ROBERT BARNARD – The Case of the Missing Brontë

Dell 11108; paperback reprint, May 1989. Hardcover edition: Scribner’s, 1983. Previous Dell editions: June 1984; 1986. Penguin, paperback, November 1994. First published in the UK: Collins Crime Club, 1983, as The Missing Brontë.

   This was – I have a confession to make – my first reading of a Robert Barnard mystery novel. I don’t know why that should be so. I just never read one before. But at a library sale not too long ago, and I got there late, mind you, and in the mystery section of the paperback tent were, lined up all in a row, about a dozen of his books. I couldn’t resist. I grabbed them all, and this is one of them.

   Not knowing what to expect, it’s difficult to suggest that I was disappointed, because I wasn’t, but it (um) wasn’t exactly what I expected. I had the strong sense that Barnard’s books are filled with an understated British humor, and in that regard I was right. But I also expected more detection (or deduction, to choose the right word, which never hurts) than there is in The Case of the Missing Brontë. There may be detection on the part of Scotland Yard Superintendent Perry Trethowan, but I think that his wife Jan may have done more of the deducing in this book than does Perry, she having taken an interest in the case even though having never read one of the Brontë books before –

   I’ll start at the beginning, which is very, very funny, with the Trethowan family (one son) on a short summer holiday and stopping for a short respite in a small Yorkshire village, in which mother and father meet an old woman in a pub with a story: a find that she had made in some old family papers.

   Could it be the manuscript of a never-published Emily Brontë novel? The Trethowans are quickly convinced, but so are other members of Miss Edith Wing’s family (distant relatives) and assorted thugs and academics – don’t be concerned; it’s easy to tell them apart, most of the time. The academics are simply thuggish in more refined ways.

   When Edith Wing is knocked on the head and the papers stolen, Trethowan has a case on his hands officially, but why Scotland Yard allows such a leisurely investigation to occur on such a minor matter is a (shall we say) a mystery. But we (the reader) are thankful that they do, as the resulting novel is small marvel of small town japery and incisive cultural commentary, British style, through and through.

   A few quotes will suffice to illustrate, perhaps. From page 38. Perry is interrogating the Reverend Amos Macklehose, the aforementioned distant cousin:

Or from page 95, Perry again:

   Barnard, I have neglected to say, has written a large number of mystery novels, most of them, I feel somewhat able to say, very much like this one, or at least I suspect so. Some of them are standalone thrillers, while others have other series characters other than Trethowan, with occasional instances of crossovers by the characters between them. Here are the ones in which the latter appears, thanks to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, the point being that I hope to be reading another one soon. Listed chronologically:

TRETHOWAN, INSP. PERRY
       o Sheer Torture (n.) Collins 1981   [US: Death by Sheer Torture]
       o Death and the Princess (n.) Collins 1982  [US: The Cherry Blossom Corpse]
       o The Missing Brontë (n.) Collins 1983   [US: The Case of the Missing Brontë]
       o Bodies (n.) Collins 1986
       o Death in Purple Prose (n.) Collins 1987   [US: The Cherry Blossom Corpse]

MANNING COLES – No Entry

Carroll & Graf, paperback reprint; 1st pr., November 1985. Hardcover editions: Hodder & Stoughton (UK), 1958; Doubleday (Crime Club), June 1958. Hardcover reprint: Mystery Guild [book club], July 1958. Contained in Five Spy Novels, Howard Haycraft, ed., Doubleday, Oct 1962. Other paperback edition: Ace D-389, no date stated [1959].

   I imagine that if you know anything about Manning Coles the author, you may already know that there never was a Manning Coles. The semi-jovial spy thrillers that appeared under his name were actually written by two friends and neighbors in England, Cyril Henry Coles (1899-1965) and Adelaide Frances Oke Manning (1891-1959), all but a few of them starring the steadfast British agent, Tommy Hambledon.

   Some of this information came from Tom and Enid Schantz’s introduction to the four ghost novels that Manning Coles also wrote (appearing under the byline Francis Gaite in England) and which the Schantzes have reprinted as part of their highly recommended Rue Morgue line of books. But according to Tom and Enid, Cyril Henry Coles wrote the last three Hambledon books after his collaborator died, but Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV lists only the last two as having been written by Coles and without Manning:

      Search for a Sultan [by Cyril Henry Coles & Tom Hammerton]. Hodder, 1961, hc; Doubleday, 1961.
      The House at Pluck’s Gutter [by Cyril Henry Coles & Tom Hammerton]. Hodder, 1963, hc; Pyramid, 1968.

   Question: Was the previous book [Crime in Concrete (Hodder, 1960, hc). U.S. title: Concrete Crime. Doubleday, 1960] written by C. H. Coles alone or with another collaborator?

   No matter how it works out, this places No Entry as either the last or next-to-last in Manning’s tenure, and unfortunately it’s not one of the better one in the series. If you don’t start with the first two, Drink to Yesterday (Doubleday, 1940) and A Toast to Tomorrow (Doubleday, 1941), preferably in that order, then any of the other immediate post-war books will do. In No Entry, however, decidedly a Cold War novel, the two authors seem to have run out of steam.

