Forgotten Book - And Death Came Too

Richard Hull is known to crime fans as a follower in the footsteps of Francis Iles, an exponent of the ironic mystery in stories such as The Murder of My Aunt and Excellent Intentions, both of which have appeared in the British Library's Crime Classics series this year. So it is interesting to turn to And Death Came Too, one of his most obscure titles, first published in 1942. It's as close as he came to writing a conventional whodunit.

The main setting is the Welsh county of Treve, and many of the key moments take place in a house called Y Bryn. Although I'm not absolutely certain, I strongly suspect that here Hull was re-using the locale of The Murder of My Aunt, and in particular fictionalising his family home of Dysserth. Four young people are invited by a man called Arthur Yeldham to Y Bryn, but when they turn up, Yeldham is nowhere to be seen. Instead they encounter a sardonic fellow called Salter and a rather strange woman, who says very little. And then it turns out that Yeldham is in the house, after all. He has been stabbed to death.

The local police get involved, and they are rather nicely characterised, in particular the Chief Constable and a slow-moving but rather appealing cop called Scoresby. Hull shifts from one viewpoint to another as it emerges that Yeldham was a school teacher, and that quite a number of people had reason to wish him dead.

It's a rather meandering story, but although it's not one of those cunningly structured novels of psychological suspense in which Hull specialised, it is quite entertaining. Hull had a leisurely writing style, and as a result, the tension doesn't mount quite as much as one might hope; I have to say that I had a good idea of the culprit's identity early on, though the motive remained obscure for some time. A second murder occurs, and there is a classic gathering of the suspects before all is revealed. This is a novel with some good moments and several amusing lines, even if it doesn't rank with Hull's best work.

Crime Classics in 2018

The British Library recently published its catalogue for the first six months of next year, and this gives me a chance to talk about some of the titles in the Classic Crime series that will be coming the way of fans of Golden Age fiction before very long. It's an eclectic mix, and one that personally, I'm very pleased with.

I've already mentioned on this blog that I've compiled a new anthology of classic railway mysteries, called Blood on the Tracks. In the past there have been a few railway-themed short story collections, but I've managed to track down some stories that I'm fairly sure will be unfamiliar to the overwhelming majority of readers, as well as some that may be known to aficionados, but deserve a fresh life.

Then there's the republication of Richard Hull. I've talked about Hull's work both on this blog and in The Golden Age of Murder (and, come to that, in The Story of Classic Crime - I guess you could call me a fan!) He was a disciple of Francis Iles, and a very interesting writer indeed. Two of his best books will appear next year: The Murder of My Aunt and Excellent Intentions. I'm pleased to say that, thanks to members of his family, the introductions will contain quite a bit of fresh info about the life of this most creative of crime-writing accountant.

I'm also delighted to say that there will be two books from another writer whom I've championed, E.C. R. Lorac - Bats in the Belfry and Fire in the Thatch. I was introduced to Lorac's work by my parents, who were enthusiastic about her later work, set in Lunedale. These two books were written earlier. Bats in the Belfry has a great setting in London, while Fire in the Thatch, as you might guess, is a rural mystery

Among the authors whose novels are republished in the Classic Crime series are quite a few whom I've long hoped to revive - Anthony Berkeley, Raymond Postgate, Christopher St John Sprigg, Anne Meredith, and Freeman Wills Crofts among them. Hull and Lorac are two more authors whom I really enjoy, and I am optimistic that these reissues will find a highly appreciative new readership.

Forgotten Book - The Martineau Murders

The Martineau Murders is the last novel published by Richard Hull. An obscure and hard-to-find title, It appeared under the Collins Crime Club imprint in 1953, and it marked the end of an interesting literary career. I've mentioned my enthusiasm for Hull (real name Richard Henry Sampson) several times on this blog, and I've been trying to find out more about him for years..

In  his day, he was much admired, and he continued to play an active part in the Detection Club, of which he was Secretary, for a long time after he gave up writing. It seems to me that he lost enthusiasm for fiction, as there is a touch of weariness evident in some of his post-war books. None of them lived up to his famous debut, The Murder of My Aunt. But The Martineau Murders represents a return to that book. Not because there are any common characters or a shared setting, but certainly some story elements are to be found in both novels.

"My doctor has just left me" is the opening sentence. Alas, the medic has brought bad news to the narrator, the eponymous Martineau, or so it seems. But Martineau is a rather unreliable narrator, and much of the pleasure of the story comes from the reader's recognition of the gulf between Martineau's perceptions and reality. Some of this is, perhaps, rather laboured for modern tastes, and this is a book that (like one or two of Hull's other books) could have done with a meatier plot, but it is still quite entertaining.

