Forgotten Book - Gold Was Our Grave

Gold Was Our Grave ranks as one of Henry Wade's more obscure titles. It was published in 1954, at a time when his reputation as one of the most accomplished practitioners of Golden Age detection was fading, and it has never attracted any significant critical discussion. But it features his main detective character, the likeable, hard-working, and occasionally fallible John Poole of  Scotland Yard, and boasts several of the attributes that made Wade well worth reading.

The book appeared at a time when the likes of Patricia Highsmith and Margaret Millar on the other side of the Atlantic, and Margot Bennett, Shelley Smith, Julian Symons, and John Bingham in the UK, were remaking the crime novel. Their books didn't, for instance, tend to include maps of the crime scene in the classic tradition - but Wade's novel does, with a drawing of the relevant part of Lincoln's Inn Fields. It's a small point, but it illustrates that he was working in a vein that was no longer fashionable.

The early pages of the story give us a rather plodding (although relevant) account of a fraud trial involving a South American gold mine. None of the alleged fraudsters was convicted and now, it seems, someone is out to take a rather belated revenge. The prime mover in the gold mine fiasco is now a successful businessman and appears to be the victim of an attempted murder. But he doesn't want police protection - will this prove to be a fatal mistake?

There are plenty of classic touches here, as well as a couple of digs, characteristic of Wade, at the pernicious nature of British taxation policy in the post-war era. The plot twist is a variant of one used to brilliant effect by Agatha Christie in the 30s, the detective work is in the Freeman Wills Crofts manner, and the cynical attitude at the end of the book towards the legal system and the nature of justice is worthy of Anthony Berkeley. This is a rather wordy novel, and it could and perhaps should have been pared down considerably. But it's decent entertainment, a book that doesn't deserve to have been so widely overlooked.

The Long Arm of the Law

We tend to associate classic crime fiction with amateur sleuths, Wimsey, Sheringham, Marple, and company. In reality, though, police stories abounded during the first half of the twentieth century. The "police procedural" may be thought of as a concept of the Fifities onwards, but Freeman Wills Crofts and others were writing books about meticulous police investigations long before the days of Lawrence Treat, Ed McBain, and Maurice Proctor.

Classic police stories are celebrated in my latest anthology in the British Library's Crime Classics series. The Long Arm of the Law charts the development of the police story over more than half a century. The first entry is a very obscure one, "The Mystery of Chernholt" by Alice and Claude Askew. And we come right up to the (relatively) modern era with Sergeant Cluff featuring in "The Moorlanders" by Gil North.

I really enjoyed putting this book together. It is, believe it or not, the third of my anthologies that the British Library have published this year alone - and there's one more still to come! - and I like to think that this reflects an increasing interest in short crime fiction. Books of this kind, though I say it myself are a great way of discovering new writers and new detective characters. Anthologies are always a mixed bag, and I do aim for quite a high degree of variety, but there's sure to be something for every crime fan - or so I hope.

This book contains, it's fair to say, a higher number of obscure stories than my other anothologies in the series, although several of the authors are well-known names - Crofts, Henry Wade, Christianna Brand, John Creasey, and Nicholas Blake among them. My researches benefited enormously from help given by a number of experts, including John Cooper, Jamie Sturgeon, and Nigel Moss. I leave it to readers to judge the result, but I'm optimistic that this book will provide crime fans with a great deal of entertainment, and some truly fascinating new discoveries.

Forgotten Book - Be Kind to the Killer

I've often extolled the virtues of Henry Wade on this blog, and my Forgotten Book for today is one of his later, less well-known efforts. Be Kind to the Killer was published in 1952, and it's another example of Wade's admirable determination never to write the same book twice. It's a police story, but his regular cop Inspector Poole doesn't appear (although Sir Leward Marradine plays a minor part), and the focus is on post-war London gangland.

