More from Dean Street Press

One of the joys of the revival of interest in Golden Age detective fiction is that quite an avalanche of long-vanished books are now readily available. As in any era, the quality varies. But the range of books that one can now obtain is striking - within the British Library series, for instance, there's a huge difference between the work of, say, Alan Melville, E.C.R. Lorac, Richard Hull, and Raymond Postgate. So readers can discover new writers, and then focus on those they enjoy most.

Various publishing models have been adopted. The British Library focuses on high quality mass market paperbacks, Harper Collins on hardbacks, and others mainly on ebooks and print on demand publications. Dean Street Press fall into the latter camp. They do a really good job, and I'm not just saying that because I've written a few intros for them. Their model makes it possible to reissue a large number of books by the same author. The complete works of Annie Haynes, say, would not be commercially viable if the focus were on mass market paperbacks, because their isn't enough interest in them for the books to be sold in large quantities in paperback format. But thanks to DSP, we can now try out Annie's work in ebook or as a print on demand paperback, and much else besides. One of the DSP authors whom I particularly enjoy is Peter Drax, and I'll be saying more about his books in the future.

At present, DSP are reissuing, in large batches, the Ludovic Travers novels of Christopher Bush. Bush was a writer who wrote so much that sometime quality suffered, but I really enjoyed The Case of the Monday Murders, first published in 1936. The mystery is good, even if I did guess the solution early on, but the satiric touches are even better. This book contains plenty of swipes at Bush's fellow practitioners, and as Curtis Evans says in his intro, the character of crime writer Ferdinand Pole, founder of the Murder League, is surely based on Anthony Berkeley. One chapter title is borrowed from Philip Macdonald: "Murder Gone Mad". There's also a hint of self-mockery in the killer's taunting letters, signed "Justice", which might make one recall the comparable correspondence in Bush's own The Perfect Murder Case.

The funniest moment in the book is when Bush mocks Dorothy L. Sayers and E.R. Punshon in the same breath, parodying Sayers' famous review lauding E.R. Punshon (in the guise of "Petrie Cubbe"), but attributing it to Pole. It does make you wonder how on earth Bush managed to earn election to the Detection Club the year after this book came out, especially since Berkeley was famously thin-skinned. It would be good to think that those who are guyed took it in good part. Or perhaps they just didn't read it! (Though given how many of them were prolific reviewers, that would be surprising). Whatever the truth, the great thing is that readers today have the chance to enjoy this one, and I suspect that it is one of Bush's best. 

Crimson Snow

                                             

This week sees the publication of Crimson Snow, the latest British Library Crime Classic. It's an anthology of winter mysteries that I've put together on behalf of the Library, and I'm delighted that early orders have been very impressive. There's a special edition for Waterstones, with a slightly different colour selection for the cover. And in the Library's Classic Crime pop-up shop you can even find bags and coasters emblazoned with the cover artwork. All very gratifying..

But what of the content of the book? After all, despite all the lovely enthusiasm for Classic Crime cover artwork, content remains the most important thing.There are a dozen stories - slightly fewer than in other BL anthologies, but that is because one of the stories is more like a novella, meaning that it's actually a chunky volume. The long story in question is "Death in December" by Victor Gunn, and I'm confident it will be familiar to very few readers.

The same is true of some of the other contributions, including "Murder at Christmas", a Ludovic Travers story by Christopher Bush, and "Off the Tiles" by Ianthe Jerrold (this may well appeal to readers who have enjoyed her crime novels, reissued in recent times by Dean Street Press). There are also some major names, including Margery Allingham, Edgar Wallace, and Julian Symons. 

When I put together Silent Nights, an anthology of Yuletide mysteries, for the British Library last year, I didn't envisage that there would be enough material to justify another seasonal collection like this. But once I started researching I was pleasantly surprised. And there's a nice bonus, too. Thanks to information given to me by Jamie Sturgeon, I was able to include "Mr Cork's Secret", by Macdonald Hastings, a Christmas puzzle mystery which originally appeared in "Lilliput" magazine. Prizes were given and the solution to the puzzle was printed in a subsequent issue. No prizes this time - you'll have to enter the "Murder at Magenta Manor" competition at the Library itself to win some books - but the solution is printed at the back of the book. All in all, I'm very hopeful that crime fans will find in Crimson Snow, and also in Silent Nights, plenty to enjoy, as well as a pleasing solution to their Christmas present-giving dilemmas!

                  

                                       

Forgotten Book - The Perfect Murder Case

My Forgotten Book for today is an early effort by the prolific Christopher Bush, who began writing in the Golden Age and kept going through the Swinging Sixties. The Perfect Murder Case (1929) is, as far as I know, the very first of those mystery novels in which a murderer plays a game with the police, and to that extent it is a pioneering effort.

Various newspapers, as well as New Scotland Yard, receive a letter from “Marius” which opens: “I am going to commit a murder.” He adds that “by giving the law its sporting chance I raise the affair from the brutal to the human.” You don’t get such sportsmanship in crime nowadays!

More letters follow, giving extra clues, and causing a popular sensation: “Flapperdom arranged murder parties at hotels. The Ragamuffin Club had a special dance gala and a gallows scene painted for it...medical students organised a gigantic rag. An enormous fortune must have been laid in bets...what Marius had intended to be the sublime was likely to become the gorblimey.”

The detective work is mainly done by a former cop called Franklin, although Bush’s usual protagonist, Ludovic Travers, contributes to solving the puzzle. There is a lot to admire about this book, but I did feel that the investigation became rather rambling and I couldn’t summon up much interest in either the victim or the suspects. Bush was a writer whose limitations kept him out of the top rank. But he had talent, and interesting and relatively fresh ideas, and The Perfect Murder Case is sure to interest anyone keen on the history of the genre.

Forgotten Book - The Case of the Chinese Gong

My choice for today’s Forgotten Book is Christopher Bush’s 1935 novel, The Case of the Chinese Gong. This is one of a long series of books featuring Bush’s amateur sleuth Ludovic Travers ( I believe he later became a private detective), who here aids and abets the Chief Constable in solving a domestic mystery.

This is one of those books in which the victim is an elderly and wealthy old chap with remarkably few redeeming features. Hubert Greeve is as mean and unpleasant as his name suggests, and there is no shortage of suspects when he is shot to death in his own home.

The suspects include four cousins who have fallen on hard times, as well as the family solicitor. Another question for Travers is whether the butler did it – this character certainly seems to be hiding a few secrets. The plot is quite elaborate, and a rough plan of the crime scene is provided. The real question is "howdunit?"

This is a competent story that begins well. The second chapter is called “Murder is Easy”. Did Agatha Christie borrow the phrase for her book of that name? Did Richard Hull turn it around when he wrote Murder isn’t Easy? We may never know. I did feel that the writing became flat in the middle of the book in particular and Travers is not a particularly memorable sleuth. Writing a compelling "howdunit" novel is a tough task: the danger is that interest focuses on the central trick and the pace drags. Bush was a decent writer, but very prolific, and it might just be that he slowed down the production rate and worked more on character and atmosphere, his fame would have lasted better than it has done.