Forgotten Book - The Big Ben Alibi

Golden Age detective fiction lends itself to parody and pastiche, but during the Golden Age itself, I'd say there weren't too many laugh-out-loud detective novels. I've come across a very pleasing exception to that general rule, namely The Big Ben Alibi, by Neil Gordon. The name was a pseudonym for the Scottish writer A.G. Macdonell (1895-1941), who appears to have published seven solo detective novels plus one which he co-wrote with Milward Kennedy, The Bleston Mystery.

Macdonell is remembered today, however, for a comic novel rather than a mystery. England, Their England is renowned in particular for a very enjoyable cricket scene, and a cricketer (who tells many boring stories about his career) is one of the members of the supporting cast in The Big Ben Alibi. The story concerns two young detective novelists whose latest novels are turned down by Henry Haddington, their literary agent. They hatch a cunning plan to enable them to recover their fortunes...

John Maclennan, one of the two writers, is a Scot, and I did wonder if he and his colleague George Cranford represented, to an extent at least, jokey versions of Macdonnell and Kennedy. I don't know the answer, but I certainly enjoyed the jokes about the cliches and conventions of Golden Age detective fiction, as well as the skits on popular newspapers. This reads like a book that was a lot of fun to write.

The plot is competently put together (which isn't always the case with comic detective novels) but what makes The Big Ben Alibi stand out is the sheer joie de vivre of the storyline, which involves a country house mystery, an unbreakable alibi and plenty of other tropes of the genre. I'm surprised this book has been so overlooked for so long. 

  

Forgotten Books - Fourfingers

At a crime festival a while back, I bumped into a crime writing friend who told me that he enjoyed reading this blog, and in particular the Friday's Forgotten Books feature. "After all, Martin," he said, "you read these books so that we don't have to." I was amused by this, although naturally I hope that my accounts of at least some of the neglected books tickle your fancy enough to prompt you to give them a try.

I must admit I did wonder whether to read Fourfingers, by Lynn Brock (the pseudonym of Alister McAllister), which dates back to 1939. It's a very obscure book, and all I knew about it was that one Golden Age expert had described it as one of the worst books he'd read. But could it really be that bad? After all, I have a sneaking regard for Brock's work. Nightmare is intriguing and ambitious, and definitely worth reading, even if The Stoat is not really worth ferreting out. McAllister wrote plays and "straight" novels as well as detective fiction, and his prose was better than that of some of his contemporaries. His great failing was verbosity.

The story makes a striking start. One evening in the New Forest, a lorry driver and his mate discover a crashed car, and near to it, the bodies of two dead ponies. Inside the car is the body of a woman, and it emerges that she has been shot. The victim is a young woman called Waterlow, who is the author of a successful (but suppressed) novel, and the wife of a very wealthy man who has been confined to a mental hospital for the past three years. The local police call in the Yard, and this means Sergeant Venn, who apparently features in two other books by Brock. Venn rejoices in the unlikely nick-name Ut - short for "Unconsidered Trifle" - because of his insignificance. In other news, a prominent politician has gone missing - can this be connected with the case? Before long, Venn is hunting "Fourfingers", the name given to the mystery man whose fingerprints are found on a cigarette case in the car.

Brock offers some interesting snippets along the way. I'd like to have been told more about "the Lunacy Laws", which sound to have been pretty eccentric themselves, and I enjoyed the job title "Master in Lunacy". Venn, and his upper class sidekick DC Kither make a nicely contrasted detective duo. There is a dodgy medic, and Nazi sympathisers play an important part, reflecting the mood of the times. I feel that Brock was trying to do something original with the detective story, and this book combines detailed police work with the material of a thriller in quite a daring way. I've read plenty of less interesting Golden Age novels by more prominent names, including books written by Douglas and Margaret Cole, by E.R. Punshon (an extremely variable novelist), and even by the gifted Milward Kennedy, when writing as Evelyn Elder, a pseudonym he seemed to reserve for his biggest flops.

