Tue 20 Oct 2015
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: CHARLES BARRY – The Mouls House Mystery.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
William F. Deeck
CHARLES BARRY – The Mouls House Mystery. Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1926. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1927. McKinlay, Stone and Mackenzie, US, hardcover, as part of its “Scotland Yard Mystery Library,†no date.
Superintendent Liddell, of the Cornwall County Police, is on holiday. Kept awake late at night by toothache, he observes through his field glasses an elderly man apparently being throttled by a younger one in the house opposite, known as Mouls House. The Superintendent and another man go to the house as quickly as they can only to find neither the attacker nor the victim. Both have disappeared.
There is more here than meets at least Liddell’s eye. Scotland Yard is called in, in the form of Chief Detective Inspector Gilmartin (a continuing character in some of Barry’s novels), one of the Big Five, which I had always thought was Four, but I guess the number can change up or down depending on the number of biggies who happen to be around at the time.
This is purely a police procedural, and probably a good one for its time. There are some sound deductions by Gilmartin and also a fair amount of guessing on his part, which is understandable in the light of circumstances.
There have recently been complaints about the number of novels these days dealing with drugs, and those who are complaining probably will be surprised to learn that drug smuggling has been going on for quite some time. It has never been a money loser that I know of. But why anyone, as one of the characters in the novel does, wants to smuggle saccharine baffles me. Was it illegal in England at one time? If so, why?
Bio-Bibliographic Notes: According to Al Hubin’s Crime Fiction IV, Charles Barry was the pen name of Charles Bryson, (1887-1963) and the author of 22 works of detective fiction, 16 of them cases for Supt. Laurence Gilmartin of Scotland Yard. Some but not all were reprinted in the US.
October 20th, 2015 at 1:14 pm
As soon as I saw the name of the author and the title of the book, I knew there’d be little chance of coming up with a cover image of a dust jacket to include with the review. I was right.
Not that the book is difficult to find. If you’re interested, I think you could find one for less than $10 online, just as I’ve just done.
October 20th, 2015 at 3:21 pm
Drugs, particularly cocaine, being smuggled in England and on the continent was a big theme in mystery and thriller fiction from the Twenties. From John Rhode’s ARP MYSTERY to thrillers like Anthony Armstrong’s THE TRAIL OF THE BLACK KING fast moving tales of drug smuggling were the norm. Keep in mind it is a sub theme in Sayers MURDER MUST ADVERTISE and appears in Christie as well as Edgar Wallace.
Socially it was the Roaring Twenties, there was Prohibition in the States, gangsters were big here and in England and France (they frequently went to Ireland to lay low from the heat in the States and Canada, did a little dirty work for the IRA, and then showed up in London and Paris when things cooled down a bit). Drug smuggling even plays a role in a few Wodehouse books and Yates Berry and Company novels.
It is one of the most common themes of the era in mystery fiction, particularly British mystery fiction, both in thrillers and the classic detective novel and remained so until the mid thirties when it was gradually replaced by international spies and intrigue.
October 20th, 2015 at 3:34 pm
I looked up saccharine on Wikipedia, and found this:
“Government regulation:
“Starting in 1907, the USFDA began investigating saccharin as a direct result of the Pure Food and Drug Act. Harvey Wiley, then the director of the bureau of chemistry for the USFDA, viewed it as an illegal substitution of a valuable ingredient (sugar) by a less valuable ingredient.”
Not as dangerous as cocaine, but perhaps as profitable for smugglers?
October 20th, 2015 at 5:03 pm
Saccharine was banned not only in the US, but apparently in England and the Continent as well. Google will bring up all kinds of references.
I also found this question that someone asked online, which I found relevant:
“In “The Green Mamba” [by Edgar Wallace] we meet a London crimelord by the name of Mo Lisski, whose drug smuggling operation is described thusly:
“… quite a lot of German drugs are shipped via Trieste to the Levant, and many a crate of oranges has been landed in the Pool that had, squeezed in their golden interiors, little metal cylinders containing smuggled saccharine, heroin, cocaine, hydrochlorate and divers other noxious medicaments.”
“So is this just Wallace making shit up? (Which wouldn’t surprise me.) Or is there something I don’t know? (Which, yeah, wouldn’t surprise me either.)”
http://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-559223.html
October 21st, 2015 at 8:27 am
Saccharine smuggling also figures in Wallace’s excellent “The Flying Squad;” the villain convinces the heroine–who has a grudge against the police for their supposed murdering of her brother–to help him smuggle “saccharine” that’s really camouflaged drugs, representing it as a harmless action that only breaks a nonsensical law.
October 21st, 2015 at 3:02 pm
As I came across an Edgar Wallace story where he confused the qualities of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he thought saccharine was an addictive drug.
Cocaine and opiates were legally sold without prescriptions in the UK until WWI. Pharmacists could sell them if they thought their customers would benefit from them until 1926 and doctors could prescribe them freely after that. There probably wasn’t much drug-smuggling – or need for it – except in novels and excitable newspaper columns.