Poirot novel may prove a test for even his most
dedicated fans
The Big Four was the seventh Poirot novel
Rereading all Agatha Christie’s detective novels in
chronological order is enabling me to enjoy her best work once again and to discover
novels that I have somehow managed to overlook over the years.
I was intrigued by her seventh novel,The Big Four, which was published in 1927, because, although it features Poirot and Hastings,
it is a far cry from the mystery with a country house setting that readers have
come to know and love.
Poirot enters the world of international espionage in
this story and races from country to country, trying to track down four master
criminals who are working together to achieve world domination.
The first is Abe Ryland, an American businessman, the
second is Madame Olivier, a French scientist, and the third is a sinister
Chinaman called Li Chang Yen.
The fourth, who Poirot does not unmask until close to the
end of the book, is able to evade him because he turns out to be a master of
disguise.
The Big Four was not my favourite Poirot novel, as it
was more of an espionage thriller, with Poirot chosen to be the unlikely hero
whose mission is to save the world.
Delving into the background of the book, I found that
it originated from 12 separate short stories that had already been published.
Apparently, Agatha, who was at a low point in her life, needed to come up with a
new book for her publisher. With the help of her brother-in-law, she gathered up some of her old stories, reworked them, and submitted them as a new novel to her publisher.
But she was never satisfied with The Big Four and used
to refer to it herself as ‘that rotten book.’ It came after her sixth novel,
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which had been a spectacular success and was a
tough act to follow.
The Big Four was adapted for television in 2013
starring David Suchet as Poirot. It is worth persevering with, if only to be able
to say in the future that you have read every one of Agatha Christie’s 66
detective novels.
A classic
mystery novel set in and around the Northern Line
The British Library Crime Classics edition of Murder Underground
Murder
Underground, the first detective novel by Mavis Doriel Hay, is underpinned by a
very clever plot. It has a satisfying ending and enjoyable resolution scenes that
wrap up the individual stories of the characters and I found it to be a very
good read.
First
published in 1934, during the Golden Age of British crime fiction, the setting
for this classic mystery novel is the Northern Line of the underground in
London.
When Miss Pongleton,
who is considered by others to be a tiresome old spinster, is found murdered on
the stairs at Belsize Park Station, her fellow boarders at the Frampton Hotel
are not exactly overwhelmed by grief, but they all have their theories about
the identity of her murderer.
They help to
unravel the mystery of who killed ‘Pongle’ with the help of Tuppy the terrier, the
victim’s dog, and each play their part in the events that lead to the dramatic conclusion.
There is of
course an official police investigation,
led by Inspector Caird, but he is in the background for most of the story and it
is the amateur sleuths at the Frampton Hotel who unearth the clues and finally make
sense of the different pieces of the puzzle.
Hay was born in February 1894 in Potters Bar in Middlesex. She attended St
Hilda’s College in Oxford from 1913 to 1916. She published three mystery novels
within three years in the 1930s, Murder Underground, Death on the Cherwell and
TheSanta Klaus Murder. Her second novel, Death on the Cherwell, appeared during
the same year as Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers and coincidentally both novels
were set in women’s colleges in Oxford.
After Murder
Underground was published, Dorothy L Sayers wrote a review in the Sunday Times
in 1934, 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.’
Like Dorothy
L Sayers, Mavis attended Oxford before women were allowed to graduate. She was interested
in the industries and handicrafts of rural Britain and, after leaving
university, she was sponsored by the Agricultural Economics Research Institute
of Oxford University to collaborate with Helen Fitzrandolph on a series of
works surveying the rural industries. Mavis was also interested in quilting and
published several books on crafts.
She married
Helen Fitzrandolph’s brother, Archibald Menzies Fitzrandolph, in 1929. He was
killed in a flying accident during World War II. Mavis Doriel Hay died in 1979
at the age of 85.
Eighty years
after it was first published, Murder Underground was republished by British
Library Crime Classics in 2014. In his introduction to the new edition of the novel, crime writer
Stephen Booth said that Mavis Doriel Hay had been ‘unjustifiably overlooked.’
