac is at work and the book takes on the atmosphere of And Then There Were None set in Hawaii with an active volcano as an added menace.

   Koa’s friend and the series narrator, Hastings Hardy, believes that a local Hawaiian has gone mad and is acting as a murderous nemesis for the offended Pele. There is a character called “the firewalker” who fits this bill. But Koa says no Hawaiian would enter a heiau and commit murder let alone do any of the other horrid things that the killer does (for example, a woman is thrown into the steaming, fomenting ocean where the lava flow ends and is basically boiled to death!).

   The book is not very well constructed and — believe it or not — is often dull. It’s a hodgepodge of a disaster adventure comprised of lots of scientific detail about volcanoes, lava flow, the different types of lava and how they behave, the types of rock and ash that accompany violent eruptions, etc. etc.

   The murder mystery is thrown in almost as an afterthought. The book could easily have been much shorter and the narrative handled less clumsily had the author focused on the story rather than focusing on the volcano and the lava.

   The only thing that holds one’s interest is the interspersing of Hawaiian lore and legends. The culprit, once one accepts Koa’s dismissal of anyone Hawaiian, is a bit obvious. The killer’s motive, set up also rather obviously way back in the first chapter when land rights and inheritances are discussed, and the denouement overall are less than satisfying.

LONG, MAX (Freedom). 1890-1971. SC: Komako Koa, in all.
      Murder Between Dark and Dark. Lippincott, 1939.
      The Lava Flow Murders. Lippincott, 1940.
      Death Goes Native. Lippincott, 1941.

J. S. FLETCHER – Todmanhawe Grange.   Thornton Butterworth, UK, hardcover, 1937. US title: The Mill House Murder, Alfred A. Knopf, 1937.

    The final mystery novel by the extremely prolific mainstream and mystery genre novelist J. S. Fletcher, Todmanhawe Grange was published posthumously, two years after the seemingly indefatigable author’s death in 1935 at nearly seventy-two years of age.

    Completed by Edward Powys Mathers, aka Torquemada, the infamous crossword puzzle creator and crime fiction reviewer for the London Observer (who himself died at the age of forty-six four years later), Todmanhawe Grange is, surprisingly enough, given that it came at the end of a long line of over eighty Fletcher mystery novels, the best Fletcher crime tale I have read.

    J. S. Fletcher turned to the mystery and thriller genre in 1901, after enjoying some success as a mainstream novelist, particularly as a regionalist in the manner of Thomas Hardy and Eden Phillpotts. Though Fletcher continued to write mainstream novels (largely about his native Yorkshire), mystery tales increasingly dominated his output, especially after the publication in 1919 of The Middle Temple Murder, the mystery famously praised by President Woodrow Wilson.

    Alfred Knopf, Fletcher’s canny American publisher, never tired of reminding the reading public of this fact; and whether because of this or some other reason (Knopf’s publicity campaign probably was the best by an American publisher prior to Charles Scribners’ promotion of S. S. Van Dine in the second half of the 1920s), Fletcher became known for a time in the United States as the greatest English mystery writer after Arthur Conan Doyle (this view was not shared in England).

    Fletcher, who naturally enjoyed the money this publishing success was bringing in, responded by producing ever more works of mystery fiction, both novels and short story collections. Many of his earlier, pre-Middle Temple Murder mystery novels that had not originally published in the United States were reprinted at this time as well (without informing readers that they were reprints), resulting in the regular publication of four or more Fletcher mystery volumes a year. Not for nothing did critics refer to the “Fletcher Mill.”

    By the 1930s the Fletcher vogue had passed and Fletcher was seen even in America as a passe, unexciting writer. Better detective novelists like S. S. Van Dine, Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, John Rhode, J. J. Connington, and Freeman Wills Crofts had become well-known, and simultaneously Fletcher’s mysteries, never the most inspired in truth, largely had become ever more mechanical and dull.

    After his death, his books quickly fell out of print and today he survives in mystery genre history essentially as a one-work writer, the author of The Middle Temple Murder (praised — did I mention? — by Woodrow Wilson).

    So imagine my surprise when I read Todmanhawe Grange and found that it was quite good, succeeding both as a puzzle and a crime novel of atmosphere and local color.

    Surely some of the credit for the merit of the puzzle must go to Torquemada (Fletcher tended to be a loose mystery plotter, often eschewing the fair play convention of the Golden Age), yet the novel is as well the most atmospheric and engrossing crime tale that Fletcher had written in some years.

