Forgotten Book - Murder Mars the Tour

My Forgotten Book today is Murder Mars the Tour, the debut novel of Mary Fitt, published in 1936. Fitt was an interesting writer, and I'm sure she was an interesting person, too. In real life she was an eminent classicist called Kathleen Freeman (1897-1959), an academic with a specialism in Greek whose first book, The Work and Life of Solon, included translated poems.

She wrote a number of scholarly articles and mainstream novels before adopting the Fitt name, and turning to crime fiction with this book. Presumably it was well received, and she proceeded to write a run of detective stories which often had something out of the ordinary about them. They weren't always successful - I'm afraid I found her last book, Mizmaze, dire - but they were often interesting, and she was well-regarded enough to earn election to the Detection Club in the early Fifties.

Murder Mars the Tour is a likeable book. As a mystery, it's slightly unorthodox, and the whodunit plot is scarcely in the Agatha Christie league. Even so, it kept me engaged from start to finish. It's narrated by a chap whose brother encourages him to go on a walking tour in Europe with a motley group of individuals who belong to the same club. During the holiday, they come across a woman whom the brother had been involved with. When a murder occurs, the plot (not before time, it must be said) begins to thicken.

The narrative voice, intelligent and rather prissy, is distinctive, and although the puzzle is nothing special, the writing is certainly proficient. I liked the atmospheric way in which the tour was described, though I was intrigued that.there was no real mention of the political difficulties that were convulsing Europe at the time. I assume that Fitt went on a tour of the kind she describes, and decided that it would make a good setting for a mystery novel. If so, she was right. I'm not suggesting that this book is a lost masterpiece; it isn't. But it did entertain me.  .

Forgotten Book - Death on Heron's Mere

I'm not sure I really know what to make of Mary Fitt, the author of today's Forgotten Book, Death on Heron's Mere. She was a writer of genuine talent, with insight into character and an interest in the unorthodox as well as a formidable intellect - the Fitt name concealed the identity of a distinguished classicist, Kathleen Freeman. She was a member of the Detection Club, and to this day many of her books are keenly sought after by collectors,and first editions command steep prices. There's a lot to like - and yet...

When I've read her books, I've found that the excellence of the ingredients has sometimes not been matched by the quality of the whole novel. Death on Heron's Mere is a case in point. It's a country house murder story, complete with map of the mere, and it features the amiable if rather colourless Inspector Mallett (Cyril Hare's police detective had the same name but a stronger personality.) The book was published in 1941, and the plot involved industrial espionage to assist the Germans, yet on the whole the impact of war does not disturb the characters half as much as their prolonged family wranglings.

I felt the book got off to a poor start because a large number of characters were introduced very quickly, and never fully recovered. Fitt evidently took pains to ensure that the main people are more than ciphers included for the sake of the plot, but did not - in my opinion - do quite enough here to involve us with their emotions. As a result, I wasn't as concerned to find out who had shot Simon Gabb's son - and tried to make it look like suicide - as I should have been.

One of the interesting features of this book is the idea of the displaced gentry - the family which owned the big house has now been exiled, and there are newcomers at the Hall. The theme of the old ruling class falling on hard times crops up in several of Henry Wade's books, and also in Agatha Christie's Dead Man's Folly, but for me Wade and Christie do a better job of engaging the reader with the story while making their points about changes in society..This is an interesting book (it was lent to me by a Golden Age expert who rates it highly, and for whose judgment I have great respect) but overall, I found it disappointing. If you plan to give Mary Fitt a try, I wouldn't recommend starting here.

Forgotten Book - Mizmaze

My choice for Patti Abbott's series of Forgotten Books today is Mizmaze. Quite a nice title. It is the only book by Mary Fitt that I have read, although she was a prolific crime writer for almost a quarter of a century. I was attracted to her work by the praise accorded to her by Harry Keating in Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers and by Cooper and Pike in Collecting Detective Fiction.

The name of Mary Fitt concealed the identity of Kathleen Freeman, a well-regarded Greek scholar whose private nature is reflected in the biographical note in the Penguin edition of this book, in which she is quoted as saying: ‘It is… the writer of fiction who is of interest to the public, not the person of whom the writer is part.’

In a celebrity-focused age, such a modest outlook seems quaint, but it was not uncommon at the time; Agatha Christie, for one, felt the same and routinely declined requests from fans for signed photographs. What would Mary Fitt have made of blogging, I wonder?

This novel, Fitt’s last but one, was published in the year of her death, 1959. It boasts a murder in a maze – to my mind, always an evocative and appealing concept. Unfortunately, the victim, old Augustine Hatley, so lacks redeeming features that it is a wonder that he survived to a ripe old age, and the various suspects, including his two daughters, are scarcely more appealing. The detection is undertaken by Fitt’s usual pairing, Inspector Mallet and Dr Fitzbrown and the latter is oddly more prominent than the former. I have to say that it's not too hard to see why this book has long been forgotten. I'm sure Fitt wrote some good stories, but this is really more of a curiosity.