   It’s not entirely a book not worth your time, but the minute the young naive son of a British diplomat unwittingly crosses the border from West Germany to East, and Hambledon arrives to see what he can do about the situation, you know that he’s going to find a way across the nearly impenetrable border, and make his way back out again.

   None the less, Coles – from now on “Coles” will refer to Coles the pair – has a beautifully laid-back way with dialogue that I can’t describe better than that, but which tickles my fancy every time I read one of their books. Take, for example, the following passage occurring early on, on page 20, after Hambledon finds a body in his hotel room. (Nothing like starting a story with a quick bracer to the spine like this.)

   Here’s another relatively long quote that will tell you some more about the complications that occur in the story as it goes along. From page 66, as the man driving Hambledon around the area next to the border says:

   When Hambledon finally does cross the border, it is in a old automobile constructed of various makes and models, and he adds some gunk to the engine to make it misfire uncontrollably, belching black smoke and threatening almost to explode if one were to look at in a threatening manner. Which is a huge amount of fun to read until you (the reader) realize that there really is no point to such a matter of calling so much attention to oneself, if you are in enemy territory under false pretenses and with high hopes of retreating back across the border with another person with you.

    Does such behavior make you less suspicious? Does it draw attention away from you and more toward the automobile? What sort of agent would behave in such a fashion, he must not be an agent, perhaps? I’m the one supplying the possibilities. Coles does not. The uproar goes on, stops, and with or without it, the story seems to continue as it would have, either way.

   And while things do not go smoothly, naturally, crossing the border back again still seems all too easy. (I am discussing matters of plot importance that I would not generally do, but as it is clear from the beginning, as I pointed out before, that this is what the story is going to be, in essence, and what is going to happen, I do not believe that I am being unwise in doing so.)

   Coles seems to be very familiar with the area in which the story takes place, which adds immensely to the pleasure provided by say, the first two-thirds of the book. The final third is where the letdown occurs, and even so, it doesn’t make this a bad book, only one that’s disappointing in a way that suggests that it might have been better.

PostScript: I’ve never really had a solid picture in my mind of what Tommy Hambledon looks like. If I think of the various “Tommy”s that I know, none of them, I do not believe, resemble Mr. Hambledon. As I was reading, therefore, I made notes of any mention of his physical appearance that Coles provided, and perhaps it was deliberate, but there were not many:

      Page 19. “broad shoulders”
      Page 91. “blue eyes”
      Page 129. “he was not a tall man”
      Page 165. “… slipped like a prowling cat”

   And that’s it. I haven’t tried to look elsewhere, online or in any of the other Manning Coles books I have. I’ll allow you to tell me more, if you can?

EVELYN BERCKMAN – Journey’s End.

Avon, paperback reprint; 1st pr., July 1978. Hardcover edition: Doubleday & Co., 1977; first published in UK as Be All and End All, Hamish Hamilton, 1976.

   From Twelfth Night:

   Or possibly (more likely, given the apostrophe) Othello:

   As for the British title, consider Macbeth, as the leading character is contemplating the killing of Duncan:

   What is also remarkable, in a prescient melancholy sort of way, is that this is Evelyn Berckman’s final novel, written when she was in her late 70s, two or three years before her death in 1978. She did not start writing mystery novels until she was 54 (with The Evil of Time, 1954), but once begun, she averaged a book a year, plus or minus a small fraction.

   Having not read any but this one, I can hardly characterize her work in any definitive fashion, but in paperback, at least, her books were often packaged as Gothic Romances, or if not, as Romantic Suspense, with the usual damsel in some sort of distress on the cover.

   Since her work was always published in hardcover first, I have a strong hunch that her books had more behind them than that, however, and if you were to go by this book alone, with its strong, in-depth characterizations, the hunch is even stronger. In and of itself, Journey’s End is a melancholy book, filled with melancholy people, with a melancholy ending. Generating most of the plot are a husband and wife who are hired as consultants to evaluate the remnants of an old French woman’s estate.

   Their marriage is unhappy, however, and perhaps it has never been consummated. The husband is gay, and before his wife arrives, he finds himself head-over-heels madly in love (and in an affair) with a young lad who had been working for the dead woman. That the young lad is also unscrupulous almost goes without saying. If this suggests that the characters seem difficult to sympathize with, it is not so. They are fussily drawn, but that does not make one feel uncharitable toward them, and – somewhat to my own surprise – quite the opposite.

   In the midst of the old furniture (all valuable) is a library with hundreds of old documents, dating back to the 1600s. This is a work of criminous fiction, but is there a crime involved? It is difficult to say. On page 123, though, I can tell you this: I sat back and said Wow. (Perhaps I should not tell you anything more definitive than this, and I do not believe I will, but there are some hints hidden in this review.)

   Other than this deliberately non-descriptive description, this is a nearly unclassifiable tale, and it’s one that I believe will stick around upside my head for a while.