In Todmanhawe Grange, we read of the last exploit of Ronald Camberwell, a private inquiry agent introduced by Fletcher late in his writing career, in 1931. Camberwell himself is not particularly interesting, but the setting, a Yorkshire mill town, is very well-conveyed, as are the people residing there.

    The murder centers around the affairs of James Martenroyde, head of wealthy textile manufacturing family. Martenroyde, affianced to a much younger woman, contacts Camberwell’s firm to investigate certain delicate matters. The blustery night of Camberwell’s arrival in the mill town, John Martenroyde is found dead in the mill weir. His death, of course, is not a natural one.

    Two additional murders follow — as well as Fletcher’s much-loved lengthy inquests — and the reader is kept engaged throughout all these events, even the inquests (much of the second inquest was written by Torquemada, who provides excellent material and forensic detail that Fletcher himself tended to scamp in his mysteries).

    The tale takes a rather Gothic twist and ends up bearing some resemblance, interestingly, to something out of the mind of Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine).

    As pointed out earlier, a goodly share of the credit for the success of Todmanhawe Grange must go to Torquemada, yet he wrote, according to his own admission, only the final quarter of the tale (except for the very last line, which followed Fletcher’s last dictates; the rest of the conclusion followed an outline).

    For whatever reason, Fletcher seems to have put some extra effort into the last work, and the effort shows.

DWIGHT V. BABCOCK – A Homicide for Hannah. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1941. Pulp magazine reprint: Two Complete Detective Books, November 1941. Paperback reprints: Avon Murder Mystery Monthly #10, 1943; Avon #68, 1945; Avon #332, 1951.

   Dwight V. Babcock was a prolific contributor to the pulps in the 1930s, and among the best of the writers developed by Joseph T. “Cap” Shaw, Black Mask’s editor from 1926-1936 and the guiding force in the development of the type of fiction he called “hard, brittle … a full employment of the function of dialogue, and authenticity in characterization and action.”

   In 1944, after publishing two of his three mystery novels, Babcock went to work for Universal Studios, for which he scripted numerous films; he also did promotion work for Disney’s The Great Locomotive Chase and worked on other Disney productions.

   The heroine of all three of his novels, Hannah Van Doren, has an angelic appearance that would lend itself to a Disney movie; this innocent facade, however, is at great odds with her connoisseur’s passion for murder and mayhem.

   Not for nothing is she known as “Homicide Hannah, the Gorgeous Ghoul” — even though her interest is purely professional (she writes for True Crime Cases magazine) and her background made that interest inevitable (her father was an L.A. homicide cop).

   In this, Hannah’s first adventure, she teams with Joe Kirby, an out-of-work custom-car salesman, to solve the murder of Steve Wurtzel, a gambling buddy of Joe’s who turns up knifed in his (Kirby’s) apartment on Christmas Day.

   The situation is further complicated by two facts: one, on Christmas Eve Kirby rescued a beaten (and very naked) young woman from an alley and gave her shelter, but she has now disappeared; and two, in her place is Wurtzel’s corpse and a Christmas present left by Kirby’s wealthy girlfriend, Veronica Smith (“Miss Gotrocks” ), whom he is afraid committed the murder.

   When Hannah learns of these events, she reacts as if Joe has given her a Christmas present: a homicide for Hannah. She and Joe chase all over Hollywood and environs, bucking heads with, among others: wisecracking reporters; hard-boiled cops; the idle (and not so idle) rich; a man with a face that looks like a skeleton; frequenters of the track at Santa Anita (where Veronica’s horse, Princess Pat, is running on opening day); and a chemist who works for a firm that manufactures “Protexu,” a patented sanitary toilet seat cover.

   Babcock’s style here is less hard-boiled than in his Black Mask and other pulp work: there is plenty of breezy humor to go along with the fast action, and some delightful glimpses into the mad social whirl of Hollywood just prior to World War II.

   Hannah is a lively and irrepressible character — and as it turns out, a very good detective. A Homicide for Hannah is good fun from start to finish.

   Hannah’s other two adventures are The Gorgeous Ghoul (1941), in which she and Joe set out to collect a fat reward by returning a missing college boy to his family and in so doing run afoul of murder, a crazy inventor with the instincts of a Peeping Tom, and a very unusual matriarch named Sybil; and Hannah Says Foul Play! (1946), in which Hannah and Joe travel to Palm Springs during its annual western-days celebration and become mixed up in the murder of a Hollywood gossip columnist.

