Sat 16 Oct 2010
A Review by Curt J. Evans: P. R. SHORE – The Bolt.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[16] Comments
P. R. SHORE – The Bolt. E. P. Dutton, US, hardcover, 1929. Methuen, UK, hardcover, 1929.
This long forgotten mystery novel was published in England and the United States in 1929. In the latter country it was published by E. P. Dutton, who at this time published several British mysteries with excellent endpaper maps.
I have no idea whether these maps originated with the original English editions, having never seen the original English editions, but I plan to review all such Dutton mysteries that have come into my purview. I start with The Bolt.
The author of The Bolt evidently was a man, Peter Redcliffe Shore. He is said to have been born in 1892 and to have authored one other detective novel, 1932’s The Death Film (about a slaying in a theater). That is the sum total of my knowledge of this author.
I originally had assumed the author was a woman, because the tale is one of those English village “cozies” and it is narrated by a female character, a thirty-nine year old “spinster,” one Marion Leslie. Given that the author was truly a man I am impressed with his ability to carry off this character.
The first fifth of the novel is given over to setting up its murder, and this part is effectively done. The village of Ringshall comes equipped with a Manor and a pub, The Lady & Hare, as well as a Squire, his nineteen-year-old daughter, his unpopular new wife, an eligible bachelor curate, the daughter’s boyfriend (a relative of Miss Leslie’s), a designing female of uncertain reputation, and assorted rustics, including a maid at the Manor House and her ambitious laboring boyfriend, a village witch and her “idiot” son. Oh, and the assorted gossiping ladies of the village.
This part of the book is done so well, that it is almost a disappointment when comes murder (of the Squire’s wife during the day of the village fair, by means of a rifle equipped with a flint arrowhead, or “elf-bolt,” as the superstitious locals call it).
Of the Squire’s wife maddening propensity to interfere with and dictate all aspects of village life (which includes patronizing the poor with dubious benevolence), the narrator amusingly notes: “She was the only person I’ve ever known who really bought those bundles of haircloth flannel and shoddy serge which certain shops advertise as ‘suitable for charity’ — which I suppose they are, if you take Mrs. Ward’s view of charity.” (I assume this is a reference to the popular Victorian novelist Mrs. Humphry Ward?)
No one in Ringshall could stand the Squire’s wife, but several villagers had especial reason to dislike her. Could one of these people have done the deed, or was it someone from her past?
Although professional detectives pop in and out, most of the work is done by Miss Leslie and her friend the curate. The solution finally comes by means of some hidden papers, but the reader is given a chance to put most of it together herself.
The solution is good enough, though it is not cut to a multi-faceted, Christie-like brilliance. However, I have to wonder whether this novel might have influenced Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage, which was published the following year. The village setting is certainly similar, as is the central situation of a locally prominent man, his second wife and his young adult daughter (though in the Christie novel it is the husband, not the wife, who is murdered).
The Bolt also resembles John Dickson Carr’s Till Death Do Us Part, which involves rifle ranges and murder during a village fair. Though it is not as clever as either of those classic English detective novels, The Bolt is worth reading for lovers of traditional village mysteries.
Editorial Comments: This book was listed by Curt in his recent list of Forty Favorites from the Twenties, which you can go back and read here. As it was one of the more obscure ones he chose, I was delighted when he offered to send a review of it.
As for the author, all that Al Hubin adds that Curt did not is that Shore was “born in Hampton; educated privately and at Oxford; educator; living in Somerset in 1930s.” His second book was published by Metheun in 1932 and never appeared in the US. There are, unfortunately, no copies of either book currently offered for sale on the Internet.
[UPDATE] 10-17-10. Curt provided the image of the book’s endpapers, but his copy lacked a dust jacket. From Bill Pronzini’s collection, however, comes cover images of both of Shore’s two mysteries, those which you now see above. Thanks, Bill!
[UPDATE #2] 10-18-10. What do you know? It turns out Curt was right all along. Check out his statement at the beginning of paragraph four, in which he says his original assumption was that P. R. Shore was female.
Which she was. Thanks to the combined detective work of Jamie Sturgeon, Al Hubin and Steve Holland, it’s been discovered that the name “Peter Redcliffe Shore” was total fiction. The author of The Bolt is now identified as Helen Madeline Leys, 1892-1965, who also wrote ghost stories as Eleanor Scott. Randalls Round, a highly regarded collection of these tales, was recently published by Ash-Tree Press (1996) in a limited hardcover edition
Congratulations to all for coming up with this. Good work!
October 17th, 2010 at 4:20 am
An interesting book.
Though, as you say this might well have influenced Christie, it is amazing how many times several writers have the same ideas around the same general time with no real crossover. We tend to think in terms of influence in these cases, and sometimes it is true, but in many cases the same idea will occur independently to several people around the same general time period.
It happens again and again, almost as if certain ideas are floating free out there waiting for the right time to come forth. It’s not at all unusual.
A perfect example is the eerie similarity between the Robert Heinlien scripted film DESTINATION MOON and the Tintin graphic novel where he goes to the Moon. The similarites are startling, right down the the design of the space ship, the space suits, and the Moonscapes used as backgrounds. However, the timing is such that neither could have influenced the other. The only tie between them being the work of Willy Ley and the paintings of Bonestall.
But such literary coincidence happens all the time — much to the frustration of critics and historians who are always looking for firsts and influences.
Sometimes there are none to be found, just as Ian Fleming was unlikely to be thinking of either John Dee or Rudyard Kipling and certainly not Agatha Christie when he named his character James Bond and gave him the code number 007.
Some coincidences are just that.
