Nicholas Blake’s first Nigel Strangeways Mystery, A
Question of Proof, published in 1935, is a cleverly written story set in a public
school for boys with a complex plot that keeps the reader guessing right till
the end.
It is the annual sports day at Sudely Hall on a glorious
summer’s day and all the parents and children are looking forward to the races.
But by the end of the afternoon the police have to be called when the
headmaster’s obnoxious nephew is found in a haystack having been strangled.
The English master, Michael Evans, who is in love with
the headmaster’s beautiful young wife, soon finds himself the police’s main suspect
for the murder and so he calls in Nigel Strangeways, an old friend from
university who has become an amateur detective, to investigate the case ‘on
behalf of the school’.
The author of A Question of Proof was the poet Cecil
Day-Lewis, who eventually became Poet Laureate. At the age of 31 he turned to
crime writing to supplement his income from poetry, using the pseudonym
Nicholas Blake.
He was hailed by the reviewers as a master of
detective fiction and went on to produce another 15 Nigel Strangeways Mysteries
as well as four detective novels and some short stories that don’t feature his
series character.
Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, alias novelist Nicholas Blake
I was surprised when I began reading A
Question of Proof that an omniscient point of view is used at the start to show
the reader round the school and introduce the main characters among the masters
and the boys.
The spotlight is on the young good-looking Evans, who
is preoccupied with arranging a secret assignation with Hero, the wife of the
Rev Percival Vale, the headmaster.
But once Nigel Strangeways arrives, the story is
mostly told from his point of view. He joins forces with the investigating
officer, Superintendent Armstrong, to try to solve the crime. Armstrong’s willing
cooperation is explained by the fact that Strangeways is a nephew to the Assistant
Commissioner of Scotland Yard.
Cecil Day-Lewis, aka Nicholas Blake, describes the
environment of a public school for boys brilliantly, showing the bickering
between the masters and the factions among the boys. Strangeways is received
well by masters and boys alike and quickly reveals his talent for blending in with
any company, along with displaying his own small eccentricities, such as
drinking large quantities of tea.
In order to solve the crime, he has to join the Black
Spot gang and pass the initiation rituals imposed by the members, but he then
has the support of a small group of boys who open up about what they know and help
him with his investigation. Interestingly, he uses psychology to solve the
crime, rather than concentrating on the most obvious suspects in the manner of the
police. It is not surprising that Strangeways was a fictional detective who was
going to live on for another 30 years.
All the Nigel Strangeways Mysteries have now been
republished by Vintage Books.
Cecil Day-Lewis adopted Nicholas Blake as a pseudonym
Crime writer Nicholas Blake wrote 20 highly regarded detective novels, 15 of them featuring his likeable amateur sleuth Nigel Strangeways.
Many novelists would be happy with achieving this much during their lifetime, but for Nicholas Blake, it was only part of his story.
For Blake was actually the poet, professor and publisher Cecil Day-Lewis - born on this day in 1904 in Ireland - who was Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972.
In 1935 Day-Lewis decided to increase his income from poetry by trying his hand at writing a detective novel.
His first novel, A Question of Proof, which he published under his pseudonym Nicholas Blake, introduced Nigel Strangeways, an amateur investigator and gentleman detective who, as the nephew of an assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, had access to official crime investigation resources.
From the mid 1930s onwards Day-Lewis was able to earn a living by writing as Nicholas Blake while continuing to write poetry, working in publishing and lecturing at Cambridge University.
The Vintage edition of A Question of Proof
His novel Minute for Murder is set against the background of his experience of working for the Ministry of Information during the Second World War and his novel Head of a Traveller has a principal character who is a well-known poet suffering from writer’s block, whose best poetry writing days are long behind him.
Critics regard his 1938 novel, The Beast Must Die, as perhaps his best work because it skilfully combines a twisting and intriguing narrative with a subtle study of the nature of private and public morality.
Day-Lewis died in 1972 at the home of his friends Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jane Howard. He left four children by two marriages, including the actor, Sir Daniel Day-Lewis, who donated his father's archive to the Bodleian Library.
A Question of Proof (Vintage Publishing) is available fromor
Crime writer challenged the conventions of the genre in first novel
The Vintage Books edition of Speedy Death
Prolific detective fiction writer Gladys Mitchell, who was born on this day in 1901, was judged by reviewers to be an outstanding novelist right from the start of her career.
She got off the mark quickly in 1929 with Speedy Death, her first novel featuring her amateur sleuth, Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, and she never looked back.
She wrote a further 66 crime novels featuring Mrs Bradley and built up a large and loyal following for her eccentric but brilliant detective.
Gladys was born in Cowley in Oxfordshire. She graduated in history from University College, London and embarked on a career as a teacher.
She wrote at least one detective novel a year while working and was an early member of the Detection Club along with Agatha Christie, G K Chesterton and Dorothy L Sayers.