Unfortunately, once a criminal gang makes its appearance, Brock loses control of his complex plot - and I felt myself losing interest. In the course of a necessarily lengthy confession that sets out to make sense of everything that has been going on, one of the bad guys says: "I was very uneasy about the whole affair, which appeared to me utterly fantastic and impossible to carry through successfully." I'm afraid that, for all Brock's brave efforts to write something fresh, this sums up my feelings about his story-line. It's a pity, but this is one Brock novel likely to remain forgotten.

Forgotten Book - Angel in the Case

Milward Kennedy is a Golden Age author whose books I've covered several times on this blog, because I'm intrigued by his work. I'm a great admirer of Anthony Berkeley, as was Kennedy, and Kennedy tried to emulate his friend's innovative approach to the writing of crime fiction. But if Berkeley was uneven - and he was - then Kennedy was very, very uneven. And although he wrote some excellent books, I'm afraid that he also wrote some that were extremely disappointing - I'm a huge fan of the Golden Age, of course, but there's no point in pretending that even the best writers of that era always made best use of their gifts..

Kennedy wrote a couple of novels in the Thirties under a different pen-name, Evelyn Elder (his second wife was called Evelyn and I'd speculate that there was an age difference between them, hence the pseudonym). The first, Murder in Black and White, has been republished in recent times by Ramble House. The second is Angel in the Case, and that's a very rare title indeed. I've been hunting it for ages, and now a kind person has made a copy available to me, so this is my choice for today's Forgotten Book.

Let me start with the good news. The book is furnished with wonderful maps of the scene of the crime - they are just about the most appealing of any that I've ever seen in a Golden Age novel, detailed and attractive. Now for the bad news. To my mind, the story is dire. The writing is perfectly good, but the story did not hold any appeal for me at all.

The book begins with a police investigation into the drowning of a wealthy man called Curtis. He is a publisher, and the guests (and suspects) at his country house include a poet and a couple of writers. Scope here, I thought, for Kennedy to provide us with some entertainment, but apart from a passing nod to the Detection Club oath, the material is flat and uninteresting from start to finish. The eponymous Angel is an attractive female house guest, but I found her no more engaging than the rest of the cast. The mystery was desperately dull even before an American gangster was introduced (invariably a Bad Sign in a British Golden Age whodunit) with no attempt at characterisation, and precious little humour. Kennedy could do much better than this, fortunately. It''s a real shame about Angel in the Case, but I can only say that I wish that Kennedy had devoted more time to elaborating the story in an appealing way rather than concentrating on the maps.

Forgotten Book - Corpse in Cold Storage

Before I get stuck into today's Golden Oldie, may I say how gratified I am by the reaction to news of the forthcoming publication of The Golden Age of Murder? I'm sure those who have read my articles and blog posts about the Golden Age will realise that writing the book has been a labour of love. Even late last night, I was tinkering with some of the notes and the bibliography (to be honest, 'tinkering' is a euphemism for 'expanding'...). One of the beauties of today's world of global communication is that people have made me aware that the book is already being marketed via Amazon here and in the US, and there have even been some pre-orders. Wow, talk about quick off the mark!

One of the reasons why I was keen for the news to come out now, even though the official publication date for both the UK edition and the US edition is next May is that this week-end, I'm giving a talk about the Golden Age and the Shadows of War at the St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Conference, and I really didn't feel I could resist keeping the news to myself any longer. There's a strong contingent of Golden Age fans at St Hilda's, and I've been looking forward to this event for months.

Now, back to today's Forgotten Book. Corpse in Cold Storage, written by Milward Kennedy, and published in 1934, is my choice. It's certainly forgotten - I can't recall reading any discussion of it anywhere. It's probably fair to say that Kennedy's fan club is a pretty small and exclusive group. Possibly I'm the only current member, though I hope not. His books often frustrate me, because they frequenly fail to live up to their potential, but they usually offer something "different" and rather inventive that is uncommon and appealing.

Corpse in Cold Storage is a case in point. The title comes from a phrase that Kennedy had used in an earlier novel, and which (I guess) gave him a starting point for this story. The corpse belongs to an unpleasant man called Charleson, and it is found in...an ice cream van. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this points to a "time of death" mystery that is quite cleverly concocted. The setting, in a small and run-down south coast resort delightfully called Heartsease, is also very nicely done. The victim, and almost all of the suspects are not, however, very interesting. What's unusual about this book is the detective duo who take an interest in the case.

