The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books

by Martin Edwards

  No Walls of Jasper

  by Joanna Cannan (1930)

  Joanna Cannan, like C.S. Forester, enjoyed a long and successful literary career, but No Walls of Jasper never matched the success of Payment Deferred, although both books concern weak men who commit crime because of their desperate yearning for a better life. Perhaps Cannan was unwise to give her novel a title which failed to offer a clue to the story’s nature or quality. ‘No walls of jasper’ is a phrase from a poem by Humbert Wolfe, in his heyday an admired writer, but now remembered only for a pithier verse: ‘You cannot hope to bribe or twist/thank God! The/British journalist/But seeing what the man will do/Unbribed, there’s/No occasion to.’

  Cannan demonstrates how the tedium of middle-class life can create the conditions in which an outwardly conventional member of society begins to contemplate committing the ultimate crime. Julian Prebble is married to a likeable wife, the downtrodden Phyl, and the couple have two sons. Julian works for a publishing firm, but does not earn enough to achieve the financial security and respectable place in society for which he yearns. Matters come to a head after he falls for a charming woman historical novelist on his list of authors.

  The writer in question is Cynthia Bechler, who bears some similarity to a real-life novelist, Georgette Heyer. Heyer was best known as an author of immensely successful historical romances, although her detective novels, such as the locked-room mystery Envious Casca (1941), were also popular. She and Cannan had become friends during the First World War, and No Walls of Jasper is dedicated to her. Cynthia is not presented in a favourable light, but Heyer, who admired the book, was wise enough not to be offended by her fictional counterpart, who differed from Heyer in at least as many respects as she resembled her.

  Julian’s father is rich and disagreeable, and it is the destiny of rich and disagreeable characters in classic crime novels to provide murder victims. When the idea occurs to Julian that his father’s death might solve all his problems, the older man’s fate is sealed. Inevitably, however, Julian’s plans go awry.

  Joanna Cannan was the daughter of the dean of Trinity College, Oxford. Her husband was badly injured during the war, and she became the main breadwinner in the family; today she is best remembered as an author of children’s books about ponies. She turned to detective fiction in 1939, introducing Inspector Guy Northeast of Scotland Yard in They Rang Up the Police. Northeast reappeared only once before the Second World War interrupted Cannan’s crime-writing career. She later created a new detective, the deeply unappealing Inspector Price; his first case, recorded in Murder Included (1950), remains her most widely read crime novel. All her four children became writers, and one of them, Josephine Pullein-Thompson, wrote both pony novels and detective fiction.

  Nightmare

  by Lynn Brock (1932)

  Nightmare represented a major departure for Lynn Brock, who had established himself as a specialist in highly convoluted detective stories, with a series detective, Colonel Gore, who was faintly reminiscent of Philip MacDonald’s Colonel Gethryn. An ambitious novel, clearly intended as a ‘break-out’ book, Nightmare was described by the publisher, Collins, as ‘an entirely original novel, which will arouse great interest and discussion. It is really a character study of a normal man turned murderer, a most fascinating study in psychology…We think Nightmare is one of the most remarkable books we have ever published.’

  Confident words. Unfortunately for Brock and for Collins, Nightmare made little or no impression on the reading public, and was the first of Brock’s crime novels to fail to achieve publication in the United States. From a marketing perspective, it might have been wiser to ‘brand’ the book uniquely, as with Francis Iles’ Malice Aforethought, by giving the author a fresh pseudonym. Any reader expecting a cerebral whodunit similar to those featuring Brock’s series detective, Colonel Gore, would have been startled and perplexed by this dark and disturbing story.

  Simon Whalley, an Irish writer, and his attractive wife Elsa, are tormented by malicious neighbours. The interplay of the characters is credible and effective, and Brock conveys the febrile spirit of the times in the country as a whole, without distracting from the narrative flow. After Elsa becomes ill and dies, her husband vows revenge on those who have ruined his life.

