Sun 20 Mar 2011
Archived Review: R. A. J. WALLING – The Corpse with the Dirty Face.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
R. A. J. WALLING – The Corpse with the Dirty Face. Morrow, hardcover, 1936. UK edition; Hodder & Stoughton, hc, 1936.
Upon first inspection the black markings smeared across the victim’s face appear to be huge inkstains sustained during the act of murder. Later it’s learned that they were permanently disfiguring powder burns the dead man received during the war — World War I, that would have been.
They’re still important enough as a factor in solving the murder to give the case its title, and a good deal of diligent detective work is needed to unravel the maze of conflicting alibis that bars the way. Also needed is an explanation for the several uncharacteristic changes of plan the victim made for the evening during the crucial time just before his death.
On the scene from very nearly the beginning is Mr. Tolefree, a private detective of the “softboiled” English butler variety. The only character to display real signs of life is the dead man’s daughter, determined not to let her loved one be accused of the crime.
It takes a strenuous grip on a great number of assorted facts to solve the puzzle before Mr. Tolefree does, and even so I question the fairness of one of the essential clues. Making up for it is a solidly constructed piece of misdirection at one point, and equally pleasing was a bit of unexpected subtlety in the prologue. Even with the portentous warning Walling gives the reader in the very first paragraph, it goes unnoticed very easily. On the whole, nicely done.
A good movie it wouldn’t make, however. Too many shots of heads, doing nothing but talking.
[UPDATE] 03-20-11. This, of course, is the review I promised as a follow-up to Geoff Bradley’s review of an earlier Walling mystery, which produced a lot of comments, mostly neutral (ho-hum) to negative. This one I liked, though, in spite of all the flaws I found and pointed out. Whether I’d feel the same way, today, I cannot tell you, nor have I read another by Walling since.
Coming up next: Bill Pronzini’s 1001 Midnights review of the same author’s Marooned with Murder. Be warned. He did not like it, and he is willing to tell you why.
March 20th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
I’ve enjoyed a number of Walling books.
And enjoyed all three reviews of Walling!
Walling is indeed low key, gentle and genteel. His books can have the soothing, peaceful quality of a nice cup of hot chocolate.
Walling at his best is good with building, architecture, maps, and describing interesting locations in rural Britain. These add imagination and color to his tales.
He also can create interesting mystery plots.
My favorite so far:
The Corpse With the Blue Cravat / The Coroner Doubts (1938)
Walling is probably most influenced by E.C. Bentley and his TRENT’S LAST CASE. Trent was designed to be a suave, polite and genuinely refined man, and Walling’s detective Tolefree is in the same mode. Both are designed to be not so much characters, as idealized role models of genteel behavior. They can be refreshing to read about.
I miss the gentlemanly actors who added so much to old cinema, Ronald Coleman, Robert Warwick, Walter Abel, Alan Napier…
I agree with Curt, that Walling is not really close to Freeman, Crofts, Rhode and others of their school.
I’ve never read The Corpse with the Dirty Face. Am looking forward to it.
March 20th, 2011 at 7:16 pm
Nice review–I’m going to have to finish and review The Five Suspects now.
March 20th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
While they have changed a bit, the gentlemanly actors of the old school are still around — one of them won the Oscar this year. It’s the roles that are few and far between.
Walling was not so bad as to never do a decent book, nor so dull as to never come up with a good idea — it’s Walling on the whole I’ve been commenting on.
Tolfree is annoyingly silly at times, and I think much of it may come from the fact that Walling was writing from the outside. He wasn’t of Tolfree’s social class or background and lacks the satirical bite of Sayers or Allingham writing about another class.
I don’t mind the great sleuth pulling the wool over my eyes, I mind when he pulls rabbits out of hats the hasn’t even bothered to wear (a Tolfree trait) and popular as it was in that era, I mind blathering when it isn’t witty or well done. But without the wit of Wodehouse or even Dornford Yates it is just drivel, and in Walling’s hands unconvincing and pointless drivel as well.
Steve mentions no sense of menace — and I would add that in most Walling that I’ve read there is also no sense of import. A murder has been done, someone is dead, there could be more — ho-hum. One of the qualities of both Christie and Allingham was a feel for the very real weight of the crime of murder — an almost moral indignation at times. Even in Crofts and Freeman where the puzzle elements often take the fore, there is a real sense that the crime at hand means something other than a means to produce a body.
In Walling a cardboard figure is dead, a cardboard figure is doing the detecting, and he suspects a group of equally cardboard figures. In some of them the background is more fully and richly drawn than any character — but the mystery as Turner landscape is not really a viable idea.
The average Walling adventure (and I use the term advisedly) is about as intriguing as playing CLUE by yourself with half the game pieces missing.
March 20th, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Credit where credit is due. It was Bill Pronzini who specifically pointed out the lack of menace in Walling’s work.
March 20th, 2011 at 9:31 pm
Conversely, though, too much “menace” can be at odds with deliberate ratiocination. I think some books by Carr and Philip Macdonald, for example, can overplay menace sometimes (for example, The Problem of the Wire Cage).
March 20th, 2011 at 11:18 pm
Curt
I think there were times Carr and Macdonald were far more interested in ‘effect’ than puzzle and it shows. Frankly, I apprecite that, but I can see for puzzle lovers why that might be a problem.
The classical form of the Golden Age mystery was more than a bit of a high wire act, and I suppose the surprise is how often it was done right when you consider how easy it is to go wrong.
In Walling’s case though he seemed to be trying to create a sense of menace — or at least suspense and movement — with all the running around and the long drawn out explanations at the end, and failing at it.
I would be much easier on him if he hadn’t been interested in that element and ignored it, than I am because his tactics for achieving it were so inadequate and often as not ended up harming the puzzle element by distracting from it.
Walling strikes me as a writer who found his niche too easily, and therefore never experimented and tried to expand or refine his repitoire.
When I called his style ho-hum I was refering to that complacency. I suppose for his fans it made him a comfortable writer — there was a certain level of familiarity they could expect — but I can think of any number of writers at the same level as Walling who had more to offer and did so.
I suppose my greatest problem with him is that in all fairness there isn’t much reward for the effort it takes to read him. For those interested in the genre as a whole by all means experience some of his work, but for most readers he falls into the category that if you find one cheap you might read it, but don’t put much effort into hunting any of them down. The reward is not going to be equal to the effort.