Kennedy had previously tried and abandoned a series police detective (by the name of Cornford) after only two books. This story sees the return of Sir George Bull and his wife Mary after they first appeared in Bull's Eye, a book which left me underwhelmed. Corpse in Cold Storage is better, and shows the Bulls in good form. Sir George is a hard-drinking conman, and he wants to find out who killed Charleson simply in order to blackmail the killer. His seductive wife aids and abets him, whilst trying to persuade him to moderate his intake of alcohol, and she proves a much better detective. Together they make an entertainingly different pair of sleuths. There have been villainous detectives before and since the Bulls, but nobody quite like them.

I enjoyed the story a good deal, though some of the detail about alibis, whilst in the Golden Age tradition, left me as cold as Charleson's corpse. It's a shame that Kennedy abandoned the Bulls after this book. He strikes me as a restless writer, constantly trying something different, and never quite writing a masterpiece. One final point: my American edition describes him as "President of the Detection Society of England". He was never the Detection Club's President, though, and I bet he got into trouble over that with the Club's founder, Anthony Berkeley, who was perhaps the prickliest of all Golden Age writers. There will be more about both Kennedy and Berkeley in The Golden Age of Murder.

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 -Death Has a Past

It's not unfair to call Death Has a Past a Forgotten Book, nor its author, Anita Boutell, a Forgotten Author. I had never heard of either of them until I saw a copy of this book in a dealer's catalogue, at quite a hefty price. It was snapped up quickly by someone, and the plot summary seemed intriguing. So I tracked down a cheapish paperback copy to see whether the nice concept was well executed. Short answer - yes, definitely. Boutell seems to me to be a real find.

Death Has a Past was published shortly before the war, and I'm guessing that timing was against Anita Boutell in making a name for herself in the genre. Yet Milward Kennedy, Torquemada and other good judges admired her writing,and I can see why. Boutell was an American who obviously knew England very well,as the English background struck me as entirely credible.Otherwise, I know nothing about her life, and would be glad of further information. And what of her other books - are they as good as this one? And why did she stop writing?

The set-up is this. Claudia Hetherton, a ghastly but rich woman, summons five female family members to her country home She hates them, and they have good reason to hate her. And there are various other hatreds within the group. We know from the start that one person is shot, and that the culprit commits suicide and writes a short confession. But who shot whom, and why?

Boutell maintains the tension very well. This sort of story can become irritating, with lots of neurotic characters getting on each other's nerves, but on the whole she avoids that mistake, and there are several pleasing plot twists. The ending was not what I expected, and I needed to read it again carefully to figure out exactly what had gone on, and to appreciate the subtlety of the wording of the confession. I enjoyed it, and I can recommend it as a rather refreshing book with a difference.

Forgotten Book - Escape to Quebec

Milward Kennedy is a writer I've featured several times in this series of Friday's Forgotten Books, and  there is much about his work that I like. He had fresh interesting ideas, a lively style, and a good understanding of people. And yet, he was something of a 'nearly man' who never quite made it as a consistent top-level performer. My choice today,. Escape to Quebec, illustrates both his strengths and his limitations.

This book is one of his later titles, first published in 1948, and one of the very few Kennedy titles which made it into a paperback edition. By this time,he had abandoned classic detection, and was trying his hand a at a different kind of story, really representing a return to his co-written debut, The Bleston Mystery, which is a light thriller. He drew on his experience of diplomacy and international relations - he was a senior figure in the International Labour Organisation - and also his knowledge of Canada, where he spent a good deal of time, in putting this novel together.

After a short prologue, we are presented with a first person narrative. Unusually, the narrator is a prisoner of war, and apparently a German Count, who has just escaped, together with a colleague, from where he was being held in Canada. The pair have been sprung in order to take part in an assassination plot. In some ways, therefore, this book resembles and anticipates the classic Frederick Forsyth best-seller, The Day of the Jackal. Forsyth's originality was much admired in its day, but you could say that Kennedy got there first (though I hasten to add that the books are very different from each other.)

