The Man Who Looked Back - Joan Fleming

THE STORY:  Anti-social Roy Unithorne has personal issues with the entire world. He dislikes his pleasant amiable, utterly harmless wife, Amy and is resentful of her friendships, especially with their boarder Islay Brown, a nurse at a local hospital. Roy begins to fantasize about Islay, imagining her a possible romantic partner. But she is repelled by him. Roy decides to "improve" himself by beginning an exercise regimen running along the beach every day.  Islay finds this amusing and she and Amy talk about Roy and his fitness kick.  Then Amy disappears.  Is she dead or did she leave Roy?  He tells two different stories to two different groups of people. To his new landlady and her daughter he says that Amy died suddenly. To the people he rents his home where he and Amy lived he says his wife became ill and went to live with a relative in Scotland. Why the two stories? Is either true? What really happened to Amy?

THE CHARACTERS: The Man Who Looked Back (1951) is Fleming's fourth novel, the second to be published in the US and it indicates a new style of crime novel for her, one that she would perfect in the 1960s. Like The Deeds of Dr. Deadcert (1955), her eighth novel, it is an inverted crime novel focusing on a criminally minded individual with a narrative emphasis on his thoughts and behavior. We mostly follow Roy's point of view though we do also get interruptions with the introduction of Islay and her fiancé Joe who become accidental amateur sleuths determined to find out the truth about what happened to Amy. Other minor characters also appear in various interludes. Fleming drops very subtle clues in these sequences about what happened to Amy Unithorne.

Roy is one of those fascinatingly odd characters that Fleming does so well in making believably eccentric and simultaneously creeping out the reader with his obsessions that ultimately will bring about his downfall. Living in his own world and fancying himself the object of desire of nearly every woman he encounters Roy goes about constructing plans for these women.  When they fail he sees the women at fault never himself, constantly perceiving his interactions only through his own skewed imagination without ever seeing those women as who they truly are.

Joan Fleming
(publicity photo circa 1966)

Lucy Shiplake, his landlady's daughter, is perhaps even more fascinating than Roy because we first learn that she finds Roy extremely odd and yet wants to find out why he seems so unhappy.  She makes him her "project" testing the waters by first teaching him to how to play chess, getting progressively closer to Roy with each new discovered pastime.

And yet Roy is still resentful and cannot appreciate Lucy's kindnesses. He has been snubbed by Islay who he foolishly proposed to in a scene that has a surprise for both Roy and the reader. He feels humiliated and explodes into one of his nasty fits and forever changes Islay's opinion of him.

Interspersed between the story of Roy and his women, we get several scenes with his boarders the Joneses who are baffled about the alternate story Roy gave them about Amy; marvelous scenes involving Roy and his landlady Mrs. Shiplake resulting in his destruction of a curtain that has terrible consequences for Roy and the Shiplakes; Joe and Islay's amateur detective work; and the late introduction of a police duo known only as Inspector A and Sergeant B who begrudgingly find themselves conducting what at first seems a routine missing person case but turns into a surprise murder investigation.

INNOVATIONS:  Apart from the unusual shifts in point of view I found Fleming's clever insertions of clues related to Amy's disappearance to be the most original part of the story.  And several amusing scenes dealing with the Unithorne's daffy neighbor Mrs. Parker and her obsession with Amy's cat Arthur who has been prowling around the local coal delivery company. Mrs. Parker is determined to capture Arthur and take him in as her pet.  She is worried about the animal which seems to be wandering around aimlessly taunting both her and the workers at the coal company.  Arthur enjoys spending an awful lot of time in two locations: in the branches of a tree overlooking Roy's flower and herb garden, and on the high roof of a building overseeing the coal cars at the factory. These scenes prove to be Fleming's most clever method of slyly indicating that the cat was a witness to some foul deed involving Amy.

Also, the book has a "howdunnit" element in that it takes the entire length of the book to discover exactly how Amy was killed and the body disposed of. In fact, there are multiple deaths and a couple of attempted murders. Although the clues related to Roy's highly unusual method are not really inserted into the story until well past the halfway mark Fleming has some unconventional scenes between Joe, a university medical student specializing in forensic medicine, and his mentor Dr. Giles Bangor, in which they discuss the possibility of poison. Suspecting Roy to be a murderer they indulge in some armchair psychology to figure out exactly what kind of poison he would select. Usually, I find this kind of pop psych to be risible in works of fiction, but here Fleming makes it seem not only logical but thoroughly believable.

