Forgotten Book - Poison in the Garden Suburb

The detective novels of the husband and wife team GDH and Margaret Cole are rather a mixed bag. I have to say that I've been disappointed with quite a number of those I've read. It's always possible, however, that one may drop unlucky with a particular book, or even a number of them, so I thought I'd give the Coles another try. Their early (1929) detective novel Poison in the Garden Suburb received praise from Barzun and Taylor, so it seemed like a good option.

The story gets off to a lively, and occasionally witty, start. People gather at the Literary Institute of Medstead Garden Suburb to listen to a talk by a noted lecturer, but proceedings are interrupted by the collapse and sudden death of a nondescript bourgeois banker called Cayley, whose only claim to fame is that his young wife is extraordinarily beautiful (and not very bright: the authors clearly don't approve of her). The dead man has been poisoned with strychnine and the prime suspect is a young doctor called Shorthouse, whose behaviour is idiotic to put it mildly.

As a result of this drama, we're not told much about the talk itself, but its subject was eugenics. The Coles were leading lights in the Fabian Society (its fictional equivalent features in the novel as the Bureau for Left-Wing Information), which had a considerable enthusiasm for eugenics at one time. I wondered if Rachel Redford, one of the main characters and employed by the Bureau, was to some extent a fictional portrait of Margaret Cole herself. There are some nice bits of social comment in the early part of the book before we get rather bogged down in the murder investigation.

One of the official detectives, a gloomy superintendent, is pleasingly presented, but the key investigator is the Coles' series sleuth Henry Wilson, who at this stage of his career was operating as a private detective prior to returning to duty at Scotland Yard. I felt the story sagged in the middle, and the climactic excitement felt rather underwhelming, especially since I thought the identity of the murderer was fairly obvious from early on in the story (even though the culprit's true character was barely hinted at: I don't think this is a stellar example of fair play, at least in psychological terms). Overall, this is a novel with some very good ingredients made into a passably entertaining story. Nick Fuller reviewed the book a while ago and makes a number of good point as well as including fascinating contemporary reviews.   

Forgotten Book - These Names Make Clues

Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to lay my hands on an inscribed copy of E.C.R. Lorac's These Names Make Clues, an uncommon Collins Crime Club title from 1937; no dust jacket (the one in pictured is an image from Mark Terry's fascinating site of facsimile wrappers), but still a treasured possession. All the more so because the story is an enjoyable one. In fact I'd rate this as one of the more interesting Loracs.

A key reason for my enthusiasm is that this book is more in the realm of the classic "closed circle" puzzle mystery than some of the author's other work. Inspector Macdonald is invited to a Treasure Hunt evening convened by a publisher called Graham Coombe, who shares a big house in London with his sister Susan. His fellow guests are mystery writers, but part of the fun is for their identities to be concealed under pseudonyms.

The seasoned crime fan won't be surprised to learn that this pleasant idea backfires when a death takes place during the treasure hunt. The deceased was an author called Andrew Gardien, and the suspects are the Coombes and the novelists. Complications ensue when Gardien's literary agent is also found dead. Were either of the deaths murder? Macdonald investigates, abetted by a breezy young journalist called Vernon.

What fascinates me particularly about this novel, published in the year that Lorac was elected to membership of the Detection Club, is that there are strong reasons to infer that her initial experience of the Club supplied the inspiration for the story and some of the characters. Coombe may be Billy Collins, but I'm fairly sure that Gardien was inspired (albeit not in terms of his personality) by John Rhode.

I also suspect that Rhode influenced (maybe even suggested to her; he was a generous man) Lorac's choice of m.o. in relation to the two deaths. Other characters seem to me to bear traces of Douglas and Margaret Cole, and Baroness Orczy. As for the plot, it boasts variety and ingenious touches aplenty, though to my mind it's not really a "fair play" whodunit, given that a key fact is revealed rather late on. Definitely a book that deserves better than the obscurity which has been its fate since the 1930s.

