Forgotten Book - The Uncounted Hour

A few years back, I acquired a copy of The Uncounted Hour (1936) by Herbert Warner Allen, inscribed to the wine buff, merchant, and writer Charles Walter Berry, but I've only this year got round to reading it. Warner Allen himself was a wine expert who wrote several books about the subject. He was evidently an interesting character, who seems, among other things, to have developed an interest in mysticism. But our concern is with his contribution to detective fiction.

Part of that contribution was to encourage his friend (and fellow journalist) Edmund Clerihew Bentley to write a belated follow-up novel to Trent's Last Case. Trent's Own Case appeared under their joint names in 1936; my guess is that the bulk of the plotting was done by Allen and the bulk of the writing by Bentley, but I might be mistaken; it just seems a logical assumption. A wine merchant called Mr Clerihew, who featured in Allen's other work, appears in the story. Presumably encouraged by the experience, Warner Allen promptly published The Uncounted Hour, described on the jacket as a 'murder story', although for much of the story the characters debate whether Sir Godric FitzWaren committed suicide.

This is in some ways an odd book, which starts out as a conventional country house mystery, narrated by a doctor called Kenelm Kinglake, and develops into something rather different. There are some interesting ideas in the story and also some excellent turns of phrase: Warner Allen was an intelligent man, of that there is no doubt. But his storytelling methods in this book were a bit clunky, clues to his inexperience as a novelist. To some extent, this results, I think, from the ingenious (if by no means original) plot idea at the heart of the book. But he handles it unevenly.

Indeed, at one point in the story, I found my attention drifting away because of the number of rather self-indulgent digressions. But Warner Allen redeems things, to some extent, in the latter part of the book, as more deaths occur, with some unusual plot twists. I must say that I didn't like his portrayal of one Jewish character, which resorts to some of the tedious stereotypes that were a regrettable feature of some Golden Age fiction. Yet despite the book's flaws, by the end of the story the author had at the very least recaptured my attention. I commend the ambition of the concept, even if I'm a bit lukewarm about the way it was executed.