HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: Sinister House - Leland Hall

The most uncanny thing about my reading Sinister House (1919) is not so much the content of this fine tale of a haunted house and malevolent ghosts but my timing.  A few days after I started the book I attended a performance of the new stage thriller Paranormal Activity (conceived and directed by Felix Barrett, written by Levi Holloway) based on the series of horror movies of the same name. The play deserves a post all to itself and I will have to refrain from talking about it here. But the eerie coincidences between a supernatural novel written more than a century ago and a play only written one year ago are seriously unreal. They both begin as commentary on routine living then morph slowly into tales of malign presences infecting the living. There is even a manifestation that takes place in the novel that is exactly the same as a fleeting moment in the play I saw.  That's chillingly coincidental and mindbogglingly uncanny as far as I concerned!

Leland Hall's novel starts out so utterly mundane that he includes lectures on the real estate business, building concerns and one of the characters' disdain for developmental communities which were already a blight on American neighborhoods in 1919, at least according to Leland Hall. Then the routine of everyday life gives way to disturbing and unsettling events. The first major shift in the story happens when the narrator Pierre is visited -- during a torrential thunderstorm, no less -- by his neighbor Eric Grier who has recently moved into a ramshackle home on the outskirts of the cookie cutter development known as Forsby. He has returned from a business trip in Buffalo, walked from the train station as there were no cabs at that late hour and when he saw the light on in Pierre's house hoped to gain entry and shelter from the storm. Eric is eager to get home to his new bride Julia who he could not stop thinking of while he was away.

Immediately, there is a discussion of the difference between the two homes in the novel. Pierre's house in Forsby is wholly modern made of cement with a "granolithic walkway" leading up to the front door, equipped with modern plumbing including turn-of-the-century fad of exposed pipes and, of course, electricity. Eric's 19th century home is still trapped in the past made almost entirely of wood and stone and no modern conveniences. Gaslight and fireplaces providing heat and illumination, water is fetched from a well. Eric is beginning to behave differently and Pierre and his wife Annette notice that Julia is especially happy in the gloomy house when her husband is absent. At first Pierre cannot understand why the two young newlyweds have moved into such an eyesore of a house. Annette finds nothing at all attractive about the place neither outside nor in. But Julia seems happy and finds comfort in its old-fashioned atmosphere. Pierre, however, finds that atmosphere chilling -- literally and figuratively.

Frontispiece from the US 1st edition,
illustrations all by Haydon Jones

 

It seems a malign influence has permeated the house and is infecting Eric. One night when Pierre, his wife and three year-old son Bobbie are traveling home their car breaks down with not one but two flat tires. They are forced to seek out help and shelter from the Griers. Little Bobbie is terrified of setting foot in the house having had his fertile young imagination stimulated by some strange fairy tales his mother has told him, notably one about the Loreley. In her version the siren sings tempting songs in order to lure men to the death and she eventually eats them! Bobbie calls the Grier home the "Singing House" and does not want to go in. His mother manages to calm him until he sees Eric. Bobbie has a fit of hysterical screaming crying out: "No, mama! Get him away, get him away! Don't let him touch me. He's going to eat me!"

Annette's cousin Giles is the primary skeptic in this cast. He is certain that Eric did not just stumble upon the house in Stanton by accident as he claims. Pierre learned that the house belonged to Morgan Snart, "an eccentric old man, very religious," and his  homely daughter Huldah "who had taken to religion even more entirely than her father." Giles digs into the Snart's past and uncovers secrets about the two that belie their supposed good character and surface religious demeanor. He also finds out a bit more about Eric but is circumspect in relaying that news to everyone.  Compounding this mystery is a forbidden room that Julia insists Eric never open. It remains locked for the majority of the novel. When it is opened out of necessity terror reigns down upon everyone.

Sinister House is clearly a precursor to Shirley Jackson's pioneering haunted house novel The Haunting of Hill House published five decades later in its depiction of a malign presence in an evil house that affects one single person. Hall's novel is both prophetic and iconoclastic in that he defies the traditions of Gothic literature by making the man the object of the haunting and not the woman. In fact, both Julia and Annette are the voices of reason throughout the entire book. It is the men who suffer the most -- from fear, susceptibility, and rash judgment -- when the evil presences finally manifest themselves and carry out their wicked plans. True Julia is targeted in a frightening scene (see illustration plate at right) but it is Eric, Pierre and even Giles who are the sorriest victims suffering both physical and psychological injury more than either of the women.

QUOTES:   I say it walked; but really it moved in some half-human, half-fiendish gait, slowly yet in springs. It was the shape of a tall woman. ...as this thing passed along the wall, its insubstantial head was turned to me, so that I was subjected to a lidless stare of incredibly sinister malice.

Books which teach etiquette of the drawing room had better put in a special clause to warn students against behaving before their hosts as if they were seeing the hideous family specter pass along the wall of the dwelling in which they are being entertained.

There's nothing like a familiar unpleasant job to keep the mind from brooding. 

Giles: "Dead men rise up never --read even your poets.  Ghosts breed in the living. That's where we'll catch them."

Truly I believe that the past was dead to [Eric]. By force of his will to live he had made it as if it had never been. He denied it to himself. And if he denied it to himself, it was no lie for him to deny it to others.

It doesn't do any good at all to say "Boo!" at the past if you're afraid of it.

THINGS I LEARNED:  Pierre talks about his intolerance for lack of modern utilities at the Grier house. He mentions one of his pet peeves is the presence of cannel coal in so many country homes and how he much prefers gaslight. Cannel coal, also called  candle coal and oil shale, was used in the 19th century for its bright and steady flame. Because it burned longer than wood it was a preferred choice for home fireplaces. Its compact dense structure also made it an easily carved material for sculpture, ornaments and jewelry.

Pierre comforts an injured Giles in the finale and describes himself as "kneeling like a Mussulman beside him in the gloom." He's not talking about an apple sauce brand or a misspelling of a he-man here. Mussulman is an archaic term for anyone of the Islam faith. We use the word Muslim now.

THE AUTHOR:  Leland Hall (1883-1957) was born and raised in Massachusetts. I was unable to locate a newspaper obituary online to share other biographical info. According to his gravestone shown in a photo at Find A Grave he was born in Malden and was laid to rest there alongside one of his relatives. Based on the dates this is most likely his father. Anyone with info on Hall is welcome to email more info or comment below. I can't even verify any other books he may have written. I'm curious about his work, if any more exists.

EASY TO FIND? Copies of the original edition are few and far between.  I found only two copies, priced rather steeply, of the US edition (Houghton & Mifflin, 1919) offered for sale online. It was first reprinted in hardcover in the 1970s by the private publisher Bookfinger in a limited edition of about 500 copies. Some if those turn up frequently for sale at affordable prices. Finally, there is a comparatively cheaper reprint in a paperback omnibus (Hippocampus Press, 2008) that is still out there in the used book market and available brand new from the publisher. In addition to Sinister House you get another classic haunted house novel in that two-fer reprint:  Cold Harbor by Francis Brett Young. 