By the time this book was written, more than a decade had passed since the appearance of the last book by Francis Iles, the author whose Malice Aforethought was a profound influence on Hull. The two men laced their work with a good deal of irony, and the law of unintended consequences plays a central part in their fiction. So it is with The Martineau Murders, a village mystery with a pleasing if foreseeable twist in the final chapter.

Forgotten Book - Keep It Quiet

Richard Hull, who has featured in my series of Forgotten Books a number of times already, is again the man responsible for today's choice. Keep It Quiet, published in 1935, was a prompt follow-up to his highly successful debut, The Murder of My Aunt. Again, the story-line is unusual, although it's fair to say that, as with so many writers who make a brilliant start, he did not find the second book as straightforward.

Keep It Quiet is set in a gentleman's club in London, and Hull was writing about what he knew, since apparently he was not only a member of such a club, but actually lived there at one time. Biographical details about Hull are fairly scant, mostly confined to bios on the back of a few Penguin editions of his work. I'd be interested to know more about him. He certainly had a sharp sense of humour. The setting gives him plenty of chances to amuse himself and his readers about clubland life. There's quite a funny joke about his own weight, smuggled in to chapter 29, which only makes sense if you know that Hull's real name was Richard Henry Sampson.

A club member appears to have been poisoned by the club cook, and the hapless club secretary decides to embark on a cover-up, with the assistance of a member who happens to be a doctor.This unwise course of action has far-reaching repercussions, and soon it seems that the lives of other members are under threat. The identity of the bad guy (there are no female characters of any significance) is clear from a relatively early stage, and the main question is how the situation will be sorted out, and whether anyone else will die before the end.

There's a neat variation on a familiar solution which introduces the laws of Latvia (of all things) and there's a general quirkiness about the book that works fairly well. The downside, as often with Hull, is that his amusing central idea needed to be stretched out somewhat to result in a full-length novel. Writers like Agatha Christie, who made sure there were plenty of suspects to be studied, structured their books better. But Hull was an engaging writer, and I suspect he was also an engaging companion in real life.

Forgotten Book - Murder Isn't Easy

Is it a typo? you may wonder. Is he thinking of Murder is Easy, the far from forgotten title by Agatha Christie? Well, the answer to both questions is no. My Forgotten Book today is a very interesting but neglected gem, written by Richard Hull. Murder Isn't Easy was first published in 1936, a couple of years before Christie's book appeared. He really was ahead of his time!

The book has two distinctive strengths. First, it's wittily written, and the humour has by no means dated badly. I found the story entertaining from start to finish, making some allowances for the passage of time. Second, it is a book with an unusual and very clever structure. Hull's debut, Murder of My Aunt, had a sort of unreliable narrator. Here, we have a great deal of unreliable narration, with the story told from four different viewpoints.

The setting is an advertising business - shades of Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. Hull's account of the business suggests some personal knowledge, though he was an accountant. Perhaps he'd audited such a firm. This one has three equal shareholders, all of whom are rather unattractive men. Latimer, who relates the first section of the story, is in some ways reminiscent of Edward, main protagonist of Murder of My Aunt. The unlovely trio also employ an artist and a secretary, and one remarkable social insight is the easy way that employers used to debate the merits of sacking a woman once she got married. You don't have to be an employment lawyer like me to find this extraordinary.

I don't want to say too much about the story-line, because after a slowish start, it develops in a very effective way. I'm not sure I've read a book quite like this one. And it offers a good example of Hull's particular and enviable gift, to conjure up highly original situations. Sometimes he struggled to execute them in a way that held reader interest to the end, but this little-known story is definitely one of his best.

Forgotten Book - Excellent Intentions

Richard Hull was one of the few chartered accountants to become a notable writer of detective novels. He burst on to the scene in 1935 with The Murder of My Aunt, which remains the book for which he is best known. It is a good story, although the ironic ending is easily foreseen by the modern reader. But my choice for the latest entry in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books is Excellent Intentions, which came out in 1938.

The plot is very clever. Henry Cargate has been murdered, and because he was an unpleasant chap, there are plenty of suspects. But although a murder trial is taking place, Hull does not reveal who is in the dock. Court scenes and police investigations are blended together cunningly so as to build the suspense.

But even when we do discover who is on trial, there is a terrific twist. It has a legal element that I certainly will not spoil for anyone who would like to track down this rather obscure title. Suffice to say that Hull is trying to show that sometimes the only way to achieve a truly just outcome is to thwart justice.

Richard Hull was one of those writers who were influenced by the ironic flavour of the work of Anthony Berkeley/Francis Iles. His reputation has not lasted as well, but he deserves not to be forgotten.