Wade was, in other words, trying to move with the times and adapting his material and storytelling style accordingly. The book opens with the conviction for murder of a cop killer, who is spared the gallows because of a recent change in the law. At first, I wondered if the story would dwell too much on arguments in favour of capital punishment, but this proved not to be the case. Wade's attitudes come out quite clearly in his fiction, but he wasn't a didactic writer.

The dead cop's friend and colleague, Campion (was this choice of name a hat-tip to Margery Allingham's famous detective? I can't believe it's a pure coincidence), determines to find out if there's any truth in the suggestion that someone else was involved in the crime. The official police investigation has turned up nothing, so he embarks on a rather risky freelance operation, enlisting the support of the dead man's widow.

After a slow start, the book perked up, and I found myself increasingly interested, despite my general reservations about crime novels written by genteel English authors about gangsters. As usual, Wade's account of police procedure has an authentic feel, and the characterisation is good enough to keep us interested in Campion's fate. This doesn't rank with his masterpieces, but I enjoyed reading it.

Forgotten Book - Bury Him Darkly

Bury Him Darkly by Henry Wade (1936) is, at first glance, a Golden Age novel of a familiar type. A series of robberies take place at jewellers' shops; in the course of one of them, a man dies; a suspect has an alibi; and the police go to great lengths to break it down. It sounds like the sort of book that Freeman Wills Crofts specialised in, and there's no doubt that Crofts was an early influence on Wade. But there is more to Wade's book than meets the eye.

Crofts' books about Inspector French record meticulous police investigations into carefully engineered crimes. This book goes further. We are presented with a picture of a team of police officers, from Assistant Commissioner (Crime) to constables, working together in the common cause. Best of all, we follow the enquiries of Wade's finest character, Inspector John Poole, and learn that, for all his brilliance, he is also very human and fallible.

The details of the crime are cleverly put together, and although one can make a stab at figuring out whodunit quite early in the story, Wade keeps a number of pleasing surprises up his sleeve. On a personal note, I was fascinated when (as in at least one other Golden Age novel) a body is found on a rubbish dump. When I was writing my first book, All the Lonely People, and came up with the same idea as a plot twist, I believed I was being highly topical,as well as making a sort of social comment about the Britain of that time. Ah, the naivete of youth! It's harder to be truly original than I realised.

Wade is very good at depicting the way in which police officers interact, and does not not neglect the petty jealousies, the mistakes, and the temptations to bend the rules. It's all rather sophisticated. Wade's presentation of female characters at this point was not quite as compelling (he remedied this in Lonely Magdalen) but he really could write. Even if you find alibi-breaking dull - and it's not my favourite form of fictional detection - this book is well worth a read. And the unusual ending is also very good and very life-like.

Forgotten Book - Death on Heron's Mere

I'm not sure I really know what to make of Mary Fitt, the author of today's Forgotten Book, Death on Heron's Mere. She was a writer of genuine talent, with insight into character and an interest in the unorthodox as well as a formidable intellect - the Fitt name concealed the identity of a distinguished classicist, Kathleen Freeman. She was a member of the Detection Club, and to this day many of her books are keenly sought after by collectors,and first editions command steep prices. There's a lot to like - and yet...

When I've read her books, I've found that the excellence of the ingredients has sometimes not been matched by the quality of the whole novel. Death on Heron's Mere is a case in point. It's a country house murder story, complete with map of the mere, and it features the amiable if rather colourless Inspector Mallett (Cyril Hare's police detective had the same name but a stronger personality.) The book was published in 1941, and the plot involved industrial espionage to assist the Germans, yet on the whole the impact of war does not disturb the characters half as much as their prolonged family wranglings.

I felt the book got off to a poor start because a large number of characters were introduced very quickly, and never fully recovered. Fitt evidently took pains to ensure that the main people are more than ciphers included for the sake of the plot, but did not - in my opinion - do quite enough here to involve us with their emotions. As a result, I wasn't as concerned to find out who had shot Simon Gabb's son - and tried to make it look like suicide - as I should have been.

