Forgotten Book - Which Way Came Death?

Which Way Came Death? written by Faith Wolseley, and published by John Murray in 1936, is my Forgotten Book for today, and it really is forgotten. I'd be very surprised if more than one or two of my readers have come across it. And yet it was, in its day, a very well regarded and well reviewed novel. With some justice, I should say, as the writing is elegant and often witty.

The book is presented as a first novel, yet although it was the first under the Wolseley name, it was not really a debut, for the author had previously dipped a toe into the waters of detection with two books under what was, I understand, her real name, Stella Tower. Dumb Vengeance, which really was her first novel, was one of my Forgotten Books recently.

The Tower book was set in a country house. The Wolseley novel is set against another background that was popular in Golden Age detective fiction: the public school. Anthony Berkeley, James Hilton, Nicholas Blake, Christopher Bush and Gladys Mitchell were among those who made good use of school setting in the Thirties, but the wit and insight into school life in this book calls to mind R.C. Woodthorpe's The Public School Murder. Wolseley's writing did not have the political edge of Woodthorpe's, but is none the worse for that.


It becomes clear early on that a schoolmaster called Stoner is the likely murder victim, and we are led to believe that poison may be the murder weapon - but how will it be administered? The head teacher's wife is a memorable character who plays a central role in the story, and I was not surprised to discover that the author was herself the wife of a public school teacher. The story flags a bit in the middle, as in Dumb Vengeance, before perking up again. The plot is nothing special, but the quality of the writing lifts this one out of the ordinary.

Forgotten Book - The Necessary Corpse

R.C. Woodthorpe is a writer I find intriguing. He burst on to the scene in the Thirties with successful books such as The Public School Murder, and his work demonstrates an ability to characterise well, and to amuse. He had a great interest in politics and social issues, and his novels reflect this. Unfortunately, The Necessary Corpse, first published in 1939, illustrates his shortcomings as a writer, as well as his strengths.

The story begins in lively fashion. Quinton, a rich entrepreneur who has built up a highly successful retail empire, receives a letter threatening his life. He has arranged to meet Nicholas Slade for lunch, and Slade saves his life when someone tries to shoot him. (We are reminded that William Whiteley founder of the famous department store, was himself murdered.) Quinton and Slade take refuge with a group of "Progressive Thinker", and discover that Quinton's right-hand woman is actually a freelance journalist with left wing and anti-capitalist views. The complications increase as it becomes clear that a trio of American gangsters are out to murder Quinton, and they won't be satisfied until he is dead. He could fake his death, yes, but how to provide "the necessary corpse"?

This is not a detective story but a light thriller, and - as usual with Woodthorpe - the emphasis is more on comedy with a political edge than on plot. Whenever I read a Golden Age story in which American gangsters make an appearance, I cringe, since they offer a kind of reverse kite mark, an indication that the book won't have even a pretence of realism. This was Woodthorpe's first published novel for four years, and I wonder if the gap arose because he struggled to find a good idea for a plot.

Slade, a sleuthing novelist who made an interesting debut in Silence of a Purple Shirt, seems rather subdued here, and it is not really a surprise that he never appeared in another novel. Woodthorpe is more interested in the relationship between Quinton and his feisty sidekick. There are some good lines, not least about journalism, but overall the novel is a disappointment. Woodthorpe's wit and intelligence don't compensate for the weakness of the story.

Forgotten Book - The Shadow on the Downs

The Shadow on the Downs, my Forgotten Book for today, is the second novel that R.C. Woodthorpe wrote in quick succession about an acerbic retired schoolteacher called Miss Perks It first came out in 1935, although another four years passed before this fairly obscure yet very interesting writer produced another mystery. I'd rate it as one of his best, and it's a pity that it marked Miss Perks' swan song.