   The latter title was published only in digest paperback form, as part of the Avon Murder Mystery Monthly series. Babcock’s only other novel is a collaboration with fellow pulp writer Day Keene — Chautauqua (1960), a mainstream historical with strong suspense elements, published under the joint byline of Day Keene and Dwight Vincent.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

ALICE CAMPBELL – They Hunted a Fox. Scribner, US, hardcover, 1940. Originally published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1940.

   Tom Boldre, owner of Chenrys, an estate in deep financial trouble, has no interest other than horses and, in season, fox hunting. On one hunt, Boldre falls from his horse and suffers a concussion. Two weeks later he falls again and breaks a thigh, which, it seems, causes a heart attack and death.

   When Boldre’s tenant who had helped him on his first fall is shot and killed shortly after Boldre dies, Scotland Yard, in the form of Inspector Headcorn, is called in. Headcorn is a dogged investigator, always seeming to be on the spot when something turns up. He discovers that Boldre died in a most unusual and unnatural way.

   Despite the attempts by all concerned to conceal evidence and mislead Headcorn, putting themselves and others in jeopardy since the murderer is, if I may put it this way, foxy, the killer is unmasked. Above average in plot and writing.

Bibliographic Data:   Alice Campbell, 1887-1976?, was the author of 19 mystery and detective novels between 1928 and 1950. Inspector Headcorn was in five of them:

      Death Framed in Silver. Collins 1937 [Colin Ladbroke also appears]
      They Hunted a Fox. Collins 1940 [Alison Young & Colin Ladbroke also appear]
      No Murder of Mine. Collins 1941
      The Cockroach Sings. Collins 1946
      The Bloodstained Toy. Collins 1948 [Tommy Rostetter also appears]

   I can’t tell you anything more about Campbell’s other series characters. Alison Young and Colin Ladbroke appear together in one book without Headcorn, while Tommy Rostetter is also the star of three solo adventures. The twosome of Geoffrey MacAdam and Catherine West appear in two others, including No Light Came On, 1942, but neither with Headcorn.

   There is very little additional information about Alice Campbell on the Internet. There is a list of her mysteries here, and another short mention of her can be found earlier on this blog in the comments following this post.

R. C. ASHBY – He Arrived at Dusk. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1933. Macmillan, US, hc, 1933.

   Truly a little masterpiece of a book. Reminiscent of Christie at the height of her powers in its brilliant use of misdirection. William Mertoun, an antiquarian, is hired to catalog the estate of a bed-ridden colonel. He is doing this at the behest of the colonel’s nurse and housekeeper, Winifred Goff, a woman who seems terrified of strange poltergeist activities in the house and keeps a close guard on her patient whom she allows no one to see.

   Recently the colonel’s brother fell to his death off a cliff and there is talk that it was no accident. While cataloging the dreary and seemingly worthless library, Mertoun learns from the colonel’s nephew Charles Barr of a local legend. The area is haunted by the ghost of an ancient Roman soldier and the village townspeople are deeply superstitious of it – so much so that no one will set foot on the grounds.

   However, Mertoun soon discovers that a brazen shepherd has dared to ignore all the warnings of the townspeople and has set up a home for his flock amid the ruins of the haunted tower a few yards from the Barr estate.

   Soon the shepherd is discovered dead – an ancient Roman sword sticking in his back and all believe that the ghost has murdered him.

   The supernatural aspects pervade the first third of the book which is narrated by Mertoun who slowly begins to believe in the existence of the ghost – especially after a seance in which something resembling the ghost manifests itself in the manor and later he does see the ghost on the grounds.

   He runs to confront it and that is when he discovers the body of the shepherd. And only a few days later the colonel seems to vanish from his room.

   The second portion of the novel takes the form of a diary written by Miss Goff’s brother, Hamleth, in which we learn of an investigation into the death of the shepherd and the real reason for the disappearance of the colonel.

   Finally the last section is narrated by a Scotland Yard inspector who finally unravels the mystery of the ghost, who killed the shepherd and what happened to the colonel.

   What is so remarkable about He Arrived at Dusk is the use of the narrator Mertoun and his perceptions of everything, and the role of Miss Goff behind the scenes, which is perhaps the best part of the book. Much of what occurs is through her orchestration. That it fails to produce what she had intended is no fault of her own.

   Really a classic of its kind. One of the best blending of supernatural and detective novel genres written in the 1930s. Interestingly, this pre-dates Du Maurier’s Rebecca by several years and yet has quite a bit of similarity in that book’s use of a frightened narrator whose interpretation of events may or may not always be perfect.