Death Goes Native - Max Long

THE STORY:  Hastings Hoyt is eager to escape his "murder jinx" after his adventures recorded in the first two books by Max Long. In Death Goes Native (1941), the final mystery in Long's trilogy, Hoyt sets sail to the remote, nearly inaccessible Valley of Waimaka, a little visited Eden away from Big Island. When he arrives he is surprised to find a colony of 12 mainlanders who have set up a private village and have "gone native" dressing in Hawaiian clothes, taking up Hawaiian art of weaving, and eating almost exclusively native foods. When one of the colony is found murdered on Hoyt's boat with a weapon that has Hoyt's initials on it he covers up evidence before reporting the death. then when he brings the self-proclaimed leader of the village to the boat they discover a thoroughly cleaned up crime scene and no sign of the body.

THE CHARACTERS:  Hastings Hoyt usually acts as the Watson to Long's series detective plantation cop Komako Koa.  While he does narrate, like a true Watson, he is usually much in the background. In Death Goes Native, however, he takes center stage as it appears someone is exploiting his presence on Waimaka. He is seen as an intruder and scapegoat rather than a humble visitor.  Several crimes occur, not just the murder of the playwright who was killed on his boat and then mysteriously disposed of.  Each time Hoyt is implicated in some way - initials on weapons, being the last person to see someone alive.  He has no luck and is seemingly at the mercy of someone who clearly want shim blamed and arrested for all the deaths and crimes.  Almost miraculously Komako shows up just in time to take over before policemen from Big Island can arrive to begin an official murder investigation. The suspects are numerous and all of them seem to be have some kind of secret they are harboring.

Bronson Delmar  - first victim of murder. A playwright who has bragged about his current manuscript recently completed while living on the island. The plot deals with crime and his inspiration for some of the characters comes from recent headlines

Bessie Delmar - The playwright's wife and co-writer of the play. When her husband dies she show little grief and is more worried about the location of the manuscript and getting proper credit for the plot. A notebook with newspaper clippings that serve as inspiration for the play's story turns up among Bessie's belongings and gives Komako a major clue as to the motivation of the killer

Elaine - being cared for by the local physician. She is suffering from amnesia and does not even know her name. Her caretakers gave her the name of Elaine. On two nights she is seen sleepwalking and talking about someone named Peter.  

Dr. Latham - While caring for Elaine Dr Latham has fallen in love with her. He fears if she recovers her memory and she learns about her life --possibly she is married -- that he will lose her. And who is Peter?  It's not him. His first name is .

Mrs. Latham - The doctor's imperious mother who seems almost a peripheral character. Until she has a private conversation with Komako and Hoyt about her suspicons of their so-called village leader...

Mr. Budd - the village chief, so to speak. He organized the colony and seems to be in charge of everything. Why did he want to set up this private idyll far away form the mainland? Is he hiding from his past? 

Turva Massic - Hoyt is struck by Turva's exotic appearance despite the long scar that runs down the side of her face. Of all the people she seems to be transforming into a true native. Her fascination with weaving keeps her occupied. But she is wary of Hoyt who she thinks has a dangerous side. 

Mary & Henry - two Hawaiians who act as servants for the villagers.  They are in love and also become key witnesses 

Mokino - another Hawaiian and Mary's father. He is the kahuna of the area, a shaman of sorts, who spends much of his time taking care of a shark that visits the lagoon near a local swimming spot. Komako tells Hoyt that the shark is a reincarnation of a dead boy and thus Mokino treats the shark as if it is his own child, feeding it and making sure no one molests the creature.

The Wests - Josephine and Thornton, married couple having some domestic difficulty. Thornton, am musician and composer, spends too much time working on a symphony. Josephine feels ignored and so she has been flirting with some of the men -- one of them being Delmar.

Herb - the manager/handyman of the village. Though most of his duties are confined to repair work Herb has taken it upon himself to micromanage the activities of the villagers. For instance, he rings a bell to remind everyone that its time for exercise and swimming. Needless to say many of the villagers find this laughable and many ignore his schedules and regulations.

Inscription with Max Long's signature
"with Aloha Nui Oe"is his greeting

INNOVATIONS:  More than the other two mystery novels Long wrote with Komako Koa and Hasting Hoyt Death Goes Native is the most accomplished and satisfying as a detective novel. He does well with trying to plant clues. More importantly he improves in building suspense in this final novel by focusing the story on the "wrong man" motif so familiar to crime novel devotees. With Hoyt discovering the crime and then foolishly covering up the crime the reader is eager to see how he will get out of the mess Hoyt creates for himself. When the body vanishes he and Komako must then re-examine the crime scene to figure out what was done with the corpse. Hoyt fears that is was fed to the roaming shark, but Komako tells him that is unlikely. This is when we learn the truth of the shark and why it is revered and cared for by Mokino. 

Long seems to have modeled this mystery novel on those of his contemporaries making use of other familiar conventions such as crimes in the past and impersonation. The play the Delmars wrote is the Macguffin of the piece - everyone wants to find it, especially Koa and Hoyt. They believe it will reveal the motive for all the murders. But has it been destroyed? If so, how will they expose the killer who they are sure is one of the villagers pretending to be someone else? Impostors will turn up over the course of the novel and more than one character will have a secret exposed. Long also dares to flaunt some of the assumed rules of detective fiction by having multiple villains having a hand in the various crimes other than murder. The plot is filled with incident as well as some intriguing insight into Hawaiian culture and superstition. These aspects are blended well into the story rather than being didactic intrusions as in the case of the volcano lectures in The Lava Flow Murders (1940), the second of the Komako Koa books.

THE AUTHOR:  Max Freedom Long (1890 - 1971) was born in Colorado and then moved to California where he was raised, schooled and eventually graduated from Los Angeles State Normal School with an associates degree.  In 1917 he moved to Hawaii and taught school there for several years.  While living and working in Hawaii Long became fascinated with local culture, folklore and what he called Hawaiian magic. These would lead to his developing a philosophy he called Huna. In the 1930s he left Hawaii and set up home again in California. By August 1941 he was living in Laguna Beach based on an inscription I have in my copy of Death Goes Native.

He wrote three detective novels with Komako Koa. I am surmising that the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, four months after the publication of his third novel, put an end to his writing anymore mystery novels set in Hawaii. Long is better known for his books on Huna, his personal philosophy that incorporates Hawaiian "magic" and culture into a kind of New Age worldview. Three of these Huna books are apparently still in print while his detective novels have been basically forgotten.

FOR SALE!  I've listed all three copies of Komako Koa mystery novels and they are currently available for purchase. Click here. This morning I checked and already The Lava Flow Murders is sold, but the other two are still eager for someone to purchase them.  Happy hunting! 

Komako Koa Trilogy
Murder Between Dark and Dark (1939)
The Lava Flow Murders (1940)
Death Goes Native (1941)

Thin Air - Howard Browne

THE STORY: Ad exec, Ames Coryell, returns from a vacation in Maine with his wife Leona and 3 year-old daughter Phoebe.  While Ames unloads the luggage from the car Leona quickly exits the car and enters the house.  When Ames goes in with his daughter and the suitcases he can't find his wife. Her handbag is on the table in the dining room but no sign of his wife.  He panics.  Runs through the neighborhood and cannot find her.  When he calls his neighbor Sally Fremont to ask if maybe Leona made a quick visit at their home Sally is perplexed. It's 2 AM in the morning! Why would Leona stop by? "Where is Mark?" Ames asks inquiring about Sally's husband. She tells him Mark is still awake in his office working on his latest architect's project. "Will you check? Maybe Leona is there."  Sally does so and is shocked when she discovers that Mark too is gone. Did the two run off together? If not, have they vanished into Thin Air (1954)?

