LIZ EVANS – JFK Is Missing! Orion Books, UK, 1998. Distributed in the US by Trafalgar Square, circa 2002.

   Grace Smith isn’t exactly the most promising private eye you will ever meet. To begin with she works the mean streets of Seatoun, a unprepossessing town on England’s South Coast, and she isn’t the greatest at her job. But as her friend Annie tells her:

   And she even has a client, Henry Summerstone, and all he wants is for her to find someone — save he doesn’t know her name — and he can’t tell Grace what she looks like because he’s blind. But aside from that it’s a perfect case for Grace, a girl named K something that Henry met on the beach during his daily walk with his seeing eye dog:

   Anyway, Henry loaned K a recording of David Copperfield and now she hasn’t shown up for a while, and since she seemed a nice young woman he’s worried. Grace agrees to take the case expecting to find very little.

   What she finds is a young woman named Kristen — Julie-Frances Kreble aka Kristin Keats, who has gone missing. There’s also a teenage girl called Bone who just wants to be loved; a skateboarder called Figgy; a pair of pot bellied Vietnamese pigs that have outlived their cute stage; Bertram who used to be married to Kristen; and Bone’s family: brother Patrick who hates boarding school, father Stephen who is something of a player and up and coming rather nicely in the world in their nice upper middle class home, and mother, Amelia, a social climbing self involved air head.

   And something else — Stephen, Daddy, and Kristen were friends. Close friends.

   And what she begins to suspect — even though there is no body — is that Kristen is dead. Murdered. Stephen Bridgerman, her primary suspect, is on to her:

   A trip to Jersey to visit Kristen’s parents and a missing workman add to the mystery as well as who ran over the skateboarding Figgy, son of one of Amelia’s chums, and a government cover up involving her not so innocent blind client who knows more about the missing Kristen than he’s been saying.

   Which leads to Grace chained up in a wine cellar with a nasty blow to the head and a very full bladder waiting for a very confused but totally ruthless killer to decide what to do with her.

   Before it’s over Grace will end up in the boot of her own car, sloshed with gasoline and with a belly full of vodka being driven to a convenient place for another little murder — her own.

   Grace may get it all wrong but she also solves a murder and brings down a murderer — even if she nearly gets killed along the way — and ends up answering to the RSPCA for a pair of Vietnamese pot bellied pigs …

   JFK is Missing! is exactly what it sets out to be, a solid funny private eye novel with an attractive, if less than brilliant, heroine, a set of quirky characters, a well realized setting, and the kinds of crimes that you see on the nightly news.

   It’s a sprightly series, other entries including Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? and Don’t Mess With Mrs. In-Between. The lines are snappy, the pace fast, the cliff hangers nerve wracking and dripping with irony, and you could easily find Grace Smith one of your favorite sleuths of the modern era. With this single book she has moved well up on my list.

       The Grace Smith series —

1. Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? (1997)
2. JFK Is Missing! (1998)
3. Don’t Mess with Mrs In-Between (2000)
4. Barking! (2001)
5. Sick as a Parrot (2004)

6. Cue the Easter Bunny (2005)

   As Patricia Grey, Liz Evans has also written a series of four books with Detective Chief Inspector Jack Stamford and Sergeant Sarah McNeill taking place during World War II —

1. Junction Cut (1994)
2. Balaclava Row (1994)
3. Good Hope Station (1997)
4. Cutter’s Wharf (1998)

BURTON E. STEVENSON – The House Next Door. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1932. Hutchinson, UK, hardcover, 1932.

   Reviewers, certainly those like me who assay the gold of the past, ought to get hazardous-duty compensation for the dross. Reading this novel could have produced brain rot if the author’s leaden prose had not set up the defense mechanism of allowing me to immediately forget what had just been read.

   Something like eight years passed between Stevenson’s previous mystery effort and this one. I can assure you that he was not perfecting The House Next Door all that time.

   According to the publisher: “In order to aid the reader in choosing a mystery of whose merit he may be certain in advance, the ‘hard-faced editors’ are placing a red badge on those detective stories which they are willing to recommend unreservedly to the most discriminating reader.”

   The red badge on this one is indubitably a fraud, for God knows I am not all that discriminating.