Forgotten Book - Disgrace to the College

I was tempted to make a new year resolution to read all the Golden Age books that I've acquired over the years, and shamefully failed to get round to reading, before I tried to add any more to my collection. But I knew it's a resolution I'd fail to keep. I did toy with the idea of listing some of them and seeking recommendations from readers of this blog as to which to prioritise, and perhaps I'll do that one of these days. In the meantime, my Forgotten Book for today is one I've laid my hands on only recently, and which has jumped the queue, partly because of its brevity.

Disgrace to the College, written by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, and first published in 1937 is unusual on at least three counts. First, it's a novella, rather than a full-length novel. Second, it's a locked room mystery; the Coles wrote one or two short stories featuring locked room puzzles, but as far as I know, this is their longest locked room story. Third, their most regular detective, Superintendent Wilson, is absent, and the detecting is done by one of their second string characters.

The book is divided into two parts. "Michaelmas Term" is set at St Mark's College, Oxford, and we are presented with a fictitious version of the Senior Common Rooms that Douglas Cole, himself an Oxford academic, knew very well. A good deal of scorn is heaped on college politics, which are presented credibly, if in a rather long-winded way. Someone who ought to know told me that, if college politics are frequently vituperative, Oxbridge college politics tend to be ten times worse, and that seems to have been Cole's view.

Two issues are vexing the College authorities. First, a South African Rhodes scholar called Sam Barrett is making waves with his misbehaviour and laziness. Second, an elderly and irascible Estates Bursar is presiding over a mysterious decline in the College's wealth. These two narrative strands occupy the first part of the book. In the second part, "Trinity Term", things have moved on, and Sam's life has undergone a remarkable change. On to the scene comes the Honourable Everard Blatchington, who features in a number of books by the Coles. His arrival conveniently coincides with a death by shooting in a locked room....

The puzzle is quite nicely done. I think it was a wise decision not to pad the story out into a full-length novel; perhaps a decision the Coles might have benefited from taking more often (but then, getting novellas published was far from easy before digital publishing changed the landscape.) The Oxford setting is captured competently, if not with dazzling flair. There is interest in the passing glances at covert homosexuality (at a time when homosexual acts were criminal offences) in college life, and the use of local pubs as brothels catering for male students who were frustrated by college rules designed to prevent hanky-panky with the opposite sex. All in all, one of the better Coles stories that I've come across (though I have numerous gaps in my reading of them.); This one was drawn to my attention some time ago by a Golden Age expert, but proved far from easy to track down. In true Oxford manner, it merits at least a middle Second, if not quite a First..  

Forgotten Book - Birthday Party

The blog has been quiet for a few days as the death of my cousin has prompted a period of reflection on many things, not least the passage of time. Heather was someone I grew up with, and along with my other cousins, she was the dedicatee of The Frozen Shroud. The note she sent me in response is one I treasure, and to read it again now is poignant. She did a little writing herself, and I suspect that she found, as many of us do, that although writing can be challenging, it can also offer a degree of solace in difficult times.

My Forgotten Book for today was written by C.H.B. Kitchin, a talented novelist whose occasional detective novels have received well-merited praise. However, this particular book has certainly been forgotten. It never seems to be mentioned when Kitchin's crime fiction is discussed (which nowadays, admittedly, isn't very often.) It has recently been reprinted by Valancourt Books for the first time since its original appearance back in 1936. For me, the biggest mystery about Birthday Party is why it's been neglected until now, because I found it gripping.

To describe a novel as "a well-made book" is often a way of damning it with faint praise. But Birthday Party is very well-made, and that's a real strength.. It's a quiet story, and anyone seeking lots of melodramatic action should look elsewhere. But I found that the tension builds steadily, and I carried on reading until the end even when I had many other pressing things to do,because Kitchin had made me care about the characters, flawed though they are.

