Tue 24 Nov 2009
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: ANTHONY GILBERT – Death in the Blackout.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
William F. Deeck
ANTHONY GILBERT – Death in the Blackout. Smith & Durell, US, hardcover, 1943. Paperback reprint: Bantam #51, 1946. Previously published in the UK as The Case of the Tea-Cosy’s Aunt: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1942; Collins White Circle, pb, 1944.
It has been twenty years or so since I read an Arthur Crook novel by Anthony Gilbert, and those I had read had been from (I shall use the masculine gender to avoid confusion, though Gilbert was, of course, a female) his later period. The novels were supposed to be amusing, and I seldom found them so. Gilbert apparently did better in his earlier works.
Death in the Blackout is one of the early cases of Arthur Crook, lawyer. Whether Crook is a solicitor or a barrister, should anyone be curious, is information not provided by the author in this novel. Frankly, I don’t recall his ever appearing in court; he seems to be primarily an investigator.
Crook’s flat is in a building with several other occupants who are almost as strange as he is. A woman who sees spies in the most improbable disguises occupies the ground floor and basement, while flat No.3 boasts the presence of T. Kersey, whom Crook immediately begins calling “Tea-Cosy” and who is a bit unsteady when it comes to the nature of time. Flat No.2 is unoccupied.
Tea-Cosy asks Crook to help him check out his flat when he finds his key is missing. Therein he and Crook find a hat of sort that could belong only to Tea-Cosy’s aunt, but the aunt is not there. Later on, a young lady checking out the unoccupied flat in the hope of renting it discovers the aunt’s body.
Tea-Cosy disappears before the body is found. Since Crook has adopted Tea-Cosy as a client, and Crook’s clients are always not guilty even when they are, Crook begins investigating. Even when Tea-Cosy, or someone dressed to look like Tea-Cosy, nearly kills the young lady who comes back to the supposedly unoccupied apartment a second time, Crook knows that Tea-Cozy is innocent.
And, of course, Crook is right. Since there are only a few suspects, the guilty are rather evident, but it is quite interesting, and occasionally amusing, how Crook works it all out from the author’s fair clues.
November 24th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Unfortunately Bill, in his review, failed to explain where the “blackout” came into the story. I’m always on the lookout for mysteries that take place in England while the war was going on. The glimpses I get of life going on during so many hardships I find very informative. It’s also one of the reasons I’m so attracted to FOYLE’S WAR. (We never learned history like this in our textbooks.)
It comes as no surprise that Gilbert’s American publisher changed the title. The idea of a mystery novel built around a tea cosy is just a little too “cosy” for me!
November 24th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
PS. Another mystery novel that has wartime bombing and blackouts at its center is HOMICIDE HOUSE, by David Frome, reviewed here.
November 25th, 2009 at 1:30 am
An excellent pair of mysteries taking place during the blackout are Winston Graham’s Cameo (1988) and Murder in the Blackout by J. Russel Warren (aka The Gas Mask Murder 1939) where much of the detection is done by an RAF officer who has been horribly burned in the war. I think the official sleuth is Inspector M’Guire.
As for Gilbert and Crook I never quite got into them, however I believe he is a solicitor rather than a barrister — somehow I can’t picture him in black robes and wig before a judge. Also a solicitor is more likely to operate as an investigator Rumpole, Patrick Butler, and Anthony Maitland to the contrary.
For any fellow Yanks still confused by the system (myself included) Michael Gilbert, himself a solicitor whose clients included Raymond Chandler, has written several good books set in solicitor’s offices — notably the classic Smallbone Deceased. They don’t explain everything, but help a bit.
Basically a barrister is a trial lawyer while solicitor’s do all the other legal work including bringing clients to barristers for trial. In the British system the barrister is something of a hired gun who may appear for the defense or the prosecution in criminal cases, the state or an individual. The term QC or Queen’s Council, refers to a barrister who has prosecuted a case for the crown (which Rumpole finally does much to his own disgust and the pleasure of She Who Must Be Obeyed).
November 25th, 2009 at 2:42 am
Re the blackout and the Blitz several of Peter Cheyney’s books take place in that milieu, Dark Duet, one of the spy novels, and the Slim Callaghan mystery It Couldn’t Matter Less. John Creasey’s The Toff Goes To Market has the Toff taking time off from wartime intelligence to crack down on the wartime London Black Market when his Aunt Glory and others are poisoned by illegal goods.
One of the Frank King Dormouse books also takes place during the Blitz and blackouts. And one of Christopher Fowler’s recent mysteries involves a crime his elderly Yard men investigated during the blitz. Carter Dickson’s He Wouldn’t Kill Patience revolved around problems related to the Blitz and Murder in the Submarine Zone blackouts on the S.S. Edwardic on a Trans-Atlantic wartime voyage.
Graham Greene’s Ministry of Fear makes use of the blackout and blitz and John Mair uses it a bit in his novel of the ‘phony war’ Never Come Back. I think it plays a small role if the first of Dennis Wheatley’s wartime Gregory Sallust novels The Scarlet Imposter. Ngaio Marsh’s Dyed in the Wool touches on in in wartime New Zealand.
On the American side John Larkin’s film Quiet Please, Murder! takes place in a big city library during a blackout though the Lawrence Blochman story it is based on does not.
Oddly enough the setting doesn’t seem to have been used as often as might be expected. During the war I think most British writers thought their audience wanted to escape from the wartime realities, and perhaps after it was too sensitive a subject for a trivial mystery novel.
November 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
David
Some of those books taking place during the WWII blackouts I knew about, others I didn’t, and I need to add them to my want list. Thanks!
What you say about “escape from the wartime realities” I have a feeling is very true. Someone ought to do a doctoral dissertation on this: that more often than not, mysteries taking place during the war years deliberately avoided talking about the war.
And I’m sure this was more true for British mysteries than ones by American writers, for what I think are obvious reasons.
On another matter, I have been looking at Anthony Gilbert’s career. She was, of course, Lucy Beatrice Malleson, 1899-1973, and she didn’t start writing about Mr. Crook until 1936, with the last one not appearing until a year after her death.
And thanks for trying to straighten out the difference between barristers and solicitors, David. I have this blind spot in that every time someone explains it to me, I understand it, and five minutes later I’ve forgotten again. The last book I read in which this came up was SILKS by Dick Francis, in which the leading character (who is one or the other) has to face a villain who’s determined to use force to get a jury verdict to come out the way he wants.
But I digress. I was rather amazed to discover that Anthony Gilbert began her writing career in 1927, long before Arthur Crook was around. There were 10 books in which a chap named Scott Egerton appeared, two with a fellow named M. Dupuy, and a couple of stand-alones.
Many of these were never published in the US, but some of the early Crook’s weren’t either.
I’m kind of like you, David, in saying that a little Crook goes a long way, but it’s my impression, not having read any lately, that his adventures are usually built with Fair Play in mind.
— Steve
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