Showing posts with label Country house mysteries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Country house mysteries. Show all posts

20230112

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

An award winning masterpiece by the Queen of Crime

The latest HarperCollins reprint of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
The latest HarperCollins reprint
of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha Christies’s sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was voted ‘the best crime novel ever’ by the British Crime Writers’ Association in 2013.

Published in 1926, the book remains Agatha’s best known and most controversial novel because of its ingenious final twist, which had a significant impact on the detective fiction genre and has been imitated by many other writers since.

Agatha, who died on 12 January, 1976 - 47 years ago today - has become famous for being the supreme exponent of the old-fashioned English crime novel. Her skill in constructing complex and puzzling plots and her ability to deceive readers until the very last page, or paragraph, are unequalled.

But this third Poirot novel, narrated by the local physician, Doctor Sheppard, in the absence of Captain Hastings, who has gone to start a new life in the Argentine, is considered by many readers and critics to be her masterpiece.

Wealthy businessman turned country squire Roger Ackroyd lives in a charming English country village, where dark secrets and dangerous emotions lurk beneath the apparently calm surface.

When Ackroyd is murdered, stabbed in the neck while sitting in his study after a dinner party at his home, there are, as usual, plenty of suspects.  

Poirot, who has just come to live in the village, after retiring to grow marrows, lives next door to Dr Sheppard. He is asked by a member of Ackroyd’s family to investigate the murder because they are worried the police will get it wrong. Suspicion has fallen on Ackroyd’s stepson, Ralph, who is a popular young man locally.

Agatha Christie died 47 years ago today at the age of 85
Agatha Christie died 47 years
ago today at the age of 85
After many twists and turns, Poirot gathers all the suspects together in his sitting room after dinner one night and reveals the extraordinary and unexpected identity of the killer.

According to The Home of Agatha Christie, the author’s own website, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was ‘the book that changed Agatha Christie’s career’. It was the first of her novels to be published by William Collins, which later became part of HarperCollins, who remain Agatha’s publishers today and attracted enormous attention in the media at the time.

Following her death, Agatha Christie's body was buried four days later after a service at St Mary’s Church in the village of Cholsey in Oxfordshire.

The inscription on her tombstone is a quotation from Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen:

‘Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,

Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.’

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20230103

Persons or Things Unknown by Carter Dickson

Solving a seemingly impossible murder

Dickson's story appears in the collection A Surprise for Christmas
Dickson's story appears in the
collection A Surprise for Christmas
Golden Age mystery writers wrote many excellent short stories as well as the novels they were famous for, and they loved to turn their hand to writing short, seasonal detective stories for the periodicals published over the festive season.

Persons or Things Unknown was written by one of only two American writers admitted to the prestigious British Detection Club, Carter Dickson, who was much admired by his fellow Golden Age writers for his locked room mysteries.

Carter Dickson was one of the pen names for John Dickson Carr, who lived in England and wrote most of his novels and short stories with English settings. He wrote Persons or Things Unknown for The Sketch, a weekly illustrated journal, for their Christmas edition in 1938.

Dickson served up a locked room mystery in a spooky setting with a historical background, which is perfect entertainment for whiling away an afternoon in December or January in front of a fire as a guest in someone’s unfamiliar, and not particularly comfortable, house.

Persons or Things Unknown has the reign of King Charles II as its background. When it was written, it was far less common to combine mystery with history, particularly in short story form, than it is now.

John Dickson Carr wrote under a number of pseudonyms
John Dickson Carr wrote under
a number of pseudonyms 
A group of guests have gathered after dinner in the drawing room of ‘a long, damp, high-windowed house, hidden behind a hill in Sussex.’  Their host has just bought the property and the party after Christmas is also meant to be a house warming.

One of the guests, who narrates the story, tells us that the smell of the past was in the house and that you could not get over the idea that ‘someone was following you about.’

The host alarms the group of guests by saying he wants to know if it is safe for anyone to sleep in the little room at the top of the stairs. He says he has ‘a bundle of evidence’ about ‘something queer’ that once happened in the room.

He then tells them he has been given a diary in which the writer says he once saw a man hacked to death in the little room at the top of the stairs. The man’s body is alleged to have had 13 stab wounds caused by ‘a weapon that wasn’t there, which was wielded by a hand that wasn’t there’.

The diary tells the story of the beautiful young daughter of the house, who was once engaged to a local landowner. Then along came a fashionably dressed young man from the court of the newly restored King Charles II, who fell for her and was determined to win her hand in marriage. The subsequent dramatic events led to a seemingly impossible murder in the little room at the top of the stairs, which used to be called The Ladies’ Withdrawing Room. It was a mystery that no one had ever been able to solve.

The host then puts all the facts he has been able to discover before his guests, who include a policeman and an historian, and invites them to come up with a solution.

The Hollow Man is regarded as Dickson Carr's masterpiece
The Hollow Man is regarded
as Dickson Carr's masterpiece
John Dickson Carr was born in Uniontown in Pennsylvania in 1906 and moved to England in the 1930s, where he married an Englishwoman and began writing mysteries. He was published under the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.

Most of his novels had English settings and English characters and his two best-known fictional detectives, Dr Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, were both English. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers of Golden Age mysteries. He was influenced by his enthusiasm for the stories of Gaston Leroux and became a master of the locked room detective story in which a seemingly impossible crime is solved. His 1935 Dr Fell mystery, The Hollow Man, is considered his masterpiece and was selected as the best locked room mystery of all time in 1981 by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers.

Persons or Things Unknown was republished by the British Library in 2020 in A Surprise For Christmas, a collection of seasonal mysteries selected by the crime writer Martin Edwards.    