The setting is a village on the edge of the Sussex Downs, close to a resort called Helmstone (I presume this is based on Brighton). The peaceful rural life of the villagers is about to be disturbed by the construction of a motor race track. A councillor who supports the scheme is found dead in the porch of a church, and Miss Perks, who is staying with her nephew, becomes intrigued.

As always with Woodthorpe, the style is discursive. His main interest is in social comedy, and his portrayal of an intellectual tramp and a young man who wants to write detective fiction allow plenty of scope for humour that is pretty well done. He's also unsparing of corruption in local government and greedy enterpreneurs. Miss Perks' acerbic and often rude manner conceal a fierce intelligence and an unexpected human sympathy. However, she fails to avert one tragedy which is of a kind that one seldom encounters in detective novels of the period and which demonstrates that Woodthorpe's interests extended well beyond the puzzle of whodunit.

In fact, the detective work here is pretty good, better than you sometimes find with this author. Miss Perks does justice as she sees fit - rather as Holmes, Poirot and Roger Sheringham used to do. Despite all the digressions (I imagine Agatha Christie, whose books at the time were very tightly structured, must have despaired of Woodthorpe, though Dorothy L. Sayers was a huge fan) it's a novel I really enjoyed reading, and I hope some enterprising publisher will make it available again to a new set of readers.

Inspector De Luca - BBC Four TV review - and historical crime

Inspector De Luca is a brand new BBC Four series that began on Saturday evening with An Unauthorised Investigation. It's an Italian production, and there are four two-hour shows, based on the character created by Carlo Lucarelli and played (very well, I thought) by the likeable Alessandro Preziosi. Lucarelli is, I'm aware, a very successful novelist, but I've never read him. I was drawn to watch really by the fact that the series is set in pre-war Italy, when Mussolini reigned supreme.

This period coincides, of course, with the Golden Age of detective fiction, and although this story didn't have a Golden Age feel to it, I've become interested in learning about the politics of the 30s, and the impact that people like Mussolini had, both in their own countries, and further afield. Several Golden Age writers - E.R. Punshon, R.C.Woodthorpe and Ronald Knox among them - wrote scathingly about Il Duce, but despite (or because of) his warped ideology he exerted an influence on people like Mosley and his followers in Britain. What must it have been like to live in Italy under his rule?

Inspector De Luca left us in no doubt that this was a deeply unhealthy society, where fear made people terrified of expressing anything less than unswerving devotion to a man who, in many ways, was as ridiculous as he was dangerous. De Luca himself is not a fan of Il Duce, but he is no saint either. He is a pragmatic police officer, and he manages (more or less) to keep his scorn to himself. I found the tension created by the claustrophobic political climate to be more interesting than the plot, which concerned the discovery on a beach at Riminii of a prostitute's corpse. De Luca's investigation soon brings him into very close contact with a glamorous countess whose seducative attention he finds hard to resist. But is she herself a victim, or a culprit?

Italy is one of my favourite countries, and it's so photogenic that makes an ideal background for a series of this sort. I liked De Luca as a character, but this was a case - in my opinion - where the history was more compelling than than the mystery. At two hours, the story felt rather drawn-out. Will I watch again? Maybe, but there are a lot of crime dramas on the screen at present - a good thing, my only regret is that none of them are based on my books! - and hard choices have to be made. I've just caught up with the very different, and quite excellent, Line of Duty, and Inspector De Luca didn't have the same wow factor. But it's a well-made and well-acted show, and if you like history, or Italy, it's worth taking a look to see what you reckon to it.

Forgotten Book - A Dagger in Fleet Street

My Forgotten Book for today is R.C. Woodthorpe's second novel, A Dagger in Fleet Street, first published in 1934, and applauded at the time, but now neglected and very difficult to find. In fact, I owe my copy to a kind person who supplied it to me when all other attempts came to nothing. And, as usual with Woodthope, the book boasts a number of attractive features.