The story is told by four different people, and the shifting points of view are very well done. They are connected by Carlice Abbey - yes, this is a country house mystery, but with a difference. Isabel Carlice is a sharp-witted single woman who loves the Abbey garden, and continues to look after it after her brother dies in a mysterious gunroom accident - was it an accident, or (more likely) suicide? And if suicide, what was the motive? The dead man's widow, Dora, continues to live at the Abbey, while nursing a secret of her own. Her brother, Stephen, a failed novelist, decides to come to the Abbey to save himself from destitution. And meanwhile, the 21st birthday of young Ronnie is fast approaching - hence the title of the book. Ronnie is an idealistic Communist, and he has ideas of his own about what should happen when he inherits Carlice Abbey. A fifth character, a successful medical man, also plays a crucial part in the story, although he is not one of the narrators.

This story casts fascinating light on the period when it was written; Ronnie's political views were fashionable then, and people like the crime novelist Margaret Cole travelled to Russia, as Ronnie does just prior to his birthday, to marvel at the success Stalin was making of his post-revolution society. People worry in the book about an impending war,and there is a sense of doom which Kitchin conveys with many subtle touches. I like his deft way with words, as well as his ability to spring small surprises. He was a far better novelist than Margaret Cole, and, I suspect, much more perceptive, because much less opinionated and fixed in his views. This is an unusual and ironic crime novel which definitely deserves a wider readership.

Forgotten Book - Death of a Millionaire

Death of a Millionaire, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, was published almost ninety years ago, and is my Forgotten Book for today. Its appearance followed Douglas Cole's solo detective novel, which introduced Superintendent Henry Wilson, and it marked the beginning of a literary partnership that lasted for more than fifteen years between Douglas and his wife Margaret. They carved a niche for themselves in crime fiction history, and although their work has often been condemned for dullness, it is noteworthy that this particular book became a green Penguin paperback a quarter of a century after its first appearance, no mean feat. This may, in part, have been due to the authors' fame as socialist thinkers, but the book also received some laudatory reviews.

It begins promisingly, with satiric description of posh Sugden's Hotel and high ranking politician Lord Ealing. He has some form of business connection with a mysterious millionaire called Hugh Radlett, who has checked into the hotel, but Radlett, and his equally mysterious secretary go missing, and all the evidence suggests that the secretary has killed his employer, and taken the body away in a trunk. But why?

The book also ends rather well, with a neat plot twist, and further helpings of anti-establishment satire. On the final page, one character says, "Law and order and rights of property...are all bunkum", and Wilson is so disgusted by what happens after he solves the puzzle that he leaves Scotland Yard and sets up as a private detective. (This didn't last long; he soon returned to the fold.) Judged by the standards of the mid-1920s, all this was rather daring and unusual, and it's best to judge books by reference to the time when they were written, and what the author(s) was trying to do..

It's significant that this book was written a year before the General Strike. The Coles describe a dysfunctional society seemingly beyond repair. During the novel, a manuscript written by Radlett tells the story of how his father was a trade union activist who suffered through his beliefs, and post-Revolution Russia is presented with more sympathy than you might expect in a detective novel of this period.

So there are pleasing elements to be found in this novel, especially for those interested in social history. Unfortunately, I found I had to struggle through some very tedious story-telling in order to unearth the good bits. I'm afraid that I was bored for some of the time, because to achieve that cunning plot twist, the Coles needed to construct a very elaborate sequence of events, which they proceeded to recount in a very long-winded fashion  The style is sometimes arch, sometimes clumsy. As so often in their books, the cleverness of the basic idea simply was not matched by the way it was put to work. But one has to remember that neither of the authors was an experienced detective novelist when they wrote this  They later proved they were capable of doing better, although like many of their contemporaries, if they had written half as many books, and lavished twice as much care over them, the results would have been more artistically satisfying..