He also bemoaned the fact that her third detective novel, The Santa Klaus Murder, published in
1936, was sadly her last, and wondered whether the approach of World War II was
the reason for this.
I am sure
that lovers of classic crime novels will be glad to have the opportunity to get
to know this author now. I have to admit that I found Murder Underground to be a
slow starter, but I kept in mind the fact that it was Mavis’s first novel.
I thought
she was better at portraying the female characters, such as Beryl, Betty and
Cissie, than the leading males, such as the hapless Basil, who was referred to
by Dorothy L Sayers in her review, or Beryl’s amiable, but ineffectual, fiancé,
Gerry.
Nevertheless,
I would recommend Murder Underground to other readers as an excellent example
of a whodunit.
A blend of blackmail,
murder and romance makes for an intriguing mystery
Miss Silver Intervenes is the sixth Miss Silver mystery
We learn
more about the character of Miss Silver in this sixth book by Patricia
Wentworth featuring the ex-governess turned private investigator.
She is no
longer just a little old lady sitting in the background knitting, but is shown to
be well respected by the police, who treat her as an equal and give her full
access to their investigation in this story.
The mystery
involves residents who live in eight flats in Vandeleur House, an old converted
mansion in Putney. The characters are beautifully drawn by Patricia Wentworth and
I found myself enticed into their world and wanting to keep turning the pages of
the novel to find out more about them.
Miss Silver comes
into the story when one of the residents, Mrs Underwood, who she has met once
through mutual friends, calls on her unexpectedly at her flat. Although Mrs
Underwood is reluctant to admit why she has come to see Miss Silver, she
eventually reveals that she is being blackmailed and needs help.
Mrs
Underwood can't bring herself to tell Miss Silver the full details of what has been
happening to her, but later, when Miss Silver reads that another resident living
in the same block of flats has been murdered, she decides to take matters into
her own hands and manages to get herself invited to stay at Vandeleur House.
Mrs Underwood
is living there with her niece by marriage, Meade, who is recovering from the
shock of being in a shipwreck in which her fiancé, Giles, was drowned. Then
one day while she is out shopping, Meade encounters Giles, who was rescued
from the sea but has now lost his memory.
Patricia Wentworth (above) again spins an intriguing mystery
Miss Silver
wastes no time in getting to know the other residents in the flats and finding
out about their relationships with each other using her considerable skills as
a conversationalist.
There is a middle
aged couple whose marriage has been put under strain by the husband’s obsession
with the attractive young woman who lives in the flat above them. A pleasant
young woman is clearly being bullied by the domineering mother she lives with.
An elderly spinster is struggling to survive financially because of her income
being affected by the wartime economy. An elderly woman is being cared for by
her maid and a companion, and there is a single man who keeps himself to
himself so that no one knows what his occupation is.
When the
police investigating the murder find out that Miss Silver is staying with her
friend, Mrs Underwood, they invite her to join forces with them but the relationship
becomes somewhat strained when they opt for a simpler explanation for the murder
than the theory Miss Silver has put forward.
However, they
eventually have to admit they were wrong when the old lady, with a fondness for
the poetry of Tennyson, manages to unravel what has been going on at Vandeleur
House while simultaneously knitting a pair of socks for her relative in the air
force.
During the
story, Miss Silver also makes a new friend in one of the investigating officers,
Sergeant Frank Abbott, who is invited to
the celebratory tea party in her flat at the end of the novel.
I would say
the only weak point in the plot is that Miss Silver uses her knowledge of a
previous blackmailing case to help her identify the murderer, which gives her
an advantage over the police and the reader. But nevertheless, I found Miss
Silver Intervenes, first published in 1944, to be extremely well written and
enjoyable.
Madness
and witchcraft in a village that seems to be living in the Middle Ages
The Devil at Saxon Wall is the sixth Mrs Bradley mystery
Probably the
most bizarre Mrs Bradley mystery yet, The Devil at Saxon Wall, the sixth novel
about the eccentric psychoanalyst and amateur detective, published in 1935, is
the first of a number of Gladys Mitchell’s books to feature the theme of
witchcraft.