There are a number of interesting and gripping scenes, and the story is very readable - I devoured it quickly, and with some pleasure. On the whole, however, I felt that there were good reasons why Kennedy failed to match the success that Forsyth later achieved. Overall, the level of excitement (given that we know that the leaders of the Western powers survived) is simply not high enough, and the romantic interest that is introduced is tepid in the extreme. Kennedy wins high marks for originality of concept, but not quite as many for execution. The story of his writing career, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, I continue to admire his desire to keep trying something new, of which this book is certainly an example.

Forgotten Book: Corpse Guards Parade

Corpse Guards Parade, my Forgotten Book for today, is a 1929 novel from the pen of Milward Kennedy. As the groan-worthy title suggests, it's fairly light-hearted in style, but it does offer a genuine detective puzzle,. My copy is a second impression, published in what Victor Gollancz called the "Prime Ministers' Detective Library". I'm really not sure what that term is meant to signify, though as I understand it, Stanley Baldwin was a fan of detective stories.But then, Gollancz was no fan of Stanley Baldwin, so it's a rather baffling marketing ploy.

One thing is for sure, a modern publisher would be unlikely to regard a link with politicians as a selling point for detective fiction, except in so far as quite a few of our elected representatives seem to finish up going to prison. Anyway, Gollancz was just starting up in 1929, and he must have been quite pleased to recruit Milward Kennedy, at that time a rising star of the genre to his list.

This book reunites Inspector Cornford and John Merriman, two characters who earlier appeared in The Corpse on the Mat. Cornford likes his food, and is quite a good-natured soul, although not perhaps the sharpest of sleuths. Merriman has recently married Joan, who is perhaps a smarter detective than either of them. In this story, Merriman stumbles across a corpse one foggy night on Horse Guards Parade. It seems to be the body of Henry Dill, recently returned from South America, but before long uncertainty creeps in as to the deceased's identity.

There are endless complications, but the fact that there are so few key characters means that it is not terribly difficult to identify the likely culprit, although his precise m.o. is less easy to figure out. I read this one quickly, and it's a pretty straightforward piece of work from an author who was still learning his trade at this point. But Kennedy's lightness of touch means that it's an easy and pleasant read.

Ask a Policeman

I've blogged ,previously about the Detection Club's collaborative novel Ask a Policeman, and now I'm delighted to say that this fascinating book is to enjoy a new life in an edition to be published by Harper Collins on 30 August. This edition is reproduced from a first printing and beneath the appealing new dust jacket (see above) the binding replicates that of the original edition. It follows on from Harper Collins' extremely successful reissue last year of The Floating Admrial.

I'd be glad to see the book reappear in any circumstances, but there are a couple of features that I'm especially happy about. First, this edition contains an essay written by Agatha Christie about her fellow detective novelistss, which is truly insightful, especially as she writes with an unexpected candour (the essay was written for publication in Russia and did not appear in the UK at the time).

And second, the book contains a brand new introduction, commissioned by Harper Collins - and written by me! Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to find that this truly was a labour of love. I'm delighted to be associated with a book that is a classic of its kind and which will, I hope, amuse a new generation of readers as much as it did on its original appearance.

The contributors to the narrative, by the way are some of the great names from the Golden Age: Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gladys Mitchell, Helen Simpson, Milward Kennedy and John Rhode.  

Forgotten Book - The Murderer of Sleep

My intermittent campaign to revive interest in Milward Kennedy continues! Today's Forgotten Book is one he published in 1935, probably at about the height of his fame (such as it was) in the Golden Age. It's called The Murderer of Sleep and boasts, in typical Kennedy fashion, two maps of distinct crime scenes: one is a hotel, where a theft and murder occur before the main action starts, and the other is the sleepy village of...erm... Sleep. The Macbeth inspired title clearly amused Kennedy.

