Readers see Campion at work when his emotions become involved
Campion is called in to investigate when the leading
man in a hit West End musical becomes the victim of spiteful, practical jokes.
The actor and dancer Jimmy Sutane is starring in a
show based on a best-selling book written by William Faraday, who is one of Campion’s
oldest friends. Campion is taken to see the show by Faraday and introduced to
Jimmy after the performance.
The star asks Campion to discreetly look into the
pranks, which are beginning to cause him and his family distress, in this eighth
novel by Margery Allingham to feature her mysterious, clever sleuth.
Campion goes with Faraday to stay at Sutane’s country
home, where he meets the star’s family and some of his show business friends.
During Campion and Faraday’s visit, an unpopular actress
is accidentally run over by Sutane in his own car. Everyone seems happy to
believe that this was an accident, but Campion is not so sure.
As the increasingly unpleasant practical jokes
continue, Sutane’s ambitious understudy is killed, along with several innocent
bystanders. Campion liaises with the police about this unpleasant development while
carrying on with his own investigation.
When the butler in charge of the Sutane household resigns,
Campion has to call on his own unconventional butler, valet, and bodyguard,
Magersfontein Lugg, to help restore peace and order to the now chaotic country residence,
while he continues to investigate the mystery. Lugg gets on well with the
Sutane family, teaching the daughter of the house to pick locks.
In this novel, which was first published in 1937, Campion
finds himself torn, wanting to uncover the facts, but trying to avoid upsetting
a woman he has just met and fallen in love with. However, the determined
detective sticks to his task and it is only at the end of the story that he
finds out the truth.
This is another gripping novel from Margery Allingham,
which slowly unveils Campion’s character, showing his human side. It draws the
reader into Campion’s world and makes us want to find out more about him.
The
story of a theatrical entertainment that starts with a bang
Ngaio Marsh was one of the four 'Queens of Crime' in detective fiction's Golden Age
Two
ageing spinsters, who are both vying for the attentions of the rector of their
church, are united in just one thing: their hatred for Selia Ross, an
attractive newcomer to the village who they think is having an affair with the
local doctor.
In
Overture to Death, when the main characters get together at a meeting at the village Squire’s house to plan an amateur theatre production to raise money for a new
church piano, it becomes obvious to the reader that the story can end in only
one way…
In
this eighth Chief Inspector Alleyn novel, Ngaio Marsh draws on her own
theatrical background when she describes the preparations the organisers make for
the performance of a play in the Parish Hall in the vale of Pen Cuckoo in
Dorset.
She
sets the stage cleverly, giving examples of the extent of the rivalry between
the two old women in the past and how far they are prepared to go to get the rector’s
attention.
Her
characterisation of the spinsters is excellent as she reveals how both women
disapprove of the blossoming relationship between the Squire’s son, Henry, and
the rector’s daughter, Dinah, who is a young professional actress.
The
artist, Agatha Troy, does not appear in this novel, published in 1939, but she is
always present in the background.
After
the explosive murder scene, Detective Chief Inspector Alleyn and Detective
Inspector Fox are sent by Scotland Yard to investigate.
Ngaio
includes a letter Alleyn writes to Troy, while he is away from London working
on the case, in which he reveals that they are engaged and speculates on what
their marriage will be like.
The HarperCollins 2001 edition of the 8th Inspector Alleyn mystery
Alleyn’s
original Watson, the journalist Nigel Bathgate, is sent to Dorset to cover the murder
story and he assists Alleyn in the investigation.
Ngaio
Marsh, who died on 18 February 1982 in her native New Zealand, contributed to both
art and the theatre during her life. She was also judged to be one of the four Queens
of Crime during the Golden Age of detective fiction.
Her
32nd and final crime novel, Light Thickens, was completed only a few weeks
before her death. The story revolves around one of her greatest theatrical
passions, Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.
Ngaio
began writing detective novels in 1931 after moving to London to start up an
interior decorating business. The idea for her first crime novel, A Man Lay
Dead, came to her when she was living in a basement flat off Sloane Square.
In
the preface to an omnibus edition of her first three novels - A Man Lay Dead,
Enter a Murderer and The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio describes how she came up
with the character of Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
It
was a wet Saturday afternoon and she had been reading a detective story borrowed
from a library, although she says she couldn’t remember whether it was ‘a
Christie or a Sayers.’ After she finished it, she wondered whether she could write
something similar and braved the rain to go to a stationer’s shop to buy exercise
books, a pencil, and a pencil sharpener.