The story was
inspired after Gladys heard a lecture on witchcraft by her friend, the
detective fiction writer Helen Simpson, and she dedicated this book to her.
Mrs Bradley
has advised her best-selling novelist friend, Hannibal Jones, who has had a
breakdown and is suffering from writer’s block, to retreat to a quiet, rustic
village to find rest and inspiration for his work.
Although the
village of Saxon Wall might seem the perfect rural escape to begin with, Jones soon
finds himself intrigued by the odd characters among the villagers and their
pagan beliefs.
He also
finds himself compelled to try to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding
Neot House, a place where a young couple died soon after the birth of their
first child.
It is a hot
summer and the villagers are desperate for rain because they are short of
water. They decide the local vicar is to blame for the lack of water and Jones
has to step in to defend him when their anger drives them to march on the
vicarage armed with weapons.
Gladys Mitchell tells the story with the skill that was her hallmark
Jones makes
some enquiries to try to sort out what happened to two babies who he thinks may
have been swapped at birth, but when a man from the village is found bludgeoned
to death, he decides he must call in Mrs Beatrice Lestrange Bradley to help
him.
The strangely
dressed old lady with her hideous cackle is more than a match for the angry
villagers and she proceeds to root out the devil at Saxon Wall using her own unique
and unorthodox methods.
At the end
of the novel, Mrs Bradley expresses the opinion that the inhabitants of Saxon
Wall are incapable of making straightforward statements. She thinks that this
peculiarity dates back to the days of the Norman conquest when the Saxons of those
parts, too cunning to tell direct lies to their overlords, resorted to
maddening half statements and obscure pronouncements, which made them difficult
to understand.
Although the
characters and situations are bizarre, the novel presents an intriguing mystery
which Mrs Bradley skilfully unravels and the story is well told by Gladys, who
helpfully provides ‘End Papers’ to clarify issues for the reader.
I found The
Devil at Saxon Wall entertaining and enjoyable and well worth reading.
An award
winning masterpiece by the Queen of Crime
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
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.’
A ‘creepy’ Christmas story with all the classic festive
ingredients
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.
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?"
Inspector
Mallett joins the ranks of fictional detectives who like a good lunch
Tenant for Death is published by Faber and Faber
When two
young estate agent’s clerks are sent to check an inventory on a house in South
Kensington they find the dead body of a man on the premises, an item that was
definitely not on their list.
Tenant for
Death, published in 1937, is the first crime novel written by the detective
novelist Cyril Hare, and it introduces his series sleuth, the formidable
Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard.
Set in the
world of high finance as it was in the 1930s, Tenant for Death is ‘an ingenious
story’ to use the words of the Times Literary Supplement review. It provides
Mallett with a difficult and puzzling mystery to solve and establishes the
Inspector as a thinking detective with a love of good food.
The murder
victim turns out to be a businessman who had a lot of enemies. The police spend
a great deal of time trying to establish the identity of the mysterious man who
has rented the house where the body has been found and we do not find out who
he really was and what has become of him until the last pages of the book.
Some of the
suspects are extremely plausible characters in their own right and the reader
can feel varying degrees of sympathy for them.
The author
shows his detailed knowledge of the legal district of London as we follow
Mallett along its streets and through its alleyways. I thought Tenant for Death
was very well written and an interesting story, considering it was Hare’s first
published detective novel.
Cyril Hare
was, in fact, the pen name for Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, who was born in
1900 in Mickleham in Surrey and became a barrister and a judge.
Cyril Hare was a psuedonym for the barrister Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark
The
writer’s pseudonym was derived from a mixture of Hare Court, where he was in chambers
as a barrister in London, and Cyril Mansions, where he lived.
Hare also wrote
many short stories for the London Evening Standard and some radio and stage
plays and he was a keen member of the Detection Club along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and many other famous crime writers.
After the
war, Hare - as Clark - was appointed a county court judge in Surrey. He died in
1958, when he was at the peak of his career as a judge and at the height of his
powers as a master of the whodunnit.
In 1990,
when the British Crime Writers’ Association published their list of The Top 100
Crime Novels of All Time, they awarded the 85th place to Hare’s 1942 novel, Tragedy
at Law, which is considered by many to be his best work.