   The only thing that can be said in favor of this novel is the apparent absence of typographical errors. Otherwise, the plot is silly, the characters totally unbelievable, and the characters’ acts and conversation tedious.

   Turning the pages was an ordeal, but I continued to read in the hope that there might be something — anything, even one felicitous phrase — to justify publication. That hope was dashed when page 313 was reached.

   The narrator, a lawyer, judges everyone by physiognomy, even including the first corpse, whose “high, narrow forehead bespoke intelligence, but also a limited and narrow character. There were little peevish lines about the eyes It was a selfish and egotistical face, utterly without attraction.”

   One of the detectives — Godfrey, of the Record, as he is described — says: “‘Of course I suspected [Blank] from the first. For one thing, I didn’t like the way his eyes were spaced.”’

   Anyone unprepossessing or suffering from some slight physical impairment had better not be around these chaps when a crime is committed.

   As for what there is of a plot, Professor Verity wants to change his will, but somebody breaks his neck before he can accomplish that aim. The neighbors are a heathen Hindu and an oily Italian. Look no farther for suspects.

   Oh, there’s another chap that might have done it, but the Professor’s daughter is in love with him and he’s Anglo-Saxon and not obviously disfigured, so he has to be innocent.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   According to Crime Fiction IV, by Allen J. Hubin, Burton E. Stevenson, 1872-1962, wrote thirteen mysteries, one marginally criminous, between 1903 and 1939. The book Bill referred to as preceding this one was The Storm-Center (1924). Jim Godfrey, the sleuth of record in The House Next Door, was in five others, including Stevenson’s first one, The Holladay Case (1903).

   Mike Grost takes a critical look at The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet (1911), one of Stevenson’s earlier books, on his Classic Mystery and Detection website, comparing his work in some ways to that of Mary Roberts Rinehart.

   Many of Stevenson’s books, including the latter, are available online. A complete listing can be found here.

   When he wasn’t writing mystery fiction, Burton Stevenson was quite well-known in other fields, at least locally, in his home town in Ohio. Quoting from this online site:

    “Born in Chillicothe in 1872, Burton Stevenson’s life was devoted to the written word as a prolific author and anthologist, and as a librarian. Following stints as a journalist while a student at Princeton University and then at newspapers in Chillicothe, Stevenson became the librarian of the city’s public library in 1899. He held the post for 58 years.

    “Stevenson then went to Paris as the European director of the Library War Service. After the Armistice in 1918, he established the American Library in Paris and directed it until 1920 and again from 1925-1930. In addition to accomplishments as a librarian, he wrote or compiled more than 50 books….”

LORNA BARRETT – Bookplate Special. Berkley, paperback original; 1st printing, November 2009.

   Tricia Miles, proprietor of the mystery bookstore Haven’t Got a Clue in Stoneham, New Hampshire, is probably the least appealing protagonist of any recent mystery series I’ve been sampling.

   She’s confrontational, irascible, and downright unpleasant, particularly in her dealings with local police and her current boyfriend, Russ, publisher of the local weekly newspaper. The series also includes recipes, which I are generally a turnoff for me, but the bookstore setting brought me back, after I’d read and reported on the second in the series (Bookmarked for Death, reviewed here ) for this follow-up novel.

   Shortly after Tricia tells a lingering house-guest to pack up and move out, the woman is murdered, and Tricia, not one to let the local authorities handle the investigation, is almost immediately very much. involved, withholding vital evidence and, in general, acting without regard for her own safety or for a reasonable outcome for a very thorny investigation.

   The author thanks friends who “pointed out the places” where she tripped up. Frankly, I think she needs a new group of friends who would point out to her that amateur sleuthing doesn’t mean you shouldn’t observe a modicum of common sense.

   However, in spite of her unattractive side, she’s still able to come out of the labyrinth of missteps and bad decisions with two potential boyfriends and only minor collateral damage.

   So what you have is a potentially attractive series, with a strong protagonist who may turn off some readers but please anti-establishment, feminist readers who will be urging Tricia on from the sideline.

       The Booktown Mystery series —

1. Murder Is Binding (2008)

2. Bookmarked For Death (2009)
3. Bookplate Special (2009)
4. Chapter and Hearse (2010)

   Coming in 2011 is A Crafty Killing, the author’s first “Victoria Square Mystery.” Lorna Barrett, the pen name of Lorraine Bartlett, has also written two suspense thrillers as by L. L. Bartlett.