Gladys Mitchell wrote 67 Mrs Bradley mysteries
Gladys studied the works of Sigmund Freud and made her series detective, Mrs Bradley, a distinguished psychoanalyst. She also developed an interest in witchcraft, which features in some of her novels.
In 1961, Gladys retired from teaching but she continued to write detective novels at her home in Dorset. She received the Crime Writers’ Association Silver Dagger in 1976.
Gladys died in 1983 and her last Mrs Bradley mystery was published in 1984.
In Speedy Death, Mrs Bradley is a guest at a country house party. When one of the guests, Mountjoy, a legendary explorer, is found drowned in the bath Mrs Bradley is convinced it is a case of murder and she joins forces with another house guest, a scientist, to try to solve the crime. The first thing that marks this book out from other Golden Age mystery novels is the scene when the naked body is discovered in the bath and the victim, who everybody thought was a man, is revealed to be a woman.
Diana Rigg played Mrs Bradley in the BBC TV series
Mrs Bradley is described as birdlike without being pretty. She has claw-like hands, yellowish skin, a cynical smirk and a sinister laugh. However, she manages to inspire loyalty and respect from young and old alike when she turns her powerful intellect to solving the crime.
Gladys also turns the conventions of the cosy crime genre on its head in Speedy Death with a surprising twist to the plot near the end. I would recommend it to crime fiction fans as well worth reading for that alone.
The BBC screened a five-episode series entitles The Mrs Bradley Mysteries between 1998 and 2000 featuring Diana Rigg in the title role. The storyline of the first episode was based on Speedy Death.
Speedy Death was republished by Vintage Books in 2014.
The story
of a complex police investigation full of surprises
The story starts with a consignment of French wines unloaded at the docks in London
Although
it was his first novel, The Cask, by Freeman Wills Crofts, has been judged to
be one of his most ambitious and intricately plotted.
The
action takes place in London and Paris, there are three different sets of
investigators and, according to the author himself, the novel was about 40,000
words too long.
But
despite being published more than a century ago, The Cask is as compelling and
fast moving as many contemporary novels and I think it is still well worth
reading.
The story
begins when a consignment of French wines is unloaded from a steamship at the
docks in London. One of the casks is slightly damaged during the process, so
the shipping clerk, who is overseeing the unloading, looks inside it. He finds
that it doesn’t contain wine after all, but gold sovereigns. He then makes a
gruesome discovery as he searches amongst the sawdust in which the sovereigns
are packed.
He
consults his superior and they decide to go to the police, but when they return
to the docks they find the cask and its contents have gone.
The investigation takes the story's detective, Inspector Burnley, to Paris
Inspector
Burnley of Scotland Yard is put on the case and he manages to track down the
cask. When it is unpacked, the police find they are dealing with a murder
investigation.
After
exhaustive enquiries, the case becomes clearer and a Frenchman living in
London, Leon Felix, is arrested.
The case
is then taken up by the solicitor of the accused, John Clifford, and the King’s
Counsel he instructs, Lucius Heppenstall. They meet to prepare a defence for
their client and review the evidence against Felix.
The Cask is available as a Collins Crime Club title
Georges
La Touche, who is considered the smartest private detective in London, is
dispatched to Paris with some of his men and he painstakingly tests all the
evidence the police have found, working tirelessly to try to break the alibis of the
people involved
In a
dramatic denouement he confronts the person who has masterminded the whole plot
against Felix.
The
alibis depend on train times, as do many of the alibis of the characters in
later novels by Crofts, who worked for the railways as a civil engineer until
he retired to write full time.
In 1946,
Crofts wrote a Foreword for a new edition of The Cask, describing how he came
up with the idea for the story.
When he
started writing the novel in about 1912 he had been off work for a lengthy period due
to an illness and was bored and wanted something to do. He says he started by
writing down the most absurd and improbable things he could think of. He read
the first chapter of The Caskto his wife and she encouraged him to complete
the book.
Looking
back, he says the story could probably have been told in about 80,000 words
instead of 120,000. Crofts went on to write another 30 novels, developing a
much more systematic way of plotting and writing along the way.
However,
more than a century after The Cask was first published, it continues to
intrigue and entertain new readers.
I found
it to be well written, exciting and constantly surprising, and I would
definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys detective fiction.
The
novels of Freeman Wills Crofts are still in print, even though the author died
more than 60 years ago.
Writer employed the intricacies of the railway timetable for his alibis
Freeman Wills Croft worked in railways for 33 years before becoming a full-time writer
The prolific Irish detective fiction writer Freeman Wills Crofts, who died 64 years ago today, was outshone by other famous names from the Golden Age but was nonetheless highly regarded by contemporaries such as Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler and many of his books are still in print.
He wrote more than 30 novels, about 100 short stories, stage and radio plays and some works of non-fiction.