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Forgotten Book - Knife in the Dark

Knife in the Dark, published in 1941 and set in the preceding autumn, is one of the more interesting books by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole that I've read. It's certainly a Forgotten Book, but doesn't deserve obscurity half as much as some of the Coles' more tedious efforts. There are several reasons why I found it noteworthy, although complexity of the detective puzzle is not one of them - this is a case solved almost by accident.

First, the setting is appealing. The Coles knew Oxford and Cambridge well, and decided to create a university along Oxbridge lines at Stamford in Lincolnshire. Some of the discussion of academic life in the early part of the book is enjoyable, and I suspect there may be one or two in-jokes that I missed. Second, this is the only novel that features Mrs Warrender, an elderly lady whose son is a private detective.She features in some of the Coles' shorter work, and she is an engaging character, albeit less memorable than Miss Marple.

A third appealing feature of the book is the background, which plays an important part in the book. The war was raging when the story was written, and the atmosphere of rural England at the time when blackouts were compulsory is nicely evoked. Fourthly, the victim, a married woman called Kitty Lake, is a memorable character,although so badly behaved that motives for murdering her abound. She is so much more vivid than most of the Coles' characters that I rather wondered if the portrayal was based on someone the couple knew in real life. Finally, the motive for the murder is connected, very suitably, to the background.

Overall, therefore, I rank this as one of the most enjoyable Coles that I've read, despite various faults. The key weakness is the plot, which is pretty flimsy. There are various suspects, but the Coles didn't seem too interested in most of them, and the final revelation is by no means a surprise. But if you are interested in a picture of life in England just a year after the outbreak of war, this is certainly worth a read.

Forgotten Book - Last Will and Testament

Today's Forgotten Book dates from 1936, but it has not been entirely neglected since its original publication. Last Will and Testament, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole was exhumed from the vaults by Collins Crime Club in 1985, and that edition is my copy. It benefits from an excellent intro by Harry Keating, displaying his characteristic blend of kindliness and insight. Any crime critic looking to model himself or herself on a distinguished figure from the past would do well to look at how Harry did it. He was rarely harsh, but he never pretended that mundane books were brilliant either. A touch of graciousness is a very Good Thing in a critic or commentator, and Harry was naturally gracious. And his style was invariable agreeable and informative.

This book is evidently the follow-up to an earlier Coles effort, which I have not read, Dr Tancred Begins.(After reading this book, I recalled that Malcolm J. Turnbull, another excellent critic and an expert on Anthony Berkeley, wrote an interesting article about both stories in CADS a few issues ago.) They go to some pains to make clear that it is not necessary to have read the earlier book to enjoy this one, but it forms a companion piece. We are given to understand that the action of the first book took place 25 years earlier, and the gifted private detective was unable to pin guilt of murder on the presumed culprit. But now murder occurs again in the same family, and the original culprit is back in the frame.

I thought this was an exceptionally interesting premise for a book, and indeed for a pair of books. Dr Ben Tancred is, as Harry rightly says, a more engaging detective than Superintendent Wilson, whom the Coles usually favoured, and who does have a bit part to play in the two Tancred stories. Tancred also has his own "Watson", though I must say I struggled to understand why the Coles bothered to have a story narrated by someone who is not present during almost all of the action.

This story boasts various classic elements, including a country house and a seemingly unbreakable alibi. The alibi proved, however, to be all too easily shattered, and this was just one of the elements of the criminal's design that perplexed me. Another oddity was that two highly intelligent authors created a character who has been mauled by a tiger in...Africa. The story does have some charm, but on the whole, its weaknesses overwhelm it, and that clever premise is largely wasted.. I'm afraid that Harry showed greater skill at writing a positive introduction to the reissue than the Coles did at creating a fascinating mystery. They could do better than this. Despite Malcolm J. Turnbull's able advocacy, I doubt that I will bother with Dr Tancred Begins. 