   Bibliography:   The author’s crime fiction only. Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.

ASHBY, R(uby) C(onstance Annie).   1899-1966.
      Death on Tiptoe (n.) Hodder 1930.
      Plot Against a Widow (n.) Hodder 1932.
      He Arrived at Dusk (n.) Hodder 1933.
      Out Went the Taper (n.) Hodder 1934.

  As Ruby Ferguson, her married name, she became quite well known as the author of a number of children’s “pony books,” among many other works of fiction. See Wikipedia for more information.

   J. F.’s review of Death on Tiptoe will appear here on this blog soon.

GEORGE MALCOLM-SMITH —

       ● The Trouble with Fidelity. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1957. Paperback reprint: Dell #999, 1959.

       ● The Lady Finger. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1962. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, November 1962.

   The Nutmeg Indemnity Company employs Lenny Painter to apprehend defalcators unfortunately bonded by that insurance company and to retrieve whatever monies they might have left. In The Trouble with Fidelity, this is going to be a bit difficult, since Homer W. Gillespie has made off with over $500,000 from the Fordyce Management Company and has killed himself.

   Nonetheless, Painter begins backtracking, with the aid of Gumbus, the C.P.A. from the district attorney’s office, and O’Brien, an investigator for the D.A., who never thinks, just turns up stones.

   Gillespie turns out to have been a much more interesting man than appeared on the surface. His embezzlement is a work of art, though his method of concealing it is a bit less so. Following down the money, Painter goes to Newark, Buffalo, Detroit, Boston, and Maine, and discovers some surprising information about Gillespie.

   While the ending is implausible, what leads up to it is excellent. Not a great mind, Painter’s, but he’s very good at what he does.

   When in The Lady Finger the Massasoit National Bank & Trust Company of Boston is robbed of $200,000 during a well-planned heist, claims investigator Otis Minton is sent to that city to pursue the investigation in the hope that at least some of the funds that the Nutmeg Indemnity Company has had to payout can be recovered.

   Although usually one or more steps behind the FBI in their pursuit of the bank robbers, Minton does have one advantage — the lady finger of the title. It seems the robbers, for reasons uncertain, had doused her boyfriend, a hairdresser, with peroxide and placed him under the hair dryer, which did him no good at all. She is miffed, and the reward offered by Indemnity is an added attraction.

   Again Malcolm-Smith has produced an amusing and lively novel.

    Bio-Bibliographic Data:

GEORGE MALCOLM-SMITH, GEORGE, 1901-1984. Living in Connecticut in 1950s; editor of an insurance company periodical.    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

      The Square Peg (n.) Doubleday 1952. Reprinted as Mugs, Molls and Dr. Harvey, Graphic #104, pb, 1955.

      The Trouble with Fidelity (n.) Doubleday 1957.
      If a Body Meet a Body (n.) Doubleday 1959.
      The Lady Finger (n.) Doubleday 1962.
      Come Out, Come Out (n.) Doubleday 1965.

   Malcolm-Smith also has a short page on Wikipedia, where it is said that “George Malcolm-Smith was an American novelist and jazz musicologist. A 1925 graduate of Trinity College, he hosted a jazz radio program on WTIC-FM in Hartford, Connecticut for many years.”

ELIZABETH IRONSIDE – The Art of Deception. Felony & Mayhem Press, 1st US edition, softcover, 2009. Originally published in England by Hodder & Stoughton, hardcover, 1998.

   I can’t help but begin with the American publishers’ statement that the books they publish in the “British” category “feature the highly literate, often witty prose that fans of British mystery demand.”

   I hadn’t realized that this was why I read a fairly substantial number of British mysteries, but I will preen my feathers discreetly, trying to pretend that I’m not flattered by the claim.

   To give you some idea of author’s style, here are the opening lines:

   The first-person narrator of this archly comic mystery is Nicholas Ochterlonie, a prim art historian who, suddenly abandoned by his wife, finds himself afloat on a sea of uncertainty. The comforting, safe harbor he thinks he finds in his neighbor, the beautiful and mysterious Julian Bennet, instead turns out to be the beginning of a perilous voyage.

   It’s initially one of discovery, with the often remote yet sometimes passionate Julian alternately exciting and perversely frightening him. The trashing of Julian’s flat by vandals and a street mugging introduce dark notes into the world he marginally shares with her, and her friends, Russians of dubious background, he only tolerates because he hopes they will bring him closer to an understanding of the enigma that she remains to him.