“Diagnosis: Danger.” An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 1, Episode 22). First air date: 1 March 1963. Michael Parks, Charles McGraw, Berkeley Harris, Rupert Crosse, Allen Joseph, Douglas Henderson. Writer: Roland Kibbee. Director: Sydney Pollack.

   A car returning from Mexico heading toward Los Angeles suddenly lurches and a man falls out of the back, unnoticed by the driver. Between the time he becomes airborne and the moment he hits the road’s shoulder, he dies — not from the impact but from the deadly and highly contagious disease of anthrax.

   Dr. Daniel Dana (Michael Parks) works for the County Department of Public Health as an epidemiologist; his boss, Dr. Simon Oliver (Charles McGraw), is a study in paradox — he can’t stand the sight of blood, flinches when someone is in pain, gobbles antacid pills, and prefers to call himself a politician. Nevertheless, these two will have to oversee the search for an unknown number of people who have come into contact with the dead man on the roadside.

   Before the day is over, Dr. Dana will be striving to save the life of a man with a rifle who, in return, will be trying to kill him ….

   Michael Parks (b. 1940), with his brooding attitude and mumbling delivery, was supposed to be the second coming of James Dean. In “Diagnosis: Danger” he has to deal with what has since become known as “technobabble”; half the time he’s incomprehensible — but when he isn’t, he’s quite good.

   He made many appearances in individual episodes of ’60s and ’70s TV series, everything from Ben Casey to Perry Mason. In films he was Adam in The Bible (1966) and Bradley Ford in The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd (1974, TVM), made one Ellery Queen (1976), Murder at the World Series (1977, TVM), Dial M for Murder (1981, TVM), Prime Suspect (1989), The China Lake Murders (1990, TVM), five appearances on Twin Peaks (1990-91), Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2 (2003/4), and even had his own series, Then Came Bronson (27 episodes, 1969-70).

   Douglas Henderson (1919-78), the nosy reporter, was one of those ubiquitous screen faces whose name you never knew, bit-part performers who superbly served as cinematic wallpaper. Criminous credits: Cage of Evil (1960), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Johnny Cool (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), three episodes of The Outer Limits (1963-64), six appearances on Perry Mason, Pendulum (1969), 10 segments of The Wild Wild West (1966-69), Zigzag (1970), four episodes of Mannix, six installments of The F.B.I., and three installments of Mission: Impossible.

    “Diagnosis: Danger” can be viewed on Hulu here.

Editorial Comment:   According to one source on the Internet, “Diagnosis: Danger” was intended as the pilot for a weekly series starring Michael Parks, but the project failed to find a sponsor.

JOHN DICKSON CARR – The Problem of the Green Capsule. Harper & Brothers, US, hardcover, 1939. Published in the UK as The Black Spectacles, Hamish Hamilton, hardcover, 1939. Reprinted many times, in both hardcover and paperback, including: Books, Inc., hc, 1944; Pan, UK, pb, 1947; Bantam #101, pb, 1947; Berkley, pb, 1970; Award, pb, 1976; IPL, pb, 1986.

   A series of poisonings of village children by means of doctored chocolates brings in a Scotland Yard detective, Andrew Elliot. While he’s there, it is learned that another murder has taken place: that of Marcus Chesney, a local millionaire whose niece, Marjorie, has been suspected of the earlier poisonings.

   Chesney has died from poisoning! And he was being filmed at the time he was poisoned! Chesney was doing a demonstration of how the doctored chocolates had been substituted for the innocent chocolates in the village shop, testing the perceptions of an audience of three people: Marjorie; Marjorie’s fiance, George Harding; and a neighboring friend, Professor Ingram.

   Chesney’s brother, Doctor Joe Chesney, had had to absent himself from the performance, while Marcus’ employee, Wilbur Emmet, was a participant in the performance, as the mysterious, muffled Mr. Nemo.

   It is “Mr. Nemo” who forced a presumably poisoned capsule down Marcus Chesney’s throat. But Wilbur is found concussed in the yard after the performance. Was Wilbur really Mr. Nemo, or was someone else masquerading as him?