   Here’s a complete bibliography for Evelyn Berckman’s mystery fiction, as taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin. US editions only, unless the British titles differ, and in chronological order:

      BERCKMAN, EVELYN (Domenica) (1900-1978)

* The Evil of Time (n.) Dodd 1954 [Germany]
* The Beckoning Dream (n.) Dodd 1955. Published as Worse Than Murder: Dell, pb, 1957.
* The Strange Bedfellow (n.) Dodd 1956. Published as Jewel of Death: Pyramid, pb, 1968. [Germany]

* The Blind Villain (n.) Dodd 1957. Published as House of Terror: Dell, pb, 1960. [Philadelphia, PA]
* The Hovering Darkness (n.) Dodd 1957 [Ship]
* No Known Grave (n.) Dodd 1958
* Lament for Four Brides (n.) Dodd 1959 [France]
* Do You Know This Voice? (n.) Dodd 1960
* Blind Girl’s Buff (n.) Dodd 1962 [England]
* A Thing That Happens to You (n.) Dodd 1964. Published as Keys from a Window: Eyre, UK, 1965.
* A Simple Case of Ill-Will (n.) Dodd 1965 [London]
* Stalemate (n.) Doubleday 1966 [England]
* The Heir of Starvelings (n.) Doubleday 1967 [England]
* -A Case in Nullity (n.) Doubleday 1968. Published as A Hidden Malice: Belmont, pb, 1978. [England]
* The Long Arm of the Prince (n.) Hale 1968 [England; 1600s]
* She Asked for It (n.) Doubleday 1969 [Los Angeles, CA]
* The Voice of Air (n.) Doubleday 1970 [France]
* A Finger to Her Lips (n.) Doubleday 1971 [Germany; 1700s]
* The Fourth Man on the Rope (n.) Doubleday 1972 [England]
* The Stake in the Game (n.) Doubleday 1973
* The Victorian Album (n.) Doubleday 1973 [London]
* Wait, Just You Wait (n.) Doubleday 1974. Previously appeared as Wait: H. Hamilton, UK, 1973. [England]
* The Nightmare Chase (n.) Doubleday 1975. Published in the UK as Indecent Exposure: H. Hamilton, 1975 [England]
* The Crown Estate (n.) Doubleday 1976. Published in the UK as The Blessed Plot: H. Hamilton 1976. [England; 1200s and present]
* Journey’s End (n.) Doubleday 1977. Previously appeared as Be All and End All: H. Hamilton, UK, hc, 1976. [France]

JOHN J. LAMB – The Mournful Teddy

Berkley 21112; paperback original. First printing: August 2006.

   Speaking of cozies, as I was just a book or so ago, take one look at the cover and the title of this book and what would you think? I’ll get back to that in a minute.

   This is the second mystery written by John J. Lamb, a retired homicide detective from San Diego County who pulled up stakes and moved back east to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where he now lives and attends teddy bear shows with his wife, among other activities. His first book, Echoes of the Lost Order (Five Star, hardcover, 2005) sounds as though it might be the first of a totally different series, one that takes place in Talmine, a small Virginia Tidewater town, where a murder is solved by the town’s chief of police, Steve MacKinnon, and his wife, Victoria, a former police crime analyst.

   Looking back at that paragraph, I see that I’ve gotten ahead of myself. The Mournful Teddy is already the first in a series, even though it’s the only one that’s been published so far. Coming up in May 2007 is The False-Hearted Teddy, and according to his website, the author is now hard at work on The Crafty Teddy.

   And I’m still ahead of myself, or I’ve swung off sideways, and I really have to get back on track. The protagonists in all three of these “Bear Collector’s Mysteries” are retired San Francisco P. D. homicide inspector Brad Lyon and his wife, Ashleigh, a teddy bear collector (and creator), now living along the Shenandoah River in rural Virginia. One senses a pattern at work here.

   Which is hardly bad news, and the even better news is that The Mournful Teddy became Number One on the Independent Mystery Bookseller Association’s best-seller list for August 2006. Who among mystery readers can resist a work of detective fiction that involves teddy bears? (When beanie babies were hot hobby items, was there a mystery that involved beanie babies? If not, someone missed a good opportunity, as beanie babies hardly have the mass appeal they had at one time, do they?)

   But teddy bears? They never go out of fashion, and I think this series of mysteries that Mr. Lamb has concocted and devised could go on for quite a while. It begins with Lyon finding a body in the Shenandoah outside his home, a male body that the local sheriff and ambulance crew seem to recognize without even turning him over. They also quickly invite Lyon to mind his own business, which of course rankles the retired homicide detective.

   Also worked into the tale, as of course you were wondering, is a valuable teddy bear with connections to the Titanic. Make that extremely valuable.

   After a slow opening, the story gradually picks up speed, and the antagonistic behavior of the local law enforcement officers gives it an even bigger boost. As an investigator, which he has been for a long time, Lyon is a good interviewer, and he is especially good with hostile witnesses. But even with so many facets to the mystery, it is one that is surprisingly easy to solve, with at least one of the bad guys caving in all too easily and not really (as it turns out) perhaps not that bad at all. Some of them certainly are, however – do not get me wrong – and they are not necessarily all guys, either, in case you were trying to read something into my words that I didn’t mean for you to pick up on.

