Forgotten Book - Proceed with Caution aka Body Unidentified

Fashions change in crime writing, as in everything else. I doubt very much whether anyone today would give their crime novel the drab title Proceed with Caution. Yet that's just what John Rhode did, back in 1937. (His American publishers called it Body Unidentified, which is at least an improvement.) And it's even less likely that a modern crime novel's opening words would be: 'Things happen like that,' said Superintendent Hanslet, 'There are times at the Yard when things are as dull as ditchwater.'

After this soporific start, things can only get better. Thankfully, they do. In the prologue, Dr Priestley is told about two distinct cases being investigated by his Scotland Yard chums Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn respectively. Both detectives are convinced that their cases are open and shut affairs, but of course three things are entirely predictable. First, the mysteries are much more complex than they seem at first. Second, they will turn out to be connected. And third, our armchair amateur detective will be quicker on the uptake than the professional cops.  

Hanslet's case involves some valuable diamonds that have gone missing, along with a Hatton Garden jeweller. Waghorn's case is a murder mystery of a Gothic nature, although it wasn't Rhode's style to make the most of the bizarre trappings of a case involving a deserted motor hearse and a body rendered unrecognisable after being dunked in a tar boiler used for road repairs. The tar boiler murder concept would, I feel, definitely suit a Rachel Savernake story, but Rhode is more concerned with timetables, alibis, and disguises than the vivid evocation of atmosphere.

I've realised belatedly that the best way to read Rhode is to rattle through his stories quickly. This is so even though I like to try to figure out the answers to Golden Age whodunit mysteries and also to try to understand how the author crafted his puzzle. Quite early on, I realised who was the villain of the piece, and rather than get bogged down in the minutiae of travel times which occupy a sizeable portion of text, I took pleasure in the way Rhode set about pulling the wool over the eyes of his readers. We never get to understand the mindset of the murderer - the motive is taken for granted - and this lack of interest in criminal psychology is one of Rhode's weaknesses, while the book is wrapped up with almost unseemly haste once the good doctor has explained things.. But there are plenty of nice little touches, and overall I'd rate this book as among the best Rhodes that I've come across.  

Forgotten Book - The Davidson Case

Today's Forgotten Book dates from 1929, and is an early case featuring Dr Priestley, John Rhode's cerebral and rather curmudgeonly Great Detective. The Davidson Case is an enjoyable mystery. I figured out the culprit's secret at a fairly early stage, but that didn't spoil the book for me, which strikes me as one of the best Rhodes I've read to date. (He also wrote as Cecil Waye and as Miles Burton, and two Burtons have been chosen for inclusion in the British Library's series of Crime Classics.)

The book has a background in business, something that was - perhaps surprisingly - quite common in Golden Age stories, especially those written by people like Rhode and Freeman Wills Crofts, who had extensive business experience. Guy Davidson's unpleasant cousin, Sir Hector, has taken charge of the family firm, and his behaviour - which includes getting rid of a senior employee called Lowry - is causing Guy concern. Sir Hector seems unstoppable, but when he is found dead after a train journey, Guy is able to take control of the company, and order seems to have been restored.

Until, that is, the police start to suspect Guy of having murdered Sir Hector. Priestley assists the police, but finds some aspects of the case troubling, and refuses to testify in court. Rhode offers a pleasing sequence of plot twists, and "justice" is mentioned in the very last sentence, a reminder of the extent to which notions of justify preoccupied Golden Age writers. I found the story held my attention from start to finish.

One line I enjoyed particularly came when Priestley and his secretary Harold pursue their investigations into Guy's activities. "Really, my boy," the great sleuth says, "the public house is the finest possible place in which to obtain information" There speaks Rhode, a pub-lover who enjoyed a pint or three (one can't quite imagine Poirot saying something similar to Hastings, can one?) A good book, well worth a read.

Forgotten Book - Vegetable Duck

John Rhode, like so many of his Detection Club colleagues, was fascinated by true crime, and he was one of those novelists (Raymond Chandler, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and recently P.D. James, are others) who was enthralled by the mystery surrounding the Wallace case. Did the mild-mannered insurance agent William Wallace batter his wife Julia to death with a poker, or was someone else guilty? To this day, there is not a total consensus. Sayers suspected he was innocent, but I'm not sure Rhode took the same view.

He adapted the case for fictional purposes in The Telephone Call in 1948, but he'd also made use of it four years earlier in Vegetable Duck, which is my Forgotten Book for today. Here is where I confess my ignorance - "vegetable duck" is apparently a delicacy of sorts, a marrow stuffed with mince, which happens to be the favourite foodstuff of one of the characters in the novel. I must admit, though, that I'd never heard of it. And it's not on the menu at any of the happily numerous pubs which do meals in this neck of the woods!

