IN BRIEF: The Case of the Busy Bees

Clifford Witting tries his hand at a master criminal style thriller in The Case of the Busy Bees (1952). This mystery is not a Holmesian adventure with apiaries and beekeeping as its background. The Busy Bees are members of a criminal syndicate stretching from "Land's End to John O'Goats" whose nefarious activities include "kidnapping, extortion, forgery, blackmail, smuggling, coining, fraud, dope-peddling, black market offences on a large scale." And of course murder.

What begins as an eccentric mystery with the theft of a Native American tomahawk from the odd dime museum run by Theophilus Mildwater leads to murder and gangland violence on a grand and brutal scale such as I've not encountered before in any detective novel by Witting. The introduction of a gang of criminals calling themselves the Busy Bees who resort to code names like Apple Nine Zero and Gooseberry One Six, who signal one another with coded phrases and a trademark "Zzzzz" sound effect, and whose leader dubs himself Rex Apis are all plot elements you'd expect to find in a book written twenty to thirty years earlier. But Witting cannot resist this homage to Nigel Morland and Edgar Wallace. And he spares no one as the criminal activity escalates from theft to kidnapping to murder. The body count is high and the surprises come when Witting shows no mercy for any of his often very likable characters. Your favorite is most likely going to end up dead in this book. Even Inspector Charlton, Witting's detective series hero, succumbs to a diabetic coma and is hospitalized for the last third of the book.

I did learn a few things here. Notably the existence of Potter's Museum (now defunct), one of the most bizarre collections of amateur taxidermy in the world. Started by Walter Potter in the summer house near his family owned pub in 1861 his collection eventually grew to over 10,000 pieces. The museum lived out it's nomadic existence in three different locations from the late 19th century through the late 20th century. From 1984 to 2002 much of the collection was exhibited at Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. Finally the museum was shut down in 2003 when the entire collection was sold at auction, sadly realizing in total sales less than what was anticipated. Witting mentions that Potter's Museum served as the inspiration for the Monk Jewel Museum run by Mr. Mildwater in this novel. For those ignorant of Potter's Museum I suggest you take a look at the macabre collection at this tribute website. I guarantee you've never seen groups of stuffed kittens, hamsters, squirrels and bunnies doing the things Potter had them do.

This wasn't one of my favorite Witting books; very atypical compared to his books written in the 1930s and 1940s. The setting is still Lulverton and the surrounding villages. The puzzle aspects are still there. And he planted some devilishly clever clues that show up the errors the villain makes due to his egocentrism and vanity. Most of the solution, however, combining a puzzling murder, the confusing thefts of museum articles, and the identity of Rex Apis is delivered in a lecture with lots of evidence mentioned for the first time in the final chapter. Even with the few fair play clues Witting hasn't delivered a traditional detective novel here. It is pretty much an all-out underworld thriller with a 1920s style homage to a fantasy world of criminals that never really existed.

*   *   *

Reading Challenge update: Golden Age bingo card space E5 "Book set in England"

FFB: Catt Out of the Bag - Clifford Witting

1st UK paperback, 1940s

As some wise old person once said to me ages ago "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do a week from now." Wait a minute, that's not it. That was my wiseass comeback to the wise old person's advice about procrastination. Probably a parent or teacher, I can't remember anymore. All this is a rambling preamble to my excuse of being behind with what was intended to be a Christmas book review. Catt Out of the Bag (1939) is set between December 21 and December 31 and would've been perfectly suited for my final post of 2013. But here it is the third day of 2014 and I'm finally getting around to letting you know about this very fine detective novel from a writer I only discovered last year.

