REVIEWED BY DAN STUMPF:

   

MICHAEL ARLEN – Hell! Said the Duchess: A Bedtime Story. Heineman, UK, hardcover, 1934. Doubleday Doran & Co., US, hardcover, 1934. Valancourt Books, softcover, 2013. [NOTE: Horror writer Karl Edward Wagner included Hell! Said the Duchess on his list of “The Thirteen Best Supernatural Horror Novels” in the May 1983 issue of The Twilight Zone Magazine.]

   A slim volume, a real curiosity, and a highly enjoyable read.

   Michael Arlen is best remembered (if at all) for his best-selling The Green Hat  (1924) which is pretty much forgotten these days. And is there anything so terribly forgotten as the best-sellers of another generation?

   Not for me. I read The Green Hat  (not to be confused with The Green Hornet) and while researching it for a review, I came across mention of this later work. Well, there’s something inside me that will not pass up anything with a title like Hell! Said the Duchess, so I ran down a copy, and discovered a neglected gem.

   Plot-wise, this starts out as a rather obvious Murder Mystery: a series of gruesome crimes, dubbed the “Jill the Ripper” murders is terrorizing London in the 1880s, and evidence points unmistakably to a woman who must be innocent — the eponymous Duchess, who is known far and wide ass the very soul of sweetness and light. Police are puzzled, friends are frantic, and confusion is rife.

   All this is carried along with a light, humorous prose that reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, as in:

   â€œSociety… can best be [described] by dividing it into three parts… those who would not be seen dead in the illustrated papers… those who week after week are seen dead in the illustrated papers, and… those who die without having managed to attract the notice of the illustrated papers.”

   
   Or:

   â€œThe history of mankind is a story told in the worst possible taste…. full of false melodrama, purple passages, sinister coincidences, and a sickening want of humanity.”

   
   The bantering tone fooled me into thinking I had the mystery figured out, only to find that there was no mystery here. Only a terrible truth that surprised & shocked me – if you can imagine being shocked by a work of fiction.

   Arlen shifts gears in the last chapter and the ending is a shattering surprise. I can say no more except that I urge you to try it and see if you agree.