Tue 29 Jan 2019
Mystery Review: FRANCIS DUNCAN – So Pretty a Problem.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[7] Comments
FRANCIS DUNCAN – So Pretty a Problem. Mordecai Tremaine #5. John Long, UK, hardcover, 1950. Sourcebooks, US, trade paperback, 2018.
It’s strange, but I have a feeling that Francis Duncan’s detective novels are selling now as well as they ever did, if not a whole lot better. Four of his six novels are back in print, and in the list of the titles at the end of this review, I’ve added the current Amazon sales ranking. They may not look spectacular, but believe me, they are — especially for detective fiction. Most of the books I have listed for sale on Amazon have rankings in the 3 to 8 millions. I don’t have any books there over 20 million.
For an author no one had even heard of a year ago at this time, that’s quite an achievement.
Duncan’s series character is a chap named Mordecai Tremaine, a retired tobacconist whose hobbies are reading romance novels and solving crimes. He’s done so well at the latter that’s he’s on a first name basis with several policemen at Scotland Yard, and they don’t mind in the least if he does some investigating for them on his own.
The structure of So Pretty a Problem is an odd one, especially at first glance. Part I consists of the murder and the immediate investigation. This section is about 90 pages long, and it serves largely as a prologue to Part II, all of which takes place before the murder. This portion, over 160 pages long, consists entirely of Tremaine’s interactions with the murder victim and his wife and all of the other suspects-to-be. Ordinarily this section would come first, chronologically speaking, but 160 pages in a detective novel before the first murder occurs is an awfully long time to keep a reader’s interest at a high edge of anticipation.
Part Three reverts to real time and Tremaine’s meticulously worked out explanation, including one of those “gathering the suspects together in one room” types of detective story expositions. Since this section is over 130 pages long, any complaints that current mysteries are longer than than they used to be will fall on deaf ears when you compare them to this one.
Dead is an extremely successful high-society artist. He is found shot to death in his isolated home off the coast of England, connected to the mainland by means of only a single footbridge that an invalid lady is constantly watching. The only person found in the house except for the dead man is his wife, who tells two obviously false stories to the police, who believe neither one, but neither do they believe that she is the killer.
I enjoyed this one. What impressed me the most about the story is how well Duncan made the explanation fit the facts so precisely, and yet before the explanation, there does not seem that there is one that’s possible. Knowing human character is a big asset for Mordecai Tremaine, and if this is an example of how he unravels a mystery as complicated as this, I’m going to go on and read all of his other cases in solving crimes.
The Mordecai Tremaine series –
Murderer’s Bluff. Jenkins 1938
They’ll Never Find Out. Jenkins 1944
Murder Has a Motive. Long 1947 (*) #600,815
Murder for Christmas. Long 1949 (*) #119,807
So Pretty a Problem. Long 1950 (*) #192,556
In at the Death. Long 1952 (*) #88,764
Behold a Fair Woman. Long 1954 (*) #123,776
Those marked with a (*) have been recently been reprinted in the US by Sourcebooks.
January 29th, 2019 at 1:32 pm
I’ve read three of the five books that were reprinted. Reviews of all three are in one post on my blog titled “Neglected Detectives: Mordecai Tremaine.†These new editions are US reprints from local Illinois publisher Sourcebooks based in Naperville. So glad to see them getting more exposure over here. I bought the UK editions two years ago, those paperbacks are not listed in your bibliography above but they are definitely still available. The book you review here is the best of the lot from what I’ve read so far. My second favorite was Behold The Fair Woman. Wasn’t too excited by the one set in the amateur theater company. Overall Duncan is a fine novelist as well as adept at mystery plotting. For me His books are more crime novels than detective novels. So Pretty a Death is the best of both worlds— and that it contains a clever impossible crime is icing on the cake
January 29th, 2019 at 1:47 pm
Here’s the link to your review, John. I’m glad we agree so well on SO PRETTY A PROBLEM, but in a way I’m sorry that I started with what may be the best one in the series. Maybe it would be better to work my way up rather than the other way around.
https://prettysinister.blogspot.com/2017/04/neglected-detectives-mordecai-tremaine.html
January 29th, 2019 at 2:40 pm
Don’t get me wrong, Steve, the Duncan mystery novels I’ve read are all well worth reading for various reasons. It’s just that SO PRETTY A PROBLEM happens to be the best culmination of well plotted mystery, detection, setting, and character — at least in my estimation. It’s also the most fairly clued of the three books I’ve read. I can’t say anything about the Christmas one (apparently very popular with most readers based on blog reviews I’ve come across) or IN AT THE RED which is more of a thriller according to a reliable reviewer I know and trust.
January 29th, 2019 at 4:31 pm
Quite a few neglected or forgotten writers have been rediscovered thanks to e-books and reprint series in the mystery field. You can read many of the E. R. Punshon novels and many a fairly obscure writer is getting a new life.
I think there is a hunger for the old fashioned detective story, at least the British version of it — there are also many new series of historical mysteries set in the era from the twenties to just after WW II, and most of them are very much in the classic British mold. And this time it isn’t just reprints of the “names” in the field. Readers seem hungry to explore writers and characters from that period that even many well read fans barely knew.
I’m not sure you can call it a full blown revival, the books aren’t reflected on bookstore shelves, but this is clearly a growing niche of often obscure British mystery fiction mindful of the eighties and nineties when many titles from Barzun and Taylor’s CATALOG OF CRIME were reprinted in mass paperback editions some having never been in paperback in the first place.
January 29th, 2019 at 4:34 pm
I just got Murder for Christmas from my local library. It was available on Kindle.
January 29th, 2019 at 4:48 pm
It also looks like Murder Has a Motive, So Pretty a Problem and In at the Death are available on Kindle
January 29th, 2019 at 5:16 pm
Thanks, Chuck. Since I don’t own a Kindle, I seldom make a note as to whether a book is available in that format or not. It’s good to know that the Duncan books are.