Forgotten Book - The Fair Murder

The name of Nicholas Brady is pretty obscure even by the standards of minor Golden Age authors. I'd never heard of him until Nigel Moss tipped me off about his work. Brady's real name was John V. Turner, and he published under that name and also as David Hume, which was his better-known pseudonym. Born in 1900, he died in 1945, so his work is now out of copyright.

There were just five books - the Brady bunch? - and his series detective in the first four books was an engaging amateur sleuth, the sharp-witted and self-confident parson Ebenezer Buckle. Ebenezer is very much in the tradition of the Great Detective, making enigmatic remarks right, left, and centre as he solves the mystery.

I recently read The Fair Murder, known in the US as The Carnival Murder, and it's an extraordinary story. There's a very good review of it by John Norris https://prettysinister.blogspot.com/2012/08/ffb-fair-murder-nicholas-brady.html on his Pretty Sinister blog, and I agree that this book has something i common with the "weird menace pulps" in the 1930s. I've certainly not read a Golden Age book with such a distinctive flavour. But be warned - it's not for the faint-hearted, and there will be plenty of readers who find it quite unpalatable, perhaps all the more so given the traditional murder puzzle storyline.

A woman is stabbed to death at a travelling fair and the circumstances are baffling. How was the crime committed? How is it that the victim, once very attractive, became grotesque? And what was the significance of the recent attempts on her life and her changed financial circumstances? It's a pretty good puzzle, and Ebenezer and the ultra-sceptical local police inspector are engaging characters. I was drawn to the book because one element of the plot is based on an idea that had occurred to me for a story I contemplated writing. But I'd never write anything quite like Brady's novel.