The Death Film - P. R. Shore

"Wonder of wonders! Miracle of miracles!"

This seems to be the year during which half of the books on my want list have turned up for sale. And of course I pounced upon all of them.  Of the final six books on a want list I have on various bookselling websites three turned up this year and I managed to buy two of them.  One of those books is The Death Film (1932), the astonishingly elusive second novel by "P. R. Shore", pseudonym of Helen Madeline Leys.  I forked over the most money I've ever paid for a single book but didn't think twice about it. Was it worth the hefty price tag? Read on, my friends.

Readers of this blog may recall back in 2011, the very first year I entered the world of vintage mystery and supernatural fiction reviewing, I wrote up a brief piece on The Bolt (1929) by P. R. Shore.  This was Leys' first attempt at a detective novel and it was one of the best I've read of its decade.  Seemingly formulaic being set in a quaint English village and focussing on the summer fete The Bolt actually pre-dates most of the well-known village mysteries including Murder at the Vicarage which introduced Jane Marple to the mystery world.  It truly is one of the more original and innovative detective novels of the era. From the bizarre murder weapon employed, an "elf bolt" (basically a prehistoric stone implement), to the unusual characters who act as amateur sleuths The Bolt is one of those books I was hoping some enterprising reprint house would reissue for an eager public. Though I tried to tempt Tom Schantz of Rue Morgue Press back when he and his wife were cranking out delightful reprints he apparently didn't think it was the kind of book for his audience. No reprint ever materialized.

And how does The Death Film measure up to that debut? Well, it's a 180 degree turn from the traditional English village mystery found in the pages of The Bolt.  What we get is a full-on police procedural with a methodically detailed investigation and a lead inspector helped by a savvy sergeant who likes to "theorize."  The story seems simple at first with two primary suspects but soon becomes ever complicated due to deceit and lies. Inspector William Gray and Sgt. Phillips have their hands full trying to sort out truth from cover-ups.  Largely thanks to the insights of a boy who works as a doorman at the Palace Cinema and a teashop owner with a remarkable memory the police are eventually put on the right track of a villain who was hiding in plain sight.

The Death Film of the title is a bizarre science fiction/crime film called The Death of the World. Released as a silent movie in this new era of cinematic sound it has impressively become the local cinema's hit, selling out regularly to large crowds, many of whom return for another viewing. One of the patrons never makes it out of the theater alive.  After the third screening Ethel Jones is found stabbed with one half of a scissors stuck in her. The police are fairly certain based on the wound in her right neck that she was stabbed from behind. Possibly someone seated next to her could've killed her. Audience members and employees are thoroughly questioned.

Gray soon learns that Miss Jones had an odd relationship with her employer Algernon Banks, a married businessman known to be too friendly with single women. She was invited to Banks' home on a few occasions to "finish up work" because the offices got cold late at night. Mrs. Banks suspects her husband of philandering. Smart lady. A few days later Banks' home is burglarized and Mrs. Banks is suspected of faking the break-in to cover up her snooping into her husband's private files which her kept locked at all times.

The other primary suspect is a musician who plays in the orchestra pit at the Palace Cinema. Ronald Mason is a multi-instrumentalist playing both piano and violin and primarily worked when silent movies were being shown. Ethel was attracted to Mason and we learn that she was pathologically jealous of all women who paid even the slightest attention to Mason.  Sgt. Phillips' first "theory" is that Mason and Pansy Stevens, a flirtatious cinema usher, colluded in a plot to kill Ethel Jones.

Then there is the odd box office worker Isobel Warren who raises suspicions due to her sly manner of answering Gray's questions and her many insinuations about the female staff at the Palace. But Isobel also seems to be one of Ronald Mason's many admirers and Gray is certain she is cleverly creating a smokescreen to shield the musician from being arrested. From her colleagues Gray and Phillips learn that Miss Warren was formerly a nurse prior to her job at the cinema.  Her medical knowledge inspires Sgt. Phillips to spin another one of his theories. The more Gray deals with Miss Warren I got some heavy-duty Irene Adler vibes.  She is so wily, so mocking of Gray's police techniques, that she seems to have been inspired by Holmes' memorable rival. In fact, at one point there is this exchange between Gray and Miss Warren:  

Gray: "My dear lady, I suspect everyone."
Isobel Warren: "Quite right. I deserved that, Mr. Holmes." 

Gray, unlike many of the fictional Transcendent Detectives of the early 20th century, is filled with self-doubt and curses himself on every other page. As he interviews suspects Leys allows us to know his thoughts (a bit clumsily rendered as dialogue) especially when he gets the answer he was expecting. This is also one of his flaws. Even though he chides Phillips for his many theories Gray is one of those cops who has his own theories and foolishly tries to fit the evidence to his ideas. Only when he gets the valuable eyewitness testimony from young Henry Bates, the Palace doorman, coupled with Margery Benson's amazing verbatim report of overheard conversations in her tea shop does he begin to learn that the truth is far more useful than any theories.

