Sentence Deferred - August Derleth

THE STORY: Sentence Deferred (1939) tells of how circumstantial evidence and coincidence can complicate a murder investigation. Two men, Beckit and Alford, claim to have shot a thoroughly disliked bank whose savings and loan institution failed taking with it most of the accounts. The victim was shot twice according to each shooter's confessions, once in the head, once in the chest. But only his bones can be examined. Why? Because the banker's home was set on fire and the blaze was so intense, accelerated by addition of gasoline, that the corpse was destroyed leaving only a skeleton.

 THE CHARACTERS:  Judge Peck once again joins forces with the District Attorney and coroner Dr. Considine of the local Wisconsin jurisdiction near Baraboo to make sense of a murder case with two confessions and a mystery of committed arson. Interestingly, though both shooters confess to having fired their revolvers at the banks neither one will admit to setting the house ablaze.  Consequently, there is much discussion of forensic evidence involving arson, accelerates and what fire does to human body. Over the course of the novel the two trials are summarized with interesting testimony rendered in dialogue.  One trial ends in an acquittal, the other in a conviction. But Judge Peck is not satisfied that either men are guilty of murder or arson.

The crux of the case is the identification of the body. Anyone familiar with GAD novels should instantly be alerted a timeworn gimmick when a skeleton is found in a burned building.  Did the fire actually completely incinerate the body in a single night? The wily judge is certain that Henry Hornly, the despised and crooked banker, is still alive and was behind the arson.

Late in the book Derleth introduces Herbert Hornly, the victim's eccentric brother who, like most people in town, was not a fan of his relation. Herbert quickly became my favorite character in a complicated book solely because his appearance adds a level of oddball humor not often found in the Judge Peck mystery novels.  He has a pet St. Bernard named Vladimir who he affectionately calls "Laddie".  A dog-catcher is constantly picking up the dog that has a habit of running off Herbert's property and roaming the village streets.  Herbert thinks the dog catcher has a scheme of milking him of the $1 fine for a stray dog and is basically at war with the town and the dog catcher in particular.  This turns into a running gag -- something extremely unusual for Derleth, at least in the mystery novels I've read. When all is wrapped up Herbert Hornly appears one more time and there is a neat end to the dog catcher saga with a clever joke that made me laugh aloud.  Loved Herbert and Laddie! 

INNOVATIONS & ODDITIES:  The IDing of the corpse relies heavily on dental records that almost certainly prove that the body is Hornly due to a highly unusual dental repair in an otherwise perfect set of teeth. How could that possibly be faked, think both Dr. Considine and Dr. Asten, the expert witness in dentistry.  But Judge Peck, ever wary of certainties being doubtful, digs further into Hornly's past and uncovers a bizarre coincidence that will upset the entire case

Derleth has a habit of adding quirky narrative touches in his mystery novels.  In Sentence Deferred he goes beyond quirky and t commits what I consider a transgression in logic. The lawyers directly address the jury during testimony! Both prosecuting and defense teams editorialize and remind the jury what the testimony means to their case. Unheard of in the actual practice of trial law. Even someone who knows law only from reading novels and watching TV shows knows those remarks are solely reserved for the attorney's closing statement at trial's conclusion.  What fiction editor would allow that in any novel?  Scribner's, Derleth's publisher at the time, was known for being stickler for sophisticated grammar. I guess they spent too much time modifying Derleth's stilted prose and overlooked a glaring error in jurisprudence.

Peck learns that Hornly made friends with a dentist, Dr. Asten, who allowed Hornly to watch him treat patients.  He even allowed Hornly to clean the dentist's teeth as a trial run.  Bizarre and outlandish!  But of course this detail mentioned in passing will play a significant role in Peck finally putting allthe pieces together in a seemingly complex criminal scheme.

QUOTES: Dr. Considine: "Positive identification of the body remains unfortunately in question. And the setting of the fire so long after the killing--over an hour--is going to be a problem. This is all most unsatisfactory."

Judge Peck: "Consider, what have you? Circumstantial evidence that looks like a certainty. But is it, in fact? I think not. Admittedly it stacks up very nicely against Beckit. The question of Beckit's guilt simply does not enter in at all, as far as the legal aspect is concerned. [...] The question here, however, is whether or not the circumstantial evidence is conclusive." 

Dr. Metzger, expert witness in forensic pathology: "It is [a case of positive identity]. In a case like this it is most unwise to take anything for granted. You will have observed the entirely circumstantial nature of not only the cases against the accused, but also of all evidence. In casting about for some loophole, we must naturally attack those facets which, if disproved, will afford the loophole. The identity of the remains is one --the chief one, I think."

Judge Peck: "The nature of circumstantial evidence is such that is it fundamentally always extremely untrustworthy. I have no doubt that the cases of the State versus Beckit and the State versus Alford may well become Wisconsin's classic examples of the insufficiency of even the strongest circumstantial evidence."

EASY TO FIND? Prior to selling my copy online last month I had checked for other copies for sale.  There were several copies out there in this vast online shopping mall. Now there are only two!  No idea who bought all of them but it seems Judge Peck is suddenly of interest to many mystery readers. Could it be these reviews?  I'm not a betting man, but I'd say it's highly likely.  ;^)  Act now before those two are also gone.

NEW STUFF: The Final Problem - Arturo Pérez-Reverte

There will always be Sherlock Holmes pastiches.  It is the one type of mystery novel homage that seems to be pouring out of an eternal fountain.  I tend to avoid them these days but The Final Problem (2026),  from the pen of inventive Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, has an intriguing originality in that this is not only a Holmes homage but also an intricately devised meta-fictional tribute to the history and development of detective fiction and also a true love letter to the Golden Age of Cinema, specifically Hollywood studio produced movies of the 1930s -1950s.