One of the interesting features of this book is the idea of the displaced gentry - the family which owned the big house has now been exiled, and there are newcomers at the Hall. The theme of the old ruling class falling on hard times crops up in several of Henry Wade's books, and also in Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Folly, but for me Wade and Christie do a better job of engaging the reader with the story while making their points about changes in society..This is an interesting book (it was lent to me by a Golden Age expert who rates it highly, and for whose judgment I have great respect) but overall, I found it disappointing. If you plan to give Mary Fitt a try, I wouldn't recommend starting here.

Forgotten Book - Lonely Magdalen

I've expressed before my admiration for Henry Wade's Lonely Magdalen, but the publication by Arcturus of a new mass market paperback means that this previously rare book is now within reach of any Golden Age fan. The Arcturus Crime Classics series is eclectic and fascinating, and I'd be saying that even if it didn't include a couple of my own Harry Devlin titles!

Inspector John Poole, Wade's most regular detective, here investigates the strangling of a scarred prostitute on Hampstead Heath. An early suspect is a man called Varden, who acts suspiciously and acts as bodyguard and bullyboy for a dodgy bookmaker. But Poole needs to discover the victim's identity. When he does, he receives a shock - she is a woman from an upper class background whose recent past is a mystery.

The second section of the book goes back in time, 25 years. We are introduced to an amiable young man called Jim Widdington, and the two attractive sisters in whom he takes an interest. He dumps one and marries the other, but spends most of his time enduring the hellish conditions of the Western Front. Wade, who fought in the war, provides a very good picture of the nightmarish life of the soldiers,and the effect it had on their personal lives.

The third section brings us back to the present (1939). Wade pursues one hopeful lead after another and eventually pinpoints the culprit. We are treated to a frank description of police bullying as the suspect is put under pressure in breach of the Judge's Rules. And in the very last paragraph, there is a wholly unexpected twist - or is it a twist? This is writing of the highest order. It's not cosy or"humdrum" at all. The plotting and characterisation are first rate. But Wade was unlucky - the book came out after the war began, and as a result did not receive the acclaim it so richly deserved. I'm so pleased it's back in print, because I think it's one of the masterpieces of the Golden Age.

Forgotten Book - The Norwich Victims

I've mentioned The Norwich Victims, by Francis Beeding, several times in previous blog posts. It's timely to feature the novel as today's Forgotten Book, since Arcturus have now brought out a mass market paperback edition. I'm very glad to see this - not least because a while ago, I encouraged their very pleasant and enthusiastic crime editor to take a look at both this book and Henry Wade's Lonely Magdalen. I'm delighted to say that Arcturus subsequently decided to bring these two excellent stories back for a new generation of readers to enjoy.

Having read the book before, I knew the ingenious plot twist that makes The Norwich Victims so special, but I found that this did not spoil my enjoyment. Rather, I had the chance to admire the skill with which Beeding (a pen-name for two writing friends) skated over rather thin ice. I also felt that the smooth and highly readable writing style has stood the test of time. The same cannot be said of all detective novels of a similar vintage.This story first appeared in 1931, and the duo's few detective stories are very good indeed. I haven't yet tried their spy thrillers.

Two separate storylines gradually merge. John Throgmorton is a dodgy stockbroker who lives with a pretty younger woman called Hermione. Into their clutches fall a woman who has a winning ticket in a French lotery of very great value. And Throgmorton decides to kill her for it, so that Hermione can impersonate her and grab the money. Meanwhile, at the school where the victim worked, a young woman, the niece of the school's owner, Robert Hedlam, has fallen for George Martin, a clean-cut cop who is put in charge of the murder case.

There are plenty of plot complications, and the pace is excellent from start to finish. Really, this book is a model of its kind. I accept that the culprit's psychology is not explored fully, and if the story were being rewritten today, this gap would need to be filled. But in the whole scheme of things,it doesn't matter much. The Norwich Victims is a very clever and entertaining book and a worthy addition to the list of Arcturus Crime Classics.