THE CHARACTERS:  This is primarily Ames' story and he acts as first person narrator. Once his wife disappears he reveals himself to be a willful and temperamental man. He makes an immediate enemy of Lt. John Box assigned to look into the claim that Leona Coryell has disappeared. Box makes no pretense that he suspects Ames has something to do with her disappearance which of course infuriates Ames. The two do not get off to a good start and it only worsens as the book progresses. Fed up with a detective who won't listen and has already accused him of murder Ames is determined to solve the mystery of his missing wife on his own.

Then Mark is found unconscious not far from his home and taken to a hospital where he lapses into a coma. He has been struck on the back of the head with the ubiquitous blunt object. Now Box thinks that Ames is acting out some revenge plot having picked up on hints that Ames imagined that Mark has perhaps had a secret affair with Leona and that they were running off together. Box is sure that Ames found Mark and attacked him. He warns Ames that if the coma worsens and Mark eventually dies he will be after Ames Coryell for a definite murder.

French paperback edition
(Editions Ditis, 1957)

Coryell then dismisses the police altogether and comes up with an ingenious plan. He enlists his entire advertising firm to turn his wife's disappearance into a regional campaign. Everyone from the art department head to every agent writing copy will work on the project. Ames even involves the agency's market research team who work at a completely different company to help in their elaborate campaign.  They will create a public interest in Ames' missing wife. TV ads, magazine ads, radio spots--the whole shebang.  Leona's face will be everywhere and she will be on everyone's mind just like the many products that the advertising firm sells. Create the need and the public will respond with purchase power.  Or in this case with possible eyewitness accounts and other information. The ultimate aim is to turn the public into a collective of amateur detectives. Soon the police and the ad agency are deluged with phone calls offering  tips and witness stories.

Some of the tips pay off and Ames soon finds himself paying a visit to a blond woman staying in a fleabag hotel. And that's when the story begins to get complicated and a bit fantastical. Best leave it there. Unexpected twists and unbelievable coincidences compound leading to a shocking murder and the somewhat outlandish reason for Leona's disappearance.

INNOVATIONS:  The idea of using an ad agency to solve a crime is wholly original. Many of the sequences where the men from Palmer & Verrick, Market Researchers offer their expertise to Ames show a truly clever way to introduce detection into the story. Market researchers, as head agent Uhlman, tells Ames are little more than compilers of statistics. They have at their hands multiple references and databases (mostly in book form in this decade) to help locate anyone and any company. As an example: when Ames shows Uhlman and his men a photograph of Marty Dry wearing tee shirt, jeans and house slippers standing in front of  car parked near an apartment building and another building with the letters ERY visible at the edge of the photo Ames is sure than the photo was taken in front of his home. Who would be dressed like that anywhere else? Remember it's 1954 and slippers were only worn in the home not in public like they are now in this age of "slovenly chic" fashion choices. They also notice the numbers 773 on the building with the letters ERY.  Uhlman offers up a variety of businesses those letters might be: grocery, stationery, bakery, millinery, etc.  After looking up addresses in Manhattan where those numbers occur in the street address he then brilliantly eliminates all neighborhoods where those businesses could not be next to an apartment building using his vast knowledge of sociodemographics.  Then Uhlman and a crew of eight other men use phone directories, split up the alphabet, and within only a few minutes they have pegged a few possible addresses where Marty Dry lives and when Ames drives to the first and most likely address he is astonished that the photo matches the location exactly. Very impressive detective work, I'd say. Completely believable, too, given how market research firms work.  

Some more innovative detective work is performed by Ame's daughter who is only 3 years old. When she asked her mother "Do you like me, Mommy?" while they were driving home from a brief stop in Connecticut Phoebe tells her father that her mother said the wrong thing. It's a game that she plays with her parents. She asks the question and they always says No. And then Phoebe asks "Why not?" and they reply "Because I love you." When the woman said yes to the question "Do you like me?" Phoebe knew it wasn’t her mother sitting next to her. This surprising news leads Ames to the most startling discovery in the book and the beginning of his action-filled search for the whereabouts of his wife.

THE AUTHOR:  Howard Browne (1907-1999) worked at several advertising agencies as well as being the editor of two notable genre fiction magazines according to the DJ blurb on the back of my copy of Thin Air.  Further research revealed to me that those magazines were Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures. Not only was he editor of those magazines Browne contributed his own fantasy, adventure and science fiction stories under both his own name and a variety of pseudonyms.  He is probably best known for the crime novels he wrote under his pseudonym John Evans. As Evans he created the private eye Paul Pine who appeared in a series of four novels set in Oak Park, Illinois and Chicago.  In 1001 Midnights Bill Pronzini called Paul Pine "one of the best of the plethora of tough guy heroes" from the post-WW2 era. He goes on:  "Although the Pine novels are solidly in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, they have a complexity and character all their own and are too well crafted to be mere imitations."  Browne also wrote for television and the movies. Thin Air was adapted several times for television. The first of several TV versions was the sixth episode in the second season of Climax! with Robert Sterling as Ames and Pat O'Brien as the policeman. Later adaptations of the missing person motif would appear in numerous crime dramas including episodes of The Rockford Files and Simon & Simon.  In addition to numerous TV scripts from series in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly westerns and crime dramas, Browne wrote the screenplays for three gangster movies: Portrait of a Mobster (1961), The St. Valentine's Massacre (1966) and Capone (1975) with Ben Gazzara in the title role.

QUOTES:  If I don't get [my wife] you're going to be up to your tie clasp in police. 

He looked slightly less dangerous than the Bobbsey Twins. 

When a girl's that close to a guy it would only seem reasonable that she'd have his phone number or his address... Maybe in a little black book. Girls who live alone in cheap hotels along shoddy back streets have books like that. ...At best this was a lonely world. 

I was making enough racket to alert half the county. This was what came from preferring football and girls to a membership in the Boy Scouts.

Looking into his eye was like looking at the falling blade of a guillotine

I was up to my hatband in doubt.

There was no warning, no advance whisper of sound. Only the world blowing up in a sudden sea of white flare laced with agony, and I was falling through it in slow motion toward the edge of blackness.

It was time for the organ music and please omit flowers.

EASY TO FIND? Multiple editions are offered for sale on line, a mix of paperback reprints and the original Simon & Schuster hardcover. The first paperback (Dell 894, 1955) is the most common edition for sale. A later 1984 reprint from Carrol & Graf also turns up often from online dealers.  The first edition will of course cost you more with prices ranging from $75 (dampstained book with a VG- DJ) to $450 for a fine copy in DJ that is also signed by Howard Browne. Happy hunting!

Now Seek My Bones - S. H. Courtier

THE STORY:  A monster crocodile. A private zoo of venomous snakes. An 18th century ship that disappeared. A lost treasure. And the return of an ancient cult of Crocodile Men. Sounds less like a mystery novel and more like a lost screenplay for another Indiana Jones sequel (though Indy definitely would not be happy about the snakes). These are the bizarre elements that feature in the plot of Now Seek My Bones (1957) which is more of an adventure thriller than it is a detective novel. This macabre crime novel ventures into horror territory frequently when an Australian obsessed with his ancestors from Revolutionary era France is found dead in his swimming pool that borders a marshland and draws water from its natural source. He was apparently attacked and killed by a giant crocodile that got through a sabotaged mesh fence designed to prevent entry of fish and other aquatic life. The horrible death is called a grisly accident and dismissed. When the novel opens the family is preparing for the man's funeral. "Digger" Haig, one of Courtier's clever often arrogant series policeman characters, suspects murder and makes his way surreptitiously to the McGorrie ranch to get to the bottom of the skulduggery.

