Forgotten Book - High Seas Murder

Years ago, I came across a brief mention in a reference book of Peter Drax as one of those writers who followed in the footsteps of Francis Iles, Bruce Hamilton, and C.E. Vulliamy as an author of realistic, ironic crime novels. Intrigued, I strove to find Drax's books, but they were hard to find. Eventually I was pleased to come across one, but they have remained elusive. Until now, that is. Dean Street Press have just reissued the six books that Drax published during his short life, and Rupert Heath of DSP recommended me to have a look at High Seas Murder, which I'd not encountered before.

Rupert was right - it's a really good book. It was first published in 1939, and was the last novel Drax (whose real name was Eric Elrington Addis - I can see why he opted for a pen-name) produced in his lifetime. His crime writing career began in 1936, so he flourished only briefly. A senior naval officer, he was killed in a German air raid on Alexandria in 1941. After his death, a seventh book was completed by his novelist wife Hazel.

Drax spent much of his adult life as a sailor, though he retired from the Royal Navy in 1929, and practised as a barrister until the war broke out. His knowledge of the sea informs this book, and the authentic feel of the story adds to its quality. But what I find very interesting is the fact that the story focuses almost exclusively on working class people in the fishing port of Gilsboro. The lawyers and the cops play only a minor role.

Although (rather oddly) he is not the first character to whom we are introduced, the central protagonist is Carl Swanson, captain of a local fishing ship. His personality is key to the story - and it's a sign of Drax's skill that the final paragraph contains a clever twist that casts fresh light on Carl's psychological profile. There's a doom-laden feel to the story that today would undoubtedly be described as "noir". The writing is crisp and gripping, and Gilsboro is well-evoked: Curtis Evans' informative introduction doesn't suggest any real life model for the town, and though I have two or three candidates in mind, it may be an amalgam of several towns Drax knew. This is an enjoyable example of the ironic Thirties crime novel, different from Iles', Hull's, and Vulliamy's work yet certainly worthy of being associated with it.

Forgotten Book - Lobelia Grove

Lobelia Grove was the second novel published under the name of Anthony Rolls, a follow-up to the successful The Vicar's Experiments. The book appeared in 1932, and my copy, from the Bob Adey collection, is signed by the author and dated September 1932. It's signed in his real name, C.E. Vulliamy, rather than as Rolls. (Bob's copy of the first Rolls book is signed in both names.)

The setting is a fictitious "garden suburb", and the social life of Kipperly  Park is portrayed with a great deal of sly wit. One always feels, with Rolls-Vulliamy that constructing a mystery interested him rather less than exercising his gift for satire,,but I must say I really enjoyed this one. He tackles the theme of the craving for respectability exhibited by so many English people, and he presents us with a number of incisive portraits of local characters, and how they behave when murder disrupts the serenity of their lives.

A case in point is Mr Bertie Quirtle (the author liked to give his characters unlikely names, a habit that I find a trifle irritating). Quirtle is returning home one night when he encounters a rude stranger in a hurry. Almost immediately thereafter,he stumbles across the body of one of his neighbours. Rather than doing something about it, he scuttles off and later tells a series of lies, seemingly out of fear of becoming involved.

There's a pleasingly ironic plot twist towards the end, but the real pleasure of the book comes from Vulliamy's jokes, and his ability to make shrewd points through humour. At the time he was writing, these books must have seemed refreshingly "different", and they still retain that quality. Yes, the influence of Francis Iles can be detected, but unlike Iles, Vulliamy was not someone who had written tightly structured whodunits, and this helps to explain why his novels focus more on people than on plot. He was a novelist who happened to write about crime. All the books of his that I've read are worth seeking out..  .

Forgotten Book - Scarweather

Scarweather, first published in 1934, is the third book by Anthony Rolls (real name C.E. Vulliamy) that I've covered in this blog, and it's a distinctive and interesting novel, with pleasing touches of satiric wit, especially at the expense of archaeologists. One of the unusual features of the novel is that the events described take place over an extended period - a decade and a half. The action kicks off just before the start of the First World War, but the final drama is enacted much later.