  Sexual undercurrents pervade the book; two of Elsa Whalley’s middle-aged neighbours lust after her in secret, and in a strange and troubling passage, Marjory Prossip, one of Whalley’s tormentors, is subjected to an attempted rape by a middle-aged man after conversations about ‘Freud and birth control and homosexualism and totemism and infinity and things of that sort’.

  Nightmare offers a striking combination of melancholy worldview and revenge tragedy, but Brock’s experiment lacked the wit and strong finale that helped to make Malice Aforethought a success. Discouraged, Brock went back to writing more conventional books, and eventually resorted to resurrecting Colonel Gore in his final novel, The Stoat, subtitled Colonel Gore’s Queerest Case (1940).

  Lynn Brock was a pen-name for Alister McAllister, who also wrote as Anthony Wharton and Henry Alexander. Born in Dublin, and educated at the National University of Ireland, where he subsequently worked as Chief Clerk, McAllister became a playwright before joining the British Army in 1914. He was wounded while serving in the machine gun corps, and also worked in British Intelligence. In 1925, he turned to detective fiction, introducing Colonel Gore, at first an amateur sleuth and later a private investigator. T.S. Eliot admired Brock’s novels, while regretting their excessively convoluted plots; he also expressed reservations about Colonel Gore’s occasional ‘stupidity’, a characteristic which Brock probably intended as a refreshing change from the omniscience of the Great Detectives.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Inverted Mysteries

  An ‘inverted’ or ‘back-to-front’ mystery cross-fertilises a study of criminal behaviour with a detective story. The first significant exponent of this type of crime writing was Richard Austin Freeman, the creator of Dr John Thorndyke. In a preface to a collection of stories called The Singing Bone (1912), he said that he regarded the focus of a detective story on the question of ‘who did it?’ as a mistake: ‘In real life, the identity of the criminal is a question of supreme importance for practical reasons; but in fiction, where no such reasons exist, I conceive the interest of the reader to be engaged chiefly by the demonstration of unexpected consequences of simple actions, of unsuspected causal connections, and by the evolution of an ordered train of evidence from a mass of facts apparently incoherent and unrelated. The reader’s curiosity is concerned…with the question “How was the discovery achieved?”…the ingenious reader is interested more in the intermediate action than in the ultimate result.’

  Freeman asked himself if it would be possible to take the reader into his confidence, making them an actual witness of the crime, and furnished with every fact that could possibly be used in its detection: ‘Would there be any story left when the reader had all the facts?’ He decided that the answer was yes, and wrote an experimental story to prove his point. ‘The Case of Oscar Brodski’ is a rare example of a Freeman story based on a real-life case, which dated back more than forty years—the murder of Henry Raynor, a Nottingham rent-collector. The first half of the story follows the actions of his fictional killer, and is called ‘The Mechanism of Crime’. Silas Hickler steals a packet of diamonds from his victim, Brodski, and lays the corpse across a railway track shortly before a freight train is due, so as to give the impression that the man died as a result of suicide or an accident. Hickler makes the mistake of leaving Brodski’s felt hat at home, but later burns it in the fireplace. In the second half of the story, ‘The Mechanism of Detection’, Thorndyke comes on to the scene, and overcomes the scepticism of a local police inspector (‘I don’t see any significance in the diet of a man who has had his head cut off’) to solve the puzzle thanks to his usual meticulous scientific detective work.

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bsp; The Singing Bone was widely admired, but in 1928, Dorothy L. Sayers remarked in a long and insightful essay about the development of crime fiction that Freeman had ‘had few followers and appears to have himself abandoned the formula, which is rather a pity’. In fact, he had recently expanded one of his inverted short stories ‘The Dead Hand’, into a novel, The Shadow of the Wolf (1925), and Sayers’ words probably encouraged him to produce Mr Pottermack’s Oversight in 1930. When Rogues Fall Out (1932) is also, in part, an inverted mystery.