THE CHARACTERS: The ostensible protagonist and something of an aide to Haig is Jeff Galloway, affectionately known as Galley by most of the women in the story. A reporter and friend of the slain Rann McGorrie, Galley is disturbed because he learned of Rann McGorrie's death from an obituary. No one from the family informed him of the death and so he heads to Port Crosby to attend the funeral. When he arrives we meet the members of the small funeral party, mostly relatives of McGorrie.

Kit McGorrie - Rann's daughter who at first seems to be a naive and flighty young girl. But no one is truly what they appear to be in this novel.

Aunt Hilary - Rann's sister, the imperious substitute matriarch of the clan. She insists that her brother died in a bizarre accident. That there is no killer at large...until the ranch is invaded by the strange men wearing crocodile masks who have modeled themselves after a cult of dream-timing indigenous people of decades past.

Norman McGorrie - Rann's nephew. From the outset it seems Norman is nothing but bad news and many readers will peg him as the villain. Sullen, quick tempered, resentful and violent. Hardly anything likeable about Norman. Don't be so quick to judge. Courtier does a fine job of misleading everyone in this mystery novel.

Marion Steele - a mystery woman of sorts. Passed off as a close friend of Kit's but Digger Haig knows who she really is. Galley (and the reader) will also learn her true identity and why she showed up at the McGorrie home after Rann's death. Her interest in 18th century France may have a lot to do with her presence at the ranch.

Hooker Trull - business associate of Rann.  Of all the characters Hooker is a kind of cipher for much of the book.  He seems only to be present as an attraction for the women in the story.  His role is made clearer in the in the final chapters.

Gosh Laffey - The most authentically Australian character of the lot. Immensely likeable, teeming wiht eccentricity, and harboring lots of secrets he is eager to share with Galley. Gosh is the owner of the private reptile zoo a self-styled herpetologist though not a professional one by any means. He has over 150 snakes in a zoo he keeps ont he south end of the property. The collection of snakes consists of both venomous and harmless native Australian species. The star serpent, so to speak, being David, a carpet python (a constricting snake and non-venomous) he often wears around his neck.  The snakes are not just unusual decor for the novel. Their presence will be exploited in a terrifying action sequence that is better left as a surprise.

Once Digger Haig reveals himself in an intriguing scene the cast will grow to include some indigenous peoples among them King Jimmy of the Crocodile Tribe, also known by his native name Koolakuk, who provides much of the history of the crocodile men, where they came form, their purpose and what they are up to now. Also we meet a tracker named Sammy who is the only one of a group of local men who takes his role as a policeman aide seriously. His work in determining how many men invaded the ranch after studying footprints in the dirt and examining broken branches is some of the most helpful native detective work to Haig. 

INNOVATIONS: From McGorrie's fascination with his French ancestors to the story of the crocodile men it's difficult to know where to start in pointing out the originality and innovation. Courtier's strength as a mystery novelist will always be his talent for uncovering some of the uncommon, often just plain weird, aspects of Australian culture and history. Whether it's in his love of the native animal life peculiar to the continent or the mysterious ways of indigenous people and their arcane mores each Courtier crime novel will offer up some fascinating tidbit. Now Seek My Bones, only his fourth mystery novel, offers more than a tidbit, it's a veritable cornucopia of trivia, history and secrets of the natural world. The story gives a crash course in native snakes of Australia, instructs on the difference between the harmless snakes and the deadly ones. The most deadly of all is the taipan. One nasty specimen makes its home in Goff's zoo and it will feature in a terrifying scene late in the book.

The climax of the book occurs when a book on Australian 18th century shipwrecks is found and a story of a missing ship and its mysterious cargo (oh yes it's all related to 18th century France) is related to Haig and Galley by the equally mysterious Marion Steele. She also reveals an unusual rhyming code that Rann McGorrie composed that when solved will lead the trio to a highly unusual hidden treasure. From this point on the book kicks into high adventure mode with many cinematic action sequences. Some enterprising filmmaker ought to grab a hold of this book and turn it into a movie. It's ripe for a 21st century movie-going public with an insatiable appetite for action movies. Underwater cavern exploration and shipwrecks and monster crocodiles?  Can't you hear the money rolling in like the crashing surf?

Somehow Courtier manages to weave in the shipwreck to McGorrie's obsession with his French ancestors and also wrapping up the reason that the crocodile cult was revived in the utterly unexpected finale that takes place in a sort of submerged cavern accessible only at low tide. Nothing is predictable in this thoroughly bizarre, often chillingly macabre, adventure-cum-mystery novel.  Yes, there is also an unveiling of the truly surprising murderer, but that comes almost as an anticlimax amid all the rest of the over-the-top adventure sequences consisting of underwater hunts, nighttime seiges, captures, rescues, and mayhem galore.

EASY TO FIND? Not at all. You may have luck if you live in Australia. I'm sure the libraries have loads of Courtier's books. My copy purchased just last year was the first one I'd seen since I started looking for all of his exceptionally good mystery novels -- most of them extremely hard to find -- back in 2014 or so. Good luck in locating another copy!

IN BRIEF: Death at Ash House - Miles Burton

When I started Death at Ash House (1942) I was ready for some kind of riff on haunted houses or shunned houses or abandoned houses with a curse. Take your pick of whatever subgenre you'd like to call this kind of mystery. Considering the original UK title is This Undesirable Residence -- the ironic opposite of the standard euphemism employed in real estate advertisements -- the house should have been more than a gloomy setting. It could have transformed into a foreboding character, but it just sort of sits there in the background. Burton in his John Rhode guise would have no doubt played up the setting a bit more as he did in the neo-Gothic detective novel The Bloody Tower.  I was disappointed. But not as disappointed with how plodding the book moves along in its first half. This humdrum mystery novel definitely earns that epithet coined by Julian Symons to describe routine, often unimaginative, detective fiction that maintains a strict adherence to detection at the expense of nearly everything else that makes a mystery novel a delightful reading experience. The police work in the first half of this book is close to drudgery with multiple solutions proposed, analyzed and re-analyzed to the point of utter aggravation. Strange all these permutations of who did what and why when the story itself seems deceptively simple.

S.H. Apperley and his secretary/companion Walter Bristow. The two men  are in the process of relocating. Bristow has been charged with checking out a few houses for purchase while Apperley sets himself up in a temporary residence. Bristow was to have visited one final house, then meet his employer at the real estate office and then make their final move into the temporary location.  But the car, laden down with five suitcases three of which contain a valuable stamp collection, and Bristow have gone missing. Apperley goes to the police to report the missing man and car. Eventually, the police find the car parked in front of Ash House. Bristow is dead, his head based in, and all of the luggage is gone. Ash House is in a forlorn neighborhood, in the shadow of a heavily forested area, and the locals tend to avoid the place because it's so lonely and abandoned. The immediate thought is that Bristow has fallen victim to a marauding thief who saw an opportunity to steal the luggage and conked Bristow on the head, probably not intending to kill. The discovery of the murder weapon, a strange metal disc that turns out to be a piece of equipment taken from a water boiler, changes that supposition to definitely intended murder. 