Forgotten Book - The Beast Must Die

My Forgotten Book today is Nicholas Blake's The Beast Must Die, which dates from 1938. Most people think it is the best crime novel Blake, better known as the poet Cecil Day Lewis ever wrote, and though I haven't read a lot of his work, I must say that I'd be amazed if he had surpassed this one. It's a fine combination of character study and puzzle.

Blake is interested in exploring the consequences of revenge and a guilty conscience, but these large themes do not get in the way of a clever and satisfying puzzle. The structure is daring and unusual, but also well integrated into the plot. The first part of the book is narrated by crime writer Felix Lane, who announces that he is going to kill a man, though he doesn't know who he is or where he lives. His target is the driver of the car that killed his son in an accident. It's a dazzling start and this first section of the story is genuinely memorable.

Lane finds his man, but the viewpoint then shifts, and he seems to be outwitted by his quarry - who is then murdered. But who killed him? He was a nasty piece of work, so motives abound. Nigel Strangeways, private inquiry agent, tries to help Lane as the police focus on the writer as their prime suspect. The switch in the style of story is a bit startling, but pretty well handled, I felt.

The finale is slightly reminscent of that n Henry Wade's Mist on the Saltings, a book I much admire. But there is a good deal about Blake's novel that is original and impressive. It's definitely one of the most notable Golden Age mysteries, even though I've never totally warmed to Nigel. Blake really could write, and here he is on top form.

Forgotten Book - The Hanging Captain

My Forgotten Book for today is another from the very reliable Golden Age writer Henry Wade. The Hanging Captain is a good story, although by no means his best, and it reintroduces Inspector Lott, who featured in The Dying Alderman, rather than Lott's Scotland Yard rival, Inspector John Poole, who was Wade's best known detective.

There are two fascinating aspects to the book. First, Wade's take on the decline of the ruling classes in Britain. This comes over very clearly and quite evocatively. Wade was an aristocrat himself, but although his writing often had a touch of nostalgia, plus a strong respect for tradition, he had no time for people who squandered the advantages life gave them, at a time when things wee tough for millions.

Ferris Court, the home of Sir Herbert Sterron, is a fading country house with an overgrown garden. Sterron is short of money and is starting to resort to selling (metaphorically) the family silver. He is impotent (this information is conveyed to us delicately but unmistakably) and his much younger wife is attracting other men. So when he is found hanging from a curtain cord it comes as no great surprise. Needless to say, though, before long murder is suspected.

The other striking element of the book is the friendly but competitive relationship between Lott and the local police. Lott has been called in because the locals fear embarrassment, since the High Sheriff of the county is a suspect. Wade knew what he was talking about, as he was once High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. His account of police work and the humanity of police officers is a recurrent strength of his books. This one focuses on a time of death mystery, and the puzzle element is competent but no more than that. Overall, though, this is a novel with qualities which make it still worth reading today.

Forgotten Book - The Missing Partners

I’ve mentioned several times my enthusiasm for Henry Wade, and my Forgotten Book for today is his second novel, The Missing Partners. A highly unusual feature of the book is its setting – in Merseyside, which Wade evidently knew quite well. And I was pleased to see a Liverpool solicitor forming part of a group of amateur sleuths who compete with the police to solve the problem! Tom Fairbanks is a young clerk working for the Inland Revenue whose girlfriend is the daughter of an accountant working in a small shipping company. The two cousins who run the company go missing at the same time, and it seems that one of them has killed the other. What follows is quite a complicated plot involving train times and smuggling, and the details are not especially entrancing to a modern reader. But there is a liveliness about the characterisation, as well as a pacy narrative, to keep one interested. And it is certainly worth persevering to the end, as Wade produces a clever and unexpected solution. Henry Wade would go on to write better books than this one, but already he was showing himself to be a distinctive talent. And what is particularly admirable about him is the sheer variety of his work. You never know quite what to expect. This range probably made it difficult for him to achieve fame in his lifetime. But it keeps his work fresh and interesting to this day.