   All three members of the audience seemingly have perfect alibis — they were watching the performance. Dr. Joe was attending a patient. So we have an impossible crime once again, though more in the nature of an alibi problem: how was someone able to get in position to poison Marcus?

   I find this on re-reading still to be a very good detective novel, with an interesting problem, lucidly elucidated at the end. Some may find it short on action, but that’s okay with someone like me, who finds some Carr’s too active.

   Interestingly, the Carr stand-in hero here is a young police inspector. On the whole, this works well. Dr. Fell does not appear until halfway through the book, and a very good police investigation is conducted until then. Then Inspector Elliott meets Dr. Fell, shouts that he loves Marjorie and confesses that he has concealed that he knew before taking the case that Marjorie tried to buy poison.

   Fell (who it turns out is suppressing evidence about Marjorie as well) compliments Elliott on his chivalry. This put me off a bit. It seemed Carr’s romanticism getting the better of good sense. Any policeman behaving that way should have been drummed out of the force.

   And that Elliot could have been “in love” with Marjorie to that extent after seeing her once in Pompeii (Pompeii is for lovers?) seemed absurd to me. But I think I’m the first person ever to complain about this, so I guess it isn’t an issue with most people.

   The characters are solid enough, classic Carr stock. We have the disputatious academic (Professor Ingram); the bluff, hearty fellow who roars a lot (Doctor Joe); the goody two shoes, obsequious male (George Harding — though did Carr really need to give us as black marks that he has “Southern European” looks and went to a “minor” public school, oh dear!); and the beautiful girl who is either an angel or a devil.

   The police are nicely characterized (Major Crow only sounds like Carr once, when he informs Elliott of Marjorie: “For all her sweetly innocent looks, I hear she sometimes uses language that would startle a sergeant-major”).

   There’s a lot of roaring from the male characters that goes on in this book (Dr. Fell even makes a roaring whisper, I don’t know how). I could do without the roaring myself, and I know this got on Barzun’s nerves.

   After reading Doug Greene’s excellent biography of Carr with all the information about his drinking, I can’t help wondering if the drinking bouts kind of influenced Carr’s writing in this regard. After all, drunken people do often roar and shout. Or maybe Carr was just naturally excitable.

   We know he was strongly attracted to the more romantic past. It’s interesting that he was such good friends with the phlegmatic John Street. Of course, both Carr and Street had a fascination with and great talent for murder mechanics.

   Carr often coupled this talent for murder with a Christie-level skill at misdirection, which makes him a truly major figure of the period even if one does like all his stylistic quirks. Barzun and Taylor are far too harshly critical of Carr (and it should be noted they never read many of his best books).

   Nitpicking aside, this seems to me one of Carr’s strongest books. Not flashy, but a fascinating problem. One part of the explanation has a beautiful simplicity, but chances are the reader will miss it until it is revealed!

Editorial Comment:   Curt has recently been re-reading a number of books by John Dickson Carr. This is the fourth in a series of reviews he wrote as a result. The Corpse in the Waxworks was the third, and you can read it here.

BARBARA CLEVERLY – Strange Images of Death. Constable, UK, hardcover, March 2010. Soho Constable, US, hardcover, April 2010.

Genre:   Police procedural. Leading character:   Commander Joe Sandilands, 8th in series. Setting:   France; 1926.

First Sentence:   He studied her sleeping face for the last time.

   Scotland Yard Commander Joe Sandilands is taking Dorcas, his friend’s 14-year-old daughter, to meet her artist father at an old castle in Provence. On the way, she asks Joe to find the mother who abandoned her when she was 2 years old.

   Upon arrival, there is a second mystery to solve. It begins with the destruction of a tomb figure, escalates to the death of a rabbit and culminates in the murder of a beautiful woman. Forced to work with French Commissaire Francis Jacquemin, known for arresting first, then forcing confessions, Joe must ensure he catches the proper killer and prevents any more deaths.

   Characters. It is they who bring a story to life and Cleverly’s characters do not disappoint. They are fully developed with their backgrounds established and their personalities distinct. We not only learn about Joe, for those who’ve not read previous books in the series, but are told of his appearance in an unforced manner.

   A predominant young character can be awkward, but not here. Dorcas, his 14 year old “niece” is someone who holds her own. She is someone I want to see remain part of the series, if not in every book but certainly in the future. There was a character I felt wasn’t as strong an element as I thought might be, but I was okay with that.

