Tue 16 Feb 2016
Archived Mystery Review: CHRISTOPHER BUSH – The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[4] Comments
CHRISTOPHER BUSH – The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel. Macmillan, US, hardcover, 1953. No US paperback edition. First published in the UK: Macdonald, hardcover, 1952.
On page 176 is a challenge to the reader that can’t be ignored, and I quote: “Too hard for you? Well, maybe it is, but it;ll do you no harm to try to think it out.” So in spite of some tough alibis and some quite unbelievable behavior on the part of Ludovic Travers’ client, no, it wasn’t too hard at all.
Usually I’m the lazy kind of reader who is entente to sit back and let the author do all of the tedious work with timetables, fingerprints and such, but as I say, that’s the kind of challenge that can’t be turned down. In fact even though some of the details were off, in smoe ways I like my version better.
The affair concerns a hunt for a missing wartime hero; a blackmailer posing s a retired army officer; and the secret connecting them. Travers has an unusual working arrangement with Scotland Yard, having his own detective agency, but on a consultant basis he’s able to call freely upon the services and assistance of Yard personnel.
This is purely a puzzle story, although there’s nothing wrong with that. The characters do suffer the humility of cavorting around with their strings showing, however, and the timetables and alibi-taking in a word is best described as sloppy.
Rating: C.
Bibliographic Notes: Between 1926 and 1968 Christopher Bush wrote an amazing 63 detective novels under his own name, all with Ludovic Travers as the lead detective. Also listed in Hubin are one novel as by Noel Barclay and another 13 as by Michael Home, some indicated as only marginally criminous.
February 16th, 2016 at 11:59 pm
I’ve managed to accumulate some 10 or 12 of Bush’s mystery output over the years, but I don’t remember reading more than one other one. As for the details of that one, they’re long gone, just as anything more about COUNTERFEIT COLONEL than you’ve just read above. Other than I remember reading it, you now know as much about it as I do.
February 17th, 2016 at 5:58 am
Just added a link to this review, to my article on Bush:
http://mikegrost.com/coles.htm#Bush
So far, Bush’s 1950’s tales seem like an artistic low point in his output. He was more inventive in other eras.
Other reviewers made the same point that Steve does, when he says this “is purely a puzzle story”. Anthony Boucher: “as usual he presents the simon-pure jigsaw-puzzle detective story”.
February 17th, 2016 at 9:11 am
Following the link to your website, Mike, I was reminded that Bill Deeck has reviewed Bush three times on my own blog:
DEAD MAN’S MUSIC (1931) here.
THE KITCHEN CAKE MURDER (1934) here.
and THE CASE OF THE PLATINUM BLONDE (1944) here.
February 17th, 2016 at 3:23 pm
I could never really warm to Travers and Bush, and never say why. It may be as simple as I had to make a bit of effort to find one to read the first time around and it seemed a disappointment after the effort put it.
The series always felt as if it were being churned out by something like a rote method, a bit of this, a bit of that, a puzzle of middling complexity, and a solution that somehow never seemed as brilliant as Bush must have intended it to be.
Comfortable and unchallenging always seemed to be how I felt about Travers and Bush, and may well have been the intention of the author and his publisher. Mundane is a word that always seems to arise when I think of Bush and Travers.