A. Fielding was a mystery writer who was very, very mysterious. He (or she) wrote more than twenty detective novels, published by Collins (who didn't bother with minor writers) between 1924 and 1937 yet nobody seems to know who he (or she) was. Even the ace researcher John Herrington, who has investigated Fielding extensively, ran into a series of dead ends. The consensus seems to be that Fielding was a woman, although on the evidence of the 1932 novel The Westwood Mystery, I wouldn't be startled to learn the author was in fact a man.
I haven't bothered with Fielding until now, because I had a feeling that the books were of a second-rate humdrum type. However, I came into possession of Anthony Berkeley's own copy of this book, and thought I must give it a go. This novel definitely has a number of pleasing ingredients. The concept for the plot is pretty good and there are a few nice touches of wit. Overall, though, I found the story frustrating because I didn't feel the ingredients were mixed with sufficient skill.
There are two strands of story. The first involves a barrister, Sir Adam Youdale, who is skilled at defending people who are apparently guilty. The second involves a dodgy businessman called Fox, who specialises in exploiting gullible women for financial gain. Youdale is found murdered at his home, Westwood, but for some time Fox drops out of our sight as Inspector Pointer pursues his inquiries.
Berkeley pencilled some notes in the book and it's clear that he had reservations similar to mine. 'Rather heavy going in the middle', for instance, is spot on. I'm rather baffled as to why the book is so disjointed, because it does seem to me that Fielding could have improved this story by structuring it differently. Possibly it was written in too much haste. Yet there is enough merit in the writing for me to be interested in reading more of Fielding's work.
6 comments:
Never heard of this writer before but certainly there is a history of female writers concealing their gender by using initials only. And the names (I can obsess on fictional names, my weakness) have a feminine feel to their choice. So many mysterious mystery writers of this era. Do you think publisher's also liked to use this as a hook to catch readers? Another example of Martin Edwards' detective work coming again to the fore.
In case anyone’s interested, here’s Berkeley’s review of this book (from Time and Tide, 24 December 1932, under the byline Francis Iles):
“The Westwood Mystery is rather too much of a good thing. So many plots, unrelated in origin, had been timed to burst on a certain evening in Wimbledon, that coincidence is stretched a little too taut and the reader has little chance to disentangle the one which was responsible for the death of Sir Adam Youdale. The book is in places a little heavy, and interest tends to flag in the middle, but there is an astonishing amount of ingenuity in it, particularly with regard to our old and improbable friend, the important witness who is away on business, no one knows where, and never reads the newspapers. I have always liked Inspector Pointer and his toes, and if Mrs. Fielding would only subdue her fondness for impossible melodrama (which quite unnecessarily spoilt the last chapters of that otherwise excellent book, The Footsteps That Stopped), and rely a little less on coincidence for her plots, she ought to be able to take a high place in the first of the two schools of detective writers.” (Iles had referred earlier to the “two factions” of writers of detective stories, the first of which “holds that the detection is all that counts, and such things as character, good writing, probability and humour have no importance.”)
Berkeley says “Mrs. Fielding”; did he know? (I had assumed Anthony Gilbert was a man until I read an Iles review referring to the author as “she.”). By the way, Berkeley had availed himself of the “important witness who is away” in the last few pages of The Poisoned Chocolates Case (including the phrase “she is the sort of woman who rarely reads the newspapers”).
In the blurb for Fielding’s second book Deep Currents (1924), the publishers Collins called the author Mr Fielding:
Deep Currents tells of the strange and terrible adventures of an English girl who falls into the hands of a weird secret order in the heart of Asia Minor, and her rescue after many terrifying ordeals. Mr. Fielding has an intimate personal knowledge of this strange land and little-known peoples, and this enhances the purely imaginative surroundings which he portrays…….Mr. Fielding made a splendid start as a novelist with The Eames-Erskine Case, a powerful and excellently-constructed detective story, and Deep Currents reveals his versatility and admirable story-telling gift.
In Fieldings’s first novel in the blurb in the Collins edition there is no ‘Mr’, it is just A. Fielding, with no indication if the author is male or female.
Liz, Arthur, Jamie, thanks as always for your excellent comments - and Arthur, special thanks for all the help you've given me over the years with regard to my Berkeley collection.
A Spanish publisher, "Sherlock Editores", is translating and publishing some "forgotten" Golden Age novels. Two of A. Fielding mysteries are among the books they've published: "Mystery at the Rectory" and "The Craig Poisoning Mystery". I've read the first and found it pretty good. With the exception of the murder method, it was a mostly "light" mystery, it's tone reminding me a little of Victor Whitechurch's "Crime at Diana Pool" (it also involved a vicar, although not as the detective), although Ive preferred Whitechurch's book.
Thanks, Gabrile. Those are two Fieldings I'm not familiar with.
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