October 17th, 2010 at 6:25 am
I like that cover. Ultra simple but yet dynamic.
October 17th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
David, I’m reading a mystery tale right now that has a character named Miss Scarlet. Obviously this was read by the makers of Cluedo (Clue)! Right?
There’s also a Colonel, but he’s Colonel Scarlet, not Colonel Mustard, unfortunately. And there’s a Professor, but he’s not a Plum, darn it all. And there is a library, but no billiard room. Blazes!
Connington has a “Miss Marple” (a housekeeper, I think) in The case with Nine Solutions (1928). One might say, a-ha!, this influenced Christie; yet the first Miss Marple story appeared in 1927, apparently (though the first Miss Marple book appeared in 1930). But maybe Christie influenced Connington! But probably not.
That’s amazing how Bill was able to come up with those covers like that! What doesn’t he have (and with dust jackets too)?
I’ve noticed that English dust jackets from the period tend to be literal, while American jackets tend to be more stylized (generalizations, of course). John Rhode’s The Bloody Tower has an illustration of a medieval tower gushing blood, while The Tower of Evil (the American edition) has a more modern, abstract illustration. But, interestingly, the American jacket actually better captures the tower itself and the mood of the book.
October 17th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Oh, by the way, how many murders in audiences at theaters have there been? This recalls a scenario from one of the Scream films.
October 18th, 2010 at 1:52 am
Curt
Re cover art and America vs the British, in the twenties Art Deco was very big in the US, and as it evolved a more Modern Art approach, all design and angles evolved while British publishers tended to stick to illustrative art (which I generally prefer) But I have quite a few books in dust wrappers from the twenties and thirties with Art Deco or Modern Art covers including unlikely choices for it like Talbot Mundy and P. C. Wren (you’d think if anyone called out for illustrative art …).
I suspect the reason was an attempt to be ultra modern, but it did provide some interesting design.
Re murder in the audience I don’t recall many — and none come to hand right off. Murder backstage and even on stage during the performance is common though. I suspect most writers considered murder in the audience a bit too easy to pull off — a darkened theater, everyone is distracted by what’s on stage … Though Frances Parkinson Keyes does have a murder in a private box, which is a bit more common.
October 18th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Very interesting to find the author was a woman. I believed P. R. Shore was a woman after reading The Bolt, but the P. R. Shore identity was ostensibly masculine. The Randalls Round stories by “Eleanor Scott” are highly regarded.
I have some Ash-Tree books but not this one unfortunately (It now sells for $200). Richard Dalby wrote the introduction to the volume, which includes a photograph of her.
October 18th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
It isn’t a film, but a Broadway play during which the victim in Ellery Queen’s ROMAN HAT MYSTERY is killed.
October 20th, 2010 at 2:01 am
That’s our earliest instance then. Tey’s Man in the Queue, from the same year, has a murder in a crowd lined up outside the theater!
By the way, it looks like Randalls Round is being reprinted next month.
October 20th, 2010 at 5:48 am
I’m thinking there has to be an earlier incidence of murder in the audience than THE ROMAN HAT MYSTERY — at least in a short story. It’s hard to believe that no one used that in any of the hundreds of detective shorts published between Doyle and the rise of the detective novel in the Golden Age, especially consdering how many mystery writers had a theatrical background in that period.
You would think Edgar Wallace would have used it by then.
At the very least there is the murder ‘of’ the audience — if not ‘in’ the audience — in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
It is possible though ROMAN HAT is the first use of the idea in a novel, certainly the first use of it in the Golden Age, it just seems a little improbable.
October 20th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
What’s the earliest murder on stage (like Marsh’s Enter a Murderer, with the switched prop gun)?
October 20th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
I hope somebody who knows more than I do can answer that question. I’m willing to wager, though, that the answer is earlier than realize. ENTER A MURDERER was written in 1935, and “murder on stage” is such an obvious idea, there has to have been many such instances before then.
Hasn’t there?
October 21st, 2010 at 1:42 am
I find it hard to believe these works could be the first when so many writers of the earlier era had theatrical backgrounds and wrote or produced or had some other theatrical tie, though it is possible that it wasn’t used in a novel.
Curt
The film MURDER AT THE VANITIES predated Marsh by a year, so I have to think the murder on or back stage had been used before this. I have this sneaking feeling we are all missing something obvious, if only Hamlet using the play to catch a murderer?
I find it hard to believe murder at a film studio (which had been done to death in the silent era already) predated the first theatrical murders in book form.
October 21st, 2010 at 4:23 am
What about Anthony Abbot’s About the Murder of a Nightclub Lady, where did the murder of the aforementioned lady take place?
October 21st, 2010 at 10:36 am
I might be wrong, but wasn’t it her penthouse apartment? There’s a nightclub involved, of course, but no movie or theatre. As I recall, that is, and relying on my memory may not be the wisest course of action…
October 21st, 2010 at 3:01 pm
I was wondering if someone was killed during a performance, but I guess not!
October 23rd, 2010 at 3:29 pm
I was wondering about Van Dine and THE CANARY MURDER CASE too, but the crime is in her apartment despite the nightclub setting.
Still, there is bound to be a murder in a private box or back stage in something in that era between Doyle and the beginning of the Golden Age. I find it hard to believe that Gasron Leroux is the only person before Marsh to use the theater as a background for crime and not just some of the characters.
What year did Vincent Stsrrett’s Jimmy Lavender book appear? I seem to recall the first story had a nightclub murder.
“The Affair at the Novelty Theater” is the title of one of Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner stories, but I can’t find my copy right now to confirm it is a murder or occurs at the theater.