Forgotten Book: Burglars in Bucks

The co-authors of today's Forgotten Book are those great political campaigners of the Golden Age, G.D.H. and Margaret Cole. I've been reading up about their life together and what strikes me above all is their unquenchable spirit. Time and again their crusades fell apart, yet each time they dusted themselves down, picked themselves up and started all over again. Rather like their number one sleuth, Superintendent Wilson, who resigned from the police force and became a private inquiry agent, only to resume his official career a few cases later.

I've not read any of the stories in which Wilson was not a policeman. In today's story, Burglars in Bucks, he is back in the police, but is rather on the edge of things, as here the Coles were experimenting. This is one of those stories told by gathering together bits and pieces of evidence - letters, press cuttings, telegrams, police reports and so on. It's a terrific concept, and I'd be glad to hear from readers of any similar Golden Age books they can recommend (other than, say, the Dennis Wheatley crime dossiers, which are not novels but, really, games.) The multiple viewpoint crime story has a hallowed tradition - think of Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, or Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace's under-rated and noteworthy The Documents in the Case, published, like the Coles' book, in 1930.

One of the snags with this book is that there is no murder, just a burglary. And the reality  is that if you are going to write a full-length novel about a much lesser crime than murder, you have to write a truly gripping story. This is a book that is highly rated by a number of judges whose opinions I greatly respect, and I was looking forward very much to reading it. But I must say that it disappointed me. Which only goes to show how subjective an experience reading is.

Intriguingly, there is a seance scene, although it is less effective than the table-turning scene in a superior book published the following year, Christie's The Sittaford Mystery. I am sure there was no question of plagiarism. Probably the ideas common to the books of Christie, Sayers and the Coles were just "in the air" at the time - it often happens, and always will. Possibly conversations over dinner at the Detection Club played a part. Certainly, Christie and Sayers executed the ideas better than the Coles did.

And I was driven almost to scream by the laborious way information about the characters was dragged in, notably in the letters between one suspect and his wife. So we get lots of lines like "You surely can't have forgotten about the Pallants so soon...Don't you remember when the old grandfather died, in 1920, wasn't it?...what you've clearly forgotten is that the villain of the piece was the same Sir Hiram Watkins you're asking about..you'd better have the whole story for reference..." And so it goes on. Such clumsy writing defeats the whole purpose of the very interesting experiment that the book might have been. The Coles were very busy people and they often rushed their writing. Margaret Cole admitted this frankly in later life. They were, though, capable of better than this, and thankfully they bounced back yet again with stories like End of an Ancient Mariner..

Weirdly, for a story set, as the title suggests, near Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, the US edition was called The Berkshire Mystery.How can we explain this? Did the American publishers fall asleep before they read much of it? It wouldn't come as complete surprise...

Forgotten Book - Dead Man's Watch

My Forgotten Book today is one that was the subject of a very interesting review not long ago on that marvellous blog Pretty Sinister Books. It is Dead Man’s Watch, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, and it was first published in 1931.

This novel was one of their first joint efforts, and it’s written with a breeziness and zest that was less evident in some of their later works. The Coles are writers who interest me, although their mysteries tend to be flawed, perhaps because they didn’t take them seriously enough in comparison to their political activism and Douglas’s non-fiction.

What is especially intriguing about this book is its construction, which is quite unusual. The story opens with a young man discovering a body in a pool on the land of Sir Charles Wylie. The young man identifies the body as that of an uncle of his, but the forensic evidence indicates that the dead man had his beard shaved off after death, and a puzzle about identities ensues. The next section of the book sees Sir Charles acting as an amateur sleuth before Superintendent Wilson becomes involved formally in the final section.

The trouble with this narrative structure is that key events, and key characters, are not seen directly by the reader. One has to make do with third party reports, especially in the form of letters sent by a young woman to Sir Charles. This lack of immediacy militates against suspense, and although the clues are set out quite fairly, the overall result is that one doesn’t care enough about the mystery. This is a pity, because the book does have some pleasing features, and there are several examples of a quiet wit that isn’t always associated with the Coles. I’m glad I read the book, though, and it’s worth a look for those interested in the way Golden Age writers tried to vary the standard whodunit formula.

