Forgotten Book - No Murder

I've been looking for a copy of H.C. Bailey's No Murder (1942) for a long time. My interest in this book dates back to the time when I read a letter in that great magazine CADS, in which John Jeffries claimed that it's the best detective novel ever written. The quest was given further impetus nine years ago, when Barry Pike, a very good judge, discussed the novel in CADS, and concluded that, if not superior to the greatest Golden Age books, this outing for Reggie Fortune was right up there alongside And Then There Were None, etc.

Barry's short but incisive essay pointed out that the book "is densely packed, with many strands to the narrative, including three violent deaths and three attempts to murder which Bailey handles "with great panache, leading the reader steadily up the garden. He demonstrates continually...the ability to tell one story while appearing to tell another". I agree that's a very significant gift for any detective novelist, and I also agree with him that Agatha Christie was the supreme exponent of this technique.

Barry adds: ""The particular cleverness of No Murder lies in its continuous misdirection, maintained with great skill to the end." The book's American title was The Apprehensive Dog, and as Barry rightly says, "the significance of the dog's activities emerges only in the last few lines of the text." The snag is that this is a rare book, much harder to find than all the other classics to which Barry compares it. So why is it that such a gem has been hidden from view for so long?

Now that I've read No Murder, I think I can guess the answer. The fact that it appeared during the war probably didn't help, but really the density which Barry mentions is reflected in the prose style, and this means that it's nothing like as smooth and slick as the best of Christie. Characters tend not to see things, for instance, they "descry" them. What is more, although the story is intricate and unusual, I didn't find it exciting. This is despite the fact that Bailey was, at his best, a genuinely powerful writer. But his techniques work best in short stories. One of the problems here is that the finger of suspicion points at too few people, and this frustrated me. There's also something anti-climactic about the story, a problem reflected by the title. That said, I was intrigued by the book and I'm glad I've read it. It's certainly original, and I do prize originality. But do I regard it as a masterpiece? I'm afraid not.

Forgotten Book - Shadow on the Wall

More than a couple of years have passed since I mentioned on this blog that a couple of interesting articles in CADS had prompted me to think about exploring further the work of Henry Christopher Bailey, one of the leading lights of Golden Age detective fiction. It says something about my other preoccupations that it has taken until now for me to get round to reading anything else by Bailey.

My choice for today's Forgotten Book Is Shadow on the Wall, a novel happily made available again thanks to a recent reprint by those excellent American publishers Rue Morgue. It was the first novel to feature Bailey's most famous detective, Reggie Fortune, although by the time it appeared Bailey had produced a large number of Reggie Fortune short stories which had earned a good deal of popular acclaim as well as critical approval. I've read a few of the short stories, years ago, but never before have I broached a full-length novel by H.C. Bailey.

This particular novel – admired by Bailey's fans – shows both his strengths and his weaknesses as a crime writer. Strengths first. He constructs a clever plot – this one starts off as a kind of upper-class country house mystery, but develops into a very dark story indeed. Bailey writes, at times, with both power and passion, characteristics not often associated with Golden Age mysteries. This story has some quite memorable features.

The snag is that Bailey's style is both mannered and horribly dated. At times story is quite hard going, and by all accounts some of his later books were even more self-indulgent. Reggie moans and mumbles so much that an interesting character becomes irritating. All this is a pity, because Bailey was an intelligent writer, and cut above many of his contemporaries. But the laboured and old-fashioned prose is a real stumbling block. Even so, those who are willing to persevere with this novel will be glad that they did.

Forgotten Book - Gory Knight

Gory Knight, my latest contribution to Patti Abbott’s series of forgotten books, was published in 1937, not long after the appearance of Dorothy L. Sayers’ renowned Gaudy Night. It’s a parody, written by the partnership of Margaret Rivers Larminie and Jane Langslow.

The story parodies the celebrated detectives Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey (and his manservant Bunter), Reggie Fortune, Dr Thorndyke and Inspector French – although the French character appears only in the final stages of the book .The sleuths gather, by improbable means, in an English country house, and are immediately greeted by the disappearance of the cook (the eponymous Ms Knight.)

It’s a fun book. The plot is slight, and perhaps stretched out too much, but there is much pleasure to be had in the rendering of the eccentricities of Poirot, Wimsey and Bunter in particular. I was glad to stumble across it – initially in the pages of Jamie Sturgeon’s catalogue. Jamie sold the book before I called him, but he referred me to another crime fan, the locked room expert Bob Adey, who was able to supply me with a copy.

There is an intriguing family connection between Larminie and a leading contemporary writer, Margaret Yorke. I hope to write an article about this aspect of the story at a future date. But I know nothing about Langslow. If anyone can tell me anything about her, or about how the book came to be written, I’d be very interested to hear it.