Forgotten Book - The Verdict of You All

Henry Wade’s debut novel, The Verdict of You All, is my choice for today’s Forgotten Book. It was first published in 1926 (or perhaps 1927 – sources vary) and it marked the start of a career in crime writing that was to last for thirty years. I’ve long believed that Wade has never received his due as a novelist, and I’m glad that the era of blogs and social networking has revealed that other fans take a similar view.

By any standards that we can fairly apply to Golden Age mysteries, this is a very good book, and for a first novel it’s truly exceptional. It combines a wide range of elements, perhaps most notably sound police procedure and a good trial scene, but the final ironic twist is worthy of Anthony Berkeley or Richard Hull.

A point I’d like to make about Wade’s writing is that it was distinguished by a warmth and humanity that is absent from many Golden Age mysteries. Wade was, in real life, almost a caricature of the conventional “officer and gentleman”, a soldier, high sheriff, and baronet who wrote a history of the Foot Guards. But he also had an understanding of people that wasn’t confined to his own class. You get the impressione consistently in his work of a thoroughly decent man.

That being so, I suppose I must add that, in straining for a very clever resolution to his mystery, Wade took one or two liberties with his characters that didn’t ring quite true. With most Golden Age writers and books, this was par for the course, and wouldn’t be an issue – I only mention it because Wade achieved such a high standard, that he has to be judged quite strictly. Overall, though, my verdict is that this is a first rate mystery that deserves to be resurrected. It has stood the test of time.

Dorothy and Wilkie

Dorothy L Sayers had a huge admiration for her Victorian predecessor Wilkie Collins. I too am a Collins fan, and it's interesting to see the ways in which his work sometimesinfluenced hers. Perhaps the most notable example is to be found in theepistolary form that she adopted for her non-Wimsey novel The Documents in theCase.

For many years, Sayerstalked about writing a biography of Collins. She did start work on it, butnever managed to complete it – for reasons that are not entirely clear. She hadall the attributes, certainly including a gift for scholarship, that would haveequipped her ideally for the task.

I've often wonderedabout the incomplete biography, and recently John Curran told me that it hadbeen published, but was very difficult to obtain. Now, thanks to the kindnessof Christopher Dean, the chairman of the Dorothy L Sayers Society, I have beenable to borrow a copy, which I read with much interest.

There are one or twopassing observations to her fellow detective story writers, J.J. Connington andHenry Wade, but sadly, the manuscript finishes before Sayers reaches the pointin Collins' life when he wrote his masterpieces, The Moonstone and The Woman in White. What a pity that we do not have a really detailed study of those booksfrom Sayers in the context of Collins' life story. Perhaps she meant to returnto the book one day in the future. Her sudden and rather premature death meantthat she did not have the chance to do so – and we are the poorer for it, eventhough it is pleasing that the fragment remains in existence.

Death in Paradise - BBC TV review

Death in Paradise is a brand new BBC TV detective drama with some interesting ingredients, and I settled down to watch the first episode tonight with a good deal of optimism. Above all, I was intrigued by the fact that we were presented with – yes! – a 21st century locked room mystery. A sort of Guadeloupe-based homage to John Dickson Carr, if you can imagine such a thing.

A British cop who is working on a lovely little Caribbean island is found shot to death in a sealed panic room belonging to a millionaire. The only two people with access to the panic room are the millionaire and his wife, both of whom are conducting affairs. But which of them is guilty?

Another British cop, DI Poole (no relation to Henry Wade’s cop with the same name) is sent out to investigate. Poole is played by comedian Ben Miller, who is inexplicably grumpy about being posted to a truly beautiful place. The casting gives a clue to the fact that this is a light-hearted drama, a contrast to the bleak and gritty shows that have become over-familiar on our screens. 