It's an entertaining book which maintains a sprightly pace more or less throughout. I say 'more or less' because arguably the revelation of the main culprit's identity is delayed just a little too long. To my mind, it becomes pretty clear who the police are looking for, and there were moments towards the end when they just needed to get on with it all a bit quicker. This is, however, a relatively minor quibble. I did enjoy reading the book a good deal, even though I'm not sure I agree with those usually severe critics Barzun and Taylor who describe it as Kennedy's 'masterpiece'.

This novel illustrates a difficulty that all writers of whodunits face - it's one I'm conscious of myself, certainly. The question is: how many suspects should one have in the story? Too many, and the result is clutter, confusion and inadequate characterisation. Too few, and the puzzle is too easy to solve. Getting the right balance is one of the keys to success. This is what Agatha Christie did so well, so often.

Kennedy, I feel, errs on the side of having too few suspects here, and he could have done a bit more to probe the culprit's motivation. I think his difficulty arose from the rather unusual structure that he adopted in telling the story. This makes it a pleasing and fairly original read - and these are the strengths that appealed to me. But it does make a constant shifting of suspicion between candidates for the murderer rather difficult. As so often, Kennedy's ambition outstripped his achievement. But what I like about his was that he was an ambitious writer. Keen to vary the formula.

I have struggled in vain to find out any more about Kennedy's life than can be found in the usual places. If anyone knows any more about this interesting man - whose day job was as an international diplomat - I'd be keen to hear it.

Forgotten Book - The Bleston Mystery

My forgotten book today is The Bleston Mystery, first published in 1928. The author is named as Robert Milward Kennedy, but that pen-name concealed a writing duo. One of the collaborators was Milward Kennedy, whom I’ve written about several times in this blog. The other was someone who had been to the same school as Kennedy – A.G. Macdonell, who later became well known as a humorous writer, his most famous title being England, Their England.

This book is quite different from Kennedy’s solo efforts. It’s a fast-moving, rather light-hearted story, slightly reminiscent of some of the lively thrillers that Agatha Christie wrote in the 20s, especially those featuring the Beresfords. I thought it stood up to the test of time rather well – better than I had expected, to be honest. There is a twist in the tale, and although I foresaw the surprise revelation, I thought it was skilfully handled.

Oddly enough, the main protagonist in this romp is called Kennedy, but his first name is Philip. The book opens with a visit to his home by a sinister foreigner, quickly followed by the news that he is one of two legatees of a dead friend, and the promise of something both mysterious and valuable about his inheritance. Several killings follow, and it becomes clear that Philip’s life is also at risk unless and until he solves the puzzle of a deserted camp at Bleston which had once housed German prisoners of war.

After this collaboration, Kennedy and Macdonell seem to have gone their separate ways, at least in literary terms. I can trace no further joint efforts of theirs. They each achieved a measure of success with solo efforts – perhaps especially Macdonell, prior to his early death in 1941. But The Bleston Mystery ranks as an enjoyable, if little known, piece of light entertainment.

Forgotten Book - I'll be Judge, I'll Be Jury

Continuing with my Milward Kennedy binge, I've chosen for today's Forgotten Book a novel from 1937, I'll Be Judge, I'll Be Jury. Despite the title, there is no real Lewis Carroll theme. But it's still an unusual piece of work.

The book’s opening is daring for its date, with none of the sluggish build-up often found with Kennedy. Mary Dallas sneaks out from the hotel where she is staying with her husband very early one morning for a tryst in a beach hut. Under her short beach-coat, she is topless. But before encountering her lover, George Needham, she stumbles over the corpse of her guardian, while the murderer hides behind a curtain.

In a panic, Mary and George contrive to make the death look like an accident, and their hurried interference with the crime scene succeeds in confusing the police. All very foolish, and almost inevitably their behaviour leads inexorably to disaster.

An interesting feature of this book is that it references the classic Francis Iles novel, Before the Fact, and gives a fresh slant to the situation Iles devised. But whereas the Iles book was filmed by Hitchcock, Kennedy's really is well and truly forgotten. Undeservedly, I suggest.

Forgotten Book - Panic Party

My choice for today's Forgotten Book is a 1934 title from the pen of Anthony Berkeley. Panic Party, aka Mr Pidgeon's Island, was the last novel to feature Roger Sheringham - one of the great Golden Age amateur sleuths, even though his career lasted less than ten years.