   Overall? Everyone reading this will either (a) read the book or (b) not, no matter what my recommendation might be, so I won’t say anything further, nor do I think I need to.

   But here’s a quote from page 88 that I thought was amusing, and since it’s about mysteries, I thought perhaps you might also:

   Ouch. Nothing like that in this one, but still. Ouch.

ERIC WRIGHT – The Man Who Changed His Name.

Signet 14930; reprint paperback, August 1987. Hardcover: Charles Scribner’s Sons, August 1986. Canadian editions, both published as A Single Death: Hardcover: Collins, 1987; paperback: Totem, 1987.

   [Written shortly after my comments on Eric Wright’s first mystery novel, The Night the Gods Smiled.]  If I’d been able to locate copies of the intervening two Charlie Salter mysteries, neither of which I may not actually have, I’d have read one or the other first before tackling this one, the fourth of the series in chronological order. Not that there seems to have been any need to, but I certainly am annoyed at myself for not having access to the two missing books, as I really don’t believe I purchased them when they first came out. I have no record of them, in any case and for what it’s worth, as my collection is completely catalogued only through 1982 or ’83. Both of the two I know I have at present I picked up used, and not so very long ago. Alas, the folly of one’s younger days.

   For as much as I enjoyed The Night the Gods Smiled, I enjoyed this one even more, starting immediately from page one onward, beginning with Salter’s first wife calling on him for assistance — in his professional capacity — but after 25 years not seeing each other, it also causes something of a shaking-up to Salter’s semi-insecurity in his present marriage.

   Not that the marriage isn’t solid, but Salter is always aware of the differences between his family and Annie’s, especially with Christmas time coming, and both sets of parents coming to visit the Salters at the same time for the first time.

   Gerry, Salter’s ex-wife was a free spirit whose life style was 180 degrees incompatible with that of a newly minted young policeman’s. As an author, Eric Wright is excellent (unsurpassed, in fact) in comparing and contrasting differences the way two people act and (try to) live together. It also comes as no surprise to read on and to discover that this is what the case of murder in The Man Who Changed His Name is about, the one that Gerry calls on Charlie for assistance with: that of a lonely woman whose death Gerry, as a middle-aged feminist, feels the police are not taking seriously enough. Separated from her husband many miles away, Nancy Cowell, a social worker, was new to the dating scene, and the police, with no other leads to go one, feel that one of the men she have met while bar-hopping is responsible.

   After his wife left him, however, her husband, whose family once changed their name to Cowell, is now known again as Kowalczyk, of Ukrainian lineage, and of course, it has to do something with the story, and so does adultery and jealousy and ethnic relations. (See specifically page 158 for a short but pertinent quote concerning the latter.)

   By this far into the series, Salter seems to have found more confidence in himself as an police investigator, and the murder and the trail he follows to solve it is both irresistible and fascinating. Hard-boiled fans may not find too much to get their teeth into, but on the opposite side of the coin, those of you who prefer cozies will find there is far more meat here than you may be accustomed to in your usual diet. What everyone will find, if I’m able to persuade you to pick up a copy, is an abundance of intelligent police work, fashioned and shaped together with a more than an occasional insight into human nature — insight that is brilliant, quietly unerring, and (dare I say) often jarring.

   This is an excellent piece of work, from beginning to end. Highly recommended, as if you hadn’t already gathered that yourself.

ERIC WRIGHT – The Night the Gods Smiled. Signet 13409; paperback reprint, February 1985. Hardcover edition: Charles Scribner’s Sons, September 1983. Canadian hardcover: Collins, 1983. Canadian paperbacks: Totem (two editions), 1984, 1988.

   Sub-titled “Introducing Inspector Charlie Salter,” this is the first of ten mysteries solved by Eric Wright’s most well-known series character between 1983 and 1993. An eleventh (and presumably last) case for Salter, a Toronto police detective, appeared in 2002. After first appearing in hardcover, all eleven of them were later published in paperback. When the series was dropped by Signet, the rest were picked up by Canada’s own Worldwide Mysteries (also known as Harlequin).

   Wright eventually added a second series character in Mel Pickett, a cop who first played a second fiddle to Salter in A Sensitive Case (1990) and then who tackled one on his own in Buried in Stone (Scribner, 1996), followed by Death of a Hired Man in 2001.

   The first of two adventures of Lucy Trimble Brenner also appeared in 1996. Ms. Brenner is a librarian who inherits a Toronto private detective agency and decides to make the big career move. (I have never seen either of the two books, and I think I had better do something about it.)

   In the year 2000 a fourth series character came along, a part-time community college English teacher named Joe Barley, who also works part-time as a private eye. He has two books under his belt so far, the second coming out in 2003. The latter may end up being Eric Wright’s final mystery, as he was born in 1929, making him now 77 years old, and perhaps he is no longer writing. Or he may yet surprise us. Perhaps there is yet another in the works.