She
sat down to write what was to be the first of a series of crime novels
featuring the gentleman detective Roderick Alleyn. Her fictional detective works
for the Metropolitan Police in London even though he is the younger brother of
a baronet. She named him after an Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn.
Several
of her novels are set in the world of the theatre, which she knew well because
she was a times an actress, director, and playwright.Along
with Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L Sayers, Ngaio Marsh was
to dominate the genre of crime fiction for the next 50 years.
I
would recommend Overture to Death as a good example of a classic Golden Age
mystery set in a respectable English village. It stands out because of its clever plot, which involves a highly
ingenious and shocking murder method.
Background romance adds extra interest to investigation
The 2016 Hodder edition of the novel, first published in 1932
Lord Peter Wimsey’s character comes to life in Have
His Carcase, the seventh novel by Dorothy L Sayers to feature her gentleman
sleuth.
Instead of appearing as just an amiable aristocrat
indulging himself with his detecting hobby, tolerated by Scotland Yard because
of his status in society, he shows himself to be energetic and determined during
this novel, which was first published in 1932, because he is trying to help the woman he
loves.
Mystery novelist Harriet Vane is on a solitary walking
tour along the south west coast of England when she discovers a dead body on
the beach.
She has stopped for refreshment and a brief doze in
the afternoon sun. But instead of just enjoying a peaceful picnic and then resuming
her journey, she wakes up to find a corpse nearby. A man, who has had his
throat slashed from ear to ear, lies spreadeagled on the rocks below her.
Harriet tries to gather evidence at the scene before
the incoming tide sweeps the body out to sea. Then she finds she has to walk several
miles before she can find a telephone to report her discovery to the police.
As a woman who has recently been acquitted of murder,
a case featured in Strong Poison, a previous Wimsey novel, Harriet finds it
unpleasant to come under suspicion and be the subject of police scrutiny again.
Ian Carmichael as Wimsey in a 1970s TV adaptation
But she does not have to wait long before Wimsey joins
her at the seaside and involves himself in the investigation, having been
tipped off by a journalist about Harriet’s predicament.
The amateur detective duo discover that it is a complicated
case to solve and it involves them, and Bunter, Wimsey’s manservant, in painstaking
work to try to break the alibis of their main suspects.
They also have to crack a secret code used by the
murderer to communicate with his victim beforehand. This was the only part of
the novel that I found less than riveting, as the codebreaking lasted for
several pages that weren’t very interesting to read.
However, Wimsey’s character acquires more depth in
this novel, and the ‘will they, won’t they?’ sub plot of their romance also
adds interest to the story.
The couple part as friends at the end of the book, but
Harriet has still not accepted Wimsey’s proposal of marriage, providing a major
incentive for fans to keep reading!
No Oxford degree for author but she found a good setting for a crime novel
The murder at the heart of this mystery occurs on the River Cherwell, still popular with students today
Death on the Cherwell, a classic Golden Age detective story by Mavis Doriel Hay published in 1935, is set in a fictitious women’s college in Oxford. The novel appeared during the same year as Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers, which was also set in a women’s college in Oxford. Both settings were loosely based on the colleges the authors had attended themselves.
Mavis writes at the beginning of the first chapter: ‘Undergraduates, especially those in their first year, are not, of course, quite sane or quite adult.’ The students featured in this novel come across as very young indeed, more like the girls in boarding school stories than intelligent students. Nevertheless, they make good amateur sleuths, who are as entertaining as they are industrious.
A group of first year girls, who have formed a secret society that meets on the roof of the Persephone College boathouse, come across the dead body of the college bursar lying in her canoe. She is later discovered to have drowned in the river but it is a mystery how her body ended up back in her own boat.
The police are called in but to begin with they assume it is a student prank that has got out of hand. However, the group of young ladies who found the body immediately suspect foul play and take the investigation into their own hands.
Led by Sally Watson, whose older sister, Beryl, appeared in Murder Underground, the first crime novel by Mavis Doriel Hay, the undergraduates uncover the tangled secrets that led to the bursar’s death and follow up clues that point in the direction of a fellow student.
The British Library Crime Classics edition of Death on the Cherwell
Mavis Doriel Hay, who was born on either 12 or 13 February 1894, 130 years ago, in Potters Bar in Middlesex, attended St Hilda’s College in Oxford between 1913 and 1916. She published three mystery novels within just three years in the 1930s, Murder Underground, Death on the Cherwell, and the Santa Klaus Murder.
