Forgotten Book - Inspector Rusby's Finale

Virgil Markham (1899-1973) was an American author who produced eight crime novels between 1928 and 1936, in other words at the height of the Golden Age, and then abandoned the genre. Why he gave up, I don't know, but given that Dorothy L. Sayers and Anthony Berkeley, two giants of the Golden Age, also stopped writing detective novels at much the same time - in Berkeley's case, just three years later - perhaps one factor was a sense that intricate mysteries were beginning to fall out of favour.

I've blogged about two of Markham's novels in the past - Death in the Dusk and Shock! aka The Black Door and when John Norris blogged about Inspector Rusby's Finale (1933) five years ago, I very much liked the sound of the book. But I couldn't find a copy. Eventually, John began to sell his collection and I was able to buy his copy from him, complete with the inscription he mentions, in which Markham describes the book as 'an outstanding example of my splendid craftsmanship'. He's quoting from the blurb of the Albatross paperback edition! 

This is an unusual mystery novel, eccentric in some respects, but it does make enjoyable reading. The opening chapter, set in Rapallo, and featuring a conversation between a group of women, is faintly disconcerting to a mystery fan, but in fact it contains information relevant to the storyline. The mystery proper begins when Inspector Myles Rusby sets out to go to a country house party near Salisbury at the request of the enigmatic but lovely Mrs Cade-Jack. He arrives late, and is greeted by her. But when he awakes, the house is deserted - except for a dead body.

It's an intriguing situation and Markham throws the kitchen sink at the reader, loading the story with all kinds of Golden Age tropes, not least a rather pleasing amateur detective called Thriddle. It's a sort of riff on Trent's Last Case (the prototypical country house whodunit, in which the detective fell in love with the main suspect) but it's very different. It's also well-written, with some witty lines as well as entertaining characters such as a gardener with a passion for crossword puzzles. Good fun.