For those who enjoy the works of Minette Walters, Ruth Rendell and even Patricia Highsmith I would highly recommend The Man Who Looked Back as an fine example of psychological suspense that those three other writers were masters of.  Joan Fleming in her early career was just as innovative as those three better known writers. Her work is unjustly ignored these days. At the height of her popularity when the books were first published she received accolades from fellow mystery writers turned reviewers like Anthony Boucher and Dorothy B. Hughes as well as numerous newspaper reviewers both in the US and in her native England. She ought to have remained in print as long as Highsmith, IMO. Luckily, her books were reprinted by the thousands in mass market paperbacks and you can still find most of her books, including this one, for cheap both in brick and mortar stores and online. Do yourself a favor and check her out!

The Curiosity of Mr. Treadgold - Valentine Williams

Horace Bowl Treadgold, third generation tailor in a family owned Savile Row clothing business, has two hobbies: philately and criminology. People with problems that should be police matters seek out Treadgold because they don't wish for police intrusion which is usually all about preserving their reputation and avoiding bad publicity. The Curiosity of Mr. Treadgold (1937) is a collection of nine short stories and one novella with the plots involving theft, disappearances, blackmail and murder. Previously in William's output Treadgold made his debut in the novel Dead Man Manor (1936) set in Quebec. He also appears in a later book, The Skeleton in the Cupboard.

Treadgold is yet another private inquiry agent in a long lone of characters modeled after Sherlcok Holmes.  Nearly all of the stories involve the kind of inductive reasoning Conan Doyle made famous with his iconic detective.  Not many of Williams' stories, however, are at all innovative or unique. The most original aspects are Treadgold's unusual profession and clientele which take him out of England to North America on occasion and his equally unusual habit of frequently quoting his favorite work of fiction -- Tristam Shandy, the 18th century picaresque novel by Laurence Sterne, a work that no one to my knowledge reads anymore or is even familiar with. Tristam Shandy is the Bible of H.B. (as he prefers to be called). George Duckett, H.B.'s lawyer and the narrator of all the stories, is rightly irritated each time another Sterne quote pops out of the Tailor's mouth.  And they happen in every story, often more than once. By the time a reader has finished the collection he may feel that he has read Tristam Shandy in its entirety.

A brief rundown of the stories follows.

"The Red Bearded Killer" - The title character is attacking women with a knife. Most are just frightened, one is murdered. A survivor of the attacks tells H. B. that in addition to his vibrant red beard the assailant wore a strangely colored overcoat in a pattern of green and brown plaid on a mustard background. H.B. uses his knowledge of clothing construction to explain the odd disguise and easily finds the knife-wielding maniac. The crime's motive is blasé.

"The Singing Kettle" - A strange sound is heard prior to death of a woman's wealthy uncle. he appears to have died of natural causes but the niece suspects the sinister servants in his household did him in. Daily delivery of ice cream to household is the major clue to how the death was in fact a cruelly executed murder.  Reminiscent of a similar clue in a John Dickson Carr novel published in 1941 and an American mystery writer's debut published in 1940.  Cannot reveal the title of either book without spoiling the surprise murder method. Unsure if Williams actually beat these two writers at using this method as I have yet to encounter any earlier instances prior to 1937. This may genuinely be an original idea for 1937.

"The Blue Ushabti" - the requisite Egyptology story of the collection. I think every crime short story collection had to have a tale that involved mummies of artifacts form ancient Egypt. Blame Christie and Van Dine. This was a dull story about the title object. A theft and switcheroo occurs during a blackout and  I couldn't help but think of a similar incident that occurs in the classic French Legion adventure novel, Beau Geste (1924). Despite the Egyptology background this is a prosaic unimaginative story.

"The Dot-and-Carry Case" - title refers to a nightclub. First truly interesting story in the collection. H.B. questions a police case listed as a murder/suicide and almost closed as such. Married found shot in his car and a vulgar showgirl is shot in her temple. Police say she killed her lover then herself. But the man's wife doesn't buy any of it. She loved her devoted husband and cannot believe that he would betray her by having an affair with a lowly showgirl, especially this particular showgirl known for her loose and flirtatious manner with a string of lovers. Leila Trent is described as a guttersnipe (!). She also ran with a drug using crowd and was a dealer herself. Story involves stolen identity and masquerade. The whole story is rather well done if a bit rushed in the finale.  I liked the scenes with Leila's roommate, Edna, a well drawn example of a uneducated entertainer who nevertheless has a good understanding of human nature.

"The Case of the Black F" - Mangled body of man found at foot of a train bridge cannot be identified because if s face is crushed. Excellent detection in this one once again using H.B.'s profession of tailoring.  He does a through examination of the man's clothes, especially in the trouser turn-ups, or cuffs as he tells the police they are called in America. Despite all markings having been removed H.B. determines where the suit was made and comes up with an idea of the kind of man who would purchase such clothing.  He immediately notices that the clothes do not fit the corpse? Is this man really Axel Roth as his personal effects seem to indicate? Some knowledge of Portuguese and German will aid the reader as they do H.B. when he realizes cryptic notations in the man's diary are not in English. First story in the book about spies and espionage which were the primary interest of Valentine Williams.