After Murder Underground was published, Dorothy L Sayers wrote a review in the Sunday Times saying: ‘This detective novel is much more than interesting. The numerous characters are well differentiated, and include one of the most feckless, exasperating, and lifelike literary men that ever confused a trail.’
That exasperating literary man, Basil Pongleton makes an appearance in the author’s second novel, Death on the Cherwell, when he and his wife, Beryl, are visiting Beryl’s sister, Sally, in Oxford. But Sally doesn’t need any help from him to uncover the truth about the bursar’s death and her sleuthing efforts even earn her the respect of the investigating officer in the case, Detective Inspector Braydon.
Like Dorothy L Sayers, Mavis attended Oxford when women were allowed into the university to study, but were not allowed to graduate, and so she left the university empty handed. But because she was interested in the industries and handicrafts of rural Britain, she was later sponsored by the Agricultural Economics Research Institute of Oxford University to collaborate with another writer, Helen Fitzrandolph, on a series of works surveying rural industries
She went on to marry Helen Fitzrandolph’s brother, Archibald Menzies Fitzrandolph, in 1929. Sadly, he was killed in a flying accident during World War II.
Mavis, who was also interested in quilting, went on to publish several books on crafts during her life. She died in 1979 at the age of 85.
Nearly 90 years after it was first published, Death on the Cherwell was republished by British Library Crime Classics. In his introduction to the novel in 2014, crime writer Stephen Booth regrets that Mavis Doriel Hay had such a short literary career and published just three detective novels. He says it is ‘even sadder’ that she was almost forgotten by crime fiction readers for so many years after her death and he was delighted that the British Library editions of her books were finally remedying that oversight.
I am sure lovers of classic crime novels will be glad to have the opportunity to get to know this author and will be fascinated by her portrayal of life inside a women’s college in Oxford, in the days when female students weren’t even considered worthy of being awarded degrees by the university they attended.
Buy Death on the Cherwell from or
(River Cherwell pic by Steve Daniels via Wikimedia Commons)
The cover of the 2015 edition published by HarperCollins
Six years before Agatha Christie’s famous novel,
Murder on the Orient Express, was published, the Queen of Crime wrote another
Hercule Poirot mystery where a murder is committed on a train.
Unfortunately for the killer, Hercule Poirot happens
to be on the train at the time, travelling from England to the French Riviera
on the famous ‘train bleu.’
The Mystery of the Blue Train, which was published in
1928, is reputed to have been Christie’s least favourite story. Nevertheless,
the book received a positive reaction from the Times Literary Supplement at the
time, who stated that ‘the reader would ‘not be disappointed.’ The distinguished Belgian detective uses
psychological reasoning to dispute the guilt of the original suspect arrested
by the police and, in the words of the review, ‘lands his fish to the surprise
of everyone.’
The murder victim is Ruth Kettering, an unhappily
married American heiress, who is travelling to France to meet her lover. On the
train, she meets Katherine Grey, who for the last ten years has been a companion
to an old lady living in the village of St Mary Mead. The old lady had just died
and left her a substantial inheritance and Katherine is enjoying her first chance
to travel abroad.
The two women have a conversation over lunch and Ruth
invites Katherine back to her compartment, where she confides in her that she
has misgivings about what she is about to do and doesn’t feel happy about
having deceived her own father about her trip.
Christie's detective Hercule Poirot, as famously portrayed by David Suchet
Katherine does not see Ruth again and that evening finds
herself seated opposite Hercule Poirot for dinner. The next morning, Katherine
discovers that Ruth has been found dead in her compartment, having been
strangled during the night.
It transpires that a famous ruby, ‘Heart of Fire,’
that has recently been given to Ruth by her wealthy father, is now missing.
Later, Poirot is persuaded by Ruth’s father to take on the case and find his
daughter’s murderer for him. The little Belgian detective doubts that the French
police have arrested the right person and, helped by Katherine, uncovers the
truth.
The Mystery of the Blue Train was priced at seven
shillings and sixpence when it first went on sale in the UK.
The novel contained the first ever mention of the
fictional village of St Mary Mead, which was to be the home of another of Agatha
Christie’s detective, Miss Marple.
Agatha Christie is reputed to have found writing the
book an ordeal, as the story did not come easily to her. At that time, she was staying
in the Canary Islands while recovering from the death of her mother, her
husband’s infidelity, and her own mental breakdown. In her autobiography, she stated
that she had always hated the novel.
I particularly enjoyed the parts of the story set in
the south of France and found the plot to be ingenious. If, like me, you are a
Christie fan, you will find it well worth reading.