Although I
enjoyed Tragedy at Law when I reviewed it for this website, I actually preferred
Tenant for Death, finding it a more compelling story with well-drawn characters
and a very clever ending.
Campion
risks his life to try to bring an audacious killer to justice
The Vintage edition of Death of a Ghost
Death
of a Ghost, Margery Allingham’s sixth novel to feature the gentleman adventurer Albert
Campion, was first published in the UK in 1934.
In
a note about Campion at the beginning of the book, the author observes that her
hero is an adventurer, whose exploits are sometimes picaresque, as in Mystery
Mile and Sweet Danger, but he sometimes faces grave difficulties, as in Police
at the Funeral. She warns that Death of a Ghost falls into the second category.
When
the story starts, preparations are being made for a party at the London home of
John Lafcadio, an artist who has been dead for 18 years. It is the eve of the
annual ceremony for the unveiling of one of the series of 12 paintings he has left
behind in a bid to keep his memory alive.
Campion,
who is a friend of the painter’s widow, Belle, visits her the day before the
ceremony and attends the unveiling occasion the following evening. When the
ceremony is interrupted by a daring and particularly brutal murder, Campion
calls in his good friend, Inspector Stanislaus Oates to investigate.
Suspicion
falls on a member of the family, but the police can’t find enough proof to make
an arrest. But when another murder is committed at the property, Campion decides
to investigate for himself to help his old friend, Belle.
I
found the novel slow at first, while lots of characters were being introduced
and described. The action didn’t really get under way until page 50.
Throughout
the novel, Campion seems passive, not behaving at all like the action man that
he was in Sweet Danger.
In
another departure from her previous stories, Margery reveals that Campion has
guessed the identity of the killer and names the person about 100 pages from the end of the book. He
says he has no means of proving it and fears for Belle’s safety, lamenting to
Inspector Oates that he is being outwitted by the killer.
Campion
seems strangely trusting to accept an invitation for a drink at the suspect’s
apartment and then to go out to dinner with a person he feels sure has committed
two murders.
Peter Davison played Albert Campion in a BBC TV adaptation of Death of a Ghost
He
allows himself to fall into a trap set for him by the suspect and then the
action heats up with Campion’s life in danger.
The
writer Margery Allingham was born in 1904 in London and began writing at the
age of eight when she had a story published in a magazine.
Her
first novel was published when she was 19, but she did not make her
breakthrough as a crime writer until her novel, The Crime at Black Dudley, was
published in 1929. This introduced her series detective, Albert Campion, even
though he appeared only as a minor character in her first book.
He
was at first thought to be a parody of Dorothy L Sayers’s hero, Lord Peter
Wimsey, but Campion matured as the series of books progressed and proved there
was a lot more to him, becoming increasingly popular with readers.
Margery
Allingham is regarded as one of the four great Queens of Crime from the Golden
Age of detective fiction. One of her fellow Queens of Crime, Agatha Christie, once
said of the author: “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.”
Reviewers
have identified Death of A Ghost as a proper detective story rather than a high-spirited
thriller, but it differs from other detective stories of the time by having the
sleuth identify the killer and share his knowledge with the reader considerably
before the end of the book. The reader must wait for proof that Campion is right
and to find out whether the police will have enough evidence to arrest the suspect
and bring him to justice. But like all good mystery writers, Margery keeps a
few surprises up her sleeve until the end of the story.
Death
of a Ghost was filmed for the BBC in 1960, when Campion was played by Bernard
Horstall, and then again in 1989, when the role was played by Peter Davison.
Vintage
Books, part of the Penguin Random House Group, have now republished all
Margery’s novels featuring her series detective Albert Campion.
Author
departs from tradition by letting her detective fall in love
Strong Poison is the fifth of Dorothy L Sayers's Wimsey novels
Dorothy L
Sayers allows her noble sleuth to have a love interest in Strong Poison, the
fifth novel she wrote featuring the exploits of amateur detective Lord Peter
Wimsey.
The author
introduces the character of Harriet Vane, a crime novelist, who, like Wimsey,
is Oxford educated and has had an unhappy time romantically.