This is, like Sayers' Murder Must Advertise, a workplace mystery. Woodthorpe had set his debut novel, The Public School Murder in a fictional version of the place where he used to teach. He moved from education to journalism with the Daily Herald, which in the novel becomes the Daily Hope. And Woodthorpe's knowledge of newspaper life makes his portrayal of it more powerful and authentic than Christopher St John Sprigg's entertaining Fatality in Fleet Street, published at much the same time.

Woodthorpe is good not only at describing the nature of journalistic life, but also at capturing the uncertainty faced by working people in the aftermath of the Slump. No job was safe, and one character says, "Thank God for the National Union of Journalists." That isn't the sort of sentiment that is generally associated with Golden Age detective fiction is it? An illustration, I suggest, of how the Golden Age is frequently misunderstood. Woodthorpe's writing regularly reflected his political views. The same woman turns out to be a communist; she is portrayed positively throughout, though she is smart enough not to reveal her political views to the newspaper's proprietor, or the acting editor, who is a "petty Mussolini," and who finishes up with the titular dagger in his throat.

Woodthorpe supplies some very good lines, and sharp social comedy. The only snag is that he is obviously uninterested in his plot. He was a writer, I think, who used the detective form as a peg to hang his writing on, but he was not very good at constructing a mystery. The puzzle, involving a rather insipid and ridiculous campaign by the newspaper against a pretty young woman, is third rate at best. But I'm really glad I read th book, because it gave me an insight, albeit quite light-hearted, into life in Fleet Street at a fascinating time of our history.

Forgotten Book - A Question of Proof

A Question of Proof, by Nicholas Blake, is my chosen Forgotten Book for today. It marked the crime writing debut of the poet Cecil Day Lewis, and the arrival on the scene of his regular sleuth, Nigel Strangeways. It's one of a number of mysteries written in the Thirties with a public school setting - R.C Woodthorpe and Glen Trevor (alias James Hilton) were among those who used a similar background. Blake had taught in such a school, and his inside knowledge of the milieu contributes to the quality of the story.

The first part of the book is seen largely from the viewpoint of a young teacher, perhaps based on Day Lewis himsel, who is an anti-establishment figure - so much so that he is conducting an affair with the head teacher's wife, who rejoices in the name of Hero Vale. When a rather unpleasant pupil is found dead in the hay castle where the couple have recently been enjoying each other's company, no prizes for guessing where the finger of suspicion is likely to point.

The police pursue the obvious lines of enquiry, and Strangeways comes into the story with a view to representing the school's interests. The author endows him with one or two mannerisms which aren't terribly memorable, but he is nevertheless an engaging character, and he detects thoughtfully and well. A further murder is committed - this time at a cricket match - and the truth about the crime is conpicuously "modern" for the time when the story was written.

Day Lewis, and his biographers, have seemed a bit dismissive about his crime novels, but they have lasted reasonably well, and it's worth noting that his career in the genre continued for rather longer than that of many of his contemporaries who started out in the Golden Age. This was partly because he was a genuinely talented writer, and partly because he was prepared to avoid formula, and try out fresh ideas. Not all of them were equally successful, but as this lively debut shows he had quite a flair for the genre.

Forgotten Book - Death in a Little Town

I’ve previously covered R.C.Woodthorpe in the Forgotten Books series, and today I’m returning to this currently obscure writer who was, for a few years, quite close to the top of the tree. But Woodthorpe’s career was short, and it’s symptomatic of the neglect into which he has fallen that, although he was an early recruit to the Detection Club, he has been missed off the list of members for a number of years!

Death in a Little Town was the first of two books he published in the mid-Thirties which featured Miss Matilda Perks (the other is A Shadow on the Downs, which I haven’t yet tracked down - this one is available on the Hathi site and I am really indebted to Christos for directing me to it.) Miss Perks is a sharp-tongued former schoolteacher who lives with her brother Robert and a loquacious parrot called Ramsay Macdonald. She does not, however, operate in this story as an amateur sleuth in the Jane Marple mould, though she is perceptive and inquisitive. When, ultimately, she discovers the truth, she keeps quiet about it.