Somewhere around the halfway mark when I was truly ready to skip more re-analysis, jump to the end and find out the answers to three of the many unanswered questions that to me seemed utterly baffling there was a surprise second murder of a character who had never appeared in the book until her dead body was found. Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard and local policeman Inspector Prickett do some of the best detective work in the novel in determining the identity of the dead woman. When they learn her name there is an unexpected coincidence that sends the whole plot into a new direction. I began to suspect that there would be an upheaval in the entire story. Then Arnold finds a typewritten letter in the woman's room at a boarding house for elderly people where she lived and worked and I had an "Aha!" moment. I literally gasped aloud and saw exactly what Burton had done.

For the remainder of the novel I waited for the final revelation and I was 100% correct. I was delighted and proud of my detective work. For that upheaval in the plot alone this book deserves attention. Initially the plot unravels ever so methodically (often dully, I will admit) and then suddenly is invigorated, so to speak, by the unfortunate second murder. Once the woman is identified the story picks up and some of the best characters appear. The brief interrogation of the stern woman who runs the old people's home and, immediately following, the questioning of the only friendly employee at the same place, a friend of the murdered woman, are highlights in this second half.  Also worth noting is the section where Arnold and Prickett visit and discuss the Napleys, a gypsy family who are working as migrant farmers in the neighborhood picking fruit and vegetables. The bigotry associated with "travellers" and Romany people crops up leading to the ultimate assessment that Isaac Napley, the eldest son of the family known to police for petty theft and trouble-making, most likely is behind the luggage theft and probably the murder of the two victims. However, nothing so predictably prosaic will solve these complex crimes.

THINGS I LEARNED:  Inspector Prickett tells Arnold that the Napleys are not true Romany.  He says: "They're what folks in this part of the country call diddikys".  I know The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden, a novel about gypsy folk that I read as a teenager. I thought, "Are they the same word?"  Indeed they are!  In fact, here is the full list of variants for the word in addition to the spellings already offered: didicoy, diddicoy, and didikai.  There are probably several other spellings with double Ds or single Ds in the second syllable but I'll stop with those three. However you decide to spell the word the term is used to describe people who are not "full blooded" Romany, a mixed race person of half Romany (or any other fraction) plus any other race or ethnicity.

While not one of the most stellar examples of a Miles Burton mystery novel Death at Ash House or This Undesirable Residence is definitely worth reading should you be lucky enough to come across a copy.  It's a rare one indeed. I've never seen a UK edition though the DJ is thankfully stored among the thousands of pictures at the Facsimile Dust Jackets website. I'm unsure if it was ever published either in the US or UK in a paperback edition. No paperback edition turns up when I looked for copies at bookselling sites.  Certainly, the second half of the novel is much improved over its somewhat drearily constructed first half.  The ultimate reveal is cleverly laid out in fair play style clues. Not too obvious, but with some out of the box thinking the final surprise can be arrived at well before Inspector Arnold delivers the whopper revelation to Prickett

Puzzle for Players - Patrick Quentin

THE STORY: Fresh out of his stay at a mental institution where he recuperated from alcoholism and psychological trauma related to his wife's death in a fire Peter Duluth has managed to score a hit play, an angel for financing that play and several veteran actors for his theatrical comeback as producer-director of the melodrama Troubled Waters.  But trouble starts early when the production is forced to move to an ancient, long dormant, and reputedly haunted theater. None of the cast is very happy about their new home.  Especially Lionel Comstock, playing a minor role in the play, who is paranoid about some horrible event that happened there years ago and fears the production may be headed for disaster. Peter dismisses it all as nonsense. After all, theater people are prone to silly superstitions. But when strange ghostly figures appear in a dressing room mirror, and rats infest the basement, it seems that the production may indeed be cursed. Comstock sees the dreaded figure he was worried about and drops dead. Just a heart attack or something more sinister? Then another actor turns up dead in a prop coffin. Peter believes that someone wants the production ended for good and will stop at nothing -- not even murder.

THE CHARACTERS:  Peter Duluth makes his second appearance in Puzzle for Players (1938) and is not much of a detective in this mystery novel. In fact, it is his "angel" Dr. Lenz who will prove to be quite an excellent sleuth. In addition to having helped Peter recover from his trauma in Puzzle for Fools (the first book) Lenz is now the primary financier for the production. His skills as a psychiatrist come in very handy when faced with a couple of puzzling illusions, a murder and attempted murder. Turns out that the novel is very much a psychological mystery and the behavior of several characters is explained in detail by Dr. Lenz over the course of the book. Strange phobias and an actor with an impressive memory for recalling faces from past encounters and are just two examples of "psychological clues" that will help the reader make sense of a rather complexly plotted story.

Being a theater mystery this story tends to be stuffed with melodramatic soap opera-like subplots. There are typical backstage crushes and quasi romances some of which turn out to be something completely different than Peter and the reader originally thought they were.  But the cast is sadly made up of hoary old theater clichés: an oddball stage door codger with a nostalgia issue grieving over his past life; a stage manager who is the miraculous Jack-of-all-trades with a specialty in trapping rats; a veteran actress with a drinking problem; young handsome Lothario as the drunk's protector; a foreign accented actor with dark and alluring looks, a scarred face from an airplane crash, and a secret; and another veteran diva who falls in love with her co-stars as easily as walking down a street. As much as I thought all of these people were stereotypes Webb and Wilson as "Patrick Quentin" do manage to pull off a couple of surprising twists, invert many of the stereotyped relationships, and come up with two well earned surprises in the finale

The best of the characters turn out to be Mirabelle Rue, the diva leading actress with a predilection for swigging from her brandy bottle during rehearsal breaks; her leading man Conrad Wessler, Austrian stage star with the deep, dark secret; and Wolfgang, Conrad's step-brother under Dr. Lenz' care at the Thespian Hospital. The story mainly revolves around these three and their relationship with each other and the other cast members.

Often Peter and Iris seem to be supporting players in their own story even though Peter narrates the book. He spends many pages mulling over his past and reminding us of the trauma of the fire and his wife's death and threatening to hit the bottle more than he does facing the consequences of two deaths in his cast.  Also, the mantra of "the show must go on" seems to infect everyone to the point that the entire company feels it necessary to withhold info from the police so that the play can open and be the success they know it will be. A bit too much even for a theater mystery. To these people the world of the stage is more important than the real world. It gets to be a bore. I only wanted to know who the villain was and why all the sabotage was inflicted on the production.

INNOVATIONS: While the subplots often are tiresome the oddities of the plot keep me engaged. The mystery of the ghost in the mirror is solved fairly quickly, proving to be both simple and utterly creepy when Dr. Lenz explains how the culprit uses the prank to trigger Conrad's fragile psyche and his continuing PTSD from the plane crash.

I especially enjoyed how Mirabelle's alcoholism turns out to be something utterly different primarily because the enabling of an alcoholic really bothered me even for a 1938 novel.  It's a given that heavy drinking seemed to be used way too often for comic effect in days gone by (I guess in some stupid sit-coms it still is) but I still have problems with that trope, especially people tolerating it and enabling the drinker. Webb & Wilson try to make Mirabelle a sympathetic figure who uses alcohol as a refuge but I was glad when it was all proven a sham, that she was seeking refuge in a bottle of something else for a problem that never occurred to me. Also, her relationship with Gerard has a twist in store as well. The Patrick Quentin mystery novels often has clever twists that come out of nowhere and transform something that seemed trite into a refreshingly original idea.