Had this fourth mystery from the talented and genuinely funny Witting been published in the US it would've been a great choice for the Dell Mapback series. My paperback reprint edition (it's extremely scarce in any edition for what it's worth. But you probably knew that already) comes with a beautifully hand drawn map of Paulsfield where the crimes take place so it is predisposed for Mapback status right off the bat. Had I been alive back then and been employed by the estimable Dell Publishing Company I would have written a fantastic little blurb for this holiday themed detective novel. For those of you unfamiliar with Dell Mapbacks the books have tantalizing lists of suspects ("Persons this Mystery is about") and a page headed "Things this Mystery is about" followed by a series of cryptic clues and plot elements that are meant to entice the reader to buy the book. So what is this mystery about, anyway, I hear you ask?

A CAROLER who disappears...
A familiar but unnameable SMELL...
A missing MILK BOTTLE...
SHEET MUSIC for a Christmas carol...
Four HOUSES named St. Brelade...
A broken COLLECTION BOX...
Some stolen COINS...
An abandoned WELL...
A LETTER signed "S"...

And the "Persons this Mystery is about"--

John Rutherford - former bookseller and narrator of the tale. He teams up with...
Inspector Charlton - your typically sharp as a tack Scotland Yard official
Sybil De Frayne - organizer of the caroling night intended to raise money for a local hospital. A bossy nag of woman married to...
Charles De Frayne - puts up with his wife's demands at the expense of his happiness
Thomas Vavasour - one of the townspeople assigned to collect money while the carolers are singing. He disappears without a trace at approximately 9:25 PM along with his collection box
Mrs. Vavasour - at home recovering from an illness the night of the caroling. She has no idea where her husband has gone to let alone what kind of work he does or who he works for as a "commercial traveler"
Harold Cornthwaite - composer of the original carol "In Wintertime in Bethlehem" a tune that has a haunting familiarity to a few of the suspects
Raymond Cloud-Gledhill - guest at the De Frayne home who sees the disappearance of Vavasour as an adventure and a chance to turn amateur sleuth
Mr. Tipper - a hairdresser with an ear for gossip
Albert Miles - a vagabond known for committing petty crimes. He has a sharp sense of smell, a memory for unusual sights, and is missing two fingers from his right hand

2nd Hodder paperback, 1952

The investigation into Mr. Vavasour's disappearance grows ever more complex as multiple identities of the victim are uncovered and a plethora of mysterious findings complicate the case. The title of the book with its odd spelling ought to tip off any sharp-witted reader to the possibility of alter egos. Charlton and Rutherford encounter a veritable Dickensian cast of characters, all drawn with Witting's characteristic lively and colorful touches and an ample amount of his customary wit. Witting also pulls off a neat trick when Rutherford, the first person narrator, uses his imagination to recount second and third hand events that were told to him by Charlton and others. This, Rutherford confesses, allows him to eliminate the cumbersome style of quoting passages of dialogue with "inverted commas".

It may take some hunting to locate a copy of this book. I lucked out in one of my tours of the eBay auctions in the late summer of last year. The book was only published in the UK and exists in hardback and at least two paperback editions, both of which I used to illustrate this post. As I've said before in my reviews of Clifford Witting's books some enterprising publisher ought to reprint his detective novels. So far I haven't read a single one that fails to deliver. And Catt Out of the Bag is surely the best of the lot I've read to date.

Other Clifford Witting books previously reviewed on this blog:

Murder in Blue (1937) 
Subject -- Murder (1945)

FFB: They Can't Hang Me - James Ronald

James Ronald received quite a bit of praise with his first few detective novels from writer August Derleth to novelist and book reviewer Harriette Ashbrook all pointing out his ingenuity and freshness.  Of course you have to take this kind of enthusiastic praise with a grain of salt and maybe a dash of sugar, too.  Book hype has been with us for decades though it has skyrocketed in the past 15 years or so with the kind of gimmicky stunts some P.R. people are pulling.  When I learned that Ronald started out as a bargain basement pulp writer for the British digest publisher Garmol who published his early novels sporting such lurid titles as The Green Ghost Murder, The Man Who Made Monsters, and The Sundial Drug Mystery I was very wary of the blurbs Ronald received for his books. Was it just a fluke or did he really rival the kind of clever plots of a John Rhode or Carr?

