Thu 27 Mar 2014
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: FRANCIS D. GRIERSON – The Smiling Death.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
William F. Deeck
FRANCIS D. GRIERSON – The Smiling Death. Edward J. Clode, US, hardcover, 1927. First published in the UK: Geoffrey Bles, hardcover, 1927.
Several times in this novel Inspector Sims and undercover criminologist Professor Wells note that coincidence is not remarkable. I concur. Thus I am not going to express astonishment because two amateur investigators discover a corpse near the police station Inspector Sims and Professor Wells happen to be visiting.
Or because one of the amateurs falls in love at first sight with a passing horror-stricken face, a face that turns out to belong to the villain’s ward. Or because the other amateur falls in love at first sight with a girl in the street — in, mind you, not of; please pay attention, even if it’s not rewarding — whose father was ruined by the villain and whose restaurant is located in the house previously occupied by the recently discovered dead man.
Or because one of the villain’s henchmen had his life saved during World War I by one of the amateurs. Or because — I could go on, but I guess you’re convinced by now of my tolerance.
Since this is a thriller and the author early on discloses the villain’s identity, I take leave to quote:
This bookseller villain — did some dastard mutter that that’s an oxymoron? — is another Moriarty, without the latter’s vast legions but with the same problem of ineptness and ingratitude on the part of his few minions.
For those of you who, like me, always wondered what booksellers buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell, it has been revealed here in a novel slightly above Edgar Wallace’s average, with more and better humor than Wallace usually provided.
Editorial Comment: I’d have thought that this to be a detective novel so obscure that not a single trace of it would exist, even on the all-knowing Internet. I’d have thought wrong. Check out John Norris’s review of this very same title over on his blog, along with a list of all of the Inspector Sims & Professor Wells novels. (And, yes, John’s blog is the source of the cover image you see here as well.)
March 28th, 2014 at 3:02 am
Are we quite sure this isn’t Harry Stephen Keeler writing under a (as he might have put it) false pseudonymous pen-name?
March 28th, 2014 at 6:05 am
Thanks for the link. Trust mine to be the blog to go to for obscure crime novels reviewed, Steve! Didn’t like this as much as Bill apparently did. Apart from the villain (the best character in the book) it’s very formulaic. Professor Wells didn’t really excite me enough to read any of the others in the series.
March 28th, 2014 at 3:03 pm
I briefly confused this with the fine Brit suspense novelist Edward Grierson from a later period. I do think I read on of these and found it a time waster without the qualities that raised up some of the other Wallace followers like Creasey, Capt. Pollard, Francis Gerard (who continued the Sanders series at Wallace request), Hugh Cleverly, and a few others.
My impression of Grierson’s work was rather staid and unimaginative compared to the other Wallace types, as if he were trying to split the difference between a detective novel and a thriller.