Forgotten Book - The Three Corpse Trick

Miles Burton, better known as John Rhode, wrote a long series of novels featuring Desmond Merrion. The Three Corpse Trick, first published in 1944, has been judged as one of the best if not the very best of them. Nick Fuller, a shrewd critic of Golden Age mysteries whose blog I heartily recommend, has described it as a masterpiece. For me, one of the most intriguing aspects of the story is that the Second World War is ignored. We are explicitly told that Merrion's duties in the intelligence section of the Admiralty have ceased and he is free to roam around the English countryside again, solving mysteries in the company of his chum Inspector Arnold. Presumably Rhode was by this time confident that the war would be won. Or perhaps he simply didn't want to think about it any more.

The first chapter is devoted to a Mrs Burge's wanderings around a village in Deanshire, collecting money for charity. This approach enables the author to introduce us to a host of characters who will later feature in the story and provide a wealth of background information. At this early stage I picked up on one reference which eventually proved to be crucial to the plot. These things can happen, but I think many authors would have introduced the characters more gradually and painted them in a little more detail. In the event, two people who are pivotal to the story are peripheral figures, to say the least, and this does seem to me to be a weakness. And including a map of the neighbourhood would have been a big help.

Poor Mrs Burge is promptly murdered and Inspector Arnold is determined that her husband  - who has vanished - is the guilty party. It takes quite a long time for the reasons for Burge's absence to become clear, and at around that stage of the novel we are also given some further information which proves to be highly relevant. At this point I realised the signifcance of the title and figured out what was going on.

Eventually, Merrion tumbles to the dastardly scheme. The crimes are neatly contrived, but I feel that a more talented writer could have made more of the raw material of the plot. It's definitely one of the better Rhode/Burton books that I've read, but it's also one which illustrates some of his shortcomings as a storyteller. Worth reading, but very guessable. 

 

Forgotten Book - Heir to Lucifer

I've mentioned John Rhode (whose real name was Cecil John Street) several times in this blog. He was a prolific writer, and in addition to countless Rhode books, he wrote a long series under the name Miles Burton. Over the years I've picked up numerous Burtons, but only in recent times have I got round to reading some of them. One of them is Heir to Lucifer, first published in 1947, and it's my Forgotten Book for today.

Although it is a post-war book, it seems on the surface to be a classic country house mystery. Desmond Merrion, late of Naval Intelligence, is Burton's regular amateur sleuth, who made his debut in a much earlier book, The Secret of High Eldersham, that I read a few weeks back and will probably cover one Friday soon. The book opens with Merrion and his wife Mavis setting off for the small resort of Croylehaven, because Mavis has been under the weather. It's not an ideal choice, since mystery and mayhem promptly ensue - yet with each violent death, Mavis seems to perk up a bit more...

Croylehaven is dominated by Castle Croyle, home to the eponymous Lucifer, a rich old man surrounded by relatives who are financially dependent on him. Usually, this set-up means that the old chap will soon be a goner,but this is an unusual book. Lucifer survives, although a small boy is killed, an attempt is made on Lucifer's life, and a murder victim's corpse is discovered at an ice-house. By this time, the Merrions have become honoured guests at the Castle, forever popping in and out - the way you do when violent deaths keep occurring.

This is an odd book and its resolution is strange, untypical and rather disturbing. Yet I found it readable and interesting. Rhode/Burton does a pretty good job of making sure that you never know what to expect, and he certainly confounded my theory about the crime. There's a touch of darkness and irony about the ending that would, I suspect, have appealed to Rhode's Detection Club colleague Anthony Berkeley. Definitely worth a look, and by no means as conventional as the basic ingredients might suggest..