Another nifty plot element is the bizarre murder method used to dispatch a condescending blackmailer, an absolutely gruesome way to go and surely a contribution of Richard Wilson Webb, the lover of the macabre of this writing duo. Also worth mentioning -- Dr. Lenz prescribes acting as a therapy for his patient Wolfgang von Brandt as an ironic means to cure an identity crisis. While this seems radical or far-fetched when all is revealed in the finale (the supreme surprise of the novel) it turns out to be yet another bit of misdirection that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Ultimately, Dr. Lenz turns out to be the detective of the novel. In solving the mystery of the ghost in the mirror he explains why it was necessary to take place in the specific dressing room. He also spots two blackmailers with varying reasons for threatening cast members and the playwright, and in the final pages reveals the dangerous murderer hiding in the company. Peter does very little detecting and in fact Iris  proves herself better as a detective than Peter in this outing. Yet another surprise in the novel.

THINGS I LEARNED: For much of the book Iris continues to press Peter into marriage.  Whenever there is a break in rehearsal she prods him to run down to City Hall to get the license or to run off for the weekend to get hitched. After Peter is bonked on the head by one of the many villains in the story she finally decides to take matters into her own hands. She basically kidnaps him while he is unconscious and drives to Elkton, Maryland.

 

Why so far from New York?  Because as I learned after some fidgety Googling Elkton was the "Wedding Capital of the East Coast" for decades.  Over 10,000 marriages were performed on average each year during the 1910s and 1920s, less during the 1930s due to a change in state law.  For decades there was no waiting period after a marriage license was issued in Elkton and people would get married within hours.  But in 1938 -- oddly enough the year Puzzle for Players was published -- Maryland enacted a state law that enforced a 48 hour waiting period after a license was issued putting a quick end to the "quickie wedding."  To read about this town, that at one time had 20 wedding chapels on its Main Street, and the many celebrities who took advantage of the quickie wedding see this article in Time magazine from Feb 21, 2021.

EASY TO FIND?  A rare "Yes, indeed!" is the answer for a change, my friends. This book was reprinted multiple times in a variety of paperback editions from the 1940s all the way into the 1980s.  Nearly all those are priced well under $15 each. There are a handful of the US or UK hardcover editions as well. Obviously those will be more expensive.  A few collector's copies are out there as well with DJs and are the most expensive, of course. A digital version probably exists too.  But I never bother looking. Someone will most likely point it out in a comment below. Happy hunting!

Greymarsh - Arthur J. Rees

THE STORY:  Sir Roger Liskard and his wife Linda are having a house party. The timing couldn't have been worse. As the guests arrive at Greymarsh, the Liskard's imposing house on the Norfolk coast, a storm is brewing. With the threat of abnormally high tides and surging waves indicating an impending flood the talk turns to Gothic legends, murder and the concept of Justice. Henry Liskard, Roger's brother and a painter of some renown grows weary of the talk which morphs into a legal debate. Henry leaves and takes his art world friends to his studio located in a tower that long ago served as a lighthouse for the area. There they view Henry's strange portrait of a nun contemplating an open grave while a figure representing the Devil watches from a thorny bush in the background. The three friends display reactions ranging from impressed to repulsed. Henry's studio is filled with similar paintings of macabre subject manner.  Eventually, the men leave Henry to retire for the night in his bedroom just off of the studio. He does not escort them out alarming the men who think he ought to lock the door. Henry assures them no one ever comes out to the tower and he often leaves the only entrance unlocked at night. The next morning Henry is found shot dead.  The door to the tower is open as is the door leading to his studio-bedroom. The guests realize almost immediately that due to the raging storm and the tsunami-like waves that flooded the grounds that they are all now on an isolated island and that one of them must have shot Henry.

THE CHARACTERS: After the lengthy exposition dealing with the house party and the several guests who attend, the story focuses on only a handful of people:  Roger & Linda Liskard; Herbert Lintwell, a lawyer who attends the house party; Avis Ormond, a village girl with whom Henry was enamored; George Rumsden, a sailor in love with Avis; Avis' father, a blind fisherman and Creeke, deaf-mute companion and aide to Avis' father. Colwin Grey and his lawyer friend Richard Haldham (the narrator of Part II of the novel) are summoned by Hugh Templeton, friend to Roger Liskard and uncle to Haldham. Templeton wants someone to clear the name of Roger Liskard who is a primary suspect in the shooting of Henry.

The night of the murder Templeton was awakened by a piercing scream coming from the vicinity of the tower.  He went out into the storm and found Roger Liskard a few feet from the tower's main entrance. He had apparently fallen and severely injured himself.  But Roger was also raving and terrified of what he had seen.  He talked about expiation using that word specifically and asked Templeton to make sure Linda knew what happened.  His final words before passing out into unconsciousness was a rant:  "No, no! I will not believe it!  The dead cannot return!" Templeton is both puzzled and frightened by those seemingly insane remarks. That rant alone is reason enough to have Colwin Grey find out exactly went on in the tower the night of the shooting.

Colwin Grey wastes no time in his investigations.  He is of the intuitive school of detection but also has superhuman intelligence and a wide knowledge on a variety of arcane topics. We learn, for example, that in his boyhood he was fascinated with seaweed and made a study of it.  This, of course, comes in extremely handy when he finds a piece of "blood red" seaweed near the tower.  It turns out to be of the Rhodophyta division, seaweed that can only grow in deep ocean water and may be an indication that someone traveling from the sea brought it up on shore.  Haldham and Templeton find it hard to believe that anyone would be mad enough to set out in a boat during the storm in order to gain access to the makeshift island created by the severe weather. It would've been a suicide mission. Grey is sure that someone did visit the tower by boat and that they suffered the consequences of the rash decision by being swallowed up by he sea.

Through subtle manipulation of villagers and playing into their love of gossip Grey learns of Henry's love of women. They served as his models for his paintings and the stories include strong intimations they were more than just models. Grey is also the first to notice that the partially hidden face of the nun in the painting still on the easel the night of Henry's death resembles Linda Liskard. This fact opens a whole Pandora's box of motives ranging from jealousy to revenge. This coupled with the fact that both Linda and Roger interrupted Lintwell in his investigation of the tower the day after the murder adds another level of suspense in a tale that begins to grow ever more complex.

We know from one of the earliest chapters that Henry enjoys meeting Avis in secret out by the coast where he sketches her and they talk of life in the village. Lately Avis has withdrawn from the world and is often seen wandering the marshlands and spending time in the cemetery at Henry's grave. Grey is concerned for Avis and her morose moods. He says, "Her grief strikes me as rather excessive--in the circumstances. No; the reason lies deeper than [grief]." Eventually he will confront her and manage to get her to confide in him, thus clearing up the one or two puzzling aspects of Henry's death. Grey is convinced the murderer is dead and tells Avis this thinking it will console her. But finding proof of his theories will take time and considerable effort.

ATMOSPHERE:  Greymarsh (1927) is populated with brooding characters haunted by the coastline and the power of the unpredictable sea. Rees' writing is at its best when he is describing the fury of the ocean and the storm that was such a threat to the partygoers at the Liskard home.  The macabre and the unexplained are also fascinating subjects for Rees. The first half of the story is a Gothic novel in miniature what with the florid descriptions of the sea, the legend of a murdered monk's skull that was supposed to remain in the tower lest all descendants of Greymarsh fall under its curse, and a story of an impossible murder that took place in Africa related to the men at a key moment during the party. Rees skillfully manages to insert these vignettes into the story’s framework creating both an anxious atmosphere and setting up a clever segue into the role of policemen and lawyers in murder cases.