Forgotten Book - The Murder at Crome House

The Murder at Crome House is my choice for today's Forgotten Book. It was first published in 1927, and was an early effort from the husband and wife team of GDH and Margaret Cole. My copy is a Penguin paperback edition, with rather entertaining biographical notes of the co-writers. Apparently, Douglas Cole "had the fidgets" if he was not writing one or more books at any one time. His wife was the daughter of a classical professor who insisted, when she was six years old, that she must ask for her Sunday dinner in Latin, and severed his connections with her when she married a socialist.

The central character in the story is James Flint, a lecturer and tutor in history and economics, who is clearly based on Douglas Cole himself. He borrows a library book about psychoanalysis and auto-suggestion, but unimpressed, he soon discards it in favour of Anthony Trollope. However, a photograph slips out of library book. It appears to depict one man in the act of shooting another.

By the time the (astonishingly careless) owner of the photograph turned up and asks for it back, Flint is under the impression that it has been disposed of. That proves not to be the case, and Flint soon finds himself persuaded by a young solicitor friend to help establish the truth about the murder six months earlier of a wealthy and disagreeable chap, the owner of Crome House.

Fans of the Coles rate this as one of their best efforts. In some respects, it reminded me of the work of Freeman Wills Crofts, as the unravelling of an alibi plays an important part in the story, and a plan of crome house, and a sketch map, are supplied. I thought the culprit was pretty easy to spot, but this is quite competent example of relatively early Golden Age detective fiction and it is livelier than some of the Coles' later books, when Margaret evidently became a bit bored with the mystery game. Worth seeking out if you are keen on the history of the genre between the wars.

Forgotten Book - End of an Ancient Mariner

G.D.H. and M. Cole were prolific if less than dazzling writers of the Golden Age and my choice for today’s Forgotten Book is one of their ‘inverted’ novels, End of an Ancient Mariner, which first came out in 1933.

Philip Blakeaway has married well, and lives a comfortable life, but it comes under threat at the start of the book. The elderly seafarer of the title comes across him, and recognises him from the past. We do not know what Philip’s secret is, but soon the old man is dead – shot, according to Philip, while attempt to burgle his house overlooking Hampstead Heath.

At first, it seems, Philip’s story will be accepted. The police seem satisfied. But Philip is at risk, because his butler smells a rat, and the dead man’s daughter – who is unaware of his fate – starts trying to track down her father. Thanks to one or two rather unlikely coincidences, Philip comes under increasing pressure, and then Superintendent Wilson, the Coles’ regular cop, finally comes on the scene...

There are one or two nice touches of satire – ‘the BBC cherishes an ineradicable hope that if it persistently addresses the public in good English with a cultured accent, by and by it will be as if the entire population of Great Britain had been educated at Winchester, and what nobler ideal can democracy set itself than that?’ Politics gets a passing mention when Philip denies being a Socialist (‘I’m far too fond of my own comfort’) despite being on good terms with his chauffeur. But these little touches are few and far between – a pity, for the Coles could have written a more memorable story if they had let their hair down a bit more.

As it is, the book is certainly readable, and it held my interest throughout, while there is a pleasing touch of ambiguity about the ending. This is the best of the few Coles novels that I have read so far.

Forgotten Book - Big Business Murder

There is a good deal of period interest in Big Business Murder, by G.D.H. and M. Cole, my latest entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books. It was first published in 1935, when the husband and wife co-authors enjoyed a considerable reputation for their detective stories as well as in their capacity as leading socialist thinkers. Three years earlier, George Cole had published a book called The Intelligent Man’s Guide Through World Chaos (sadly, I’ve never seen a copy – perhaps the intelligent men all kept hold of theirs) and he was also a prominent economist, as well as a mentor of the future Prime Minister, Harold Wilson.

