Exit to Music - Neal Shepherd (aka Nigel Morland)

THE STORY: Chief Inspector Michael "Napper" Tandy attends a party at the home of musician John Farnham for what he thinks will be a private performance of a new composition for piano, violin, cello and clarinet. After being dared to attempt a complicated clarinet passage in the new piece Farnham drops dead. He's been poisoned with strychnine. Everyone is sure that the whisky he drank was poisoned but Tandy proves that Farnham never drank from the glass. How was the poison administered?  Was it that specially ordered bowl of sweet almonds that Farnham was so fond of? Or some other way?

THE CHARACTERS: There certainly are a lot of suspects to choose from and a many of them seem to have strong motives.

Myra Farnham - The victim's young and (of course) beautiful wife who seems to be the object of many of the musicians' attention. She's the only woman in the story which should come as no surprise to those familiar with the "Neal Shepherd" books which tend to deal with realms of übermacho businessmen and maverick scientists and engineers. In this case the world we are visiting is the milieu of contemporary composers of new chamber music. Not one female musician among them. Ugh. But Myra is presented as sensitive, intelligent and a bit complicated.  She is discussed at length rhapsodically by the men but when Tandy
finally interviews her he finds a woman of intelligence, indomitable spirit and a repressed independence.

Felix Hinton - the founder of a modern music quartet (piano, cello, violin, clarinet). He teaches violin to college students and gives private lessons to budding musicians. Not well thought of by the other members of his quartet. He is obsessed with Myra having once been engaged to her but losing her to Farnham, the clarinet player. Felix also has some depression issues and when his violin case reveals a hidden bottle of strychnine he descends into his morass never to return.

Dr. David Wylie - one of Myra's closest friends who has managed to move in with the Farnhams. Tandy soon learns that Wylie was receiving large payments from Farnham related to stock manipulations. Wylie is a gambler both in casinos and in the stock market. His medical case was broken into and the poison used to kill Farnham was certainly taken from a bottle stolen from him. Arrogant, suspicious and his greed knows no bounds. Tandy discovers nearly everyone in the house
was approached by Wylie who asked for loans of large sums of money.

Leslie Farnham - the victim's son.  Currently a 4th year medical student.  He asked for strychnine from Dr. Wylie to experiment with because his toxicology classes were fascinating to him.  That's what he claims. But was he planning to kill? Has a very eccentric religious belief system he calls "New Morality".  Has written a manifesto that Tandy finds among the young man's possessions. Comes across as a religious maniac to Sgt. Holland.  Tandy, however, sees Leslie's extreme beliefs as thoroughly sincere if utterly dispassionate and lacking in humanity. Views his father's death as a just end the result of Divine Intervention for his adultery and betrayal of his first wife, Leslie's mother Lily, who is long dead at the start of the novel.

Brian Tweed - composer who has finagled his way into the Farnham household as a lodger. Pretentious wanna-be, known to mimic the behavior, speech and dress of well known artists, writers and musicians. Still Myra finds him charming and he exploits his rare moments of charm in manipulating others.

Medlicone - Farnham family lawyer who talks with Tandy about the strange will that gave Farnham his wealth and cheated Dr. Wylie out of a fortune he thought he was going to inherit. The lawyer also provides some very interesting details about the odd financial relationship between Farnham and Wylie that seems to have bound Farnham to his lodger.  Also, early in the book and during the music party the lawyer inadvertently reveals the contents of Farnham's will and who will inherit what.

Anton Cheveral - cellist in the quartet. A despicable gossip who enjoys maligning everyone involved in the case. Builds on rumors of Myra's infidelity with two different men and disparges all the musicians, especially Farnham's lack of skill with the clarinet.

Jarvis - butler in the Farnham household.  Devoted to his former mistress Lily Farhman. Myra is treated with disdain by the butler. Slightly sinister in his omniscience of what goes on in the house. His refusal to accept the new Mrs. Farnham gives off a strong Mrs. Danvers vibe. I thought he was a baddie for most of the book.

