Fri 9 Sep 2011
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: C. ST. JOHN SPRIGG – Death of an Airman.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Crime Fiction IV , Reviews[4] Comments
William F. Deeck
C. ST. JOHN SPRIGG – Death of an Airman. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1935. First published in the UK: Hutchinson, hardcover, 1934.
Fortunate it is for the minions of the law that Edwin Marriott, Bishop of Cootamundra, Australia, is in England on leave and wants to learn how to fly. For it is he who spots an anomaly when the flight school’s principal instructor expires after his plane crash: rigor mortis never sets in.
A delayed post-mortem uncovers a bullet wound in the dead man’s head. It can’t be suicide. It also cannot be murder since the pilot was flying alone and no other plane was seen in the area.
Scotland Yard Inspector Bernard Bray, one of Sprigg’s continuing characters, is called in to assist in the investigation. Even he can’t puzzle out the absence of rigor in the corpse, though he does get on the trail of drug smugglers and peddlers (yes, young people, like sex, this was not something invented in your generation).
With the help of the Bishop, Bray and the locals break up the drug ring and finally figure out how the deceased pilot met his fate in an entertaining novel that provides some interesting information about the early days of flying.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: [Taken from the Revised Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin.]
SPRIGG, C(hristopher) ST. JOHN. 1907-1937.
Crime in Kensington (n.) Eldon 1933 [Insp. Bernard Bray; Charles Venables] US title: Pass the Body. Dial, 1933.
Fatality in Fleet Street (n.) Eldon 1933 [Charles Venables] No US edition.
Death of an Airman (n.) Hutchinson 1934 [Insp. Bernard Bray]
The Perfect Alibi (n.) Eldon 1934 [Charles Venables; Insp. Bernard Bray]
The Corpse with the Sunburnt Face (n.) Nelson 1935. US title: The Corpse with the Sunburned Face. Doubleday, 1935.
Death of a Queen (n.) Nelson 1935 [Charles Venables] No US edition.
The Six Queer Things (n.) Jenkins 1937.
Editorial Comments: There is a longer biography of Sprigg on the Golden Age of Detection Wiki, along with a photo.
A challenge I might present to you I’m sure I would win is to have you collect all of the books above, or try to. I do not believe you could do it. If you have a collection already, you must have put it together some 40 years ago or more. At one time the US editions of his books were relatively common, but no more, especially in jacket. (The one shown above came from a Sun Dial reprint.)
As to this particular book, I’ve had a copy since forever, but I’ve never read it. I do wish that Bill Deeck had commented on how clever the “impossible crime” aspect was. At the moment, all it is is a tease.
September 10th, 2011 at 8:38 am
I like his books. I wrote a little tribute to Sprigg on my blog last month. I have all but two of his books. But they are a mix of reprints, paperbacks and only two US firsts. None of the 1st editions have DJs. My copy of DEATH OF AN AIRMAN is also a Sun Dial Reprint in DJ. The only DJ of a Sprigg book I own.
Curt Evans may have all of these books. If Curt reads this post he will once again remind us of Sprigg’s Marxist leanings which he says color the content of his later books.
I tend to overlook things like this and all I can say is that I’m sorry Sprigg was killed in action during WW2 for it robbed us of a writer who could rivaled Carr in the impossible crime subgenre.
I wish I could find a copy of two of his rarest books DEATH OF A QUEEN and FATALITY IN FLEET STREET. Never seen a copy of either. Ever. Are there any out there? if one ever turns up it’s sure to priced exorbitantly. I’m crossing my fingers that the day I return to the UK for my book buying extravaganza I will find all the rare books in some tiny little used bookshop for less than a pound. I can dream, can’t I?
September 10th, 2011 at 9:39 am
Thanks for the link to your blog, John. I don’t know how I missed reading it earlier, but there’s more here about Sprigg’s books than I ever knew before.
I especially liked this short quote:
“Sprigg’s work is entertaining and unusual. It stands out from the majority of the work in a period of the Golden Age known for formulaic stories and cardboard characters. I’d class him alongside Christianna Brand for he shares her talent for wit, an arch prose style and clever plots.”
September 10th, 2011 at 11:19 am
“I’m sorry Sprigg was killed in action during WW2 ”
Not WWII, but the Spanish Civil War, actually.
September 10th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Only Sprigg’s last book was strongly colored by his Marxism. More than leanings. by the way–he is seen as one of the major English Marxist theoreticians. He made the Coles look like marshmellows. I’ve read some of the works and they are utterly stultifying. It’s hard to attribute them to the man who wrote the earlier mysteries, which are quite humorous.
Marxist though he was, Sprigg was thrilled to get a good review from Dorothy L. Sayers for his “The Perfect Alibi” and wrote her a thank you letter. On other occasions he referred to his detective literature as trash written just to make money. He had a talent for it, but I’m not sure he took the talent seriously enough to become a great figure on the genre.
I also think his incredibly stiff, doctrinaire Marxism would have foreclosed future detective novels, but that’s conjectural on my part, since he was killed fighting for the cause in Spain (which his hero Stalin betrayed). Maybe he would have wised up, like George Orwell and Julian Symons and Andrew Garve did, but he was much, much, much more deeply entrenched in Marxism in the first place.