Sun 14 Feb 2021
A Vintage Mystery Review by Maryell Cleary: E. C. R. LORAC – Fell Murder.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[19] Comments
E. C. R. LORAC – Fell Murder. Inspector Robert Macdonald. Collins Crime Club, UK, hardcover, 1944. Poisoned Pen Press / British Library Crime Classics, US, trade paperback, January 2020.
The fell country of Yorkshire is lovingly drawn by Lorac in this first story of Chief Inspector MacDonald’s encounters with these quiet, reserved farmers. The Garths have farmed here for generations. Now, in wartime, the farm is inhabited by old Mr. Garth, a tyrant in his family; his son Charles, home from Malaya because of the war; his daughter Marion, who farms as well as a man; and his son by his second marriage, Malcolm, who is lame. A Land Army girl, Elizabeth Meldon, works with them. Another son, Richard, was driven away by his father when he married the daughter of a tenant farmer,
As the book opens, he has come back, his wife and child dead. He is there only to take a look, not to see the family, but the land. Marion is angry with her father because he won’t allow her to use modern farm methods; Charles, because his father works him bard and pays him nothing. Malcolm is a poet, something his father has no sympathy for. Then the old man is killed.
There is a plethora of motives but little hard evidence against anyone, MacDonald arrives from Scotland Yard, and his own quiet ways put him in tune with the local people, who had been annoyed with the local inspector. Careful detective work brings about a solution that satisfies the mind, though my emotions protested a second, unnecessary death.
Editorial Update: While E. C. R. Lorac wrote over 40 books in her Inspector Macdonald series, it wasn’t until the recent burst of interest in vintage detective fiction that anyone could obtain copies to read. With several presses working overtime to get nice-looking reprints back in the hands of readers, it’s good to see a large number of Lorac’s books available again — and like this one, for the first time in this country. (And extremely cheaply, too, if you can read books on a Kindle.)
February 14th, 2021 at 8:15 pm
Works which convey history like this, (in their content and production) could be considered ‘cultural documents’. Though written for entertainment, they nonetheless record (in rich detail) lifestyles which were once commonplace, and now are no longer so.
February 14th, 2021 at 8:17 pm
Absolutely. No doubt about it. Books such as this one are mini-sized wayback machines.
February 14th, 2021 at 11:18 pm
Here for instance, is an example. Maryell referred to someone as a Land Army girl. It didn’t mean a lot to me, so I Googled it. It turns out that the Women’s Land Army was a program in England during WWII in which women joined up to work on farms, doing the chores that men who went off to war weren’t there to do any more. I certainly didn’t know that before.
February 14th, 2021 at 10:15 pm
Lorac is one of those capable British mystery writers I never got “into,” but always read with pleasure when I do encounter her work.
She never got overblown or ahead of herself, and mostly produced intelligent good reads for a long time. I feel a little guilt at times I am not more of a fan, but I do recognize her considerable skills as a writer.
February 14th, 2021 at 11:12 pm
I read some of her books back in the 60s, when I was putting together a collection of all the Crime Club books ever published. (They were the one who did her books in this country, but starting only in the late 40s or so.)
Read and enjoyed, as I recall, but long ago forgotten. I’ve added some of the recent revivals to my Kindle queue, but I haven’t gotten to any of them yet. Kind of hard to pass up books for only 99 cents each.
February 14th, 2021 at 11:42 pm
haha. ‘Land Army Girl’. It’s sure true, that during the conflict there were a lot of oddities that simply go beyond what we could even imagine or comprehend now. Stuff that just doesn’t make sense in the more modern world.
Easy example: the ridiculous ‘camouflage paint’ worn by the crew of the USS Caine in Wouk’s “Caine Mutiny”.
BTW, (acquaintance of mine), Larry Loftis was on the ‘Today Show’ this month for his biography of WWII spy Aline Griffith. Dude is connected. Wish some of it would rub off on me.
February 14th, 2021 at 11:45 pm
The “FANYs” were another women’s outfit. Gad, can you imagine the double-entendres that must have flown around at the time.
February 15th, 2021 at 12:31 am
There was even a TV series based on the Land Girls:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Girls_(TV_series)
February 14th, 2021 at 11:50 pm
Both the U.S. and the UK established Women’s Land Armies in both WWI and WWII. It’s a shame their work has been forgotten outside of academe. However, I liked this book a lot even aside from its documentary value.