The story is told by a young barrister called John Farringdale, who has to be one of the most naive fictional lawyers I've encountered in a long time. The detective work - unhurried, to say the least - is done by Farringdale's mentor, a gifted all-rounder called Ellingham, who is presented in such a way that I did wonder if Vulliamy had thought of using him in more than one story.

Much of the action takes place at a lonely spot on the northern coast called Scarweather. Apparently there is somewhere called Scarweather Sands in the author's native Wales, but his fictional version is located in England - presumably on the east coast, rather than the west, though I couldn't identify it with any resort that I know; certainly not with Scarborough. Farringdale, his friend Eric, and Ellingham, get to know Professor Reisby and his gorgeous wife Hilda, who live at Scarweather, and a sinister sequence of events begins to unfold.

I found the style of writing enjoyable; Scarweather's a good read. The plot has a pleasing central idea, but the main flaw of the book, in my opinion, is that the final revelation is obvious long, long before the end. I was hoping for an unexpected twist, but no luck. This seems to me to be Vulliamy's weakness as a crime writer; he had a gift for coming up with terrific ideas, but struggled to sustain plot development and narrative tension to the end of his books. This may explain why his work has faded from view, but his merits are such that he deserves rediscovery.

Golden Age commentators have had mixed views about him over the years. There is a good essay about him in Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers by the very knowledgeable Charles Shibuk, and Barry Pike is another admirer, but Barzun and Taylor were not keen, and Julian Symons expressed some reservations in Bloody Murder. As ever,  Curt Evan's blog is informative and includes a review of this novel; he also published an article about Vulliamy in CADS  a couple of issues back.

Incidentally, when I wrote about Vulliamy on this blog five and a half years ago (blimey, can it be that long?) I mentioned that I have a signed copy of his late book Floral Tribute, but had never read it. Alas and alack, I still haven't got round to it. But I really, really, intend to make the effort now....

Forgotten Book - Family Matters

Family Matters, my latest Forgotten Book, isn't set at Yuletide, but Christmas is a family time of year, so perhaps it's an appropriate choice. The novel dates from 1934. It is one of four books that C.E. Vulliamy published before the Second World War under the name Anthony Rolls, although he wrote several crime novels under his own name in later years. Way back in 2009, I wrote a blog post about his debut, Clerical Error, and I've been meaning to come back to this writer for ages. Now I've read two of his other books in quick succession. This one is excellent, and if it were not for my reservations about the latter stages of the story, I'd call it a masterpiece.

The family of the title is the Kewdinghams (one of Vulliamy's quirks is a taste for unusual surnames; I suppose he was trying to avoid the risk of libel, but the overall effect is off-putting, at least to me.) Robert, age 47, has been unemployed since he lost his job in the Slump, and he lives increasingly in a fantasy world. His wife, Bertha, is some years younger, attractive, and fed up. She has two admirers, one of them a doctor, the other a novelist.

I don't want to say too much about the way in which the story develops, because if you read it, you'll find it a pleasure to come afresh to the central situation which makes this book very distinctive. Suffice to say that it is to do with poisons. Dorothy L. Sayers heaped praise on this book, but even she admitted that she had no idea whether what Vulliamy was saying about poisons was accurate. I didn't find it especially convincing, but that didn't matter much. It's a very, very good set-up, handled with plenty of irony and satire.

I became engrossed in the situation and the characters, but I did feel that once a death finally occurs, Vulliamy became so preoccupied with unravelling the tangle he'd created that he lost sight of the characters, and this for me was the flaw that deprives the book of the status of absolute classic. Vulliamy was influenced by Francis Iles, but in the three Iles books, the psychology of the central characters remains of critical importance from start to finish. I think that is, in part, why Iles' books, or at least the first two, have stood the test of time better. But Vulliamy was a fascinating writer, and this is a book I can warmly recommend. There is also an excellent review on the Pretty Sinister blog, and an equally good article about the author by Curtis Evans in issue 68 of CADS - Curt commented on my original post about Rolls/Vulliamy, and it remains the case today, as then, that his crime fiction deserves to be reprinted.