That African murder tale serves as the springboard for a debate about justice and truth-seeking and will come back to haunt the partygoers when Henry is found dead.  Mortimer, a caustic art critic, reminds everyone of Lintwell's challenge to find a killer among an isolated group of suspects. Lintwell said if he had been in Africa he would never have allowed the seven men to leave until he found the culprit. Likewise, Mortimer says they are all in a similar situation: it seems as though one of their isolated group is a killer. This sets off Herbert Lintwell, an arrogant self-righteous lawyer, on a path of amateur detective work that will prove extremely detrimental to Roger, Linda, Avis and Templeton.

INNOVATIONS:  The detective work -- both from Lintwell in the first half and Grey in the second half -- is engaging and modeled after the old fair play techniques. The reader sees everything each man sees, he knows their thoughts, too. Nothing is held back. However, Lintwell is a sloppy detective and makes rash judgments. A clever reader will be able to note his mistakes prior to Grey revealing them to Haldham and Templeton.

Grey, on the other hand, is the "Transcendent Detective", as Carolyn Wells liked to call the sleuths of this era in detective fiction. He knows more than the average man, sees more, and is skilled at manipulating people into telling him more than they should ever tell. The clue of the seaweed is probably the highlight of the book. It's simultaneously bizarre and amusing, especially when Grey remarks that studying seaweed was his boyhood hobby. Later, Haldham accidentally finds a revolver by stepping on it in a pile of seaweed. Seaweed is key to unravelling the mysteries!

Northeaster by Winslow Homer (1895)
via Metropolitan Museum of Art

QUOTES: "And now? The sea was wreaking fresh wickedness. [...] In its unstable heart lurked treachery, and implacable hatred of mankind."

"...the encircling sea had seemed a joke, but it wore another aspect now, relentless as fate, impassable as time. The sea held them all there captive, until it thought fit to let them go."

"There is no room for sentiment or gentlemanly feelings where murder is concerned."

"The revelation of the likeness in the studio impressed me most, though I did not see that it carried far. And yet, in that veiled and enigmatic picture, the key of the problem might be concealed"

"A murderer has one deed of violence to repent, but a fool has to atone for his whole life."

Avis has a monologue that includes these pithy exclamations:  "The sea is worse than cruel. Cruelty does not matter so much, because everything in life is cruel. The sea is not only cruel--it is wicked as well. There is nothing it loves so much as to wreck ships and drown men. It is a place of ghosts..."

THE AUTHOR:  Arthur John Rees (1872–1942) was born in Melbourne, Australia.  In his early career he wrote for Australian newspapers including Melbourne Age and New Zealand Herald.  Sometime in his 20s he traveled to England where he settled. His first two detective novels were written in collaboration with John Reay Watson. In 1919 he wrote his first solo novel The Shrieking Pit lauded by Barzun & Taylor in A Catalogue of Crime (1989, revised) as "a first rate novel...distinguished from its fellows by an absolutely steady forward march through a variety of clues and contradictions."  I've read this admirable novel and it strikes me as being heavily influenced by Trent's Last Case (1913) even to the inclusion of a similar clue involving missing shoes and a young man and young woman lying in order to protect each other. After a brief series of novels featuring Colwin Grey, Rees introduced his new policeman detective, Inspector Luckcraft, who would feature in seven more mystery novels from 1926 through 1940.

Colwin Grey Detective Books
The Threshold of Fear (1925)
Simon of Hangletree (1926) - U.S. title The Unquenchable Flame (1926)
Greymarsh (1927)
The Investigations of Colwin Grey (1932) - collection of 8 stories and 2 novellas

 

The Croaking Raven - Gladys Mitchell

THE STORY: Despite its gruesome deaths by falling and crushing in a Norman castle The Croaking Raven (1966) is very much like a 21st century mystery. You know the kind:  tea parties and bakeries and gossipy characters, one of whom has an unusual profession. Like a tour guide of a castle who turns into an amateur sleuth when someone falls down a flight of stairs and dies.

It's Hamish Gavin's tenth birthday and for his present he has demanded that his family rent a castle in the advertisement he found in a local newspaper.  They do so and off they all go along with Dame Beatrice Bradley in tow.  Part of the lease requires the renters to open the grounds to visitors twice a week for four or five hours. Hamish can't wait to turn their rental property into a tourist trap. He mans the card table and collects the admission fee of a half crown, charges another shilling for parking cars in the courtyard and persuades his policeman father Robert Gavin, also a talented sketch artist, to whip up some souvenir drawings for yet another money making opportunity. All goes well until they start getting requests to see the bloodstains and are pestered with jokey queries about the ghost.

Bloodstains? Ghost? Did someone die in the castle? And how long ago was that?

Yes, indeed there was a death. Tom Dysey fell down the stairs the evening following a dreary party two years ago. And the rumors of a ghost are not just stories when the renters hear singing at night coming from within the walls and Hamish sees a white clothed figure appear in the dining room then slowly shrink and disappear into the floor. Is the castle truly haunted?  Hamish, his mother Laura, and Dame Beatrice turn sleuthing ghostbusters to find out what exactly is going on in the Dysey estate. Not much later after they settle in another person falls to his death.

CHARACTERS:  There's quite a large cast here and nearly everyone is a Dysey forcing Dame Beatrice and the others to refer to nearly everyone by their first name. There's Tom, the first victim of death by falling, and his brothers Eustace and Cyril.  Cyril's wife whose first name I don't even recall because she's always referred to as "Cyril's wife" nearly every time in order to avoid confusion with the other Mrs. Dysey (widow of Tom) whose first name is Henrietta. She goes by Etta but she's rarely called Mrs. Dysey because another Henrietta turns up and she also claims to be a Mrs. Dysey.  Who exactly is she supposed to be married to?  Tom?  Eustace?  We never find out the truth about this other Henrietta until the final third of the book. This other Henrietta appears only once in the story as a comic figure. She is a tourist who claims to be psychic and refuses to pay admission to the castle as she is a member of the historical society and she should be exempt.  This second Henrietta may appear only once but her persona hovers over all the proceedings.

Then there are the Carters who we also learn late in the book are related to the Dyseys because the grandmother was born Charlotte Dysey and is the great aunt of all the other Dyseys. And did I forget Bonnamy Dysey?  Henrietta Dysey (Tom's widow, that is) had a memorial plaque in his name placed on the outer walls of the castle and everyone assumes he's dead. But is he really?

Chillingham Castle courtyard,
supposedly the most haunted
castle in the UK

The tangled web of Dyseys and Carters, two mysterious deaths and an absent relative make up only a small sample of the many unanswered riddles. Dame Beatrice wants to make sense of it all but it will take a lot of intense questioning and probing to unravel the skeins of ambiguity. Not many people are willing to cooperate until the second, in some cases third, confrontation with the formidable Beatrice Lestrange Bradley.

We get a cameo from Jonathan Bradley (the Dame's younger son) and his cipher of a wife Deborah, too.  Jonathan helps explain the mystery of the ghost and in so doing uncovers a secret passage. Not a real spoiler as this happens very early in the book. The secret passage plays a very large part in the story.

