Thu 17 Jun 2010
A Review by Curt Evans: MILES BURTON – Death Visits Downspring.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
MILES BURTON – Death Visits Downspring. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1941. UK edition published as Up the Garden Path, Collins Crime Club, hardcover, 1941.
It was 1941, the war clearly was here to stay for some time, and Americans evidently were ready to read about it in their English detective fiction. John Dickson Carr had placed Murder in the Submarine Zone (Nine–And Death Makes Ten) the year before, and in 1941 Agatha Christie would ask her readers the tantalizing question N or M? while Margery Allingham would investigate a Traitor’s Purse.
For his part, John Street that year contributed two wartime detective novels with espionage elements, one a “John Rhode,” They Watched by Night (Signal for Death), the other, the title under review here, a Miles Burton. While They Watched by Night is the better of the two tales, Death Visits Downspring makes an entertaining read. (I use the American title to distinguish the book from a 1949 John Rhode novel that in England also used the title Up the Garden Path!)
The novel opens with murder appearing at night on the doorstep of Downspring’s own police sergeant. His wife and a woman friend of hers are discussing the upcoming dance in aid of the Comforts Fund (we learn the “Raggle Taggle Band” has been engaged — apparently a good thing!) when a knock is heard at the door.
Mr. Noakes, the butler at Valley View, the local great house, has come to talk to the police sergeant, but the latter man was called away suddenly. As a disappointed Noakes leaves and the police sergeant’s wife shuts the door behind him, he is violently struck down. Murder!
Inspector Arnold is sent by the Yard to take over the case and, being Arnold, he fails to make much progress for much of the novel. (Arnold actually does manage to solve several solo cases — apparently Street wanted to show that miracles can happen occasionally.)
Meanwhile, there is a second murder — another bludgeoning — and it appears that somewhere in the neighborhood intelligence is being transmitted to the enemy. (German planes periodically drop bombs and engage in aerial fights during the story.)
Miles Burton’s brilliant amateur gentleman detective, Desmond Merrion, is working in intelligence for the duration of the war (as Street himself once did) and he arrives on the scene in the last 40% of the novel to put an end to the espionage and, incidentally, solve the murders too.
Miles Burton’s novels often tend to be fairly cozy affairs, and Death Visits Downspring is no exception to this general rule. As usual, Street writes with authority about village life (“The inspector’s experience had taught him that when a native said it as impossible to lose the way it turned out to be exceptionally difficult to find”), and much of the pleasure to be derived from the novel comes from its authentic atmosphere.
No real gentry appear, despite the fact there is a great house, Valley View, in the vicinity. Valley View, we learn, is modernistic barracks of a place that was built built by a wealthy, knighted pickle king who has passed on to that great cannery in the sky; and it is now occupied by strangers from London, crippled Alvar Dorn, his striking daughter Roma and their three pugnacious Cockney maids.
Similarly, at nearby Brook Bungalow live other relative newcomers, romance novelist Ellen Daintry and her evacuated, rambunctious nephew, Peter. Additional characters like Captain Baldock, tradesman Mr. Fisherton, commercial traveler Charlie Gatwick and market gardener Reuben Pentecost are not exactly out of the top drawer, and they are none the less interesting for that!
In the novel there are two mysteries: who committed the murders and how exactly is information transmitted to the enemy. While neither mystery is fiendishly difficult for the seasoned reader, both should provide sufficient entertainment to the mystery buff. Combining these mysteries with the wartime village atmosphere, John Street gave readers an enjoyable detective novel.
June 17th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I always found Major Street uneven — especially writing as Burton, though as Curt says this is good middle level Street with some of his virtues and few of his flaws. Though I generally preferred Merrion to Dr. Priestly, both had their moments — Merrion’s finest moment in THE SECRET OF HIGH ELDERSHAM.
June 17th, 2010 at 7:41 pm
For some reason, I always found the Burton books more enjoyable than the John Rhode ones. Perhaps that was because I read only the better Burton’s and mostly the later ones by Rhode from the 1950s. The early ones were hard to find, back when I was looking. (They probably still are.)
I like John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson equally well, but a lot of people like A. A. Fair more than Erle Stanley Gardner. I go the other way on that pairing myself, but only slightly. I think it’s Bertha Cool who rubs me the wrong way.
— Steve
June 17th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Some of the early Rhode’s were reprinted in paperback in the eighties and helped to fill in some gaps for me though I never found them too hard to find. Several Miles Burton books are available at Manybooks as free downloads though for some reason listed under their pulp section.
Most of the Merrion books I’ve read are from the general period of this one.
June 17th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
While I have the John Rhode books that Perennial published in the 1980s, Death in Harley Street for one, I can’t remember ever making a special effort to collect books by him, only if they came along while bookhunting locally, which you could back then. Which I’m sure goes a long way in explaining why I have so few of them today.
I collected the Miles Burton’s when I trying to put a complete set of the Doubleday Crime Club books together. Luckily so, since there is right now not a single copy of DOWNSPRING available for sale online.
I checked the Manybooks site and couldn’t find any by either Miles Burton or John Rhode. They must be hidden fairly well.
Searching by author, there’s a jump from Burton, John Hill to Burton, Russell, with no Miles in between.
http://manybooks.net/authors.php?alpha=b
In any case, Curt was able to send me the cover image I added to his review. Otherwise we’d have had to have done without!
June 18th, 2010 at 12:01 am
Sorry, said Manybook and meant Munseys. Available there are:
BEWARE YOUR NEIGHBOR; THE CHINESE PUZZLE; DEATH IN A DUFFLE COAT; DEATH PAINTS A PICTURE; DEATH TAKES A DETOUR; DEATH TAKES THE LIVING; THE DEVILS RECKONING, FOUND DROWNED; HEIR TO LUCIFER; HEIR TO MURDER; LOOK ALIVE; THE MILKCHURCH MURDER; THE SECRET OF HIGH ELDERSHAM
There are several by Herbert Adams there too.
June 18th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Generally speaking, your best Street books, Rhode and Burton (there are a few by Cecil Waye too), are going to be from the late twenties to the mid-forties. Burton is less scientific, more rural, arguably “cozier” than Rhode. My conclusion is Street originally started the Burtons to be a thriller series, but turned them into bright gentleman amateur detective tales in the manner of Sayers (of course Street is a lot more restrained writer than Sayers, which can be a good thing or bad thing depending on what you want in a mystery).
Rhode’s Priestley looks more back to Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke. He was always a better known detective than Burton’s Desmond Merrion, whom he preceded. After 1950, Miles Burton was dropped by American publishers, though all the Rhode’s were published in the U.S. through the last, in 1961.
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