Rhode makes explicit reference, more than once, to the Wallace case in this book. The circumstances of the murder are very different from those in the original crime - you guessed it, the vegetable duck is poisoned - and the setting is a reasonably prosperous part of London rather than a northern city. But the type of "alibi" put forward by Wallace is used by the victim's husband here. Dr Priestley utters words of wisdom in the background, but the main detecting is done by a cop, Jimmy Waghorn, who often featured in Rhode stories.

I enjoyed this book. It was crisp and readable, and contained a number of points of interest. Rhode's technique means that I was able to spot the culprit on first appearance, but the means by which the dreadful deed were done remained unclear to me at that stage. "Means" fascinated Rhode rather more than they do me, or most other modern writers. But he was a capable performer, and this is a good example of his post-war work.

Forgotten Book - The Murders in Praed Street

Which was the first detective novel to feature a serial killer? I use the term “detective novel” to exclude book such as The Lodger, by Marie Belloc Lowndes, which is a suspense story heavily influence by the crimes of Jack the Ripper, and which Hitchcock turned into a film early in his career.

I stand to be corrected, but the first serial killer detective novel I know of is The Murders in Praed Street, by John Rhode, and that is my Forgotten Book for today. Today, the plot twists may seem shopworn to seasoned whodunit fans, but this was a ground-breaking book when it appeared in 1928, and I enjoyed reading it.

The luckless denizens of Praed Street start to fall victim to a signature killer of considerable ingenuity, and the police are baffled until Dr Priestley helps them out. One of the murders involved the use of “a remarkably virulent synthetic alkaloid”, prompting the good doctor to reminisce about one such alkaloid with which a character in The Ellerby Case “tipped the spines of the hedgehog to which I so nearly fell a victim. You remember that incident, I dare say?” Odd question. Who could forget an attempted murder by hedgehog spines?

Within a few years, serial killer (or “multiple murder”) mysteries became relatively common. Philip Macdonald wrote two, Anthony Berkeley and Francis Beeding had a go too, and Agatha Christie produced that wonderful puzzle The ABC Murders. But Rhode deserves credit for leading the pack. Today, of course, serial killer novels are two-a-penny. I doubt if many of those who read them know the name of John Rhode. And, whatever his literary limitations, I think that is a pity.

Forgotten Book - The Telephone Call

My choice for today's Forgotten Book dates back to 1948. The Telephone Call by John Rhode is a sound example of crime fiction inspired by a real-life case. The case in question is one of the most celebrated true crime mysteries of the 20th century, the Wallace case. And it's a murder mystery that has long intrigued me, partly because it has so many fascinating aspects and partly because it occurred in Liverpool, a city I know well.

Dorothy L Sayers and Raymond Chandler were amongst those who are fascinated by the Wallace story and Sayers wrote about it at some length. There was a widespread (although by no means universal) consensus that Wallace did not murder his wife, although many years passed before diligent investigative journalism produced a plausible theory about an alternative culprit, whom it was impossible to bring to justice.

John Rhode apparently used elements from the Wallace story in an earlier novel, Vegetable Duck, which I have not yet read. The Telephone Call does, however, follow the real-life scenario quite closely. Rhode acknowledges in a note at the outset that "this story is based on a celebrated murder trial" although he hastens to insist that "his treatment of it and the solution he propound are entirely imaginary".

Most of the detective work in the novel is undertaken by Superintendent Jimmy Waghorn of Scotland Yard, but he finds it necessary to consult more than once Rhode's most famous amateur sleuth, Dr Lancelot Priestley. This is a soundly constructed novel with an interesting solution, although since that solution depends upon the character of the victim, and Rhode fails adequately to characterise her for most of the book, it falls short of excellence. In fact, in this respect it is a good example of the shortcomings of detective novels which focus heavily upon alibis rather than strong characterisation of the key players in the drama. Yet despite its failings, The Telephone Call is a good illustration of true crime rendered as fiction, and I certainly found it well worth reading.

Forgotten Book - Shot at Dawn

Shot at Dawn, first published in 1934, is a whodunit by John Rhode (real name, Major Cecil Street) and features Rhodes’ regular amateur sleuth, Dr Priestley, who is the original grumpy old man, attended by a secretary called Harold Merefield, who helps him to deliver solutions to murder cases to Scotland Yard’s Superintendent Hanslet.

This case concerns a man whose body is found sprawled on his motor cruiser, which has anchored in the River Ridding. Who shot him, and why? His fellow sailor appears to have been in a drunken stupor when the crime was committed. But has he got something to hide?

After a pleasing start, the story gets bogged down in a lot of stuff about tides, and at one point Dr Priestley even commands the hapless Harold to draw a graph to cast some light on the mystery! The graph is duly reproduced, and provides a clue to the solution, but suffice to say that this method of investigation is less than exciting.

Happily, there is a very good solution to the puzzle that redeems the story. A weakness, though, is that the precise, as opposed to generic, motive remains unclear. Rhode was more interested in the velocity of motor cruisers than in a criminal’s psychological motivation. Unlike me.