   Eric Wright himself was (and more than likely, in this order) professor, chair of the English department, then Dean of Arts at Ryerson Institute of Technology in Toronto, from where he is now retired. And if his first book (and also more than likely) several of his others deal with academia, one should hardly be surprised. I know I am not, and in fact after reading The Night the Gods Smiled, I highly approve.

   The victim, in fact, was a professor of English at a small college in Toronto, but he was found dead in his hotel room while attending an academic conference in Montreal. The dead man’s occupation, however, gives Charlie the opportunity to interview many of his colleagues, none of whom seem to have liked the man very much, some less than others, and in the process, Charlie learns a lot about academic squabbles indeed.

   There was a glass with lipstick on it in the dead man’s room. Had he picked up a streetwalker? He had also bragged of good fortune earlier in the day (hence the title). I should back up. Charlie is on the outs with the current administration of the Toronto police force. He works under the category of General Duties, and homicide is by no means his regular assignment. But the investigating officer in Montreal is French, and the roots of the crime may lie in English-speaking Toronto, hence Charlie is assigned liaison duty.

   In the background is Charlie’s home life. While they are happily married, there is a class and/or cultural divide between Charlie and his wife (and children) and especially his wife’s family, who are considerably wealthier than Charlie, who gets by on a policeman’s pay, but usually no better than that. That Charlie is (platonically) attracted to the free-spirited Molly, one of the dead man’s students (and so was the professor) is part of who he is and who he is learning himself to be. She is a charmer.

   Here’s a short quote taken from a conversation Charlie has with one of the dead man’s colleagues at the Faculty Club, taken from page 59:

   The paragraph is longer, but I’ve changed my mind and decided to cut it off here, omitting the rest of it. The part that I cut has Usher explaining how courses are set up and who gets to teach what course and the like, all of which is necessary for Charlie to feel himself in the dead man’s shoes, and I hope you get the idea well enough from this greatly truncated version.

   The following quote shows Wright’s ability to describe something entirely ordinary and everyday, but when you look at it more closely, is not. From page 113:

   I have a number of other quotes jotted down to provide to you, but I will resist and behave myself. I also see that I wrote myself a note about the mystery and its solution: “somewhat frazzled at the end but OK.” It’s been a while since I’ve read the book — I’ve had to put off writing this review for several weeks, I’m sorry to say — but I skimmed through the ending again, and I was right. It’s the characters that I remember the most about this book — characters who are described as individuals and (even better) who are allowed to think and behave like human beings that we either know or see around us every day.

   The book won a couple of major awards (see below) and if my opinion matters at all, at this late date, I think the author deserved them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY    [With a couple of exceptions, these are the US editions only. Some books may have appeared earlier in a Canadian or British edition.]

         Charlie Salter:

The Night the Gods Smiled. Scribner, hc, September 1983. (John Creasey Memorial Award, Arthur Ellis Award)
      Signet 13409, pb, February 1985.

Smoke Detector. Scribner, hc, December1984.
      Signet 14123, pb, February 1986.

Death in the Old Country. Scribner, hc, August 1985. (Arthur Ellis Award)
      Signet 14450, pb, 1986.
      Signet 14450, 2nd pr., July 1991.

The Man Who Changed His Name. Scribner, hc, August 1986.
      Signet 14930, pb, August 1987.

A Body Surrounded by Water. Scribner, hc, December 1987.
      Signet 16385, pb, September 1989.

A Question of Murder. Scribner, hc, October 1988.
      Worldwide 26039, pb, 1989/90?

A Sensitive Case. Scribner, hc, 1990. [Note: Mel Pickett also appears.]
      Worldwide 26083, pb, Oct 1991.

Final Cut. Scribner, hc, May 1991.
      Worldwide 26107, pb, Oct 1992.

A Fine Italian Hand. Scribner, hc, 1992.
      Worldwide 26143, pb, 1994.

Death by Degrees. Scribner, hc, 1993.
      Worldwide 26169, pb, 1995.

The Last Hand. St. Martin’s, hc, February 2002 [in which Salter, having reaching the mandatory retirement age of 60, does exactly that]
      Worldwide 26569, pb, 2006.

         Mel Pickett:

A Sensitive Case. Scribner, hc, 1990. [Note: A Charlie Salter case in which Pickett also appears.]
      Worldwide 26083, pb, Oct 1991.

Buried in Stone. Scribner, hc, March 1996.
      Scribner, trade pb, January 2001.

Death of a Hired Man. St. Martin’s, hc, March 2001.
      Worldwide 26521, pb, 2005.

         Lucy Trimble Brenner:

Death of a Sunday Writer. Foul Play Press, hc, 1996.

Death on the Rocks. St. Martin’s, hc, June 1999.
      St. Martin’s, trade pb, June 1999.

          Joe Barley:

The Kidnapping of Rosie Dawn. Perseverance Press, hc, 2000. (Barry Award)
      Perseverance Press, trade pb, October 2000.

The Hemingway Caper. Castle Street Mysteries (Canada), trade pb, April 2003. No US publication.

