Top Ten Obscure Golden Age novels that deserve to be better known

Following on from last week's post, here's an admittedly idiosyncratic list of obscure Golden Age novels that are fairly hard to find (at the moment) but which in my opinion deserve to be more widely known. One thing that most of them have in common is that they are unorthodox - the books by Connington and Bowers are the only really conventional ones of the type people associate with the Golden Age. I suppose I'm making the point that the Golden Age was more varied than many people believe...

10. Death Has a Past by Anita Boutell. This variant of the "whowasdunin" is set in England but written by a very talented American. What a shame her career was so short.

9. Nightmare by Lynn Brock. An odd book, quite different from his convoluted mysteries starring Colonal Gore, and an ambitious study in psychology. A downbest ending is a flaw, but it's a very interesting book.

8. Poison in the Parish by Milward Kennedy. Kennedy was influenced by Anthony Berkeley, and was almost equally innovative, although not with the same degree of success. This is a fascinating and original spin on the village mystery which deserves to be much better known.

7. No Walls of Jasper by Joanna Cannan. This is a very impressive piece of work, so good that I felt quite distraught when I read the same author's more orthodox novel The Body in the Beck, and found it tedious. But at her best, she really could write. This book is somewhat in the Francis Iles vein, but quite distinctive. It just pushed out of the list Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith, which I also recommend.

6. The Divison Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson. This was the solo detective effort of "Red Ellen", the left wing Labour MP who was a prime mover in the Jarrow Crusade. The House of Commons setting is very well evoked, and the book is free of didacticism. The plot is so-so, but never mind, the story is very readable.

5. The Sweepstake Murder by J.J. Connington. This is a really clever and enthralling story, a fresh take on the "who will be next?" theme that makes And Then There Were None so irresistible.

4. The Grindle Nightmare by Q.Patrick. A very clever mystery with a great US setting and an astonishingly dark storyline. An unforgettable book. I'm very much indebted to John Norris for supplying me with a copy.

3. Middle-Class Murder by Bruce Hamilton. Brother of the better known Patrick, Bruce wrote a few extremely interesting novels. This is very much in the Francis Iles tradition, and is really well done.

2. As for the Woman by Francis Iles. This book was a commercial failure, and marked the end of the novel-writing career of Anthony Berkeley, aka Francis Iles. Hardly anyone seems to like it. So why do I rate it? Because it's an intriguing and unusual novel, which repays careful study. More on this topic in the future.

1. A Deed Without a Name by Dorothy Bowers. My choice of this as number one is, I readily admit, partly influenced by sentiment, but it would be a grim world if there were no place for a bit of sentiment every now and then. It's a nicely clued whodunit of real merit, by a writer of genuine ability and it evokes the "phoney war" nicely. Yes, it is not perfect, but I think it's utterly heartbreaking that Bowers died of TB months after being invited to join the Detection Club and at a time when she hoped her life was changing for the better. Had she lived, I'm confident she would have become a major star. And the good news is, this book is the easiest to find of those on this list. It was reprinted by the splendid Rue Morgue Press a few years ago.

Forgotten Book - The Division Bell Mystery

My Forgotten Book today is a book by a Forgotten Politician. But she was a political figure, and a writer, who certainly doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. Her name was Ellen Wilkinson, who was known as “Red Ellen” because of both her hair colour and her left-wing views, and The Division Bell Mystery, which dates back to 1935, was her one and only mystery.

A financier is found shot in the House of Commons. Is it suicide or murder? Well, we know the answer to that, don’t we? A young parliamentary private secretary turns amateur sleuth, and becomes smitten by the dead man’s gorgeous but enigmatic daughter. The solution to the puzzle isn’t a masterpiece of fair play, and assumes the crime scene was investigated by incompetents, but this doesn’t detract from the highly agreeable nature of the story.

There are countless entertaining touches, as well as some points that made me think many of the issues we face in the current economic crisis are eerily reminiscent of those of the 30s. The bankers of today are rather like the financiers of that era, it seems. Despite her political views, Wilkinson is not didactic, and makes her points neatly and gently.

I thoroughly recommend this book, but Wilkinson wrote it after losing her seat, and once she returned to the House of Commons, as MP for Jarrow, she focused on more serious issues than whodunits. She was a prime mover in the Jarrow March, and later became a Minister for Education, but died in mysterious circumstances. Suicide was suspected, because of her fading affair with Herbert Morrison, but the inquest verdict was accidental death. A sad end to a life of great accomplishment.

The People's History Museum

I had the pleasure of being invited to the opening last night of the revamped People’s History Museum in Manchester. I’m a big fan of museums generally, and I much enjoyed inventing the Museum of Myth and Legend for The Arsenic Labyrinth, and researching in places like the fascinating Bagshaw Museum in West Yorkshire. Lottery money has helped to ensure that Manchester’s redeveloped museum looks very impressive, while the displays are imaginatively presented.

The opening was very well attended, and there was a real buzz about the place. My host, a trustee of the Museum, and a pal for the best part of thirty years, is a doyen of the Labour party, and I gather the party’s archives are to be kept in the Museum. He is one of many people who have worked hard on the project, and I'm sure they were all pleased with last night's event.I can’t imagine ever wanting to join a political party, and I don’t have much time for our present government, but I do think that the history of the labour movement is fascinating. Above all there are many rather moving stories of the struggles of those who believed in a cause, and who did not allow their idealism to be tainted by the egotism and selfishness that is the hallmark of the expenses scandal era. One does wonder what stalwarts of the past would make of the way in which politics has developed in recent years.

Political thrillers often seem unsatisfactory to me, especially if they are written from a prejudiced viewpoint, whether of right or left, but there are some interesting mysteries with a political slant. One that I acquired a while back, and look forward to reading,is The Division Bell Mystery (1932) by Ellen Wilkinson, a left wing MP known as ‘Red Ellen’; her circle included G.D.H. Cole, whose book Double Blackmail I mentioned recently..

Wilkinson’s life story is remarkable, though it had a sad and premature end. A renowned class warrior, who herself came from Manchester, she became Minister for Education in 1945. Two years later, she took an overdose, for reasons that remain mysterious; some say it was because she was disappointed by political failure, on other accounts she was distraught because of an unsatisfactory secret affair with an ambitious fellow minister. Her whodunit may not be a masterpiece – it is perhaps significant that she never wrote another – but it will be interesting, quite apart from the story-line, to see how a fascinating woman portrayed the political dynamics of her time.