"The Strange Disappearance of Miss Edith Marless" - Blackmail of a woman addicted to gambling. H.B. consulted by the husband to spare them embarrassment and ruinous publicity. Involves rather obvious masquerade which I spotted instantly. Somewhat innovative but another extremely rushed finale. The story is all incident with all the clues delivered in the hastily delivered two page ending. Most of the stories in the book fit into this formula. Williams cannot maintain suspense in the short story form.

"Donna Laura's Diamond" - Missing princess, cursed diamond ring, decapitations. H.B. searches for Gemma Malatesta who was most likely kidnapped by professional crooks who want the diamond as ransom. Very action oriented, like an American pulp magazine story. Another slapdash ending with multiple car wrecks and slaughter of the villains.

"The Murder of Blanche Medloe" - Flighty Mrs. Medloe checks into Hardmore MAnsions wiiht Frank Barkley.  She doesn't check out. Maid finds Mrs. M strangled on a couch in her hotel room. Barkely is gone, but his luggage is left behind. Third story in which H.B.'s profession comes into play. Lots of Holmesian induction based solely on where the clothes came from and their wear and tear. Another Holmes touch is H. B.'s knowledge of exotic tobacco and he notes that the tobacco "silt" he finds in the luggage and clothes indicate a Boer brand from South America. This story is well plotted with an outlandish coincidence incorprated into the story as an example of how true detection can often go astray when the improbable and unpredictable occurs. A luggage thief steals the case of the murder victim's ex-husband! Very enjoyable and unusual story.  Perhaps my favorite of the book.

"The Man with Two Left Feet". This is the story which inspired the illustration on the cover of the US first edition (shown at top of this post). A Russian scholar is bludgeoned in his study and money is robbed from a safe. Young translator Christopher "Kit" Kendrick who was working with the professor is arrested. His girlfriend, another Russian translator and secretary to the professor, believes Kendrick is innocent.  Much circumstantial evidence does not work in Ki'ts favor. H.B. investigates with permission of police. He finds two left footprints, at scene of crime outdoor near a brick wall.  Also finss the murder weapon - a French bayonet belonging to Kendrick who has a collection of war memorabilia.  Uh-oh! Things do not look good for Kit Kendrick. Clearly someone wants him to take the blame. Nicely done story with some extremely unusual business involving war veterans and amputees. My second favorite tale in the book for the relationship between Kit and his girlfrined and the innovative portion involving the search for the title character.

The final story, Murder Stalked at Sea Nest, although at novella length sadly is the most formulaic of the lot. There are two deaths but the plot is overloaded with cliché bits like footprints, a tennis shoe lace, a hastily burned note with partially legible writing and some business with a phonograph record. One of the victims is a blackmailer.  The only interesting thing really is that George Duckett, the narrator/lawyer, takes part in the action much more as a sidekick detective rather than simply observing and reporting what took place.

Interestingly, this is not as hard to find as I thought it would be. My copy is currently for sale in my eBay listings and it's the one of five available with a DJ, also the cheapest copy offered for sale online with a DJ. If you are interested in reading this book, there are a handful of affordable unjacketed copies out there in both the US and UK editions. The UK edition, by the way, is titled Mr. Treadgold Cuts In.

FIRST BOOKS: Wheels in the Forest - John Newton Chance

"Cars, Siddons, cars! The place bristles with 'em. A Morris Oxford, an M.G., and two Rolls-Royces. The solution to this problem is in those cars."

 Emblazoned across the DJ front panel of the first edition of Wheels in the Forest (1935) is a laudatory quote from the pseudonymous crime fiction reviewer of The Observer, Torquemada, praising the debut of its author John Newton Chance. Torquemada (aka Edward Powys Mathers) was notoriously scathing in his reviews, nothing else would be expected from someone who chose as his pen name the identity of the cruel torturer of the Spanish Inquisition. To find a positive review from him, let alone a rave, was a rarity and I was tantalized. I came across a copy of Wheels in the Fortune in my book hunting and saw several positive quotes attributed to Torquemada related to Chance's first few mystery novels and I succumbed to the spell of Gollancz's marketing scheme. Could these books really be so good that the toughest detective novel critic of the Golden Age thought them exceptional?  For once the hype proved correct.  Wheels in the Forest is a corker. It delivers the goods on so many levels. And I'm already eager to try more of Chance's books from the 1930s and 1940s.