          Collection:

Killing Climate: The Collected Mystery Stories Eric Wright. Crippen & Landru, trade pb, August 2003. Collection of 16 stories, one original. A limited hc edition also appeared.

Lodgings for the Night. Crippen & Landru, August 2003. Separate pamphlet accompanying the limited edition of A Killing Climate: The Collected Mystery Stories by Eric Wright, Crippen & Landru, 2003.

   EDITOR: Criminal Shorts: Mysteries by Canadian Crime Writers, ed. Eric Wright & Howard Engel, Macmillan Canada, hc, 1992.

   SOURCES:

      Allen J. Hubin, Crime Fiction IV.
      William J. Contento, Mystery Short Fiction: 1990-2004.

LESLIE FORD – The Woman in Black

Popular Library K63; reprint paperback, December1963. Hardcover: Charles Scribner’s Sons, May 1947. British hardcover: Collins (Crime Club), 1948. US hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 1948 [3-in-1 edition]. Other US paperback editions: Dell #447, mapback, 1950; Popular Library 60-2443, circa 1969. Magazine appearance: The Saturday Evening Post, a seven-part weekly serial from January 18 through March 1, 1947.

   As far as I can recall, this is the first mystery by Leslie Ford that I can recall reading. In doing so, it was with a small amount of bias, shall we say, when I started, having been given negative impressions about her work from others who have read her recently. This negativity was said to lie in Ms. Ford’s attitudes toward racial minorities, but perhaps by 1947, when The Woman in Black was published, this lack of sensitivity had begun to disappear from her work.

   Mrs. Grace Latham’s housekeeper Lilac is apparently black, but it is not so stated. The only way you will realize it is from her speech patterns. Here’s a sample, taken from page 19, the first time we meet her in the story. She’s helping to hide a young married woman who has come to Mrs. Latham for some advice:

   By itself I think this is not only fairly innocuous but a pretty good example of a way with words. What the reader gets in these two lines, with no further description, a pretty good picture in his or her mind of who Lilac is and what she may even look like. Is it harmful? Is it demeaning? I’m predisposed to say no, but if you were to press me, I don’t think that it would be too difficult to convince me that any negative stereotyping, wherever or however it occurs, is ever entirely wholesome.

   In any case, however, any racial attitudes that are displayed in the author’s earlier books, even done unconsciously, do not manifest themselves in this one to any degree more visibly than this. Not that I’m saying that the case is closed, but I also think that the backgrounds and settings of mystery novels, taken as a snapshot in time, do more to illustrate the attitudes and opinions of everyday people — for better or worse — than any number of history textbooks I ever studied from when I was in school.

   Grace Latham, who appeared in many of Ms. Ford’s books, is a widow and apparently a Washington socialite of some stature and renown. She has also made her mark as a sleuth of some distinction, even if only peripherally, as in this one, since the bulk of the real detective work is done by Colonel Primrose’s stalwart assistant, Sergeant Buck, and Captain Lamb of the Washington police department, who also appeared in many of Mrs. Latham’s adventures, but not all.

   After retiring from the military, John Primrose and Phineas T. Buck operated in tandem what Grace calls on page 13 a “subterranean private investigation business,” their clients very often being various governmental agencies. Primrose himself does not make an official appearance in this book. He’s quarantined with the measles throughout its duration. Behind the scene, however, he’s actively behind the investigation into the murder that occurs in this case, making numerous suggestions and keeping Grace out of trouble, or trying to.

   Dead is a woman who may have been blackmailing a wealthy industrialist who may have his eye on the White House, the blackmailer therefore being in two ways the lady in the title of the book. One of the various people surrounding the would-be presidential candidate, all of whom were at the same cocktail party, is very likely to have been the killer. Most of them are known to Grace, if not close friends, which many of them are, which makes solving the murder all the more difficult for her.

   Leslie Ford’s prose is sometimes not easy to read, and sometimes the time and location of where her characters are at any one time seem to be taken too much for granted. The difficulty in reading is also due to a “fretful” way of talking that sometimes seems to bunch itself up too much, making it slow going at times to work one’s way through.

   I think the following paragraph, the one quoted at some length below, may go a long way in illustrating this. Grace is with Sergeant Buck, who is trying to reassure her that Susan Kent (the woman being comforted in the quote up above) is not the killer. Grace, by the way, tells the story herself — all but a short Chapter One, which acts like a prologue, which I generally dislike, and once again, yes, I generally dislike it here as well. But to return to page 96, which I was leading up to, before that last digression:

   Don’t get me wrong, though. Leslie Ford seems to have had an excellent insight into people, why they react the way they do; and into marriages that work, and those that don’t. The mystery element — the whodunit part — is also done in a highly acceptable fashion, all wrapped up in a package that in the end is worth unwrapping. To be completely honest, though, for those willing to stop reading a book that seems unsatisfactory before finishing it, there may easily be doubts along the way.

