Sun 24 May 2015
A 1001 Midnights Review: J. S. FLETCHER – The Middle Temple Murder.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[9] Comments
by Thomas Baird
J. S. FLETCHER – The Middle Temple Murder. Alfred A. Knopf, hardcover, 1922. First published in the UK: Ward Lock, hardcover, 1919. Reprinted many times including: Dover Press, softcover, 1980.
Julian Symons, English author and critic, coined a good name for the multitude of middle-rank mystery writers who lacked literary skill and ingenuity — the Humdrums. J. S. Fletcher stood in the front rank of the prolific English phalanx of Humdrums. He wrote over a hundred books on a variety of subjects, and the majority were detective stories. These melodramas are extremely conventional, with the not-too-brilliant central puzzle dominating the story. They are a comfortable confirmation of decency and lawfulness for the moneyed middle class. Snobbery descends to racial prejudice (with several Chinese villains), and despicable, evil foreigners have dark complexions and comical accents.
Not much scientific detection is involved, and the tenets of the Golden Age are not closely followed. There is too much reliance on coincidence, detectives missing details, failure to follow up clues, and mysterious figures who appear to wrap up the plot at the end.
It is a trifling triumph to select one of Fletcher’s detective stories as his best. From The Amaranth Club (1926) to The Yorkshire Moorland Murder (1930), there is not much to choose from, except for The Middle Temple Murder.
While the plot is fairly pedestrian, many of Fletcher’s defects are absent. It is one of his earliest works, and attracted the first real notice for Fletcher in the United States when it was championed by Woodrow Wilson. The story concerns Frank Spargo, subeditor of the Watchman, who happens to be present when a bludgeoned body is found in the Middle Temple.
The hotshot reporter (he’s as bright as any latter-day Flash Casey) teams up with Ronald Breton, barrister, to follow the clues in this devious mystery. The victim is John Marbury, from Australia, who was struck down on his first night back in London after an absence of many years.
This photo-procedural novel is a case of complicated theft, legacy, parentage, and includes a suspected empty coffin. A major motif (as in many Fletcher tales) is railway travel- checking timetables; confirming alibis; zipping around to discover clues; getaways and pursuits.
Fletcher has been praised for his novels set in the English countryside, but the atmosphere in most of these is overwrought and the descriptions dull. Novels such as The Middle Temple Murder and The Charing Cross Mystery (1923) are vivid because most of the action takes place in the streets, byways, squares, stations, and buildings of London, and is reported in factual detail.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
May 24th, 2015 at 6:48 pm
The only Fletcher I ever finished, though I tried one or two others. Not bad of its kind, and worth a read for students and historians, but most of Fletcher is a bore despite Chinese villains and dastardly foreigners.
May 24th, 2015 at 8:06 pm
I’ve never read a Fletcher novel, although I’ve had plenty of chances, including this one. I think this review summarizes what I’ve always thought his books were like.
But I see lots of his mysteries are available as ebooks or very recently, in paperback. I’ll pass on the Kindle ones, but maybe I’ll try one of the paperbacks, just to see for myself.
May 24th, 2015 at 11:12 pm
I’ve had three shelves of Fletcher in my collection for years, but I have to admit I’ve never read one either. At some period he was considered important enough for me to want to collect him. His last novel was unfinished at the time of his death and a mystery critic completed it for posthumous publication.
I once had six shelves of John Creasey …
May 24th, 2015 at 11:43 pm
Quite a few of Fletcher’s books are available on archive.org and Project Gutenberg as free downloads, including this one.
May 25th, 2015 at 5:18 am
Never read a Fletcher, but having read some of the other so-called ‘humdrum’ writers on Symons list I tend to assume (like Curt Evans)that they represent nothing more than a list of writers that Symons personally disliked. Any attempt to put Gladys Mitchell, R. Austin Freeman and Henry Wade together as part of some sort of literary group deserves a prize for chutzpah if nothing else!
May 25th, 2015 at 9:53 am
J.S. Fletcher is drastically different from Crofts, Connington, Henry Wade, Clifford Witting, E.R. Punshon and other members of the British police procedural school. In fact, Fletcher’s novels don’t resemble Golden Age mysteries much at all. They tend to be more like thrillers. They also have an “old-fahioned” feel.
I was underwhelmed by The Middle Temple Murder and The Charing Cross Mystery when I read them years ago.
But several of Fletcher’s short stories are vivid and entertaining.
May 25th, 2015 at 5:44 pm
Bradstreet,
I agree wholeheartedly about Symons, but Fletcher is not Freeman, Wade, or Mitchell by any stretch. This one isn’t bad, but Fletcher … only for genre historians.
July 29th, 2018 at 9:25 pm
[…] master that hovers over this volume today is why Howard Haycraft placed it on his “Reader’s List of Detective Story […]
May 3rd, 2020 at 11:01 am
[…] Middle Temple Murder has been reviewed, among others, at Mystery File, Golden Age of Detection Wiki, ‘Do You Write Under Your Own Name?’, My Reader’s […]