I'm especially surprised that this first novel turned out so well because the first Chance mystery novel I read (decades ago) was Death Stalks the Cobbled Square (1944), aka The Screaming Fog, which has the distinction of being one of Chance's few known locked room mysteries.  I remember nothing about the book other than that it was one of the few in which the author himself appears as narrator and acts as a character in the story. Nothing really new there -- Willard Huntington Wright was doing that back in the late 1920s as "S. S. Van Dine" in all of the Philo Vance novels. Then sometime in February of this year I read one of Chance's much later books called The Traditional Murders (1983) which based on the title I thought would be a fun retro-homage to the Golden Age. Frankly, it was one of the worst mystery novels I've read in a long time. Utterly forgettable, often stupid, filled with stock characters of the worst stereotypes, and peppered with inane gratuitous sex scenes.  I had to find out what happened to this writer who was so lauded when he first appeared to the world of mystery readers. 

He must've just gotten lazy and money-grubbing easily succumbing to all that publishers felt necessary to sell books because his first novel is nothing like that drecky book from 1983 when Chance was 72 years old. Wheels in the Forest is not only better written, it often feels more like a mainstream novel satirizing village life along the lines of Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm.  As I got deeper into Chance's first mystery the Golden Age writer I kept thinking of was George Bellairs who at one time I liked, but quickly grew tired of when his books all seemed to be utterly formulaic and repetitive.  Like Bellairs Chance employs an author omniscient point of view and allows the reader to know every single character's thoughts.  Chance does a much better job at this than Bellairs and it is one of the book's best strengths and innovative touches.  Every character introduced gets at least one noteworthy scene that not only fully fleshes out that character but advances the story adding layers of suspicion and motivation to the puzzling murder. A pregnant girl's body is found alongside a road in the village of Isle nestled in the New Forest and surrounded by a circuit of roads that attract motor car enthusiasts eager to test out their driving skills and the speed of their cars.

As the epigraph to this review suggests cars play an important part in the solution of the crime. Similar to Freeman Wills Crofts' fascination with train schedules and timetables Chance is a bit obsessed with speeding cars, their mechanics, and the timing of the many cars that were known to be driving on the roads leading to and from the crime scene. In fact, one character - Dennis Lambert - crashes his car into a streetlamp the very night of the murder. That car wreck adds an intriguing mystery to the puzzling nature of where the murdered girl's body was discovered.

 Our detective team consists of belligerent impatient Superintendent "Smutty" Black, his fathead of a sergeant named Siddons, a crew of lower level coppers, and the delightfully eccentric Evelyn DeHavilland who prefers to go by the simple moniker of D. Black enlists D as his unofficial spy in the village and orders him to get the locals talking and to listen carefully, but to never directly ask any questions about the murder. Black tells D: "You're a stranger, starting at an advantage, because you're not used to them. You might notice something that I wouldn't through being used to it."  But later we learn through Black's personal thoughts that he knows D very well from their years spent in the war together and he thinks D to be a fool:

Fools find out things. You can be off your guard with intel-lectual people because they're so wrapped up in themselves that they don't notice anything outside; but with a fool you risk being off your guard and the fool notices the small faults; proving that a fool is not such a fool as he looks.

That talk of fools is also an indicator that Chance was clearly a fan of slapstick comedy. He shows off his love of farce with several scenes of people falling down or otherwise embarrassing themselves in comic bits and gags. In the person of Evelyn DeHavilland alone, a Wodehouse-like fop who embraces eccentricity for its own sake, the comedy is witty and lighthearted. But when the dramatic moments come they are often as shocking as the intrinsic surprises and twists in any mystery plot.

Because we are privy to everyone's thoughts not just those of Black and D, the primary detectives, there are exceptionally well done dramatic vignettes.  In particular, a scene involving a dim-witted motor car garage worker (who through much of the book seems like a stock in trade village idiot) is heartbreaking.  Bill Jupe, the teen aged brother of the murder victim, breaks down in grief late in the story. In his emotional pleas stated in simple language he asks someone why was his sister killed so brutally, that it was so unfair and that he misses her terribly. It's simply written, direct and powerfully affecting. What makes the scene even more affecting is also the most innovative moment of the novel. That open display of grief in turn drastically affects another character in the novel and the book transforms from a whodunnit to an inverted detective novel. Shortly after that scene with Bill, Chance turns his attention on the murderer's thoughts and allows the culprit to basically confess to the reader!

Wheels in the Forest has turned out to be one of the richest, most surprising, and unexpectedly moving detective novels I've read this year. Copies are hard to come by unfortunately. There were three affordable copies for sale (a mix of first editions and later reprints) a few days ago, but after this post was published they all sold within a few days! There’s one left but it’s priced at an exorbitant amount. Good luck finding any other copies!