When Wimsey
sees Harriet Vane for the first time, she is in the dock, accused of the murder
of her ex-lover, the poet Philip Boyes.
Strong
Poison, which was published in 1930, is considered to be a major departure for a
Golden Age mystery as it shows the detective falling in love with a woman
accused of the murder that is central to the plot.
Dorothy L
Sayers fans have speculated that the writer modelled Harriet Vane on herself. The
writer had suffered a romantic disappointment and by creating the long-drawn-out
romance between Harriet Vane and Wimsey, which was to run through four novels,
it allowed her to have a vicarious affair with the detective herself, far-fetched
though this might seem now.
Dorothy had
been very impressed with the novel Trent’s Last Case by E C Bentley, published
in 1913. In the story, the detective, Philip Trent, falls in love with the wife
of the murder victim.
Right until the end of the novel the reader does not know
for certain that the wife is not the murderer. E C Bentley’s novel was intended
as a send up of the classic crime story and it also involves the hero detective
identifying the wrong person as the murderer close to the end of the story,
completely at odds with the conventions of the genre. But Dorothy, along with
many other readers, really liked the novel and went on record as saying that
Bentley’s novel ‘holds a very special place in the history of detective fiction.’
In Strong
Poison, the victim, Harriet’s ex-lover Philip Boyes, has died from arsenic poisoning.
He has attempted to engineer a reconciliation with Harriet on the night of his
death and she has given him a cup of coffee while listening to what he had to
say. She is accused of the murder because she is found to have bought poison
under an assumed name. She has claimed this was to test one of the plot points
in the crime novel she is currently writing.
Sayers herself had suffered a romantic disappointment
Fortunately,
the trial results in a hung jury and the judge has to order a retrial. With no
time to lose, Wimsey visits Harriet in prison to tell her he is convinced of
her innocence and is determined to catch the real murderer. He also asks her to
marry him, but she turns him down politely.
The jury has
failed to return a unanimous verdict because one person sitting on it could not
bring herself to believe in Harriet’s guilt. This is Miss Katharine Climpson, a
spinster who, coincidentally, sometimes works for Wimsey by carrying out
inquiries and undercover work because she has to live in difficult financial circumstances
and needs to earn some money.
Wimsey deploys
her to gather evidence for his inquiry and, in one hilarious scene, she is
obliged to pose as a medium and hold a séance to obtain the information he
needs. Miss Climpson first appeared doing undercover work for Wimsey in the
novel, Unnatural Death, two years before Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, also a
spinster with a talent for detection, was introduced on the crime fiction
scene.
As well as being
an intriguing mystery, Strong Poison explores some of the issues of the time,
such as sex before marriage and the double standards that were applied to the
behaviour of men and women. The novel is intricately plotted and written in a
very entertaining style and I would highly recommend that you read it.
Not so much
a whodunit, more a question of who is trying to do it
Danger Point was first published in 1941
The self-effacing,
elderly lady detective, Maud Silver, is sitting on a train about to depart to
London when a young woman who is clearly very upset bursts into her
compartment.
The woman is
a wealthy heiress, Lisle Jerningham, who has recently got married and should
have been blissfully happy. But she has overheard a sinister conversation in
the garden of a country house, which has terrified her.
Lisle
confides in Miss Silver about fleeing from the house party she had been
attending after hearing total strangers discussing how her husband’s first wife
died in an apparent accident. After Lisle’s new husband inherited his first
wife’s considerable fortune, he was able to save his family home. The unknown people
seemed to think her husband was broke again and were speculating about whether
he would attempt to engineer a second convenient misadventure.
Miss Silver
does her best to calm Lisle down and gives the distraught young woman her
business card in case she wants to consult her professionally at any time.
But the
beautiful heiress has mixed emotions once she has started to feel better. She
loves her new husband, Dale Jerningham, and can’t allow herself to believe that
he would wish to harm her, even though she has started to wonder about a recent
incident when she nearly drowned while swimming with him and other members of
his family.
Miss Silver
does not know whether Lisle really is in danger or is simply being paranoid.