The book begins with Berkeley’s riposte to the challenge Milward Kennedy set him in Death to the Rescuea and which I mentioned last week:

“You once challenged me, in public print, to write a book in which the only interest should be the detection. I have no hesitation in refusing to do anything so tedious, and instead take the greatest pleasure in dedicating to you a book which is precisely the opposite, which breaks every rule of the austere Club to which we both belong, and which will probably earn my expulsion from its membership.”

In fact, the novel does not break all the Club’s rules by a long stretch. Sheringham joins a yachting party organised by Guy Pidgeon, an Oxford don who has come into the money. The group finds itself marooned on a desert island, and Pidgeon announces that their party includes a murderer. His 'murder game' has a predictable outcome – soon he is found dead.

When I first read this book years ago, I felt rather dissatisfied with it. On a second reading, I was more sympathetic. It's an interesting experiment. almost a forerunner of Lord of the Flies. And, as usual with this author, there are some witty passages as well as several darker ones.

Forgotten Book - Death to the Rescue

I've told the story already of how Milward Kennedy was sued for libel over his 1931 novel Death to the Rescue, but I've chosen the novel as today's Forgotten Book because I found his dedication to Anthony Berkeley very interesting. Here it is:

'"We have sometimes discussed the future of the Detective Novel. We know only too well ourselves-imposed difficulties; our oaths to play fair, to conceal from the reader no clue of which are detective is aware, to eschew Death Rays and Unknown Poisons and over-use of Chinamen. We know, too, our other difficulty – the character of our Detective.

Our public grows sophisticated… It knows that in the investigation there is no place for the talented amateur or the private practitioner… So we are driven to make him a Priest, or Insurance Agent, or Lawyer, or Journalist… These professions grow overcrowded. Worst of all, we make him a policeman – super-eccentric or super-efficient, which ever seems more likely to add a taste piquant enough to hide the smell of machinery. We aim at even greater ingenuity in the ways of murder…

You, I believe, discern a new road – the "inner history" of the murder itself. You and Miss Sayers and others have given us masterly glimpses of that new road. But – will it not lead you away from Detection?

Here is a novel of Detection and little more; with a Detective who is wholly amateur, and has no knowledge of Shellfish or Finger-Prints or Cigar Ash; with no excitement of chase or of lunacy or of the shadow of the gallows spreading across the path of the innocent…

But, since I am the author, the novel does not answer the question, 'can Detection in itself be the whole motive of a Story?" I suggest that you can write a novel which will prove that the answer is 'yes'.'

I rather like the idea of writers setting each other challenges like this. It doesn't happen today in the same way. Sure enough, Berkeley responded with a book dedicated to Kennedy three years later. But he didn't exactly take up the challenge...

Forgotten Book - Poison in the Parish

My choice for today's Forgotten Book is another novel by the unjustly neglected Millward Kennedy – this one is Poison in the Parish, which was first published in 1935. It opens with a rather aggressive dedication to an un-named person who has complained that Kennedy peoples his work with unpleasant characters. Here, Kennedy says, is something rather different. The suspects are all relatively agreeable people.

The book then begins with an extract from a letter which is tantalisingly described as a "prologue or epilogue" before the story proper gets underway. Following gossip in a small village, the police have exhumed the body of a rather nasty old lady who turns out to have been poisoned with arsenic. In order to get a handle on life and relationships within the village, the police – rather improbably, it must be said – call upon a wealthy invalid to assist their enquiries.

The invalid is called Francis Anthony, and I am as sure as I can be that Kennedy chose the name deliberately as a tribute to his friend and colleague by taking the first names of his two most famous pseudonyms, Anthony Berkeley and Francis Iles. The book is in many ways a homage to Iles, especially in its ironic flavour, and one of its main features is a very unusual murder motive which later found its way (in the context of a very different storyline) into Anthony Berkeley novel.

