Forgotten Book - The Silent Murders

Over the course of just five years, between 1928 and 1933, A.G. Macdonell, the Scottish writer best-known as author of England, Their England, applied his wit and facility for writing entertaining prose to the detective genre. He co-wrote one novel, The Bleston Mystery, with Milward Kennedy, under the name Robert Milward Kennedy, produced six novels as Neil Gordon, and two as John Cameron. And then he moved on to other things. His early death in 1941, at the age of 46, means we'll never know if he would have returned to crime writing. Perhaps not. But his books deserve not to be forgotten.

The Silent Murders, which dates from 1929, is an example. In fact, I'd rank it as outstanding for its time, if it were not for the fact that the clever idea at the heart of the story had been used by another novelist a couple of years earlier. Whether Macdonell simply nicked it, or whether the idea was simply in the zeitgeist, I don't know. Either is possible. But he makes good use of it, and writes his book in such a different and agreeable way that it's definitely worth reading even if you have - as I did - a pretty good idea of where the story is ultimately heading.

The book begins with the murder of a tramp. Tramps were a regular feature of Golden Age detective fiction, and this reflects social issues that aren't so often discussed. For some people down on their luck, it really wasn't a golden age at all. But when someone else is killed and it emerges that there is an inexplicable connection between the two crimes, the story begins to take shape.

The main detective in the story, Inspector Dewar, is an appealing character, and Macdonell hit on a good way of complicating the mystery. The tension builds nicely, although one question (where was the culprit hiding out all the time?) didn't seem to me to be clearly answered, as the book ends rather abruptly, almost as if the author had run out of steam. So, not a masterpiece, and not totally original, but I really enjoyed it. It's a pretty rare book (the illustration comes from the excellent Hadwebutknown website, but that first edition will set you back £225), but deserves rediscovery.