   There’s deception at every level in this artful novel. Nicholas is, of course, undoubtedly deceiving himself as he is deceived by Julian, but prodded by his cousin Prisca at the opening dinner, the novel is his attempt to follow her advice to “come to some kind of understanding of what happened, why it happened, why it happened to you of all people.”

   The reader floats on a surface of contradictions and improbable events, with the novel, in search of explanations, ending with the narrator’s declaration that he will “never tell [Prisca] or anyone” what they want to know.

   And if you are interested in learning more about the the multiple deceptions, I invite you to enter this maze, perhaps at your own peril.

   Bio-Bibliography:

      A Very Private Enterprise (1984)
      The Accomplice (1995)
      Death in the Garden (1995)

      The Art of Deception (1998)
      A Good Death (2000)

   Elizabeth Ironside is/was the pen name of Lady Catherine Manning, wife of Sir David Manning, the British ambassador to the US between 2003 and 2007. Felony & Mayhem Press has recently reprinted all five books, in each case their first US publication.

ELIZABETH FERRARS – Give a Corpse a Bad Name. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1940. Collins Crime Club, UK, hc, 1981. Chivers, UK, large print edn, 2000. No US edition.

    Like Christianna Brand, the prolific, long-lived mystery doyenne Elizabeth Ferrars (1907-1995) slipped into print at the tail end of the Golden Age of British mystery (roughly 1920 to 1940); and, like Brand, upon her appearance in the detection field, she was raved as part of the “literary” school of British women mystery writers following Crime Queen’s Dorothy L. Sayers’ injunction to transmute detective novels into novels of manners with a crime interest.

    Ferrars went so far as to use a Lord Peterish, Campionite series detective in her first five books, one Toby Dyke, who comes complete with a Bunterish, Luggite assistant, one George (no last name — George is wary about giving out personal details). Though Toby is no aristocrat, he is an winning gent; and George seems to have picked up quite a bit of knowledge of crime and criminals at some point in his life.

    I have read three of the later four titles in the series and thought the last, Neck in a Noose, the best, with the other two getting bogged down in messy plots. Give a Corpse a Bad Name, however, struck me as very good, with a particularly ingenious, twisting finish.

    In the English village of Chovey, the charming, youngish widow Anna Milne (formerly of South Africa but now residing at one of Chovey’s most desirable residences, “The Laurels”), reports to the police that she has run down and killed a man. Oddly, the dead man also comes from South Africa and has Anna Milne’s address in his pocket, yet Anna Milne claims not to recognize him.

    Since the man had been drinking heavily before the fatal accident and she herself had not, no legal culpability is attached to Mrs. Milne. But then anonymous letters begin appearing, suggesting that this “accident” was no accident….

    Soon former crime reporter Toby Dyke and his mysterious yet amiable friend George are investigating, with surprising results. And George proves no slouch himself as an “amateur” detective in the end.

    Give a Corpse a Bad Name is an enjoyable book, with sufficient, sometimes strong, characterization, good writing and an interesting puzzle with some coherent cluing. Toby and George remain more nebulous than Peter and Bunter and Campion and Lugg, yet they do have some nice moments, such as George’s lecture to Tony on the merits of barley sugar.

    Definitely worth reading, though the original edition, printed only in Britain by Hodder and Stoughton, is very rare and very expensive. Fortunately it was reprinted in hardcover by Collins in 1981 and also a new press, Langtail, appears to have reprinted it in paperback just this year.

   Some Brief Bio-Bibliographic Bits:

The Toby Dyke mysteries:    [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]

       Give a Corpse a Bad Name (n.) Hodder 1940.
       Remove the Bodies (n.) Hodder 1940. Doubleday, 1941, as Rehearsals for Murder.
       Death in Botanist’s Bay (n.) Hodder 1941. Doubleday, 1941, as Murder of a Suicide.
       Don’t Monkey with Murder (n.) Hodder 1942. Doubleday, 1942, as The Shape of a Stain.

       Your Neck in a Noose (n.) Hodder 1942. Doubleday, 1943, as Neck in a Noose.

Note: Both Elizabeth Ferrars and E. X. Ferrars, her byline in the US, were pen names of Morna Doris Brown, 1907-1995. A long obituary for her by Jack Adrian can be found online.

Editorial Comment: I have found no website for Langtail Press, but there is a list of their forthcoming mysteries, all softcover reprints, on Amazon UK, with almost 50 titles scheduled for release on December 1st. The books are uniformly priced at 12 pounds; other authors include Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Fredric Brown, Gavin Black and John Dickson Carr.