   Cleverly is a very visual writer, whether in panorama or in detail. You have a real sense of their surroundings at all times. I appreciate dialogue that has a natural ear and flow with a touch of humor, and she satisfies on all aspects.

   This book’s opening hook is very strong; suspenseful, dramatic and ultimately brutal without the reader having to witness the act. It is also, we soon learn, the first of many excellent twists within the plot, this first so subtle you don’t realize it until later.

   Cleverly skillfully interweaves interesting historical information into the story as well as providing an adept explanation of French and English police ranks and an amazing assessment of Van Gogh’s self portrait.

   These are only a few examples of the deftness with which Ms. Cleverly writes, with none of these causing a break in the flow of the story. Add to that an emotional secondary mystery, and just the right touch of suspense and you have a well thought out and well executed traditional mystery.

   Each year I plan for the release of the newest Sandilands book and order it as soon as it is available. If you’ve not read them, do start at the beginning of the series and set aside uninterrupted time to enjoy each one. I know why they rank so high on my “must read” list; they are excellent.

Rating: Excellent.

      The Detective Joe Sandilands series —

1. The Last Kashmiri Rose (2001)

2. Ragtime In Simla (2002)
3. The Damascened Blade (2003)
4. The Palace Tiger (2004)

5. The Bee’s Kiss (2005)
6. Tug of War (2006)
7. Folly Du Jour (2007)

8. Strange Images of Death (2010)

   Barbara Cleverly has also written three books about aspiring archaeologist Leatitia Talbot, a series that also takes place in the late 1920s and various exotic places around the world.

   Of all the authors who in the years after World War II moved mystery fiction “from the detective story to the crime novel,” perhaps the most influential American woman was Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995).

   Certainly she’s the only one to have received so much critical attention after her death: first Andrew Wilson’s biography in 2003, more recently Joan Schenkar’s The Talented Miss Highsmith, which isn’t a conventional biography but more an exploration of Highsmith’s obsession-torn mind and emotions and how they spilled over into novels like Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

   If you think Cornell Woolrich was something of a psychopath and a creep, you don’t know the meaning of those words till you’ve encountered Highsmith.

   Both, of course, were homosexual. I gather from Schenkar’s book that Highsmith, who was born in Texas and came of age in the feverish New York of the World War II years and went through lovers with the fury of a Texas twister, was never terribly comfortable with being a lesbian.

   Woolrich was perhaps the most deeply closeted, self-hating homosexual male author that ever lived. Both wound up worth several million but often acted as if they were penniless. Both lived mainly on booze, cigarettes and coffee, with peanut butter added to the diet in Highsmith’s case.

   Both bequeathed their copyrights and other property to institutions, not human beings. Woolrich left an autobiographical manuscript (Blues of a Lifetime) which is full of obvious fiction; Highsmith left 8000 pages of notebooks which, as Shenkar demonstrates, are also pockmarked with falsifications.

   But there were notable differences too. Just to mention one, Highsmith was fixated on possessions, keeping everything (except any paper trail leading back to the seven years she had spent in her twenties writing scripts for comic books like Spy Smasher and Jap Buster Johnson), while Woolrich kept nothing, not even copies of his novels and stories.

   It’s most unlikely that the two ever met. Woolrich read very little crime fiction but appeared regularly in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in the Fifties and Sixties and may have read Highsmith’s EQMM stories.

   We know she read the magazine steadily and, in her book Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, devoted almost a full page to Woolrich’s “Murder After Death” (EQMM, December 1964).

   Why did she single out this rarely reprinted and never collected tale? Perhaps she saw something akin to her own evil protagonists in Georg Mohler, a loser at the game of love who turns to crime for emotional revenge.

   When the wealthy and lovely Delphine rejects him for law student Reed Holcomb and then dies a sudden but natural death, Mohler concocts a laughably dumb plot to sneak into the funeral parlor, inject poison into her body and frame Holcomb for murder.

   Woolrich’s detail work is sloppy and implausible and his climactic twist, like those in several of his earlier stories, comes straight out of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. But the scene where Mohler hides in the funeral home and posthumously poisons his lover’s corpse is a gem of poetic horror.