CHARLES J. DUTTON – The Clutching Hand

A. L. Burt; hardcover reprint, no date stated [1929]. First Edition: Dodd Mead & Co., 1928.

   It does no harm, I don’t imagine, to begin with a list of Dutton’s mystery novels. Taken from Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, the one that follows is in chronological order, and does not include British editions.

   Dutton did other writing as well as mysteries, including a biography of Oliver Hazard Perry in 1935, a book that’s apparently still in print, and a book entitled The Samaritans of Molokai: The Lives of Father Damien and Brother Dutton Among the Lepers. (Joseph Dutton worked as a Catholic lay missionary at Kalaupapa, Molokai Island, Hawaii. He arrived on Molokai in 1886, working with Father Damien until Damien’s death in 1889, and remaining on the island until the time of his own death in 1931.)

    Of Harley Manners, I know nothing. Of John Bartley, The Clutching Hand represents the final of nine appearances, and in all honesty, it is not an impressive outing. His companion on this case, a man named Pelt, says of him, taken from pages 2-3:

   This, however, is primary a case (no pun intended) of tell but not show. Here’s another excerpt, this one from page 122, after the case of the clutching hand has begun in earnest. Bartley is talking:

   The murder had occurred — to back up just a little — on a dreary, rain-drenched outpost of an island in Long Island Sound. Van Dike was a famed criminal lawyer with many enemies. After Bartley and Pelt had found the body along in a car, and with Pelt waiting alone for Bartley to return with the authorities, the death apparently (at first) a suicide, Pelt spies a hand reaching into the window to clutch at the dead man’s coat. He gives chase, but loses whoever it was in the mist along the shore.

   It was “a lonely place on a dark rainy night.” The very words are found on page 105.

   It’s hard to say too much about Bartley’s abilities as a detective. He does have the answers at the end of the book, but he does not confide much in Pelt, a man who — and I do hate to say this — is as dumb as a stump. He takes in each day, or so it seems, with the countenance of a new-born babe.

   Clues are not so much found (see the quote above) as, well, here’s an example. On page 123, all seems lost, as far as the investigation is concerned. “So far we knew nothing,” Pelt tells us, the reader, “not the slightest thing of value. And I wondered if we would ever know anything.”

   The chief of police, in attendance at this meeting of minds, pauses and pondering this, says, “I found out one thing which seems odd.” As if it happened to casually occur to him at that very moment, and of course it is exactly what is needed to generate another burst of major barnstorming on the case. Everything seems to happen in slow motion, including a trip by Pelt to a nearby island to visit a gambler’s den there, a trip long in detail, but not much is made of it later on.

   There is a woman named Lura who is involved, and so are some letters. Could it be the same Lura, a woman who also lives on the island? Pelt is greatly puzzled over the possibility that the two could be one and the same. You would think that Lura were as common a woman’s name as Lorraine or Linda.

   The case concludes with a confrontation with the killer, with Bartley outlining the case against him in hypothetical fashion. It is a solid case, an iron-clad one, but Pelt is amazed, absolutely stunned when he/she in fact really turns out to be the killer. From page 287, Pelt says to the reader:

   Or perhaps this was meant to be the double-switcheroo of an ending, but no, not so. Bartley was no Ellery Queen, and Pelt is no Watson.

INIGO JONES – The Albatross Murders

The Mystery Novel of the Month #33; digest-sized paperback reprint, 1941. Hardcover First Edition: Mystery House, 1941.

    Beginning with what’s known so far about the author, here’s a quote from Bill Deeck’s long-awaited reference book on lending library mystery publishers, Murder at 3 Cents a Day (Battered Silicon Dispatch Box):

   Some detective work is therefore in order. The actual title of the book appears to be 50 Best American Short Stories 1915-1939, and one can find a complete list of the contents on the Internet, including all fifty authors.

   This narrows it down, but not enough, unless authors like Erskine Caldwell, J. P. Marquand, and Dorothy Parker can be eliminated, and they probably can. But there are enough unfamiliar names there (Robert Whitehand, I. V. Morris, Lovell Thompson and a host of similar others) that at the moment, I cannot tell you that I have proceeded any further than this.

    While I am presuming that the first name Inigo denotes someone of the masculine gender (about which see below), it cannot obviously be presumed that the person behind the pseudonym is equally masculine.

    If by chance it is a clue to you (but not to me) that there are two Inigo Jones’s listed online at the wikipedia website, let me know. The first is considered the first significant English architect (1573-1652), while the second is a descendant of the first, one Inigo Owen Jones (1872-1954), who is noted as having been a well-known meteorologist and long-range weather forecaster.

    More clues may arise from the settings of Inigo Jones, the detective story author. The Albatross Murders takes place in Shrewsbury, a small New England town, the mystery centering around the troupe of actors plying their trade in a two-months-long summer theatre. (No state is named; only New England. While no actual state name is mentioned, it had the distinct feel of Connecticut or western Massachusetts to me.) Doing the investigatory honors is Inspector Sebastian Booth.