The solution to the mystery has a clever twist, and although this show is certainly not in the same league as early Jonathan Creek – which provided a masterclass in scriptwriting -  I found it watchable. After all, given my enthusiasm for impossible crime stories, I’m naturally pleased to see that they are still finding favour with the TV programme makers. Admittedly, there were various flaws in the script, and some of the humour seemed forced. Nor was I really carried away by Miller’s performance, which struck me as less than subtle. I can imagine that some viewers will have been seriously unimpressed. But this was an establishing episode, with seven more to come. As for making a definitive judgment on the show’s  quality, the jury is still out.      

The admiral floats again

I was delighted to receive recently a copy of the brand-new reprint by HarperCollins of a classic detective story which I have mentioned before on this blog – The Floating Admiral. It is one of the round-robin mysteries put together by members of the Detection Club and is by common consent the best.

An obvious selling point of the book is that the contributors included such stellar names as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, while G.K. Chesterton – the first president of the detection club – contributed an introduction. The ingenious Anthony Berkeley undertook the toughest task – that of writing the final chapter which pulls all the threads together – with considerable aplomb.

The other contributors included names which are now largely forgotten today, although I have mentioned quite a few of them in this blog – an example is Canon Victor Whitechurch. The excellent Henry Wade and the reliable if plodding John Rhode also feature. And in this edition the scene is set by the detection club's current president, Simon Brett.

I do find round-robin mysteries intriguing, even if some of them are not entirely successful. The Floating Admiral is more than a historical curiosity; on the whole, it is pretty good example of 1930s detective fiction. A while ago, I myself contributed a chapter to a round-robin mystery organised by a literary Festival. As yet, unfortunately, it hasn't seen the light of day, but I must say that I'm looking forward to finding out what happened to resolve the conundrum that I helped to create!

Forgotten Book - No Friendly Drop

My latest choice for a Forgotten Book is No Friendly Drop, by Henry Wade, which dates back to 1931. When I read the first chapter, I feared the book might be a big disappointment. There was quite a bit of seemingly aimless chit-chat between the landed gentry – Lord and Lady Grayle, of a decaying great house called Tassart, and their son and daughter-in-law. But before long, my interest quickened and it became clear that Wade had planted important clues in that first chapter.

Lord Grayle dies, in mysterious circumstances, of an odd combination of poisons. The local police call in Scotland Yard, and Wade’s regular cop, Inspector John Poole, is sent to investigate. Poole is nicely characterised – young, intelligent if sometimes fallible, keen and likeable, a much more rounded figure than, say, Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French. Even the minor characters are nicely done – I rather enjoyed the idea of an aged solicitor ‘who had never used a telephone in his life’. And I liked Wade’s wry reflection, when Poole thinks that a woman of 55 might not be driven by passion, that ‘Poole did not yet know everything about life’!

In fact, the story is cunningly designed, and the book held my interest even though it is quite lengthy. Wade (real name Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, 6th baronet) was a wealthy man, and you get the feeling that he really did know his way around grand country houses – more so than colleagues who simply used them as a convenient setting for a murder mystery. His instincts were conservative – punitive taxation gets a critical mention here, as in other of his books – but He is very good at dealing with the politics of relations between different branches of the police, and Poole delves much deeper into motive than, say, French. In fact, a puzzle about motive is at the heart of the book. Poole’s humanity is such that, at the end, ‘though it was impossible not to feel horror at the callous cruelty that had destroyed two human lives, it was also difficult not to feel some sympathetic understanding of the provocation that had led to it.’

All in all, a good book. Not a match for the best of Christie, but readable and intelligent. I am definitely a member of Henry Wade’s fan club.

Forgotten Books - Heir Presumptive

I’ve mentioned before my enthusiasm for the work of Henry Wade, and his Heir Presumptive, first published in 1935, which I’ve only just caught up with, is my choice today for Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books. I’d sum it up as ‘Francis Iles meets Kind Hearts and Coronets’, and if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that this is meant to be high praise!