The Death Film unravels at a brisk pace with multiple surprises as the investigation continues. Ultimately, the plot involves one of my least favorite crime fiction motifs - drug smuggling - but getting to that final revelation makes for engaging, entertaining, and -- on occasion -- suspenseful reading.  Leys may not have been as innovative or witty as she was in The Bolt but her second foray into crime fiction has its moments not the least of which is the unique scene of the crime and the exploration of how an early 20th century British cinema operates.

Double Detection - Belton Cobb

THE STORY: Noel Ross, ex-police sergeant with Scotland Yard, has just ad an operation to remove shrapnel from his head. He and his wife take a vacation for him to recuperate. Ross is distracted and annoyed by his fellow guests at the White Cliffs Hotel on the South Coast of England. When Mr. Griggs, a supposedly amusing and witty man, is found unresponsive in his room the maid jumps to the conclusion that he is dead. A doctor is called who find that Griggs has suffered some sort of respiratory attack and luckily can revive him. Ross later meets Griggs who at first seems friendly and of a like mind. When the other guests show up in the lounge Griggs' humor surfaces. He turns out to be a British Don Rickles belittling and insulting everyone with his brand of nasty humor. Ross seeing that nearly everyone is appalled or enraged by the insults begins to think that the health issue of the previous evening was really a murder attempt. Then Griggs suffers another respiratory attack and dies. Ross is convinced that the murderer struck again and this time he succeeded.

INNOVATIONS: The most intriguing aspect of Double Detection (1945) is that there are two detectives trying to solve the murder.  But each approached the crime from a different angle. Basically, it is the intuitive detective vs. the evidentiary detective. Noel Ross at first surmises and imagines an attempted murder and insists the accidental death Griggs suffers the second night is an actual murder. Inspector Cheviot Burmann shows up at the hotel and Ross ever eager to show his brilliant police work immediately assumes Burmann is there to investigate the murder. He's not. He is acting in an undercover role to ferret out a cook who is involved in a clothing coupon racket. But with his cover instantly blown by the rash ex-copper Burmann is forced to re-think hi strategy. So he begins to investigate as if Griggs was murdered. Slowly the coupon racket case and Ross imaginings blend and when the post-mortem comes out Burmann learns that Griggs was in fact poisoned. 

Ross approaches the crime focusing on HOW it was accomplished.  There is a complicated business with beer bottles recalling the mix-up of cocktail glasess in The Poisoner's Mistake. I was never really clear what was going on with these beer bottles until a very lengthy description which pointed out that some of the guests, including Griggs, had their own stock of beer. The reson for this also involves a complicated revelation about who o actually owned the hotel.

Burmann derided for ignoring the howdunit of the crime by Ross prefers to seek out the WHY. He spends much of his time finding a legitimate motive other than sheer hatred that Ross harps on about. The coupon racket scheme comes into play for a while and Burmann is keen that Griggs death has something to do with cheating his partners out of profits. much to his surprise this sound motive will fall apart when the real culprit behind the coupon is arrested and clears several of the suspects.  once again, Burmann will have to lean in on Ross' ideas in order to solve Grigg's murder.

SUMMARY: Intricately plotted, mostly fair play, and often very funny this was the second detective novel I've read by Belton Cobb and I thought it almost as ingenious as The Poisoner's Mistake. I say mostly fair play due one deeply hidden clue amounting to a bit of minutiae in one character's past that was mentioned exactly once. I thought that bit almost unfair but it was there in the story. Can't really whine. Also one crucial bit of information that seems practically superfluous shows up late in the novel and proves to have a lot to do with the murderer's motive. Therefore, nearly everything in this story will be relevant if the reader wants to match wits with Cobb and his detective characters. I nailed the murderer early in the story due to a psychological quirk that I have come across in other modern detective novels. This unusual aspect, a bonus of sorts to the murderer's motivation, might have come as a shock to Cobb's audience when the book was first published.

QUOTES:  That, of course, thought Cheviot as he put down the receiver, was the worst of doctors: they could always quote to you the case of someone who died in 1776 in a peculiar way and thus had prevented all people who had since died normally from establishing a firm rule. [...] Damn the doctors, thought Cneviot, they always make things harder instead of easier!

 Ross:  "What you need to do now is trace [the poison] from that bathroom to the kitchen where the beer was kept. When you've done that, you'll know who could have taken it there, and you'll have finished the case."

Burmann: "I suppose that would be one way to do it. But it has never been my way to do Sherlock Holmes stuff with a magnifying glass, crawling about carpets. And I don't believe that in this case it would work, if I did it."

EASY TO FIND? Though no modern reprints of this title exist Double Detection is easy to find in the used book market, especially from online sellers.  It was reprinted by Cherry Tree Books around the late 1940s or early 1950s. But be warned:  sometimes those Cherry Tree Books are abridged. I turned up 16 copies, a mix of hardcover and paperback, in one simple search and many come with the typographic DJ. All but two copies are priced sanely and affordably. Happy hunting!