In his introduction to Persons or Things Unknown, Edwards says the author ‘blends historical atmosphere with a pleasing locked room mystery in the form of an inverted detective story of the kind first popularised by R. Austin Freeman.’

In my opinion, this pleasing locked room mystery by Carter Dickson, which takes up just 20 pages of the book, would be the perfect post lunch, or post dinner, winter diversion.

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20221230

Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon

A ‘creepy’ Christmas story with all the classic festive ingredients

John Jefferson Farjeon was a journalist who went on to be a successful novelist
John Jefferson Farjeon was a journalist who
went on to be a successful novelist
When a group of passengers trapped on a snowbound train on Christmas Eve decide to take their chances in the ‘curtain of whirling white’ to try to find shelter, the scene is set for an intriguing seasonal mystery.

No one answers the bell at the first house they find, but when they try the door handle it turns and they stumble inside with relief. The fires are lit, the table is set for tea, but surprisingly there is nobody at home.

It is obvious the occupants would not have ventured out in such extreme weather conditions unless there had been an emergency and the house has clearly been prepared for guests, so despite uncomfortable feelings of guilt, the train travellers warm themselves by the fire, eat the tea that has been prepared and set out to solve the mystery.

The main sleuthing brain belongs to an elderly gentleman, Mr Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society, who uses a mixture of reasoned logic and psychic intuition to try to work out what has happened to the occupants of the house.

He is ably assisted by a bright young man, David Carrington and his cheerful sister, Lydia, who has practical skills. A chorus girl, Jessie, who has fallen in the snow and sprained her ankle, a young clerk called Thomson who succumbs to ‘flu, Hopkins, an elderly bore, and Smith, a rough man who turns out to be a criminal, complete the Christmas house party.

A Mystery in White is a published as a British Library Crime Classic
Mystery in White is published as
a British Library Crime Classic
The author of Mystery in White, Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, was a crime and mystery novelist, playwright, and screen writer. Born in 1883, Farjeon worked for ten years for Amalgamated Press in London before going freelance. He went on to become the author of more than 60 crime and mystery novels, short story collections and plays.

He was a major figure during the Golden Age of murder mysteries between the two world wars and Dorothy L Sayers praised him for being ‘quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures.’

Farjeon was named after his maternal grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, who was an American actor. His father, Benjamin Farjeon, was a successful novelist, one of his brothers was a composer, another a drama critic and director, and his sister, Eleanor Farjeon, wrote poems, including the words for the hymn, Morning Has Broken.

Originally published in 1937, Mystery in White was republished as a British Library Crime Classic in 2014. Like most Golden Age mysteries, it has a satisfying, logical conclusion, brought about by the deductive powers of Mr Maltby and the heroics of David.

At the end of the story, the police inspector, who manages to reach the house on Christmas Day, remarks to his sergeant: “Four murders in a dozen hours! I reckon I’ve earned my bit of turkey.”

When the owners of the house return they are happy to forgive the intrusion by the party from the train. As Lydia had said earlier to the chorus girl, Jessie: “Suppose this house belonged to you and you returned to it after the world’s worst snowstorm, would you rather find your larder empty or seven skeletons?" 

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20221123

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer

An author famous for Regency romances has a stab at a country house mystery

The Cornerstone edition of Footsteps in the Dark
The Cornerstone edition of
Footsteps in the Dark
Prolific writer Georgette Heyer is famous for creating the Regency England genre of romantic novels, which were inspired by her love of Jane Austen’s books and were meticulously researched and full of period detail.

Georgette is probably less well known for her detective fiction, which she began writing in 1932 when she produced a country house mystery, Footsteps in the Dark.

She wrote the novel while awaiting the birth of her son, Richard George Rougier, and afterwards said dismissively that she did not claim it as ‘a major work’.

For the next few years, Georgette published one romance novel and one detective novel every year. The romances always outsold the detective novels, which may be why Georgette is chiefly remembered for them.

Her son, Richard, once said that Georgette regarded the writing of a detective story as similar to tackling a crossword puzzle, an intellectual diversion before harder tasks had to be faced.

It has been claimed that Georgette’s husband, George Rougier, a mining engineer who later became a barrister, often provided her with the plots and that she created the characters and the relationships and brought the plot points to life.

Georgette’s detective novels have been praised mostly for their humour. The New York Times wrote: ‘Rarely have we seen humour and mystery so perfectly blended.’ The Daily Mail once referred to Georgette as: ‘The wittiest of detective story writers.’

The novels were all set in the period in which they were written and the humour comes from the characters and the dialogue that takes place between them.

I was keen to read her first detective novel, Footsteps in the Dark, and I was not disappointed. 

Georgette Heyer wrote her debut detective novel while pregnant
Georgette Heyer wrote her debut
detective novel while pregnant
Two sisters, Celia and Margaret, and their brother, Peter, inherit an old country house called The Priory from their uncle. The property has not been lived in for many years because their uncle preferred to live elsewhere, but the three of them and Celia’s husband, Charles, decide to spend a few weeks holiday at The Priory. They soon learn from the local people that the house is believed to be haunted but are determined not to be frightened into leaving.

When they hear peculiar noses and a skeleton falls out of a secret cupboard, they try to find out more from the other residents in the village. Then a murder is committed and they feel they have to stay in the house and solve the mystery. I thought it was a carefully plotted story, with believable characters and a satisfying solution at the end.

Georgette produced 12 detective novels in total, between 1932 and 1953 when her final novel, Detection Unlimited was published.

She believed that publicity was not necessary for good sales and, wishing to maintain her privacy, refused to grant interviews, which is perhaps another reason her detective stories have been overlooked. 

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