The best characters in any Gladys Mitchell mystery are the supporting players.  I will mention Percy Bellairs, the gardener at the castle and Mrs. Dysey (Cyril's wife) as two of the most interesting and intriguing of this rather large cast.  And Hamish is an utter delight. Precocious to be sure, as most of Mitchell's child characters usually are, but delightful nonetheless.  Mitchell was a former schoolteacher and you can tell her love of children whenever they appear in her books.  They are almost all infectiously affable.  Sadly, he disappears with his father for the bulk of the book. Robert and Hamish both return at the end and luckily mother Laura (secretarial assistant/business associate to Mrs. Beadley for many of the novels) has a surprise for him when she reveals the secret of the ghost in the final paragraphs. It's a tidy and heartwarming way to end the novel.

Tom Dysey falls down a newel stairway
or spiral staircase to modern readers

INNOVATIONS:  Detection occurs in The Croaking Raven but much of it take place offstage, peripherally mentioned and then discussed after the fact at length in wordy dialogue laden passages. For example: Why don't we follow Dame Beatrice into the priest's hole and watch her train her flashlight as she explores the space and then lands her light on the second corpse that dies by falling? Instead we get these two sentences: "So saying, she ducked under the low doorway and made for the steps. It was a long time before she reappeared." Considering Mitchell's predilection for outré plot elements, legends, ghosts, and hauntings this was a huge missed opportunity for added creepiness. Nearly all of the book is devoted to lengthy Q&A sessions that are often interrupted forcing Dame Beatrice to seek out individuals two or three times to pester them again for the questions still unanswered.

I must mention one thing that I marvel at when I read a Gladys Mitchell mystery novel. She is a master at rendering regional dialects. Never does she ridicule speech patterns or odd vocabulary, it is always done with authenticity and respect. No other writer of crime fiction is as skilled at this as Gladys Mitchell. Truly! I've read hundred of books with phonetic dialects and 90% are just wretchedly mimicked (revealing more about the author's sense of hearing than accurate vocal inflections) or an utter mockery of the dialect. Mitchell loves the rhythm, the elisions, and the rich and unusual vocabulary and slang. Reading the dialogue of Bellairs, the gossipy gardener and Cyril's wife, an angry woman whose speech always reveals her tone and hidden frustrations, were for me the best parts of this novel. I could definitely hear their voices as I read those passages.

Only the final third of the novel really delivers the goods. Much of the detective work is surmising about primogeniture, birthright, birth order in the Dysey family and trying to secure a motive for the two deaths of the Dysey brothers.  Is it a greedy fortune hunter?  Is it revenge for the "bastard" child Henry whose parentage is never really known until the final pages? All the familial rehash, genealogy and talk of who will inherit got to be dreary. Only when the Raven's Hoard is mentioned do things finally pick up. This is a legend about a hidden treasure stowed away by Jesuits during the late 18th century. Then a bible is stolen, and returned mysteriously, rudely dumped in a pig sty. Soon Dame Beatrice is off on another puzzle solving adventure that will involve a strange code found in underlined passages in a text book on household care.  All these odd plot maneuvers are typical of Gladys Mitchell, reminding me again of the strange gimmicks in contemporary cozy mystery novels.

Overall,  The Croaking Raven is kind of a mixed bag. As usual, Mitchellesque epigraphs head each chapter. This time she selects passages from a variety of obscure Scottish folk songs to hint at the content of each chapter. Even with these atmospheric touches, attempting to inject eerie frissons with their allusions to ghosts and violent death, The Croaking Raven meanders along with intermittent thrills and a few surprises until its somewhat predictable end. The villains are not a surprise, some of the mysteries fizzle out, others never fully explained, and the finale seems too pat. I'd recommend this only to those who are Mitchell completists.

EASY TO FIND? Not really. I bought my copy decades ago and I've not seen one since. There is no US edition and I know of no paperback reprint since it was first published in 1966. But! I'm offering mine for sale online and just lowered the price. It's the only copy currently for sale.

IN BRIEF: Murder in the Procession - Leslie Cargill

Back in 2021 I read Death Goes by Bus by Leslie Cargill which was his first foray in detective fiction.  I wasn't impressed.  But I had bought a slew of Cargill's books because many of them were the only copy being sold and all of them were fairly cheap. I figured one of them had to be better than his first attempt at a mystery novel.  Lo and behold!  Murder in the Procession (1937) proves that Cargill did not have the usual sophomore slump. In fact, it is much better on multiple levels -  in writing, plotting, characters, and sheer originality.

In this second novel Cargill introduces a new series character who would replace his less than interesting, supercilious and thoroughly irritating puzzle maven Morrison Sharpe. Major Mosson in no amateur sleuth like Sharpe luckily. Instead, he is a Scotland Yard administrator who after being permitted by the C.I.D. to assist in the investigation of what appears to be a political assassination enlists all manner of experts from ballistics and armory men to a woman who works in a cinema studio. Late in the book when Mosson is being lectured to by a French policeman who has figured out how the assassin disguised his rifle we get some insight into just what kind of lawman Mosson is:

Here he represented the very spirit of the British police system, its integrity, obstinacy, blind reliance in established principles of justice and all that had meant from the time of the Bow Street Runners to the establishment of [Hugh] Trenchard's famous [Metropolitan Police] college.

Two elements make this detective novel all the more intriguing.  It is set during the coronation of George VI in May 1937. There is a parade to take place with an assortment of international VIPS in attendance. Amazingly, during the parade in front of thousands of witnesses General Vincent Parminster is shot dead.  The gunman managed to kill the general without anyone seeing a weapon of any type and escaped promptly after the shooting. Who had accomplished all that so seamlessly?

The bulk of the book is spent on painstaking detective work using news reel footage to examine the exact moment of the shooting. Several different films from news cameras shot from various angles are reviewed repeatedly at a local cinema studio. Phyllis Hulme, a Jill of all trades in the world of photography, is one of the most fascinating characters in the book. She can develop film, enhance the contrast, edit, enlarge and anything else Mosson and his crew of policemen need done. She is instrumental in providing most of the best footage to help ferret out where the gunshot came from.  

You may be thinking that this all rings a bell, right?  "But this is just like the Zapruder film!" Yes, indeed. What a prophetic book. A detective novel with a fictional plot written two and a half decades prior to that tragedy. A novel that seems to have predicted how one man's amateur movie was key in the police investigation of the JFK assassination. I was floored by this eerie coincidence.

The method in Murder in the Procession is, however, far more bizarre than a sniper shooting from a tower.  The killer was in disguise and had also managed to cleverly hide the murder weapon. It's all rather ingenious reminding me of another detective novel by the obscure American writer Morrell Massey. But I better not mention the title because it will give a huge hint to the solution.

In addition to this impossible crime of sorts there is some political satire about Eastern Europe, a diplomatic imbroglio involving a delegate from the fictional country of Baltnia.  Some minor complications in that subplot but thankfully nothing as baroque as one of Anthony Hope's Ruritarain novels.  Eventually I was a bit let down when after the riddle of the murder weapon is solved and the murderer is apprehended we learn that the killing was rooted in a motive as old as the hills.  Ah well, there had to be one flaw in this almost perfect book.

Those interested in the full story of Murder in the Procession will be hard pressed to locate a copy.  I recently sold my copy on eBay, the only copy I know of in existence. There are unfortunately no other copies for sale online. Try your luck at a library or interlibrary loan.