I figured out what was going on in the story at an early stage, partly because aspects of the narrative reminded me of a book that Agatha Christie wrote early in her career. But this did not spoil my enjoyment of the mystery, which is pleasingly put together. I'd say this is one of Kennedy's most entertaining novels, and a reminder of his talent. It's strange to think that he produced only a handful of novels after this one. Perhaps his disastrous experience with the law courts over a libel claim, which I discussed in this blog recently, provides the explanation.

Forgotten Book - Death in a Deck-Chair

I've written several times in this blog of my admiration for Anthony Berkeley, and I've also mentioned his contemporary and Detection Club colleague Milward Kennedy, whose approach to the genre reminds me of Berkeley's. Kennedy was another who liked to mix detection with humour, and he was also keen on experimentation.

My choice for today's Forgotten Book is a novel Kennedy published in 1930, Death in a Deck-Chair. It opens with a brief but very interesting introduction, in which Kennedy discusses the nature of detective fiction with a friend. He then describes how the conversation gave him the idea of taking the essential features of an actual case and reinventing it for fictional purposes, making use of his personal knowledge of police procedure, gained while working in Military Intelligence in the First World War.

Kennedy acknowledges at the outset that "complete realism" is out of the question – "is a novel pursued each possible clue to its final conclusion, it would run into volumes". This is the dilemma that succeeding generations of crime writers have grappled with. Unfortunately, it has to be said that this pioneering novel struggles to maintain a balance between plausibility and entertainment.

The body of the man who is found stabbed in a deck-chair at a seaside resort turns out to belong to a blackmailer who dies unmourned. The investigation moves slowly, and although Kennedy tries to compensate with humorous dialogue, for a modern reader the material simply isn't amusing enough to justify the lack of pace. In the latter stages of the book, things move more quickly, but overall the quality of the story does not remotely match that of books such as The Murder at the Vicarage, which was published in the same year. Yet Kennedy deserves a good deal of credit, I think, for his attempts to move the detective story forward from the straightforward puzzle. Unfortunately, in this book at least, the idea was stronger than the implementation.

Forgotten Book - Bull's Eye

Over the past few months, I have mentioned Milward Kennedy a number of times in this blog. I find him rather interesting as a Golden Age detective novelist – not in the same league as Anthony Berkeley, I must admit, but equally interested in doing something different with the detective story and adding more than a touch of humour.

My choice for today's Forgotten Book is a Kennedy novel that dates back nearly 80 years and which, I would like to bet, not many of my readers have heard of, let alone read. Bull's Eye is a rather unusual, if somewhat meandering, mystery in the country house tradition which offers quite a few ironic touches worthy of Berkeley.

This was the book that introduced Sir George Bull, who is hired as a private detective by a woman who appears to have rather more money than sense. The matters that Sir George is asked to investigate seem relatively trivial, but no sooner has he joined one of those house parties so common in Golden Age books than a rather shady character dies in mysterious circumstances. Sir George duly decides to investigate.

One of the things that puzzled me when reading this book was the curious way in which Kennedy characterised Sir George. I thought this was a failing, but the final chapter cast a rather different light on Sir George's activities. The humour deployed throughout is not quite strong enough for a modern reader to be bowled over with admiration for Kennedy's wit, but the story is interesting and original enough to me to understand why Kennedy decided to bring Sir George Bull back in a subsequent novel.

Milward Kennedy's Big Mistake

When I bought Jessica Mann’s A Charitable End from Jamie Sturgeon recently, he told me a story that I never knew before. We were discussing Milward Kennedy, an interesting writer whom I’ve blogged about recently, and he mentioned a libel case in which Kennedy featured. The story is told in a true crime book called The Ordeal of Philip Yale Drew. It’s written by Richard Whittington-Egan, a chap of immense knowledge, whom I’ve never met, but to whom I’ve chatted on the phone several times. He was very helpful indeed when I was writing Dancing for the Hangman, and was kind enough to read and comment on the manuscript. Apparently, a novel that Kennedy wrote featured a thinly disguised version of Drew. The snag was that, though Drew had been suspected of murder, and was grilled at a coroner’s inquest, he was never tried and the case was never solved. Drew sued Kennedy and his publishers, Gollancz, for libel. The case was settled at the last minute before the trial, as often happens. The compensation didn’t do Drew much good, however, as he died only three years later. Kennedy’s barrister was H.C. Leon, who later became well-known as a writer under the name Henry Cecil. This mishap rather messed up Kennedy’s career as a crime writer, or so it would seem. Until the court case, he had been prolific, a rising star of the genre. Afterwards, though he lived for thirty years or more, he only published four more books. A sobering story, to my mind. And a reminder of why it’s a good idea to try not to libel anyone. The trouble is, avoiding accidental libel is by definition rather difficult.