February 15th, 2021 at 1:54 am
As much as I admire Great Britain, I would say I’m much more a fan of western history and western fiction. ‘Locked-room mysteries’ are a kind of book I read the least. It’s one thing, if it’s Wilkie Collins or Conan Doyle. They never skimp on passion and heart and human psychology. There are great and terrifying rages and lusts in such writer’s works. Some other mysteries too, are superb sexercises in suspense: for example the lineage of ‘So Long at the Fair’, ‘The Lady Vanishes’, ‘Cabin B-13’ etc.
But the supple thing about westerns is: lack of fussy complication. A ‘good guy’ is a good guy; and a ‘bad guy’ is a bad guy. No two ways about it. No technicalities decide it and it’s simply a matter of time before the ‘bad guy’ winds up caught. A western villain’s villainy is never decided by the depth to which a sprig of parsley has sunk down in a plate of butter, on a hot day.
To me: if the cold logic of John Dickson Carr ruled the world, then Adolf Hitler might conceivably go scot-free sometime. Hitler hated mystery novels; he thought them obfuscation. His own arc is ironic testament to his viewpoint. Was there ever a juncture in Hitler’s life, in which Hitler was not headed towards his ugly fate? I think not. Candler called Hitler’s mindset ‘anarchist’ but the more interesting question is why Hitler bent that way.
Anyway: I dislike stories which suggest that guilt and innocence ‘can turn on a card’. Evidence-based crime doesn’t impress me; murderous urges more truly originate in the heart and often go utterly unpunished. Frex: the character of ‘Brenda Last’ in Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Handful of Dust’.
February 15th, 2021 at 2:53 am
Lazy,
That isn’t camouflage paint in THE CAINE MUTINY, like the black stuff worn by football players it cuts down on reflective glare, in this case off the water and also prevents the enemy spying faces on deck or on the bridge at night.
February 15th, 2021 at 4:46 am
Given the age of the original review, it’s perhaps a little late to point this out, but being set in a valley of the river Lune means that the setting is not Yorkshire but either Lancashire or Cumbria.
Those who enjoy Lorac’s work may like to know that her book “Two-Way Murder” will be published for the first time this year (it was complete at the time of her death but not published then.)
February 15th, 2021 at 8:24 am
To add to what you say, Jonathan, a couple of years ago, when the Lorac reprints started to come out, Martin Edwards did a remarkable post on his blog entitled “Exploring Lorac Country” in which he begins “Last week I spent a fascinating day exploring the area where Carol Rivett, alias E.C.R. Lorac and Carol Carnac, lived for the last fifteen years or so of her life. This is Lunesdale in north Lancashire, an area that is – in comparison at least to the much-visited hot spots of the Lake District – somewhat off the beaten track, yet a very appealing area of the English countryside.”
http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/2019/07/exploring-lorac-country.html
The photos he includes in this post are quite remarkable.
I did not know there was a previously unpublished Lorac novel. That it will finally see the light of day is wonderful news!
February 15th, 2021 at 10:18 am
This is quite unofficial, but a short note from Martin Edwards says he’s hoping there will be a second Lorac title as well as Two-Way Murder later this year.
February 15th, 2021 at 7:57 am
As I remember, Macdonald returns to “Lunesdale” in at least a couple of his later adventures.
February 15th, 2021 at 8:28 am
You put Lunesdale in quotes, Jeff, but from Martin’s essay, apparently it is a real town, and not only that, but it is the place where Lorac spent the last 15 years of her life. I did not know that before.
February 15th, 2021 at 9:41 am
Wikipedia:
“Lunesdale Rural District was a rural district in the county of Lancashire, England. It was created in 1894 and abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. It comprised 21 civil parishes to the east and north-east of the city of Lancaster, around the valley of the River Lune.”
February 15th, 2021 at 10:11 am
The problem with vintage detective fiction is that there is plenty of current detective fiction. How you are supposed to read it all is quite beyond me.
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers
― Jacques Barzun
February 15th, 2021 at 10:22 am
Barzun really had an eye to the future didn’t he?
As to how to find time to read current novels as well as the older stuff, except for maybe one or two authors, I don’t try to keep up with current books. Meaning no offense to those who are writing them, most of them don’t appeal to me anyway.
Which shifts the dilemma only a very very little. How to read all of the older stuff? You have me there!