Douglas Rome - clarinetist in the quartet. He dares Farnham to play the clarinet solo in the piece by composer Holt Linray (who does not appear in story).  When Farnham dies Rome flees the house without anyone noticing him.  Tandy sends police off to locate him.  Rome never appears again in the book.  Odd little plot element that I thought would pan out to a surprise, but nothing really comes of this.

INNOVATIONS: The murder method is diabolical and worthy of John Rhode's complicated death traps. Obviously I'm not going to discuss it. But I will mention that the portion of the book in which Tandy and Holland together review evidence about the whisky glass determining it could not have been used to administer the poison (even though the glass contains enough strychnine to kill five men) is extremely well done.  Overall, there is an emphasis on excellent detective work related to physical evidence.

Morland's fascination with abnormal psychology is on strong display here. By the mid 1940s and beyond this aspect of crime led Morland to write some non-fiction works on criminal pathology. In Leslie Farnham, the victim's son, Morland has created quite a religious zealot. He may remind modern readers of the new crop of neo-conservatives trying to revert Christian beliefs back dozens of centuries to the days of antiquity when God was truly the only Force to reckon with and the laws of men were negligible. Morland also delves into the consequences of men who become obsessed with women and the danger of falling in love and never getting over rejection. Felix Hinton suffers from an obsessive attraction to the victim's widow coupled with severe depression and it leads to his own demise.

Nigel Morland (1905-1986)
(aka Neal Shepherd, John Donavan,
Roger Garnett, et al.)

In the final pages Morland also attempted to introduce a moral dilemma for Tandy in his dual professions. he is not only a policeman but a scientist. Throughout the book some of the characters refer to him as Dr. Tandy. MD or PhD? I was never really sure. Tandy in previous books uses his knowledge of chemistry to help him in solving impossibilities in the murders he investigates.  But in this book he also acts as a physician.  In any case, during one crucial scene a character while recovering from a poisoning attempt and in a delirium re-enacts a conversation with another suspect. This rambling "conversation" reveals the murderer's motivation. Tandy doesn't know how to act on this. Has he eavesdropped? Has he heard this in a capacity as a physician? If so, then it's private and should not be revealed. But can he use this information he has overheard as a policeman to help capture the criminal?

Interesting idea, but I found the whole scene utterly contrived in that an entire conversation is re-enacted in a form of delirium and yet is done lucidly and clearly to deliver all the salient points. Other than that flaw in the story I thought this was the best of the Chief Inspector Tandy detective novels. It's rich with complicated characters, psychology and is teeming with wonderful detection set pieces throughout the story.  Even Sgt. Holland gets his due in three scenes when Tandy asks for his insights. 

And now the bad news... Ridiculously scarce! I think it's a genuinely rare book. My copy was the only one I've come across in over 20 years of looking for the book. And it's gone already. Sold to a lucky reader in Australia. Good luck finding another. Perhaps in a library in the UK, Canada or Australia? There must be a copy...somewhere!

Death Walks Softly - Neal Shepherd (Nigel Morland)

THE STORY: Inspector Michael Tandy makes his debut in Death Walks Softly (1938) an excellent example of three subgenres:  police procedural, scientific detective novel and impossible crime mystery.  Tandy using his expert knowledge in chemistry quickly disproves that a chemist supposedly committed suicide in his locked office, accessible by only one door and a private elevator that can only be summoned from the ground floor with a special key. Murder, theft and burglary are the many the crimes that arise in a complicated case involving professional jealousy and romantic entanglements. Heavy use of scientific detection makes for a dizzying yet fascinating detective novel.

THE CHARACTERS: The action is set primarily in a research facility where Robert Sherry, a reclusive anti-social chemist, was working diligently on two chemical formulas -- one for a universal solvent and another for stainless steel alloy that would be able to contain the solvent. Sherry has the use of only his left arm, his right having been amputated years ago.  He is found in his locked office with an injection mark in his usable arm and some Veronal found nearby.  Everyone in the company assumes he has committed suicide.  Tandy quickly asserts it cannot be suicide because 1. drug users addicted to Veronal do not inject the drug, it is ingested orally and 2. the injection was administered into the left arm.  Since Sherry is left handed and cannot use the artificial limb on his right arm as he would a hand with fingers he could not have injected himself.