   If any single element in the tale deserved Highsmith’s attention it was this one. In fact she spent most of the page summarizing the plot, calling it a “quite well-done gimmick story” with “an elaborate but quite entertaining and believable scaffolding….” Go figure.

   It was a gimmick—the two men in Strangers on a Train (1950) agreeing (or did they?) to exchange murders — that first made crime fiction readers (not to mention Alfred Hitchcock) take notice of the not yet 30-year-old Highsmith.

   Later authors including Nicholas Blake and Fredric Brown worked their own variations on the theme. But who remembers its first appearance in the genre?

   Mum’s the Word for Murder (1938) uses very much the same gimmick, although here it involves three murders, not two, and is saved till the solution rather than employed as a springboard.

   The byline on this long-forgotten book was Asa Baker but the author’s real name was Davis Dresser and his best-known pseudonym was Brett Halliday, which he used for the all but endless adventures of Miami PI Michael Shayne, beginning in 1939, a year after Mum’s the Word came out.

   As chance would have it, much of both novels is set in Texas, where both Dresser and Highsmith spent several of their formative years.

THE SWORD OF LANCELOT. Universal Pictures, 1963. Released originally in the UK as Lancelot and Guinevere. Cornel Wilde (Lancelot), Jean Wallace (Guinevere), Brian Aherne (King Arthur), George Baker, Archie Duncan, Michael Meacham, Mark Dignam (Merlin). Director & co-screenwriter: Cornel Wilde.

   Everyone reading this knows the story, or you should, so I won’t take the time or space to go into details. But the details do change every time the story is filmed — and how many times has it been? — which is why every time it’s filmed, it’s worth seeing again.

   There must be something in the story, the ill-fated love triangle between Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot, that keeps it fresh and entertaining, no matter how times you see it.

   I do have a couple of comments, though, and as I keep typing, the couple may turn into a few. The first, though, are the ages of the performers. Brian Aherne was 61 and close to the end of his acting career. Cornel Wilde was 48, and Jean Wallace, to whom he was married at the time, was 40.

   They were not youngsters, but even if you were to think them too old — by say 20 years — with their general enthusiasm and zeal for their roles, they can make you believe that they are younger, or very nearly so.

   By all appearances, Cornell Wilde was working with a relatively low budget. This is not a lavish, MGM-style motion picture. But I think the non-majestic if not homely surroundings for the interior of Camelot are more likely to have been the case at the time, if Camelot every really existed, than the splendiforous, wonderfully marvelous settings you may see in other movie versions of the tale, if not most of them.

   The movie is in color, which is definitely a plus. And the battles on horseback and on foot, with lances, spears, axes, maces and any other fierce-looking weapons the combatants could get their hands on are equally authentic looking.

   Not to mention gruesome. One gets the feeling at times that this is the way battles really looked, with swords sticking out of endless bodies on the ground, with the constant danger of being trampled underfoot, if they were not already dead.

   Merlin plays a relatively small role, I am disappointed to say, but Arthur seems really delighted to have Guinevere brought to him by Lancelot, and I felt badly for him when things do not work out the way he anticipates. Even worse, his final fate is dealt with off-screen and well after the fact, and I was disappointed in that as well. He deserved better.

B. A. PIKE – Campion’s Career: A Study of the Novels of Margery Allingham. Popular Press, hardcover/trade paperback, 1987.

   While primarily of interest to a limited audience, B(arry) A. Pike’s Campion’s Career is a loving evocation of the creation of one of the great writers of the detective story’s golden age.

   Pike conveys the wit and wisdom of Allingham and the complex character she invented, deftly showing Camplon’s evolution from a silly ass to a wise and avuncular detective.

   I recommend it without reservation to all who have read Allingham. I suspect that those who haven’t will get more by reading the original first, then reading Pike on Allingham.

Editorial Comments:   It is may not be complete, but Google does have the book online, most if not all. You can check it out here.

   This is the fourth in a series of reviews in which Marv covered reference works published in 1987, books about the field of mystery and crime fiction. Preceding this one was An Introduction to the Detective Story, by LeRoy Lad Panek. You can find it here.