  Sayers’ comments may also have persuaded other writers to adopt and adapt Freeman’s method. They included Francis Beeding, author of the pleasingly unorthodox Murder Intended (1932), G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, and above all Freeman Wills Crofts, who took to the inverted form with gusto, publishing two novels of this type in 1934. The 12.30 from Croydon was a soundly constructed example of the form, which he rapidly improved upon with Mystery on Southampton Water, aka Crime on the Solent, with an unusual setting in a cement-manufacturing business. Crofts’ Antidote to Venom (1938) is an especially ambitious book, combining an inverted mystery with a central theme, inspired by his deeply held religious convictions, about the redeeming power of faith in God. George Sturridge, the director of the country’s second-largest zoo, is comfortably off and well respected. But nobody has it all, and George loathes his wife Clarissa, who is independently wealthy, but selfish and mean. To make matters worse, he has become addicted to gambling, and run up heavy losses. His expenses mount further when he begins an affair with a pleasant and lonely widow. There is one ray of light: an elderly aunt in poor health has already promised that he will inherit her estate. The stage appears to be set for her to meet an untimely end at George’s hands, but Crofts confounds the reader’s expectations in his most innovative novel. When, eventually, murder is committed, the modus operandi is so cunning and original that diagrams are supplied in order that the reader can understand howdunit.

  The danger of repeating the narrative techniques of the inverted mystery is that the stories can become formulaic. Significantly, some of the best inverted mysteries are stand-alones rather than entries in series. A notable example is Dial M for Murder, by Frederick Knott, which began life as a television play before being successfully adapted for the stage, and then filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1954 (and re-made in 1998 as A Perfect Murder) Much less well-known, but equally watchable, is Vernon Sewell’s 1957 film Rogue’s Yarn, with a screenplay by Sewell and Ernie Bradford The popularity of the long-running American television series Columbo, with Peter Falk as the eponymous detective, and more recently episodes of Luther, starring Idris Elba, demonstrate that a well-told inverted mystery can attract large audiences.

  Two of the finest post-war inverted mysteries were written by Presidents of the Detection Club. Arthur Brownjohn, the protagonist of Julian Symons’ The Man Who Killed Himself (1967) is a character reminiscent of Dr Bickleigh in Malice Aforethought. Brownjohn, a henpecked husband, finds an outlet for his earthier side by creating an alter ego, Major Easonby Mellon. The early chapters are funny, but the mood darkens once Brownjohn starts to plan the murder of his domineering wife. A Shock to the System (1984), one of the few non-series mysteries published by Simon Brett, is equally gripping. The book was filmed in 1990 with a screenplay written by a fellow crime novelist, the American Andrew Klavan.

  End of an Ancient Mariner

  by G.D.H. and M. Cole (1933)

  The Blakeaways own a large house overlooking Hampstead Heath, and as their chauffeur whisks Hilda Blakeaway and her daughter off in a long, black Packard to their country residence near Lambourn, her husband Philip reflects on his good fortune: ‘rich, happily married, in good health, and conscious of his own charm and of a bounding capacity for making friends’. A year earlier, he had been an unsuccessful exporter, but marriage to the slim and gracious widow of a successful architect had transformed his fortunes. True, his step-children are not fond of him, but Philip has scarcely another care in the world.

  Everything changes when Captain John Jay, an elderly seafarer, recognises him from the past. Philip, who believed the old man to be on the other side of the Atlantic, knows that with Jay in the neighbourhood, he will never know a moment’s peace. When Jay turns up at his home, Philip resolves to take decisive action, and packs the butler and his wife out of the way.

  The old man is duly found dead—shot, according to Philip, while attempting to burgle his house. At first, Philip’s story seems plausible, and likely to be accepted by the authorities. Unfortunately, the butler becomes suspicious, while the dead man’s daughter—who is unaware of his fate—tries to track down her father. Philip comes under increasing pressure, and the tension is ratcheted up once Superintendent Wilson of Scotland Yard comes on to the scene.

