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.