Forgotten Book - Peril at Cranbury Hall

A couple of years before Agatha Christie published Peril at End House (1932), her Detection Club colleague John Rhode was responsible for Peril at Cranbury Hall. With one exception, the similarity ends there, though. Whereas Christie's novel is a splendid example of her craft, with some very clever plotting, and is well regarded to this day, Rhode's book long ago fell into obscurity.

This is a pity, because it's a readable story. One aspect that I really liked was that Cranbury Hall is home to a medical scam, in which a group of unscrupulous men take advantage of the gullibility of the 'worried well', offering a phoney cure for fatigue, by way of a vaccination. Rhode's description of the way that naive people with money to burn will fall for all sorts of scams in the search for better health or a better appearance, is very good. And of course, the central point that he makes remains true to this day.

At the heart of the scam is an unscrupulous chap called Oliver Gilroy. Oliver has just been released from prison, after serving seven years for fraud. (Compare the way certain fraudsters are treated nowadays by our legal systerm) He is bent on making big money fast, and he is ruthless about securing the collusion of  a number of people who fear that he may disclose their secrets.

However, it soon becomes clear that someone wants Oliver dead. A number of attempts to kill him are near-misses (compare the story that Nick Buckley tells Poirot about the attempts on her life in Peril at End House: the explanation, however, is utterly different). Dr Priestley becomes interested in the case, and for once stirs himself into physical action, travelling to Ostend with his long-suffering secretary Harold Merefield during the course of his investigations. This is a carefully structured story, and one I enjoyed reading.