  The Coles enliven the story with occasional satiric touches—‘the BBC cherishes an ineradicable hope that if it persistently addresses the public in good English with a cultured accent, by and by it will be as if the entire population of Great Britain had been educated at Winchester, and what nobler ideal can democracy set itself than that?’ Politics gets a passing mention, and the authors have Philip deny sharing their socialist beliefs (‘I’m far too fond of my own comfort’) despite being on good terms with his chauffeur.

  For George Douglas Howard Cole and his wife Margaret, writing detective stories was a sideline, inconsequential in comparison to their academic and political work. Margaret dismissed their novels with brevity in her autobiography, and in her biography of her husband. Douglas Cole was a distinguished economist and lecturer whose pupils included two future leaders of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson. He married Margaret in 1918, and they worked together at the Fabian Society before moving to Oxford, the setting for their locked-room novella Disgrace to the College (1937).

  An admirer of Freeman Wills Crofts’ detective stories, Douglas published The Brooklyn Murders in 1923, but all the Coles’ later books appeared under their joint names. Their fiction has been described as ‘humdrum’, an impression strengthened by Superintendent Wilson’s dullness. Many of the books were written in haste, and a lack of care often shows. Nevertheless, the Coles indulged in an occasional interesting experiment, as with their two-volume Pendexter Saga, comprising Dr Tancred Begins (1935) and Last Will and Testament (1936), two linked novels about crimes separated by a quarter of a century. The books introduced a new detective, Dr Benjamin Tancred, although he was scarcely more memorable than Wilson. End of an Ancient Mariner, conversely, is good enough to make it a pity that the Coles did not devote more time and effort to developing the inverted form of detective novel.

  Portrait of a Murderer

  by Anne Meredith (1933)

  The opening paragraph of Anne Meredith’s first book reveals that Adrian Gray was murdered by one of his own children at Christmas, and that the crime was ‘instantaneous and unpremeditated’. Depriving herself of the opportunity to engage readers through a complex whodunit puzzle or an elaborate police investigation, Meredith concentrates on exploring the psychology of her characters, and incisive social comment. The Grays, members of the squeezed middle class, are much less happy than those both poorer and richer than they are: ‘the Grays were solemn, because they did not desire to identify themselves with the uncontrolled lower orders, and were not sufficiently sure of themselves to be immune from criticism’.

  Each member of the family is described in turn before the identity of the murderer is revealed through an extract from his private journal. Thinking quickly, he contrives to throw suspicion on his brother-in-law, a financier. An inquest jury returns a verdict of wilful murder against the scapegoat, and although a young lawyer who has married into the family begins to have doubts about the accused man’s guilt, Meredith skilfully maintains suspense about whether there will be a miscarriage of justice.

  Dorothy L. Sayers bracketed the book with R. Austin Freeman’s ground-breaking inverted stories. She felt that
Meredith offered a compelling portrayal of the killer’s ‘hard core of egotism…an egotism more for his work than for himself…and [it] possesses a sort of brutal grandeur which is almost its own justification. He knows his own genius to be better worth preserving than the lives of his disagreeable relatives…Because he is what he is, we can understand that callous determination, just as we understand his final act…He combines meanness and magnanimity, both in a heroic degree …The book is powerful and impressive, and there is a fine inevitability to the plot-structure which gives it true tragic quality.’

  Anne Meredith was a pseudonym of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, who had previously published detective fiction as J. Kilmeny Keith, a number of whose books featured a politician-detective called Scott Egerton, and also under the name Anthony Gilbert. Having abandoned an attempt at a thriller, she resolved to venture upmarket and adopt a fresh literary identity for a novel influenced as much by Dostoevsky as by Francis Iles. Yet despite the praise accorded to Portrait of a Murderer, she recognised that ‘the effects of the slump were unlikely to be permanently offset by books modelled, be it ever so faintly, on the works of Russian genius’. She continued to use the Meredith name, not least for her memoir, Three-a-Penny (1940), but ultimately achieved more success as Anthony Gilbert.