FFB: Death in the Limelight - A.E. Martin

A hypnotist's act goes haywire when one of the audience volunteers is stabbed in full view of spectators in the opening chapter of Death in the Limelight (1946), Australian mystery writer A.E. Martin's third detective novel. The story opens with this scene as described by the self-absorbed actor Egan Crane and then flashes back in time to introduce the rest of the cast.

We are taken on board a cruise ship recently docked in Sydney harbor and get to meet the cast of characters. Egan Crane, supercilious and full of himself, is an itinerant actor headed to the Colonna Theater hoping he can latch on to some acting work. Though he has grandiose ideas about his limited talent and keeps imagining great things fir himself he will have to settle for vaudeville work. Also on board are Bob Struthers (American) and Janie (Australian) , dance partners who likewise are headed for the Colonna in search of work. By chance they happen to meet Miriam Lindel who is immediately taken with the couple. Miriam is a retired actress and their charm and youth remind her of days gone by when she and he late husband used to re-enact the murder scene from Othello. She asks Bob and Janie about lodgings while in Sydney and when they say they haven't yet found a place she invites them to her home.

Eventually these two alternating stories intersect and we learn that Egan, Bob and Janie were all in the theater where the murder occurred during Herman Flaxman's hypnosis act. Bob and Janie were in the audience while Egan was one of the audience volunteers on stage with Flaxman. The story takes an interesting twist when Egan through sheer luck runs into his half-brother Henry and his wife Hetty and a few pages later learns that his sister lives nearby. Three guesses as to who the sister turns out to be. Bingo! It's Miriam, the loopy retired actress. And it is at Miriam's excessively Gothic home that the bulk of the novel takes place. Miriam at times reminded me of Miss Haversham with her morbid devotion to dear departed Lionel. Her overly protective, surly servant Dugald -- one of the best of the supporting characters -- is like a sassy male version of Mrs. Danvers. These two oddball characters along with other supporting players like Joe Parotti (nee Parsons), an eccentric who trains parrots, a knife thrower (again!) and his nymphet of a wife are highlights in a well told, lively and sometimes complicated plot.

Two wonderful scenes enhance the eerie mood that at times is reminiscent of the best Gothic novels. Bob witnesses Dugald carrying an apparently lifeless body down the stairs in the wee hours of the morning and Egan stumbles into a small theater discovering a full replica of the final scene of Othello including a gorgeous sleeping Desdemona in a curtained bed. But who is she? The same body Dugald carried down the stairs perhaps? All will be revealed, but not before another murder or two take place along with a few shocking and gruesome surprises.

The only fault in this book is Martin's rushed ending in which he attempts to tie up into a neat bundle the many extraneous threads of a complex plot. In a series of lengthy monologues delivered by the police inspector in charge of the investigation the reader is asked to swallow a bit much. After a number of ludicrous leaps in logic and several absurd assumptions Martin still manages to leave a few threads hanging.

A. E. Martin had extensive experience in theater as a magician's assistant, a stage performer, and spruiker (an Australian name for a carnival barker) which adds a dimension of authenticity to his mystery novels with entertainment backgrounds.  As with his other novels  Death in the Limelight also shows off Martin's macabre sense of humor and a predilection for Gothic settings and situations.

Previously reviewed on this blog is Sinners Never Die, Martin's debut novel which is a superior crime novel lauded by Anthony Boucher among many other critics.

READING CHALLENGE UPDATE: Marking down #5 out of the minimum of eight books required  for the  "Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2013 - Scattergories" sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. The book fulfills the category Staging the Crime. Previous reviews for the challenge are listed below:

Murder is Academic: Murder from the Grave by Will Levinrew
Colorful Crime: The Woman in Purple Pajamas by Willis Kent
Jolly Old England: Murder in Blue by Clifford Witting
Scene of the Crime: The Mystery at Stowe by Vernon Loder

Sinners Never Die (1944) - A.E. Martin

Australian writer Archibald Edward Martin is an underrated and forgotten mystery writer of the 1940s who deserves some notice. He was championed by Anthony Boucher in his reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle when Martin's books first started appearing in the US. Only recently has his work been reissued, but only in Australia and only the first three books. I wish some enterprising publisher would recognize A E. Martin's unique place in the development of detective fiction and get the rest of his work back in print.

Among Martin's many unusual jobs prior to writing to crime fiction were his involvement in the documentary movie exhibition business as well as a touring vaudeville show. Nearly all of his books feature plots that somehow involve show business be it a touring carnival, a vaudeville troupe or an amateur theater company. In the case of Sinners Never Die the story features a traveling sleight-of-hand artist who also does a mind reading act with spook show gimmickry as an added theatrical bonus.

Set in turn of the century Australia Sinners Never Die is narrated by Harry Ford, a very unlikable fellow who is the town postmaster. He busies himself with opening people’s mail and blackmailing those he doesn’t like. As there are very few people he does like he is very busy with his hobby. The complex story involves the disappearance of a young man during a flood, the apparent accidental shooting of a hateful blind man and Ford’s blackmailing of the blind man’s widow and her lover when he convinces them he knows that they actually poisoned the man prior to the shooting. The arrival of a mind reader/conjurer sets Ford on edge when at one of the preview shows he learns that the mind reader has somehow managed to learn everyone’s secrets –- including Ford's criminal hobby.


Although this first book is not truly a detective novel the criminal aspects of the plot more than make up for the lack of clue hunting, examination of physical evidence, and interrogation. What is most interesting here is the despicable nature of the narrator and the sudden turn of events that makes this villainous man turn into something of a do-gooder. The reader is never quite sure if his snooping and blackmailing is self-serving or for the benefit of the town. Is he merely toying with the townspeople or is he trying to root out evil? When Harry starts to get a taste of what it is to be a victim, the novel takes on an even deeper dimension about the nature of crime and the criminal's means to an end.

Martin went on to write other books all of them just as rich in detail and character as this one. Sinners Never Die foreshadows the unreliable narrator who would become almost cliché in the modern suspense novel we now have. Writers like Ruth Rendell and Patrick MacGrath used them effectively in their early works of the late 1970s and 1980s. As I was reading Martin's book I was also reminded of the nasty characters in the unhappy, corrupt small towns that provide the creepy settings in the books of Minette Walters (her first four books only) and Caroline Graham. Here is a book that was far ahead of its time.


A.E. Martin's Crime & Detective Fiction  (U.S. titles & dates unless otherwise noted)
Sinners Never Die (1944)
The Misplaced Corpse (1944 - Australia only)
The Outsiders (1945) (orig published as Common People)
Death in the Limelight (1946)
The Curious Crime (1952)
The Bridal Bed Murders (1953)
The Hive of Glass w/ his son Jim Martin (1962 - Australia only) Published posthumously, crime interest is marginal