Eustace Hendel is alerted by a newspaper item to the fact that he just might be line for an inheritance that will solve all his financial problems. And those problems are pressing; he is running out of cash, and risks losing his lovely but greedy girlfriend as a result. However, he sees a possible route to becoming the next Lord Barradys. Unfortunately, some family members stand in his way – you can guess what rascally Eustace starts to contemplate...

Henry Wade provides a family tree of the Hendels, which repays careful study. The account of Eustace’s attempts to secure the title and a fortune is very entertaining, and the action moves at a fast pace. There is a double twist at the end, and despite one or two implausibilities, the book is a light and lively read from start to finish.

Wade kept trying out different types of story – this may account for his relative lack of fame, but it also helps to make him a quite fascinating writer, arguably the most versatile of all the Golden Agers. Most of his work is darker in tone than Heir Presumptive, but I found the change in mood pleasing and achieved with real flair. This is a breezy book that I’d strongly recommend to fans of older mysteries.

Forgotten Book - Released for Death

My choice this week for Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books is Released for Death, a novel by Henry Wade which I've seldom seen discussed. It's a period piece, but of considerable interest, both historically and in its own right. I reviewed it for Geoff Bradley's marvellous magazine CADS a few years back. Here is an amended version of that review.

The rich variety of Wade’s work is illustrated by this book, which traces the misadventures of a cat burglar, Toddy Shaw. The early pages of the novel are set in Hadestone Prison, where Shaw is serving a sentence for a crime committed in collaboration with a cleverer and infinitely more dangerous villain, Jacko Carson. He is released earlier than Carson, who by that point is nursing a grudge that threatens, eventually, to cost Toddy Shaw his life. Wade shifts viewpoint regularly, both in the prison scenes and later, and this technique adds depth to the novel, although it is a little frustrating that, having interested the reader in the prison doctor and his wife in the space of a few pages, he never allows either character to return and play any part in subsequent events.

Following his release, Shaw contrives to stay on the straight and narrow – until family misfortunes and renewed acquaintance with Carson push him into resuming his criminal career with disastrous results. When he is charged with a murder he did not commit, he realises too late that he has been set up. The question then is: will he be able to free himself from the noose that Carson has so neatly arranged to fit his neck? As usual, Wade charts the police investigation – and the differing approaches of the members of the team – with calm authority.

An important part is played in the later stages of the novel by the ambitious young PC John Bragg, who appeared in the short story collection Here Comes a Copper, published in the same year as this novel:1938. Wade includes a scene in which Bragg admits to his wife that as part of his duties he is trying to win the affections of a woman who has given Carson an alibi. Arguably, it is a scene superfluous to the story, and it certainly slows the book as it approaches a climax. Yet Wade’s willingness to address the personal implications for a young policeman of his work is striking: he was a writer much more interested in character than most of the ‘humdrum’ school of novelists with which he is sometimes – misleadingly, I tend to think – associated by the critics.

It is a pity that Bragg did not appear in other books, but Wade (like the late lamented Michael Gilbert, of whom he was a forerunner) liked to ring the changes with his detectives as well as with types of story. Wade’s novels tend not to move at lightning speed and that is undeniably the case here - apart from a final scene that feels rushed after the stately pace of what has gone before. But he was much more than a mere plodder. This book may not be a masterpiece, but it presents an interesting and credible picture of a slice of British society in the bleak period immediately before the Second World War. Wade manages to hold the reader’s interest despite largely dispensing with puzzle and mystery. No mean achievement for a writer in the Golden Age.

Michael Gilbert

I’ve mentioned Michael Gilbert a few times in this blog, and one of his titles is my ‘forgotten book’ this coming Friday. He’s a writer whom I came across in my teens. My parents liked his books and encouraged me to read him.

They had an ulterior motive, actually. The biographical note in the Gilbert books that Hodder published in those days explained that Gilbert combined a career as a solicitor with his crime writing. He achieved a good deal of success in both fields (he was Raymond Chandler’s solicitor in England, incidentally and a good friend of the great man). At this time my parents were unnerved by my stated ambition to become a crime writer, and naturally wanted me to have a ‘proper job’. When I proved resistant to this, they pointed to Michael Gilbert as an example of someone who wore both hats.