The novel begins with a gripping scene, at a board meeting of Arrow Investments. Kingsley Manson, the managing director, reveals to his colleagues that the business is founded on a swindle, which seems likely to unravel unless they all support his attempts to solve the problem. An honest director called Gathorne objects, but the others go along with Manson. After the financial dramas of 2008, some of the Coles’ points struck a surprisingly modern note, I felt. There is a timelessness about greedy, vain or naive people who think that business is all boom, and never bust. The scene was set for a great book.

Gathorne, predictably, is murdered, but after this the story rather falls apart. One of the directors, believing that Manson’s wife is the killer, tries to clear her by confessing to the crime. The Noble but Misguided Confession was a staple of Golden Age detective fiction and Agatha Christie was among those who used the device to complicate her plots. It can, however, be irksome if over-done, and the Coles over-do it badly, so that half the book is devoted to the ramifications of the false and foolish confession before Superintendent Wilson makes a belated appearance.

There are various references to the Nazis, or economic problems in Germany, and there are nice but all too brief touches of satire. The unlovable Inspector Ebenezer Jones is made to say, ‘I don’t hold with Socialism’ – the sort of in-joke that writers often enjoy introducing into their stories. The snag is that, rather than use the business scam as a context for a probing study of the pressures that may drive people to crime, the Coles came up with a half-hearted plot and Wilson solves the mystery in a very anti-climactic fashion. This is a book that is interesting, but for reasons other than those which the authors intended.

Forgotten Book - Double Blackmail

The blurb of the American edition of the Golden Age mystery Double Blackmail, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, is rather enticing: ‘”Double Blackmail” only in part describes the double-ness of this detective mystery. There are, of course, two cases of blackmail. But there are likewise two murders; two bigamies; two detectives; the two Coles for authors; and twins….’

Two bigamies – blimey, you don’t find that in many murder mysteries nowadays! The Coles were a husband and wife team who were prolific producers in the Golden Age. They were prominent socialists, and G.D.H. (like Robert Barnard, many years later) was a Balliol man who rose to prominence in the Fabian Society. Margaret was the sister of Raymond Postgate, who wrote that brilliant crime novel Verdict of Twelve (and who also devised The Good Food Guide), and aunt to Oliver Postgate, creator of Bagpuss.

The Coles wrote books of the kind disparagingly described as ‘humdrums’, and their regular sleuth Superintendent Wilson was notoriously characterless, but I’m led to believe from comments on the excellent Golden Age Detection discussion group that this novel, which features Wilson, is one of their better efforts.

I have not yet read the book, having only just bought it, as a treat for myself after a few fun-free weeks. The appeal of this particular volume was not just the mystery (though I do find that idea of a story about double bigamy weirdly intriguing) but the fact that this book was presented to the Detection Club, and signed by, Margaret Cole herself. So it’s a small piece of crime fiction heritage, and I’m very happy to have it on my bookshelf.

Big Business Murder

Thanks to an excellent second hand book dealer, Mark Sutcliffe of Ilkley, I’ve just acquired a copy of an obscure Golden Age detective novel, Big Business Murder, by the husband and wife team of G.D.H. and Margaret Cole.

It will be interesting to see what the book is like, and whether it reflects, in an entertaining and instructive way, the Coles’ political leanings. Few Golden Age books show much meaningful engagement with the political issues of the period, and the Coles’ many books were – as a rule – no exception to this. But unlike many of their contemporaries, the couple were prominent socialists, and G.D.H, a leading figure in the Fabian Society, was a prolific writer of political books.

His early work included Some Essentials of Socialist Propaganda (1932) and What is Socialism? (1933). He compiled A History of Socialist Thought (1953-60) and managed to spin it out to five volumes, no less. I detect a note of weariness creeping in over the years, though. In 1919, he wrote Workers’ Control in Industry, but 35 years later, he penned What is Wrong with Trade Unions?

I’m not sure what, if they were alive today, the Coles would have made of the current travails of our politicians. Perhaps, again, they would have been driven to crime.