But after another attempt is made on Lisle’s life, the young wife gets in touch
with her at her London office and then subsequently cancels the appointment she
has made. After reading in the newspaper that another young woman has been
found dead near Lisle’s coastal home, the detective decides to travel there in
order to investigate further.
Danger Point
is Patricia Wentworth’s fourth Miss Silver novel and was first published in
1941. Like her previous Miss Silver story, Lonesome Road, it involves a rich young woman who someone is
trying to kill. But is it Lisle’s handsome husband, another member of his
family, or a disgruntled former employee?
Patricia Wentworth could draw on a depth of life experiences
Patricia
Wentworth was the pen name of Dora Amy Elles, who was born in India, where her
father was stationed with the British Army, in 1877. She was sent to England to
be educated, but returned to India and married George Dillon in 1906. He had
three children from a previous marriage and they had one child together. After
his death she moved back to England with the children.
In 1920 she
married again, to George Turnbull, and settled in Surrey. She had begun writing
while in India and in 1910 had won the Melrose Prize for her first published
novel, A Marriage Under the Terror, which was set during the French Revolution.
Under the
pen name of Patricia Wentworth, she wrote 32 crime novels featuring Miss
Silver, beginning with Grey Mask in 1928 and ending with Girl in the Cellar in
1961, the year of her death. Miss Silver develops as a character during the
series and works closely with Scotland Yard. The reader eventually discovers
she is a retired governess with a passion for Tennyson as well as for knitting.
I would
recommend Danger Point, which is very well written with good descriptions of
the coastal scenery that form the backdrop for the story. Patricia maintains the
mystery and the suspense right until the end. It is less a question of whodunit
and more a matter of the reader finding out who is trying to do it.
First
appearance by author turned sleuth Roger Sheringham
The paperback edition of The Layton Court Mystery
The Layton
Court Mystery, published in 1925, was the first detective novel by journalist
Anthony Berkeley Cox, who was to become one of the founding members of the
elite Detection Club.
His series
detective, Roger Sheringham, is one of the guests at acountry house party being held at a Jacobean
mansion called Layton Court. The character, who is an author, was to feature in another ten detective novels
and many short stories by Berkeley.
The party is being hosted by Victor Stanworth, a genial and hospitable man, aged
about 60, who has taken Layton Court for the summer to enable him to entertain
his friends in style.
At the start
of the book, Sheringham has been enjoying Stanworth’s generous hospitality for
three days until the party is given the grim news during breakfast that their
host appeared to have locked himself in the library and shot himself.
Sheringham
is not convinced that his host has committed suicide and sets out to
investigate the mystery himself, using his friend, Alec Grierson, who is also
in the party, as his ‘Watson’.
Anthony
Berkeley was just one of the pen names used by Anthony Berkeley Cox, who died
51 years ago today (9 March 1971). He also wrote novels under the names Francis
Iles and A. Monmouth Platts.
Anthony
Berkeley Cox helped found the Detection Club in 1930, along with Agatha
Christie and Dorothy L Sayers. It was to become an elite dining club for
British mystery writers, which met in London, under the presidency of G. K.
Chesterton. There was an initiation ritual and an oath had to be sworn by new
members promising not to rely on Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo
Jumbo, Jiggery Pokery, Coincidence or Act of God in their work.
Berkeley Cox wrote 19 crime novels before returning to journalism
In The
Layton Court Mystery, Sheringham does not conceal anything from his friend,
Alec Grierson, and therefore the reader has the same information to help them
solve the crime as the detective himself.
I found The
Layton Court Mystery unexciting and stilted at the beginning, but the writing improved
a lot as the book progressed.
I thought Roger
Sheringham had the potential to be a good character, although some of the rather
fatuous dialogue at the beginning reminded me of Lord Peter Wimsey at the
start of Whose Body?the first novel by
Dorothy L Sayers that he appeared in.
Sheringham
sometimes tells Grierson what detectives in books would do in particular
circumstances, showing that the character, like his creator Berkeley, is a
devotee of the genre.
The amateur
detective jumps to a few wrong conclusions along the way and
follows up each of his theories until he accepts that they are disproved. He
tells the other characters that he is asking questions because he has ‘natural
curiosity’, to cover up the fact he is interrogating people he doesn’t really
know, which was not considered good form at the time.