They Can’t Hang Me (1938), listed in Adey’s Locked Room Murders, also offers the added bonus of an impossible crime. Actually, two impossible crimes. Ronald had a lot to live up to. I’m glad to report that despite his background in pulp digests James Ronald does indeed merit all the praise lavished upon him. They Can’t Hang Me is a corker of a mystery novel. Ingenious murder methods call to mind the brilliant John Rhode; two impossible crimes, one of which is worthy of Carr; and witty dialogue reminiscent of Clifford Witting. All are on colorful display in this page-turner of a story.

The plot is familiar to any crime fiction fan and seems lifted from the cliffhanger serials of the 1930s. Lucius Marplay, an inmate from a mental institution, escapes with the intent of carrying out a plan of murderous revenge, threats of which sent him to the asylum in the first place. Each murder is announced in the obituary section of The Echo, the newspaper where the victims work, on the very day of the death leading the police to believe the killer is hiding out in the building. A thorough search of The Echo building and its environs turns up no one who shouldn’t already be there. Though the police are fairly certain the escaped lunatic is the culprit somehow he manages to elude capture with each baffling crime. The title comes from Marplay's claim that his plan is as close to a perfect crime as one can dream up for even if he is caught he can't be hanged as he has already been declared insane. He will just be thrown back into the asylum.

Perhaps what makes the book work so well is Ronald’s sharp sense of humor. Even amidst the terror Ronald still finds ample opportunity to lighten the tone. The book is very funny with handful of well drawn colorful characters who serve as the author’s comic voice. Some of the best wisecracks come from a scene between Agatha Trimm, the guardian of Joan Marplay, daughter to the escaped lunatic and the offbeat private investigator Alastair McNab. Some of my favorites are:

Agatha Trimm: "Cocoa is a perverted taste for a man. I'd be careful of him, Joan."

Alastair McNab: "There's two things I like naked and whiskey's one of them."

Sir John Digby (a psychiatrist fed up with the Freudian imaginings of his female clients): What he longed to say to them was "What you need is more fat here"--slapping them where a woman should be comfortably rounded-- "and then you'd have less fat here" --smacking them on the head.



Later UK edition, circa 1940s

The characters, too, are a lively bunch who hold the reader's interest and keep the story moving at brisk pace:

Mark Peters -- managing editor ready to fire anyone whose actions threaten to ruin the already tarnished reputation of his dying newspaper.

The aptly named Ambrose Craven -- an overweight skirt chaser whose cowardice and fear has him fainting in every other chapter.

Flinders -- an ex-reporter gone to seed and drink, who’ll risk his life when he turns to blackmail in order to feed his alcoholic cravings.

Alastair McNab -- the odd and rambunctious private investigator determined to unmask the murderer and sell his story to a rival newspaper.

Agatha Trimm -- guardian to the plucky heroine Joan Marplay. Agatha is a tough as nails, no nonsense woman distrusting of nearly every man Joan sets eyes on.

The detective work is shared by two characters. Joan Marplay who acts a sort of girl sleuth trying to prove her father is not the madman the police and newspapermen think he is. She is sure he was sent to the asylum wrongfully and that his sworn revenge was only a reaction to his furor at being thought mad. Then there is McNab who arrives with a letter in of introduction from the asylum announcing he has been hired to track down the escaped Marplay. With his pronounced Scottish brogue, rendered in a typical 1930s phonetic dialect, and his oddball tastes and habits (like carrying his lunch around in a wicker basket wherever he goes), McNab is the most unusual of the cast. So unusual that he arouses the suspicions of Superintendent Wrenn who has his sergeant investigate McNab's background. McNab is shrewd yet enigmatic. One never knows if he is out for himself or if he really wants to solve the case and apprehend Marplay.

They Can't Hang Me is an excellent example of a crime novel that mixes elements of the detective novel with that of the pulp thriller. So good was this first outing I had to read the other easily accessible crime books of James Ronald. I found most of his other books lean towards psychological crime novels that foreshadow the work of Patricia Highsmith and Julian Symons. I'll be reviewing three more later in the fall. Stay tuned.