The stand-in for Holmes in this well thought out and trickily plotted detective novel is an actor who clearly is meant to be Basil Rathbone. No attempt to hide his true identity is made even if Pérez-Reverte saddles him with the awful stage name of Hopalong Basil, a name Basil despises. His real first name is no better.  It's Ormond and only one person ever calls him that.  I think it happens twice. He's referred to by his last name hammering home the source of the character each time someone addresses him as Basil. Anyone who knows old movies and the life of Basil Rathbone will see through the disguise immediately regardless of the similarity in names.  Ormond Basil's biographical information as it slowly seeps into the storyline parallels Rathbone's life matching everything from his close friendships with David Niven and Errol Flynn to his failed marriages.

And so we have a meta-fictional mystery with Holmes being played by the actor most well known at the time of the book's setting (it's 1960, BTW) who reluctantly accepts the role of detective. Basil is among a group of international tourists marooned on a Greek island when a violent death occurs. They are waiting for a severe storm to subside so that the Corfu police can arrive by boat and take over the police investigation. Edith Mander, a British tourist, is found dead from an apparent suicide in a locked room.  But of course it's not. This is a detective novel. There is a murderer among the tourists and violent deaths will occur twice more (one in another locked and bolted room) before the police arrive. Basil takes on the Holmes mantle one more time with the aid of Paco Foxá, Spanish thriller writer -- another attempt at a disguise that is easily seen through as it is obvious this is meant to be Pérez-Reverte.

This book is overloaded with Holmes allusions and quotes.  Hardcore devotees and all the Baker Street Irregulars out there may find this a real romp, but the incessant quoting of lines from the Canon and allusions to the many movie adaptations Ormond Basil has appeared in were a distraction for me. An equal amount of references to Hollywood movies, both real and imagined, dozens of real Golden Age of Cinema actors and actresses as well as insights into the life of Basil Rathbone are strewn throughout the text.  The abundance of references seemed like padding by the midpoint of the book. After each lengthy interruption I was eager for a return to the unravelling of the many mysteries surrounding the death by hanging and the two bludgeoning murders that occur later.

Basil and Foxá are a good duo and enjoy the role playing so much that there begin to refer to each other as Holmes and Watson. However, the role playing gets to be as transparent as Ormond's true life inspiration when the talk turns to plot tricks and misdirection. An exchange between Basil and Foxá hints at the rule breaking trend in GAD mystery fiction of both the detective and the Watson turning out to be the murderer.  This was, I think,a huge mistake on Pérez-Reverte's part because it led me to scrutinize one of the two detectives' actions and I easily figured out the solution to one of the locked rooms. Without that mention I don't think I would have seen through it so easily. Astute readers may see that sequence of discovering the second locked room is an allusion to a well-known detective novel, oft imitated in the genre. Even the title of that work is mentioned off-hand at least once that I noted.

What is most unique about the narrative is Pérez-Reverte's devotion to the actual construction of a mystery novel. Not only is this a meta-fictional treatment of a detective story it is the only one I can recall in which the crimes are viewed as incidents in a novel. The solution itself is arrived at only by looking at the murders as if they were created by a writer of mystery fiction. This conceit makes the reader look rather closely at the actions of Foxá, a writer himself.  But don't expect an obvious twist there.  The real motive behind the murders is hidden very cleverly and while the focus seems to be on a cat-and-mouse game between Basil and Foxá, Pérez-Reverte has several tricks up his sleeve delivered in the finale that elicited a few gasps of surprise from this veteran reader of detective fiction. Timeworn motifs and plot gimmicks show up and I was too busy out-thinking Pérez-Reverte to see the obvious.  And, of course, the ultimate Holmes allusion arrives in the finale, one that should have been obvious from the start. I overlooked that one because of the constant references to Moriarty. I should have paid closer attention to Basil and his frequently quoted line "You see, Watson, but you do not observe."

Some of the best parts of the book are in the talks of writing and concocting mystery plots, comparing "real" crime with fictional crime and the role of the detective. Here are some of my favorite exchanges:

Foxá on the art of misdirection: "You have to cover the reader's ears when you show them something and then cover their eyes when you tell them something. Also, play with their capacity for misjudgement and forgetfulness. You have to plant an idea, hide it, and confuse the reader with things that lead them to a different idea..."

"Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be on television today for being famous; he would be famous for being on television." 

 Foxá persuading Basil to be their detective: "Look at it another way. Lacking a real detective and with all those films under your belt, you have more experience than any of us. It's less about a criminal investigation that simply acting as an authority figure. Something symbolic." 

Foxá: "...[the murderer is] working like a good novelist."
Basil: "That's exactly what he does: incite ideas, but arranges everything to as to impede us from thinking things though. That's why we cannot trust the visible clues. And he could be offering up real ones as well to make it seem less suspicious."

Basil: "One of the downsides of imagination is that is suggests too many alternatives and can cause one to follow false leads."

Basil: "Remember that we're inside a novel. [...] Who said that audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world?"
Foxá: "You said it. Well, Sherlock Holmes said it. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge?"
Basil: "Well, Sherlock Holmes, or Conan Doyle was mistaken. There are still some romantic killers left."  

The Final Problem is a meta-fictional tour de force. Whatever your obsession -- Sherlock Holmes, old Hollywood movies, actors and actresses, or the traditional detective novel formula with all its trickery and plot motifs -- this new treasure trove of a novel will not disappoint.  Just be prepared for an overload of allusions.  Is there a preventive drug like Dramamine for allusion overkill?  Pop one of those in mouth (figuratively, of course) before diving headlong into this richly detailed and truly fun book.