He sometimes
says he is looking for material for his next novel and one of the characters
actually says to him: ‘Everything’s “copy” to you, you mean?’
He also
finds clues, such as a footprint, a hair, a piece of a broken vase and a trace
of face powder, to help him work out what has taken place in the library.
The Poisoned Chocolates Case sold more than a million copies
Anthony
Berkeley Cox was born in Watford in 1893 and educated at Sherborne School and
University College, Oxford. After serving as an officer in the First World War,
he began writing for magazines, such as Punch and The Humorist.
He wrote 19
crime novels between 1925 and 1939 before returning to journalism and writing
for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times. From 1950 to 1970, the year
before he died, he contributed to the Manchester Guardian, later, the Guardian
newspaper.
Berkeley’s
amateur detective, Sheringham, had his most famous outing in The Poisoned
Chocolates Case, which was published in 1929. The novel received rapturous
reviews and sold more than one million copies. It is now regarded as a classic
of the Golden Age of detective fiction.
At times, The
Layton Court Mystery reminded me of Trent’s Last Caseby E C Bentley, published in 1913, which was
originally intended to be a skit on the detective story genre. Like Trent,
Sheringham doesn’t actually solve the case until the real murderer confesses to
him right at the end.
However, by
the end of The Layton Court Mystery, I had taken to Roger Sheringham and I now look
forward to reading the next book in the series.
The Layton
Court Mystery was first published in London by Herbert Jenkins in 1925 and in
New York by Doubleday, Doran and Company in 1929. It was republished by
Spitfire Publications Ltd in 2021.
A unique selection of stunning examples of the genre
This handy guide by Richard Shephard and Nick Rennison provides
a treat for all lovers of detective fiction by choosing 100 books to give readers
an overview of the rich and diverse crime writing that has been produced over
the years.
The authors did not intend to provide a list of the 100 best
crime novels because of the difficulty of comparing books written in different eras
and with varied intentions.
An invaluable guide for beginners and established fans of the crime fiction genre
They aimed to provide a book that would be useful as a
starting point for readers wanting to explore the genre. Their selections are
arranged A to Z by author and describe the plot of the novel without spoiling
it for prospective readers. They include information about the authors and where
they are placed in the history of crime fiction.
At the end of each entry there is a Read On list with suggestions
of books to read by stylistically similar authors. Most authors have one entry
only, but Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have
been allowed two entries, because they have been judged so important to the
genre.
There is also a brief history of crime fiction and lists of the winners of
the Edgar Award and the CWA Golden Dagger Award right from the beginning.
The book selects many well-known crime writers but there are
also some names that are less familiar. E C Bentley has an entry for his ground-breaking
1913 novel, Trent’s Last Case. Lawyer Michael Gilbert has been chosen for his
1950 legal mystery Smallbone Deceased and Cyril Hare, who was a judge in real
life, for his legal mystery When the Wind Blows, published in 1949.
Francis Iles, with Malice Aforethought, and Michael Innes,
with Hamlet Revenge! have both been chosen for novels written in the 1930s.
Having to pick just one Dorothy L Sayers novel, it is
fascinating to see that they went for The
Nine Tailors, published in 1934. For
Josephine Tey, they picked her 1948 novel, The Franchise Affair.
Ruth Rendell manages to get two entries, both as herself
with An Unkindness of Ravens (1985) and as Barbara Vine, with A Fatal Inversion
(1987).
European writers are represented with entries on Gaston
Leroux, Georges Simenon, Henning Mankell and Manuel Vasquex Montalban.
American writers featured include Eric Ambler, Dashiell
Hammett, Donna Leon and Vera Caspary.
This guide offers readers an invaluable introduction to authors
they may never have tried before but might grow to love.
100 Must-Read Crime Novels is packed with useful book suggestions
and fascinating information for crime fiction fans.
.jpg "Tenant for Death is published by Faber and Faber")
.jpg "Sayers herself had suffered a romantic disappointment")
.jpg "Patricia Wentworth could draw on a depth of life experiences")