       Previously on this blog:

Call for Campion Complete, by Mike Nevins (the Campion short stories)
Tether’s End (reviewed by Tina Karelson)
Death of a Ghost (a 1001 Midnights review by Thomas Baird)
Mr Campion and Others (reviewed by Mike Tooney)
Dancers in Mourning (reviewed by Steve Lewis)

PETER DICKINSON – A Summer in the Twenties. Pantheon, US, hardcover, 1987. Hodder & Stoughton, UK, hardcover, 1981.

   The year is 1926, and the Twenties are Roaring with flappers and social conscience and colliding with the death of the Victorian era and Red scares about rising Bolshevism. That’s the background for Peter Dickinson’s A Summer in the Twenties.

   This one is more a thriller than a detective story though Dickinson was one of the bright lights of the late flowering of the fair play detective story. He and Robert Barnard almost single-handedly revived the genre injecting humor and style as well as real insights into character and action and in many ways extending the traditions begun by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Michael Innes, even as P.D. James and Ruth Rendell were taking the genre in their own directions.

   Dickinson’s best books were those featuring Superintendent Jimmy Pibble, and his Poison Oracle — in which the detection is done by a chimp who has been taught to communicate in a private zoo in the curious palace of a desert sheikdom — was chosen by H.R.F. Keating for his Crime and Mystery Stories The 100 Best Books (reviewed by Marv Lachman here ).

   Thomas (Tom) Hankey is the hero of this one, the son of Lt. General Lord Milford, and a product of the privilege and wealth of the upper classes at a time when that meant more than money. At the novel’s start he is in the South of France pursuing the beautiful Judy Tarrant, another product of the same class.

   But this idyll is cut short when Tom is summoned home by his father. A crisis is brewing in England, one that borders on revolution — the General Strike of 1926.

   For those unfamiliar with the General Strike, it was an attempt by the British working class to shut down transportation and other industry in England to show both their importance to the country’s economy and protest social injustice, triggered by a lockout of coal miners. Instead it inspired paranoia in the upper and middle classes and the government, with memories of the recent Russian Revolution still fresh and the Tory government anxious to break the back of the Trades Unions.

   While there were certainly some radicals on the left with visions of a revolution, that was far from the aims of the mass of strikers — but in this case appearance trumped reality. It became a defining moment in the class war in England and inspired the plots of many a thriller in the Sydney Horler and Sapper class. Dennis Wheatley’s first Gregory Sallust novel Black August was a Wellsian variation inspired by the General Strike.

   And true to the spirit that would carry England through the Blitz, the upper and upper middle class rallied, manning the vital jobs of the working class and keeping the country going. Whatever your politics, it was a splendid effort mindful of WW II when even the then Princess Elizabeth was in uniform driving a staff car.

   That’s why Tom’s father has called him home, to train as a volunteer engineer on the railway:

   His father has more sympathy for the miners than the owners, but the General Strike is anathema to him.

   Tom is quickly dispatched to the slums of Hull, a mining town unlike anything in his life experience. There his wish to do his duty clashes with his innate sympathy for the workers and his sense of decency and fair play. Confronted by bullies and violence on both sides, gangs of hooded men with guns, he finds merely doing the right thing to be a challenge, and his feelings for Judy Tarrant are soon tested when he meets fiery Kate Barnes and a passionate agitator.

   What makes reading Dickinson a pleasure is that the characters are well drawn and above all human. They make mistakes, have prejudices on both sides of the question, and manage to change, grow, and rise to the occasion as needed. Tom, Judy, and Kate all grow. He is also the brightest of writers, capable of real humor and rare intelligence.

   Though there is little mystery element there is a good deal of action some railway lore and the growth of the main characters, especially Tom …

   This being Dickinson there is a killer and a mystery resolved, though a minor one, but as a portrait of a unique time and a picture of good people trying to resolve the differences that divide them, coming together for a common good, and facing the very real class divisions that separate them A Summer in the Twenties is a solid smart read.

   If you don’t know Dickinson, he is well worth meeting. He took up writing at age forty after seventeen years as an editor at Punch. He was successful both as a children’s author and a mystery writer, winning a Gold Dagger from the Crime Writer’s and the Carnegie Medal for his children’s books, and his books, including King and Joker, The Lively Dead, One Foot in the Grave, Walking Dead, The Lizard in the Cup, and Skin Deep are all good examples of his many virtues.

       Previously reviewed on this blog:

The Lively Dead (by Steve Lewis)