James Melville and CADS 68

The latest issue of CADS, the 68th instalment of this "irregular magazine of comment and criticism about crime and detective fiction" has just arrived, and is full of good reading. I was sorry, however, to read about the death of James Melville earlier this year - I'd completely missed the announcements that appeared; here is anobituary by his sons which appeared in The Guardian - under his real name of Peter Martin.

As his sons rightly say, James (as I continue to think of him) enjoyed CWA events, and I met him and his partner Carole on a number of occasions. He was intelligent, amusing and genial company, and he also wrote very well. The Otani books were crisp and entertaining and made excellent use of his knowledge of Japan and the Japanese way of life. He was also a reviewer, and I was one of many younger writers who benefited from his generosity and his willingness to cover books that were not necessarily destined to be best-sellers. I shall remember him fondly.

Apart from this sad news, there are many good things to be found in CADS 68, as usual. Malcolm J. Turnbull, author of a very interesting book about Anthony Berkeley, Elusion Aforethought, contributes an excellent study of two books, one by Berkeley and one by John Dickson Carr, which are linked by the same Piccadilly hotel. Other highlights included J.F. Norris's piece on Kathleen Moore Knight and Barry Pike's continuing detailed survey of the Reggie Fortune short stories.

One of great merits of articles that appear in CADS, or other crime fiction reference publications, is that they send you hunting for books you've never read (often, books you've never even heard of). This was one of the reasons why Julian Symons' Bloody Murder remains my favourite book about the genre; although it's not a long book, it introduced me to many wonderful novels - only yesterday, for instance, I mentioned Sudden Death. Some of Julian's more sweeping generalisations in Bloody Murder get a bit of a critical kicking from time to time by other commentators, including me, but his book remains a masterpiece of its kind, setting a standard of lucidity, wit, knowledge and flair that hardly anyone else has ever matched.

I've never heard of Michael Keyes, or his solitary crime novel from the Golden Age, but Margaret Cooper's short piece about it makes me want to read it. Similarly, there is a characteristically well researched article by Curtis Evans about Anthony Rolls' early books that makes me determined to track down a couple I haven't read. Rolls was a pen-name sometimes used by C.E. Vulliamy, and what  pleases me in particular (given that Curt's taste in mysteries and mine quite often coincide) is the discovery that some of the titles I have yet to find sound as though they really will justify the search.

Forgotten Book - Clerical Error

My last entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books featured a title from the pen of Richard Hull. This week, the focus is on novel written by another disciple of Anthony Berkeley/Francis Iles. Clerical Error has also appeared as The Vicar’s Experiments, and it has been published under two different names – first as by Anthony Rolls, and then under Rolls’ real name, C.E. Vulliamy.

Vulliamy wrote, among other things, biography and satire. It is his satiric instinct which prevails in the opening chapter, when a seemingly inoffensive cleric snaps during a conversation with a disagreeable loudmouth:

‘Up to a quarter past three, Mr Pardicott might have been described as the gentlest of rural clergymen; at twenty minutes past three he was a criminal of the most dangerous kind. In a dizzy moment of revelation he saw that he had been chosen by the Inscrutable Purpose to be the destroyer of Colonel Cargoy.’

Alas, even when the murder of Colonel Cargoy has been accomplished, Pardicott does not rest content….

Vulliamy wrote a number of other crime novels. I’ve read one of them, Don Among the Dead Men, which follows a broadly similar pattern. I wouldn’t claim either book is a masterpiece. In each case, there is a neat initial idea, and some witty writing, but (at least, for a modern reader) the plot isn't complex or credible enough for the whole novel to live up to the promise of the early pages. But they have, at the very least, a deal of interest for readers fascinated in the development of the genre. Vulliamy was no Ruth Rendell, but he was no mug, either.