Duly persuaded, I studied law and ultimately became a solicitor. I remained a firm fan of Michael Gilbert’s books and during the 1980s, I persuaded a legal magazine to allow me to write an article about his work. This gave me the chance to interview a man who was something of a hero. I talked to him at length on the telephone and found him as urbane and likeable as his books. He was, too, remarkably and genuinely modest, a man who had spent most of his career in a world where solicitors were not allowed to advertise and in grave trouble if they did so surreptitiously.

After that, we spoke again on various occasions. He encouraged my own writing and was kind enough to provide an extremely positive quote for Eve of Destruction (something he seldom, if ever, did for other writers, and something of which I am rather proud). In later years he allowed me to reprint some of his classic short stories for CWA anthologies and shared with me his disappointment at the lack of critical attention given to The Queen against Karl Mullen, one of his last books, and quite splendid. The pity was that, by the time the novel came out, Michael Gilbert was no longer truly fashionable. Even Hodder, to whom he had long been faithful, dropped him. He had won much acclaim, including the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, but he is associated primarily with the post-war era, in which his most famous whodunit, Smallbone Deceased, is set. Yet he wrote with great accomplishment for half a century.

One other thing about Michael Gilbert. He had a great deal of insight into the crime genre in all its forms. As well as many novels and countless short stories, he wrote with success for both tv and stage, and Death in Captivity , Danger Within, was enjoyably filmed by Don Chaffey. He was a friend and admirer of Cyril Hare, and edited a posthumous collection of Hare’s best short stories. He wrote intelligently about the work of other writers, and thereby introduced me to such notable authors as Henry Wade and Christianna Brand.

Oh, and he and his wife found time to produce seven children, one of whom also became a successful writer. Quite a man.

Forgotten Book - Constable, Guard Thyself!

My latest entry in Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books is another one from Henry Wade. I've previously covered The Dying Alderman in this series. Now for a look at Constable, Guard Thyself!, which dates from 1934. Don't be too put off by the odd, old-fashioned title. It's a decent book by a fine writer.

Actually, the book might with stricter accuracy, given the rank in the Brodshire police force of the murder victim, Captain Scole, have been entitled Chief Constable Guard Thyself! It features death by shooting in the unusual setting of a police station (a plan is provided) and an investigation conducted – once the locals have decided to call in Scotland Yard – by Wade’s regular detective, the pleasingly fallible Inspector Poole.

Wade was willing to experiment with styles and story-lines, and this novel is a reminder of his early contribution to the development of crime fiction based upon police procedure. Wade’s knowledge of police hierarchies and routine surpassed that of contemporaries such as Freeman Wills Crofts, J.J. Connington, and the Coles, and when Poole reminds Sergeant Gower that ‘they’ve cut us very close on our expenses since ‘31’, his words have an authentic ring. (I was a little less impressed by the scene where Poole ‘arranged with the greengrocer a simple vegetable signal…’, but this was long before the elaborations of The Da Vinci Code.)

Occasionally Wade is described by commentators as a ‘plodder’ or a ‘Humdrum’, but I believe this under-values his work. Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, as the splendid name behind the pseudonym suggests, was a pillar of the establishment: a decorated war hero, an alderman and sheriff, who inherited a baronetcy in 1937. Yet, as this book demonstrates, he was not afraid to contemplate the possibility of police malpractice and miscarriages of justice. In some ways he seems in real life to have been the sort of man upon whom other crime writers of the time might well have modelled their own heroes – yet despite the demands of public life, he contributed valuably to the development of the genre for almost three decades.

He demonstrates his commitment to fair-play puzzling in an especially bold fashion here, offering major clues to the murderer’s identity at a very early stage; sadly, they may be too obvious to deceive the astute modern reader. Nevertheless, the book gives an interesting portrayal of police work in the 30s, and remains readable to this day.