Suspicion immediately falls on Mrs. Sherry who says her husband was more in love with chemistry than her and Daniel Lyne, the CEO of the chemical company. Lyne and Mrs. Sherry were carrying on a not very discreet affair.  Though the police know that Mrs. Sherry stopped by the office many times for visits, the CEO will not elaborate on the real reason. He is, however, quick to draw Tandy's attention to an embittered former employee Alan Talaver, who not only lost his job to Sherry but swore to kill him. When Tandy tracks down Talaver he turns out to be not only embittered but paranoid.  He volubly criticizes everyone at the chemical lab, rants about conspiracy theories and reveals a marked persecution complex. 

One of the bits of evidence found in Sherry's lab is a thumb mark with a scar running across the print.  Talaver, surprisingly, is quick to show that he has such a thumb mark and offers up no real alibi for the night of the poisoning murder. Nevertheless, he maintains his innocence. This confession of sorts will lead to one of the most remarkable aspects of the murder mystery and recalls a similar incident in one of the memorable Carter Dickson impossible crime mystery novels

Then there's Frank Donegal, Sherry's lab assistant.  Donegal gives a fuller picture of Sherry's misanthropy and utter immersion in his work. He was also the only person with an apparently iron-clad alibi having been in an enclosed study room at the research library across the street.  Reading Cabinet #5, Donegal's favorite place to study, is located at the rear of the library and is constructed similar to a telephone booth. The reading cabinets are shown to be occupied by a red light on the outside wall activated when someone sits down and the door is closed.

The impossibility of the locked room involves Sherry's office elevator that leads to a hidden doorway in the alley behind the lab building (see the plan at left). Oddly designed the elevator can only be operated with a key that summons the elevator from the ground floor to the office above.  The key must be also used to exit the elevator. Any time the elevator is used the car returns to the ground floor automatically. There is a lot of business about a load meter installed in the elevator that helps to save on the firm's electric bill. This portion sort of went over my head, but Nigel Morland in his "Neal Shepherd" guise certainly turned on his expert mode during this electrical engineering lesson. Tandy retrieves the time graphs -- basically reports of each instance the elevator went up and down -- in order to determine if the elevator was the murderer's method of escape from the locked office.   

INNOVATIONS:  Tandy studied chemistry prior to becoming a police officer.  He mentions this to many of the scientists he interviews and it helps him to get some of the suspects to talk more freely and, of course, more expertly on the scientific aspects of the murder case.  There are several lectures on chemical alloy structures, the previously mentioned mechanical and electrical design of the elevator, the creation of plastic molds, chemical nature of poisons and a lot more. After one of these long lectures that goes on for nearly four pages (!) Sgt Bill Holland, Tandy's hero worshiping colleague, is astonished: "Holland's eyes opened wide. This was the type of detection he had hitherto believed existed only in detective novels."

French edition of Death Rides Swiftly
translated less poetically as Death is Swift

Bill is right of course. But not in the ironic sense that Morland intends.  It is the kind of detection that exists only in detective novels and not ever in real life.  Rarely do real life criminals engage in the kind of guile and scientific trickery employed in this deviously constructed and often ingenious mystery novel. But this trickery is also what makes the "Napper" Tandy mystery novels so fascinating to read and mark them as stand-outs of the impossible crime and scientific detection subgenres at the tail end of the Golden Age.

I hope to get three of these novels reprinted by the middle of next year. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate an English language copy of Death Rides Swiftly though I do have the other three.  But I have not given up my search for that elusive fourth title.

 Inspector "Napper " Tandy Detective Novels
Death Walks Softly (1938)
Death Flies Low (1938)
Death Rides Swiftly (1939)
Exit to Music (1940)