Fri 2 Sep 2016
IANTHE JERROLD – The Studio Crime. Dean Street Press, UK, softcover, 2015. Introduction by Curtis Evans. First published by Chapman & Hall, UK, hardcover, 1929. No US edition,
If you were to go looking for the original British edition of this book, even with a wad of big bills stashed in your wallet, I don’t believe you’d find one. Dean Street Press is one a few recent publishing company who are doing mystery fans a big service in getting literally hordes of Golden Age mysteries back into print, and Curt Evans, a one-time contributor to this blog, has a lot to do with it. (He now has his own blog, which I wholeheartedly recommend to you.)
Even though there a brief reference in this book to the involvement of amateur detective John Christmas in an earlier case, one having to do with a museum, this is the first of only two of his investigations to make it into print. The second, Dead Man’s Quarry (1930), is also available from Dean Street Press.
Given this longer than usual introduction, I suppose it would be churlish of me to point out that Christmas is no Wimsey or Poirot, nor is author Ianthe Jerrold (1897-1977) a Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. The opening is very effective, however, as it describes a party taking place in a cartoonist’s studio on a foggy, foggy night, with several mysterious visitors coming and going from the studio above (including a sinister-looking man in a fez) before the resident there is found dead, with a knife thrust through his heart.
The dialogue, to me, reads very formal and dated at times, while sheer coincidence mars the telling: with all of London as the setting, too many of the characters are always coming across each other in places where it seems unlikely they should even be. The relationships between them, unraveled slowly as Christmas’s investigation progresses, often seem far-fetched as well.
But Christmas’s deductions, as explained thoroughly at the end, seem solid enough, and depending on your interest in puzzle stories or not, you may enjoy this one as much as I did.
Bibliographic Notes: Two other mysteries written by Ianthe Jerrold, but published under her pen name Geraldine Bridgman, have also been reprinted by Dean Street Press: Let Him Lie (1940) and There May Be Danger (1948).
September 2nd, 2016 at 9:45 pm
DEAD MAN’S QUARRY is by far the better of her two detective novels. I thoroughly enjoyed it and found hardly a single flaw in that book. I think you’d like that book, Steve. Witty and smart, great detective work, very imaginative and a nifty surprise ending.
September 2nd, 2016 at 10:02 pm
I bought all four of her books when Dean Street came out with them, and I was encouraged enough by this one to plan to read QUARRY soon, even without your recommendation, John. I’ll move it up in the queue now, though. Thanks!