A railway engineer by training, Crofts introduced railway themes into many of his stories and the apparently unbreakable alibis of his characters often featured the intricacies of railway timetables.
He is best remembered for his series detective, Inspector Joseph French, although the character wasn’t introduced until Crofts wrote his fifth book.
His first novel, The Cask, published in 1920, was republished last year to mark its 100th anniversary by Collins Crime Club.
Crofts was born in Dublin in 1879. His father, who was an army doctor, died before his birth. His mother remarried later to a Vicar in County Down and Crofts was brought up at the Vicarage in Gilford, County Down.
The Collins Crime Club edition of The Cask
When he was 17 he was apprenticed to his uncle who worked at the Belfast and Northern Counties Railway and he continued to work in railways for the next 33 years.
He wrote The Cask after a long absence from work because of illness. He started writing to help him pass the time and it established him as a new master of detective fiction.
In an introduction to the centenary edition of The Cask, Collins reprinted some words Crofts wrote in 1946 about how he began writing the story. He says: ‘I became so bored that I didn’t know what to do and to try to fill the time I asked for a pencil and a few sheets of notepaper. I began to write down what seemed the most absurd and improbable things I could think of.’ When he had finished the first chapter of The Cask he read it to his wife and her enthusiastic approval encouraged him to carry on with the book until he was well enough to return to work.
He continued to write steadily, producing a book almost every year for 30 years as well as numerous short stories.
Trains and timetables featured in a number of books by Freeman Wills Crofts
In 1929 he gave up his railway career to become a full-time writer and settled in the village of Blackheath near Guildford in Surrey.
He was a member of the Detection Club with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers and was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Raymond Chandler described Crofts as ‘the soundest builder of them all when he doesn’t get too fancy.’ Crime writing experts have said his concentration on the mechanics of detection made him the forerunner of the police procedural school of crime fiction.
Freeman Wills Crofts died on 11 April, 1957 in Worthing, West Sussex.
The 100th anniversary edition of The Cask can be bought from or
Edgar
Allan Poe invented the fictional detective in April 1841
The first
detective story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue
Morgue, was published in a magazine 180 years ago this month.
Although
Poe himself referred to it as one of his ‘tales of ratiocination’, the work has
since been hailed as the first modern detective story.
The first story about amateur sleuth C Auguste Dupin
Poe’s
fictional amateur detective, C Auguste Dupin, solves the savage murder of two
women living in a house in the Rue Morgue in Paris, demonstrating many of the
traits which were to become literary conventions in stories about subsequent
fictional detectives, such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.
The
creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, praised Dupin as ‘the best
detective in fiction’.
The
murders in Poe’s first detective story appear to have been committed in a
locked room on the fourth floor of an otherwise uninhabited house. Neighbours
hearing the agonised screams of the women victims break into the house, but
find only two dead bodies and no other person anywhere in the property.
For the
very first time, the reader is told that the local police are completely
baffled.
The story
begins with the unnamed narrator of the story first meeting Dupin when they are
both trying to obtain the same rare book.
The two
men become friends and decide to share a rented property together in Paris.
The
narrator is constantly amazed by Dupin’s brilliance and powers of deduction. In
one scene, Dupin is able to work out what his friend is thinking and answer him
before he has even asked a question.
When the
two men read about the murders in the newspaper, Dupin is immediately
interested and gets permission from the police to visit the house and assess
the crime scene in the locked room.
From what
Dupin observes there he is able to work out what has happened and who is
responsible for the murders. He convinces the police to release the man they
have mistakenly arrested and finally explains to the narrator how he has solved
the mystery from the clues he observed at the crime scene.
Poe wrote
his first detective story at the age of 32 and was paid $56 for the publication
rights by Graham’s Magazine, based in Philadelphia. It appeared in the April
1841 edition and became the prototype for many future stories featuring
fictional detectives.
Poe's narrator technique was taken up by Conan Doyle. His Dr Watson
narrated the circumstances surrounding the cases solved by Sherlock Holmes and
marvelled at the amazing powers of deduction of the friend with whom he shared
rented rooms. The first story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887.
Captain
Hastings began narrating stories about the cases solved by Hercule Poirot in
The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, published in 1920.
There
were just three Dupin short stories, but the Mystery Writers of America still
honour Edgar Allan Poe annually by presenting the Edgar Award for distinguished
work in the mystery genre.
Detective
novelist Dorothy L Sayers has described the three Dupin stories as ‘almost a
complete manual of detective theory and practice.’
The
Murders in the Rue Morgue and the two other Dupin stories were republished in a
single volume by Vintage Classics in 2009.
A look back at the career of E C Bentley who wrote the detective novel that heralded the Golden Age
E C Bentley intended his novel to be a send-up of the detective genre
The writer and journalist E C Bentley, who is credited with writing the first modern detective story, Trent’s Last Case, died 65 years ago today in London.