    Jones’s earlier book, The Clue of the Hungry Corpse (Arcadia House, hc, 1939; Mystery Novel of the Month #11, digest pb, 1940), takes place in New York City, and the detectives of record in that book were Lieutenant Blanding and Headquarters Detective Barry Linden, thanks again to Bill Deeck’s book. Which I admit doesn’t give us a lot more to go on, except to suggest that the author was familiar with both small town and big city American life, New England and New York City style. (I’d have eliminated Erskine Caldwell on this basis, if I hadn’t already.)

    So who Inigo Jones was is a mystery as yet unsolved. There’s also, I go on to say, at last, an equally interesting case to be solved in The Albatross Murders as well – that of an actor being shot to death on stage with a gun loaded only with blanks, and in full sight of 500 people. More? It is later discovered that the bullet is not in the body, nor is there an exit wound.

   There is a lot of back stage rivalry between the players – hardly unexpected, as such rivalries always seem to exist in such affairs – and in terms of both quantity and quality, there is certainly more than enough, and they are substantial enough, to keep the story going purely on the behind-the-scenes business alone. But adding some additional momentum to the tale, the local townspeople have their own secrets as well, and the events that occur after uncovering them turn especially nasty very quickly. The double combo gives Inspector Booth about as much as he can handle, or wants to.

   There was a certain amount of crudity, I thought, in the detective’s initial approach. Chapter IV is twelve pages long and consists of nothing more (or less) than a re-creation of the murder, with all of the players in their places, and the body of the victim still lying uncovered on the floor.

    But (and again, if this is a clue to the person behind the pen name, let me know) the author knows his way around backstage, and his detective character is no mean slouch at reasoning things through. Let me quote one paragraph from page 43, to allow you to see, I believe, for yourself:

    Yes, yes, I know. Some of you are yawning already, and so was I for a while, but by page 108 the dialogue between the characters had become almost lyrical, the repartee flowing both easily and wittily, with Booth always firmly centered at the focal point. The method of the murder is clever enough, although highly unlikely, and with no perhaps about it. But one could say that of the Queen effort commented on a short while ago, couldn’t one?

    Other than that, there’s really no comparison. In the final analysis, Jones’s effort comes up far short in comparison with that previously reviewed and totally superb, multi-faceted Queenian extravaganza. But even though The Albatross Murders is a minor league effort, it definitely has its pluses as well as minuses, making totally valid the final note I wrote myself – I always write comments to myself while reading – for this is what I said, somewhat in surprise, I have to admit, after the book and I got off to such a rough start together: “Not bad after all.”

   And please take that statement for all that it’s worth. You can take it to the bank, deposit it, and count on it.

J. A. S. McCOMBIE – Mandate for Murder

Manor 15349; paperback original, 1978.

   I’m a sucker for books by obscure, one-shot mystery writers, and here’s one that qualifies on both counts. The copy of this book that I purchased off ABE was the only one that was available for sale at the time, and at the moment, a couple of months later, there haven’t been any others that have turned up for sale. Nor I can find a record of any other books written by Mr. McCombie, mystery fiction or not.

   Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV supplies some information: The initials stand for John Alexander Somerville, and he was born in 1925, but that’s it. A search on Google suggested that McCombie was involved with the movie business, however, and so it was off to the Internet Movie Data Base.

   Pay dirt. Sometimes known as J. A. S. McCrombie, he was the screenwriter or wrote the story for:

   Coincidentally, or not, all three films were directed by Virginia L. Stone, who was also the co-producer, along with McCombie. (On the other hand, Virginia Stone was married to long-time director Andrew L. Stone, about whom more might be said at some later date.)

   In any case, I should have known that McCombie was involved with the movies or television, just from reading the book he wrote. Not that I’ve ever watched the current television smash hit 24, but I thought to myself, and more than once, that the person who came up with some of the hard action twists in Mandate for Murder really ought to be writing for more money than Manor Books ever paid him.

   The book’s set mostly in Hong Kong and the area surrounding. When a wealthy sophisticated terrorist kidnaps the consular general, the nephew of the US Secretary of State and the husband of a Senator’s daughter (and the goddaughter of the President), what he hopes to gain is the leverage to free a cohort from a northern California prison.

   Which may be all you need to know. There is torture, there are multiple deaths, some of them occurring surprisingly early, and there is a lot of local color. The writing, although sometimes very sloppy, is vivid and cinematic (not surprisingly) and moderately compelling. The author also seems to know airplanes and other flying craft, of which there are several that are flown and/or blown up during the course of this book. (No animals were harmed, however, as I recall.)

   Unfortunately, which I believe is the correct word, the big surprise that McCombie has in store for the reader is one which I had anticipated long before. When the smaller twists start accumulating too quickly, one of the side effects that can happen is that the reader starts thinking too much about the larger picture and what the author may have up his (or her) sleeve.

   Or in other words, from a structural point of view, unless the author is adroit and nimble-fingered enough at the keyboard, too many twists can be counter-effective, since it can easily leave the big, would-be jolt naked and exposed and not so terribly difficult to smoke out in advance.

   And so it is in this case.

[UPDATE] 06-03-07. There are now four copies listed on ABE, in case you might be interested, and I did watch the final four weeks of 24 in last season’s series.