JAMES WARREN – The Disappearing Corpse. Ives Washburn, US, hardcover, 1958. Original published in the UK as The Runaway Corpse, hc, Collins Crime Club, 1957.

   James Warren is a late representative of the Golden Age puzzle plot story. His first mystery novel She Fell Among Actors (1944) was praised by Anthony Boucher.

   The Disappearing Corpse is a comic detective novel. The comedy is fairly gentle, poking fun at a bunch of eccentric characters in a tiny English town near Dartmoor.

   The book is consistently funny. The outrageously dated Victorian house is a good subject of satire. The bad weather is also a subject of much vivid comic and atmospheric writing.

   Most of the characters have actually moved into the district from London. While Warren makes them a target for humor, as well as the local roads and weather, he is careful not to ridicule the locals or Dartmoor culture. The book is lacking in malice, or anything that smacks of prejudice.

   The main murder problem in The Disappearing Corpse has an ingenious solution. So does the subplot about the antiques the hero is brought in to investigate. Both mystery puzzles have antecedents in Agatha Christie: not exact re-uses of plot ideas, one hastens to add, but plots in broadly similar kinds of traditions. (SPOILER: The antiques subplot recalls such Christie tales as the Mr. Quin “At the Bells and Motley” (1925) and the Miss Marple “Ingots of Gold” (1928). END OF SPOILER.)

   But there are also some plot problems:

   The disappearing corpse of the title is given the flimsiest of motives for its kidnapping. We are also asked to follow the wanderings of the corpse and its heisters in detail — but none of this ever amounts to a plot of much substance. They just seem like random, if funny, wanderings.

   Strange, hard to explain footprints show up early. But they are never mentioned again, let alone given any sort of explanation. When we first encounter the prints, it looks as if the book is going to be some kind of Impossible Crime novel. But it is not.

   The subplot of the bundle of clothes never makes too much sense.

   The description of a rural gasoline/petrol pump is unexpectedly interesting (Chapter Three). It is the kind of social or technological detail that sometimes turns up in mysteries.

   A year after its British publication, The Disappearing Corpse was brought out in the United States. There is a comment on the back of the book jacket from the Denver Post, describing its US publisher: “Ives Washburn has recently launched the Chanticleer series of mystery novels, at the rate of one a month. The covers are sturdy and attractively designed; the print is large and legible. The novels remind one of Christie or Queen. Intelligence, individuality of style and plotting.”

Editorial Comment:   Some information about the author, James Warren, and who the man was behind the pen name can be found here on the main Mystery*File website.