Agatha Christie, who wrote her own first detective novel seven years later, said Trent’s Last Case was ‘one of the best detective stories ever written’.
Dorothy L Sayers, whose first detective novel was published in 1923, said Bentley’s novel ‘holds a very special place in the history of detective fiction.’
But when Bentley wrote Trent’s Last Case, first published in 1913, he intended it to be a major send-up of the genre, which had tended to feature intellectual detectives lacking any obvious human failings.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley was born in London in 1875. He was educated at St Paul’s School and Merton College, Oxford, and then studied Law in London while working as a journalist for several newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph. Although he was called to the Bar in 1902 he continued to work for the Daily Telegraph until he retired in 1934.
But he returned to the newspaper after World War II started because younger men were being called up, retiring again in 1947.
He became friends with the writer of the Father Brown stories, G K Chesterton, while they were still at school and later in life they were both, in turn, president of the Detection Club.
Agatha Christie spoke in glowing terms of Trent's Last Case
Bentley started work on Trent’s Last Case in 1910 having had the idea for ‘a detective story of a new sort...’
Bentley thought it should be possible to write a detective story in which the detective was recognisable as an average, fallible human being. He said: ‘It was not until I had gone a long way with the plot that the most pleasing notion of all came to me: the notion of making the hero’s hard won and obviously correct solution to the mystery turn out to be completely wrong…’
The story begins with a powerful and ruthless American capitalist being found dead in the garden of his English country house, fully clothed, but without his false teeth. His young, beautiful widow seems relieved by her husband’s death. The household also includes a butler, a French maid and two young male secretaries.
It appears to be an intriguing case and therefore artist, journalist and amateur detective Philip Trent is sent to investigate by his newspaper.
Bentley planned his novel in just a few weeks while walking from his home in Hampstead to his office and he began work on it by writing the final chapter first.
In the novel, he allows his hero, Trent, to fall in love with the beautiful widow, which was at the time considered against the rules of the genre. He then introduces a plotting innovation that qualifies Trent’s Last Case to take its place among the great detective novels of all time.
The Collins Crime Club edition of Trent's Last Case
All detective writers that came afterwards owed a debt to Trent’s Last Case. Bentley’s experiment, with a detective who, unlike his predecessors, is a fallible human being and is operating within a cleverly constructed plot culminating in a surprise solution, prepared readers for the advent of an era in which they would learn to expect the unexpected. Trent’s Last Case heralded the Golden Age of detective fiction.
Bentley was to point out later that it does not seem to have been noticed that the novel is not so much a detective story as an exposure of detective stories.
My copy of Trent’s Last Case, produced by Collins Crime Club, contains an Afterword by Dorothy L Sayers, which was taken from the draft of a talk she had written about a possible radio adaptation of the book, although there is no evidence that the talk was ever delivered.
Dorothy writes: ‘If you were so lucky as to read it today for the first time, you would recognise it at once as a tale of unusual brilliance and charm, but you could have no idea how startlingly original it seemed when it first appeared. It shook the little world of the mystery novel like a revolution, and nothing was ever quite the same again. Every detective writer of today owes something, consciously or unconsciously, to its liberating and inspiring influence.’
I found this particularly interesting as I recalled that in Dorothy’s first novel, Whose Body?, she used the technique used by Bentley in Trent’s Last Case, of a character dressing in the murder victim’s clothes and sleeping in his bed in order to confuse the authorities about the time of death. Whether this was ‘consciously or unconsciously,’ borrowed from Bentley, we don’t know.
I found Trent’s Last Case gripping and well written. I enjoyed it particularly because there isn’t just one surprise at the end, but two. However I don’t want to give anything else away. In the words of Dorothy, it is sufficient to say the novel is ‘a masterpiece.’
Michael Wilding (above) played Trent opposite the deceased's widow Margaret Lockwood in the 1952 film
Challenging the rules and conventions of detective fiction was not Bentley’s only literary innovation.
His first collection of poetry, Biography for Beginners, published in 1905, made a form of verse popular, which became known as the clerihew, after his middle name. This four line metrically irregular verse is one of his early examples of the clerihew:
‘Sir Humphrey Davy
Abominated gravy
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered Sodium.’
Bentley dedicated Trent’s Last Case to G K Chesterton saying he owed him a book in return for Chesterton dedicating the Man Who Was Thursday to him.
Trent’s Last Case was adapted into a film three times, in 1920, 1929 and - with Michael Wilding as Trent in a cast featuring Margaret Lockwood and Orson Welles - in 1952.
After 23 years, Bentley relented and decided Trent hadn’t had his last case after all. He wrote Trent’s Own Case in 1936 and a book of short stories, Trent Intervenes, in 1938.
Trent’s Last Case was republished in paperback by Collins Crime Club in 2020.