Forgotten Book - Murder in Black and White

In 1931, Milward Kennedy wrote the first of three books under the pseudonym of Evelyn Elder. These are rare books, but the first Elder, Murder in Black and White, has recently been reprinted by Fender Tucker’s excellent small press, Ramble House. I strongly recommend Ramble House, who have brought back at reasonable prices a host of obscure titles.

This book contains, in effect, a ‘challenge to the reader’ in the Ellery Queen style, though it is not expressly described as such. The author says: ‘When teh reader has reached the end of Part Three he is in possession of all the facts needed to reach the solution of the problem. Such further facts as are introduced in Part Four (and they are virtually only two in number) are no more than confirmation of the theory which emerges from the rest of the book.’ So in a sense, Rupert Penny, whom I quoted a while back, was wrong in saying that The Talkative Policeman was the first English book to present this kind of direct challenge to the reader.

The novel shows us both the best and the worst of Kennedy. He was an intelligent man and a good writer, with a flair for ingenious ideas that suited the Golden Age. But somehow, all too often, the sum of the parts does not add up to as much as it ought. The narrative is strangely constructed, with far too many characters introduced too soon, and this becomes wearisome. I didn’t care about the people as much as I should have done, given that Kennedy was better at characterisation than some of his contemporaries.

And yet the idea of the book is very appealing. An architect and amateur artist, Sam Horder, takes a holiday in the south of France and becomes involved in a seemingly impossible crime. Real tennis, of which Kennedy was clearly a fan, plays a significant part in the story. Sam’s sketches are reproduced in the book – Part Two consists solely of them - and you can, if you care to do so, try to figure out the solution by studying them. He recounts the mystery to a friend, who plays armchair detective by doing just that. The sketches were actually drawn by Austin Blomfield, himself an architect and artist who went into practice with his father, an architect of distinction whose work included buildings at Lady Margaret Hall.

Overall, then, a book I found frustrating yet, from a historical perspective, very interesting indeed.

Forgotten Books - Half-Mast Murder

Milward Kennedy was a founder member of the Detection Club, but his novels are long out of print in the UK, and Half-Mast Murder is a good candidate for inclusion in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books.

Published in 1930, it is a country house murder case, boasting three plans, including one of the octagonal summer house in which Professor Paley, an expert on the subject of international relations, is found stabbed to death. The summer house is locked, but Superintendent Guest soon establishes that the victim was murdered, and the ‘locked room’ element of the story is quite minor. The flag above the summer house is flying at half-mast – but why? The explanation for this aspect of the story is a pretty good one.

The main question is whether the motive for the murder was connected to the dead man’s political views, or to some more commonplace personal or domestic issue. There is one character who appears to be above suspicion throughout, and if I were writing the book, I’d have been tempted to make her the culprit. But Kennedy opts for a different outcome, although the motive is concealed until the end of the book (and because a key fact is not revealed until very late on, he doesn’t really play fair with the reader.) The culprit’s identity is, though, a pleasing twist on an old theme.

Kennedy, whose full name was Milward Roden Kennedy Burge, was an interesting character. His first book was a mystery written with a contemporary from Winchester College, A.G. Macdonell, best known for the humorous classic England, Their England. He wrote few novels after the 30s, though he reviewed crime until the 60s, and lived until 1968. At one time, he worked for the League of Nations, which is name-checked in his book, and I felt this background might have been more fully exploited than in fact proves to be the case. Kennedy was a good enough writer to come up with some very interesting ideas, though not perhaps good enough to make the very best use of them. Even so, this is a sound example of Golden Age fiction of the second rank.