FFB: Subject--Murder - Clifford Witting

Fans of Foyle's War, the British television series about a policeman who during World War 2 finds himself solving crimes involving military personnel, might be interested in Subject-Murder (1945) a detective novel by Clifford Witting based on his personal experience as a bombardier in an anti-aircraft detachment.  The detail about military life in a detachment as opposed to a regular army base is fascinating and when the story finally makes its way to the investigation of a murder of a warrant officer Witting once again proves he has the stuff of a high ranking officer of detective novel plotting.

Peter Bradfield, the detective constable colleague of series character Inspector Charlton, is the narrator. Most of the book is devoted to Bradfield's reporting his military training from the summer of 1942 through November 1943. We follow him from basic training in Wales to his various transfers to other posts eventually landing him in an anti-aircraft detachment between the villages of Etchworth and Sheep, and coincidentally just outside of Lulverton where he and Charlton are based as policemen.

Battery Sgt. Major Yule -- "Cruel Yule" to the bombardiers he oversees -- is a sadistic, manipulative and narcissistic bastard. No other words describe him better. Throughout the novel he proves to be one of the most odious villains in the entire genre. In his indifference to human feeling and his perverse joy in causing misery for the soldiers Yule has managed to drive one man to suicide, got men he dislikes transferred to other bases, and punished others with demotions based on trumped up charges.

40mm Bofors Anti-aircraft Gun

When we first meet him through the eyes of Johnny Fieldhouse Yule is seated at a desk in his office taunting a mouse he has trapped under a drinking glass. Fieldhouse, a man of honesty and integrity, is appalled and immediately frees the mouse and gets into a tussle with Yule in doing so. This brief encounter will put Fieldhouse on Yule's list of marked men for the remainder of the book. Though he is consistently warned by Bradfield and others to rein in his self-righteous indignity Fieldhouse pays no heed. He is who he is and cannot change, especially when confronted with the monstrous and amoral behavior he sees exhibited by Yule. Damned be his higher rank, is the bombardier's attitude. Fieldhouse's moral integrity will lead to a world of trouble for him including court-martial, brief imprisonment, and prime suspect in the murder case.

Is it any wonder that Yule in creating false incidents, framing men he dislikes for imaginary offenses while protecting lazy good-for-nothings like himself, becomes the target of everyone's enmity? His demise is long overdue when it comes. Fittingly, he dies a gruesome and horrid death -- dragged by his legs while tied to an enraged horse, trampled and beaten by its hooves. When murder occurs on a military base the structure of a soldier's life -- or rather a bombardier's life -- reverts to that of a civilian.  All men are on equal footing as suspects in a crime; no one can pull rank now as the police become the officers in charge.

Royal Artillery Cap Badge

The detection in this book is top-notch. Clues and red herrings are abundant as in any of the best examples of the fair play detective novel. Charlton is allowed to team up with his old colleague Bradfield and together they uncover such intriguing evidence as unusual knots in the rope and dog leash used to tie up the murder victim, a book on torture practices of the Spanish inquisition that has certain passages bracketed, and the double life of a mysterious soldier named Alexander Templeton.

The large cast of characters of military men and the few civilian women make for a varied bunch. Witting finds ample opportunity to show off a skill in replicating regional dialects and his gift for creating lively dialogue.  Several of the minor characters like Gianella, a clever recruit whose specialty is playing stupid in order to get out of being assigned dangerous tasks, are the highlights of the book. In addition to the detective story plot Witting gives us a few romantic subplots with Bradfield and Fieldhouse both pursuing the girls of their dreams with some interesting sometimes amusing complications that arise.

FIRST BOOKS: Murder in Blue – Clifford Witting

"He's deep, is the Inspector."