The story concerns the battering to death, by a spade, of an unpleasant wealthy man called Bonar. He is a landowner in the Sussex town of Chesworth, and it is pretty clear that what really interested Woodthorpe was portraying the town and its people, rather than setting an elaborate puzzle to be solved. The key characters include a novelist and an eccentric bachelor, but no attempt is made to characterise Bonar, and thus it is difficult to care about what happened to him.

Woodthorpe was, I think, not a natural detective novelist. He was primarily interested in social comedy. There is a lot of dialogue in this book that does not take the story forward, though to some extent it portrays the people of the story entertainingly and amusingly. That, I’m afraid, wasn’t enough for me to love this story, but Woodthorpe could write well, and it’s a pity that inspiration started to desert him after only a handful of books.

Forgotten Book - Silence of a Purple Shirt

R.C. Woodthorpe is best known for his debut novel, The Public School Murder, but his Silence of a Purple Shirt (Death of a Purple Shirt in the U.S.), my Forgotten Book for today, seems to me to be a more enjoyable book. It was published in 1934 and featured Nicholas Slade, a novelist who appeared in one other novel before Woodthorpe abandoned him. A pity, because he and his confidential clerk Alfred Hicks make a pretty likeable Holmes and Watson duo.

The story features the murder of a political agitator, and a related child kidnapping, but the real interest of this book lies in its humour – which Dorothy L. Sayers lauded in a review. Woodthorpe pokes fun at the Purple Shirts, a Fascist group who want to “Make Britain Free”. I’d say he was ahead of many writers in recognising not only the absurdity but also the unpleasantness of the reactionary groups who became so formidable in the Depression era.

There are plenty of jokes, including a nice nod to Margery Allingham, whose husband Pip was once a pupil of Woodthorpe’s. before he abandoned teaching for writing. I enjoyed especially the civil servant who had written a single thriller, which sounds suspiciously like the author’s debut novel. 

The early chapters sparkle, and the resolution of the mystery is pretty good. I did feel, though, that the middle section of the book sagged. Woodthorpe spends ages describing an island hotel and its occupants, and although the writing is amusing, this is not enough to disguise the skeletal nature of the plot – a recurrent failing in Woodthorpe’s work. He was a genuinely talented entertainer, but not much interested in weaving complex fair play whodunits. That said, he was too good a writer to have disappeared from sight. It would be interesting to know why he gave up writing after 1940. Perhaps he felt he'd done all he can. Possibly he might have changed direction instead. I'm certainly on the look-out for the rest of his books, hard to find though they are.

Forgotten Book - The Public School Murder

R.C. Woodthorpe was a pretty successful author in the 1930s, and his best known novel, which I have in a green Penguin edition, is my Forgotten Book for today. This is The Public School Murder, and its school setting, Polchester, is evidently based on Christ’s Hospital, where Woodthorpe taught in the Twenties before going into journalism.

The story is agreeably written, and it makes a virtue of the public school ethos, about which views are probably as divided today as they were in the Golden Age. Much of the tale is told from the viewpoint of one of the teachers, although it is the head of the governing body of the school who eventually acts as amateur detective and comes up with a solution to the mystery of how Polchester’s headmaster died.

I’ve never read anything else by Woodthorpe, but I would like to do so. The trouble is that his books are now rather elusive – it would be good if someone could bring them back into print.  However, very little information seems to be available about Woodthorpe, and such detection work as I’ve been able to do has been rather poignant.

His full name was Ralph Carter Woodthorpe, and he lived until 1971. But he gave up writing following the outbreak of the war, and soon his reputation became shrouded in obscurity. He was a good enough writer to have been elected to the Detection Club in 1935 – yet his name is nowadays not even included on the list of the Club’s past members! Very sad, but at least I can do my best to put that right. He doesn’t deserve to be so neglected, but it’s sobering to be reminded yet again of the transience of success.