Forgotten Book - Bird in a Cage

Frederic Dard was a successful and exceptionally prolific French crime writer whose work is little known in Britain despite the fact that he's often been compared to his friend Georges Simenon. That should change now, since Pushkin Vertigo have begun to publish some of his books.in English translation. I decided to have a look at Bird in a Cage, first published in 1961, and now translated by David Bellos.

This is a mystery set at Christmas, but if you're expecting a Parisian equivalent of The Santa Klaus Murder, you are in for a shock. It's really a noir story, with a melancholic mood, and a whiff of Boileau-Narcejac (when will more of their mysteries be translated into English, I wonder? Vertigo was far from being their only masterpiece).

The protagonist is Albert, who has come back home after years of absence. His mother is dead, and he becomes entranced by an attractive woman he chances to meet. The woman has a child (although it has to be said that the narrative does not show her parenting skills in a particularly good light) but she seems as drawn to Albert as he is to him.

Before long, however, we are confronted with a corpse, and in due course, in classic mystery fashion, the body vanishes. What is going on? I enjoyed this story, and felt that Bellos' translation worked well. It's a very short book, not much more than a novella, but none the worse for that brevity. I enjoyed reading it, and will look forward to reading more Frederic Dard.

Mavis Doriel Hay

Mavis Doriel Hay's detective fiction seems to be making more impact now than it did on its first appearance in the 1930s. This is thanks to the British Library's very welcome decision to reprint her three long-neglected novels in their Crime Classics series. I've previously talked about The Santa Klaus Murder, and in today's post I turn my attention to the two books that preceded it, Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell. They both benefit, by the way, from nice intros by Stephen Booth, who spoke enthusiastically about them on the Forgotten Authors panel at Crimefest.

Mavis was a student at Oxford at roughly the same time as Dorothy L. Sayers, and although she was an alumna of St Hilda's, rather than Somerville, it may be that their paths crossed. Did this influence Sayers' warmly positive review of Murder Underground? I very much doubt it - Sayers was not someone who said things about books that she didn't mean, and some of her reviews of friends' work were scarily acerbic. Sayers liked "good English", and Mavis was a stylish writer - it is this that lifts her novels out of the common run of Golden Age stories, and helps to explain why the British Library have chosen to republish her books. That said, I don't rate Murder Underground as highly as her two later novels. As the title suggests, the killing of an elderly spinster takes place at a Tube station (maps are provided), and the manner of the story-telling is light and amusing. It's a pleasing period piece. The plot, and in particular the solution, are however rather slight.

Mavis created a fictional Oxford college, Persephone, plainly influence by St Hilda's, for Death on the Cherwell. Again, we have a map of the scene of the crime, and a victim who is an unlovely spinster. A group of young female students find the body of the college bursar in a canoe floating down the river - shades of the beginning of The Floating Admiral. There is a lot to enjoy in this book, and Mavis's light touch is more expertly deployed than in her debut. Again, there is a shortage of suspects (not a mistake she made in The Santa Klaus Murder, which has a dauntingly large cast) and the "surprise twist" is foreseeable. But the story is fun.

In judging this writer, and these books, I think it's important to keep in mind that she was an inexperienced novelist, and this accounts for some of the flimsiness of plot and structure. Given her fluent writing style, I think that, had she kept writing mysteries, she might have developed into a notable contributor to the genre. It was not to be - she seems to have lost interest, although she wrote non-fiction later and lived until the Seventies. But it's marvellous to see these books given a new life, in very attractive editions, and they are being very successfully marketed by the British Library. The Golden Age is in vogue at long last!

The Santa Klaus Murder

Ever heard of the crime writer Mavis Doriel Hay? Neither had I until I received a review copy of a book she published in 1936 and which has just been reprinted by the British Library, as part of its rather exciting programme to make available again some very rare crime stories from the Victorian era and also the Golden Age between the wars.

The Santa Klaus Murder is one of three novels she published, although she also wrote non-fiction on the subject of rural handicrafts. On the evidence of this novel, I'm guessing that she enjoyed the conventions of the Golden Age and in the post-war era did not feel tempted to return to the idea of game-playing mysteries. But I'm guessing, as I know very little about her.

So what of The Santa Klaus Murder? The first thing to say is that it's a nicely produced book, as you'd expect from the British Library. And it also ticks a number of Golden Age boxes - the setting is Flaxmere, a country house, a floor plan is provided, and a Chief Constable is heavily involved in the detective work in the way typical of the period (think J.J. Connington in particular) but would now seem rather extraordinary.

One very strong positive about the book is that the story is told from multiple points of view, almost like The Moonstone, though the Chief Constable's perspective predominates once murder is done. The victim is Sir Osmond Melbury, the wealthy patriarch. Agatha Christie had a similar victim in a Yuletide mystery that post-dates this one, Hercule Poirot's Christmas. Each member of the large cast of characters has a motive for murder, and my one reservation about the book is that there are too many people, so that focus blurs after the crime is committed, with too much space is devoted to the question of means and opportunity. But Hay could write, and her other two novels are to be published by the British Library next year.

Sir Osmond has proposed to change his will - a Golden Age stand-by - and of course this impacts on motive, and a fragment of a piece of paper about the legacies is again included, another element that you just don't find that often in modern books, but which is the sort of device that Christie used to love to play with. Overall, I found this an enjoyable novel, and the familiar ingredients are lifted out of the ordinary by a pleasing touch of humour. Mavis Doriel Hay may not have made a great name for herself in the genre, but this book shows that she does not deserve to be forgotten. A nice Christmas gift for a Golden Age fan.

The British Library and Classic Crime

The British Library is a wonderful institution, but it's only in recent times that I've found any time at all even to begin to explore its treasures. I really enjoyed its exhibition earlier this year about the history of crime fiction, and since then I've been keeping an eye on their publication list.

One venture that fascinates me is their decision to publish some classic crime titles. The Notting Hill Mystery, first published as an eight part serial in 1862-3 is generally regarded as the first full-length detective novel (Poe, of course, had written detective short stories a couple of decades earlier) and the British Library's nicely produced edition boasts an intro by Mike Ashley. I've never actually met Mike, but I've contributed numerous short stories to anthologies he's edited. He's not only a very good editor but also extremely knowledgeable about the history of crime fiction.

The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester introduces the first female detective, and the Library's edition includes not only another intro by Mike Ashley but also a short preface by Alexander McCall Smith. Mike again introduces Revelations of a Lady Detective, by Williams Stephen Hayward.

More interesting titles are in the pipeline. I'm especially intrigued by The Santa Klaus Murder, a Golden Age mystery by Mavis Doriel Hay, which first appeared in 1936. I must admit I'd never heard of either book or author, and look forward to its arrival on the shelves in November. I very much hope that the British Library will continue to make available rare novels of this kind, and I do like to think that this is yet another illustration of an upsurge of interest in the once-maligned detective puzzles of the Golden Age. Perhaps their time has come again!.