John Rutherford, bookseller and sometime fiction writer, discovers the bludgeoned corpse of a policeman one evening while taking a stroll in a rain storm. The policeman's overturned bicycle is what first catches Rutherford's eye. Then he sees Officer Johnson's body sprawled on the sodden ground of Phantom Coppice. Rutherford takes Johnson's bike and pedals to rural Paulsfield police station, two miles away, to report the crime. There he finds Sgt. Martin who initiates calls to a doctor, a photographer and Inspector Charlton. Among the oddities in the case are the mystery of the bicycle tire puncture, the possibility of switched bicycles, the appearance of a third cop on the scene, and the strange location of Johnson's policeman's hat at the scene of the crime. 

Rutherford is narrator and wanna-be amateur sleuth who aids Charlton in the investigation of the crime. But it is not these two lead detectives who are the most interesting characters of the book. That honor goes to 19 year-old George Stubbings, assistant at "Voslivres," the bookshop Rutherford owns. George is a detective story addict and he is keen on solving the various mysteries surrounding Johnson's violent death. He is both ingenuous in dealing with Rutherford and ingenious in his precocious observations about the apparent murder. Whenever George sets foot on the scene the book gets a welcome humorous lift.

To be truthful the entire book is more lighthearted than one would expect for a story about the beating death of a policeman. It's one of the many examples of how a detective novel can also be a good mainstream novel. The detail about life in a village bookshop and how Rutherford and George treat their customers is a highlight. At times I was reminded of the work of Herbert Adams who, like Witting does here, adds a romantic subplot and populates his books with fully realized minor characters who tend to upstage the detective leads. There is an abundance of charm and wit on display in Murder in Blue amid the brutal violence.

The detection is mostly fair play, but several clues withheld from the reader and revealed in the final pages are clearly not. The solution, sadly, leaves a lot to be desired. In an attempt to make the mystery more realistic Witting has chance figure prominently. Rutherford in acting as Good Samaritan inadvertently ruins what was intended as the murderer's perfect frame-up. The bad weather, the available bicycle, and several other plot details all combine with Rutherford's split second decisions to create unnecessary complications that hinder the murder investigation. But the reader is not really aware of these complications until the final chapter. That will make for cries of "Cheat!" among the more rigid detective fiction fans.

According to several reviews I have read elsewhere -- notably those by Nick Fuller at the Golden Age of Detection wiki -- Witting improved over time. Catt Out of the Bag, Witting's fourth mystery novel, receives the closest thing to a rave from Nick. I've been looking for an affordable copy of that title for several months now. His Measure for Murder, set in an amateur theatrical troupe, was chosen as one of Jacques Barzun's "Fifty Classics of Crime Fiction" and reprinted in a library edition back in the 1970s. I will be reviewing that book in the coming weeks.

As a side note Murder in Blue introduces Peter Bradfield, a policeman in a very minor role. Later in Witting's books, Bradfield turns up assisting Inspector Charlton and eventually serves as the lead detective. Out of all Clifford Witting's books Charlton and Bradfield work together on seven cases, Charlton is solo in four others, and Bradfield is alone in three of the later books.

Clifford Witting's Detective Novels
Murder in Blue (1937)
Midsummer Murder (1937)
The Case of the Michaelmas Goose (1938)
Catt Out of the Bag (1939)
Measure for Murder (1941)
Subject -- Murder (1945)
Let X Be the Murderer (1947)
Dead on Time (1948)
A Bullet for Rhino (1950)
The Case of the Busy Bees (1952)
Silence After Dinner (1953)
Mischief in the Offing (1958)
There Was a Crooked Man (1960)
Driven to Kill (1961)
Villainous Saltpetre (1962)
Crime in Whispers (1964)

READING CHALLENGE UPDATE: This number three in my "Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2013 - Scattergories" sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. The book fulfills the category Jolly Old England. Previous reviews for the challenge are listed below:

Category 1: Murder is Academic
Murder from the Grave by Will Levinrew
Category 2: Colorful Crime
The Woman in Purple Pajamas by Willis Kent