Mon 27 Oct 2014
HUGH DESMOND – Death Walks in Scarlet. Wright & Brown, UK, hardcover, 1948.
Superintendent Alan Fraser, the leading detective in Death Walks in Scarlet is, I suspect, about as unknown a character who appeared in over 40 works of crime fiction as there could possibly be. Nor would even the most ardent reader of detective mysteries recognize the name of the author, who wrote several hundred of them — which is only a rough estimate. I didn’t take the time to count.
In other words, this is my candidate for the most obscure author of the month, although without looking back, I have a feeling there may be some strong contenders. The author’s real name was Kathleen Lindsay, who wrote crime novels under her own name, as Hugh Desmond, Elizabeth Fenton, Nigel MacKenzie and Mary Richmond. In fact one of the Alan Fraser novels was by Nigel MacKenzie. She was so prolific that she has her own Wikipedia page, which begins thusly:
In case you’re wondering, no, I hadn’t heard of her either, before I tried to see if I couldn’t find out more about “Hugh Desmond” and coming up with a whole lot more than I expected.
I might have guessed that the author was a woman, if I hadn’t done the research mentioned above before I finished the book, but I was leaning that way, since the female characters in the story are all strongly depicted and play such key roles in the mystery. The superintendent’s wife, for example, does more in Death Walks in Scarlet than fix her husband’s supper when he comes home late at night after a long, hard day on the job.
Nor is she a mere sounding board for his concerns. It is at her suggestion that they go to a dinner party where they meet an invalid woman who is cared for by a trusted servant female and who has recently taken charge of a niece, who has come to live with them after the death of her father in France.
All strongly depicted characters, but what do they have to do with the gang of burglars who have become the bane of Fraser’s existence, especially once they have added murder to their long list of crimes? Fraser suspects they are former members of British military who, after the war, cannot find non-criminal employment to use their newly obtained talents on, and have thus turned to crime.
The connection between the two parts of the story is a key one, and even though the novel turns into more of a thriller — one including many deaths and more than one kidnapping — than a puzzle to be solved by pure deduction, it is a suspenseful one, with a twist that I almost but didn’t really see coming. I enjoyed this one.
October 27th, 2014 at 10:05 pm
This book is scarce enough that I couldn’t locate an image of the cover online, so I had to make do with my new iPhone 6, the first time I’ve used it on this blog.
As you can see, my copy is rather shabby. If it weren’t, it might be worth a small fortune, As it is, though, in as rough shape as it is, it’s a keeper. Not my usual reading fare, but enjoyable.
October 28th, 2014 at 3:04 pm
There is an army of little know midlist writers like this from the UK virtually unknown here. Some were fairly popular like John Newton Chance, Stephen Francis, and W. Howard Baker and had some American exposure, but only a tiny bit of their output.
For that matter Roderic Jeffries continued his father’s Blackshirt series successfully in the sixties, as Berkley Gray did Norman Conquest, and save for Canadian editions were little known here.
Creasey only began to break the American market with Gideon in the mid fifties and it wasn’t until the mid sixties Toff reprints by Pyramid that his American sales took off.
Quite a few British authors had long successful careers without ever cracking the American market, or only under pseudonyms like some of the early Nick Carter Killmaster books.
Desmond is a more familiar name, but I’m not sure I ever read one.
October 28th, 2014 at 8:18 pm
The only other mention of Desmond/Lindsay’s work I’ve seen was a fairly disparaging review somewhere that accused her of plagiarizing Alistair MacLean, which was kind of disappointing because I’ve been intrigued by Desmond if for no reason other than the sheer quantity of her output. And I do have a fascination with the family of British writers that David mentions – I’d add Mark Cross, Pamela Barrington/Charles Barling, the Radfords (E. and M.A.) to the list, and there are countless others.
I have now ordered the cheapest Desmond book I could find on the strength of this review, and I’m excited to read it! I do think it’s remarkable that Lindsay was able to produce even a single strong novel with the sheer amount of prose she had to produce (I read somewhere when originally researching her that she wrote 5,000 words a day? Ack!).
Ah, I see now that she also plagiarized Georgette Heyer, allegedly. I’m ethically very opposed to plagiarism (I’d hope that goes without saying!) but considering she’s been dead for 40 years and all her books are long out of print, I think I can set my ethics aside enough to approach her work with an open mind.
October 28th, 2014 at 9:04 pm
I wasn’t aware of any reference to Alistair MacLean in regard to Lindsay, but the Wikipedia link I supplied in my review does address Heyer’s accusations, and I’ll quote below. I ignored it, as accusations like this are made fairly often, usually without any merit. I also saw that that Heyer never pursued the case in court. But with similarities to another author’s work brought up, maybe where there’s smoke, there’s fire. I don’t know if we’ll ever know, but I prefer to presume innocent until proven otherwise.
“In 1961, Lindsay was accused of plagiarism by the author Georgette Heyer, after a reader identified similarities between Lindsay’s book Winsome Lass and Heyer’s works. Heyer sent a summary of the similarities to Lindsay’s publisher, Robert Lusty of Hurst & Blackett, prompting Lindsay to reply, “What does it all amount to? About four incidents and two lines.” Lindsay’s dismissive response inspired Heyer to provided a detailed eleven-page analysis of the alleged plagiarisms cross referenced against eight of her own novels to her solicitor, who recommended an injunction. The case never made it to court.” [1]
Reference: Kloester, Jennifer (2012). Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller. London: William Heinemann, ISBN 978-0-434-02071-3, p. 335-6