FFB: The Case of the Gold Coins - Anthony Wynne

THE STORY: It's another detective opera from the pen of prolific impossible crime maven Anthony Wynne. Madness, stabbing, cudgelling, strangling, suicide attempts, and melodrama galore! This time we have a corpse discovered on a sandy beach with not a footprint in sight.  Blood on the sand from the stab wound indicates the man must've died on the spot. The knife that killed the man is still firmly embedded in his back yet no impression in the sand beneath the body would indicate being dropped, thrown or falling from a great height. Airplanes are ruled out immediately. How did he die and who managed such a baffling murder? Dr. Eustace Hailey, expert in maladies of the brain, assists the puzzled and infuriated Captain Ainger to ferret out the killer.

THE CHARACTERS: Dr. Hailey is always in accelerated action mode in Wynne's mid-career novels. He shows off his skill in sailing and piloting boats in The Case of the Gold Coins (1934). In this book Hailey is also at his most compassionate and heroic. As usual we get more than we need about psychological theory of the period which more often than not has more to do with class prejudice than it does with an understanding of human behavior. Hailey is supposedly a psychologist or neurologist or something like that ("I study the human brain") and loves to lecture about who has the capability of being a murderer, what constitutes genuinely insane behavior, and other similar topics, but thankfully we are spared some of the more naive theories we usually get from this pontificating detective. Needless to say his talent for abstract thinking comes in very handy in trying to explain how Lord Wallace's battered and stabbed body ended up where it did. Oh! and adding to the excitement are the two other bodies turning up where they shouldn't.

The is the twelfth Dr. Hailey mystery I've subjected myself too in an effort to read the twenty-two books (out of Wynne's total output of  28) I've acquired over the years. And the good news is that I think I have found the absolute best in the entire series. The plot is non-stop action with very little of the usual Wynne lagging and dullness. The detection is keen and very fairly clued which is not the norm for Wynne. And the impossible crime along with the other two murders and the mystery of the gold coins found at the scene of each death are more than satisfyingly explained. Histrionics and melodrama are still present in ample amounts, but there is a sound resolution to all the problems and a real ending rather than his usual abrupt stop.

More to my liking were the interesting characters, especially the two young women -- Ruth Wallace and Pamela Bolton. Wynne usually throws in a couple of attractive women into his plots for romantic interest but they never really come alive. However, in the person of Pamela Bolton we have one of Wynne's most unusual women, a troubled soul who elicits genuine sympathy. She is conflicted by her filial duty to her irascible father, a prime suspect in the murder of Wallace, and her attraction to her former fiance. Captain Ainger finds himself attracted to Pamela further complicating this woman's fragile emotional state. Hailey at the midpoint in the novel pursues Pamela via boat (like many of the characters she is also an expert sailor) to an island off the shore of the Wallace seafront estate and rescues her from her own rash behavior. Their scene together reveals Hailey's wise old man side as he counsels her and she manages to evade his prying questions with cleverly worded ambiguous statements. Pamela may be troubled, but she's still wily and protective of the men she loves. Though Wynne does tend to play up the hysterical woman stereotype too heavily it nevertheless manages to be one of the best written scenes in any of the Anthony Wynne mysteries I've read.

Bryn Terfel as Falstaff
Just as I picture Maj. Pykewood

I can't leave this section without mentioning the other standout, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Major Pykewood is the requisite kook in the story. Is he mad, is he sane or just very angry? He confesses to the murder of his wife and pleads to be arrested.  He has not one, but two mad scenes that would fit right into any classical opera. His first scene is a hysterical confession which includes this pronouncement: "I am dead. I'm still dead. That is why I want to give myself up to the police. They take charge of corpses." All that's missing from a speech like that is the music. Though it's usually women who have the mad scenes in opera I was envisioning a grandiose aria for Major Pykewood, an intensely guilty man with a masochistic streak for self-punishment. He should get fervent percussion and a keening melody. He literally shakes his fist at the ocean and cries out, "Island, island, island! That's where they used to meet." He goes on to describe his wife's love of the sea, her talent for sailing, and how she loved boats more than men. He believes that Lord Wallace was killed not by a human but by an act of God proclaiming: "Do you know what I had planned to do if God hadn't killed him? I had planned to smash him to pieces." Then he talks about his duck gun and he bangs his hands together to emphasize the deed. A tympani would do just as well. I loved the lunatic Major. He becomes the typical Nemesis in a Wynne novel and provides for a literally explosive finale.

INNOVATIONS: Wynne's impossible problem is one of the best of the books I've read so far. Unlike the contrived deaths in previous books the puzzle comes about as part of an accident when the murderer attempts to cover up his crime.  And the solution is simple and rather brilliant.  It's the manner in which the problem is obfuscated by the characters' poor observations that always tends to baffle the reader. The mystery of the appearance of the gold coins is also cleverly handled and so well clued that I was able to figure almost all of how the hidden treasure was transported from place to place and how poor Henry the footman (the second murder) met his death.

There is more genuine detection in The Case of the Gold Coins than in any other Wynne book I've read to date. Dr. Hailey does a thorough job of ruling out obvious answers to how Lord Wallace's body turned up on the beach making it all the more puzzling to arrive at the real reason. He manages to deduce where the gold coins were hidden on the island by looking at the growth of seaweed and barnacles on the rocks. In investigating an outside entrance to a cellar he pays careful attention to the way a trapdoor is constructed and discovers how someone could have bolted the door without ever being inside the cellar. All sorts of brilliant stuff, all of it providing the reader with fantastic clues.

Bill Pronzini has praised The Case of the Gold Coins in 1001 Midnights as probably the best of the Wynne books. I have to agree with him. Everything any detective fiction purist would want in a book is here to make for an entertaining and satisfying read.

FFB: The Room with the Iron Shutters - Anthony Wynne

"Behind the mystery of the room, believe me, lies the deeper mystery of the man."

When it comes to dreaming up preposterous variations on the locked room and devilish murder methods in the detective novels of days gone by one of the most imaginative writers was Anthony Wynne. In his fairly steady output of nearly 30 novels from 1925 to the late 1940s more than three quarters of them contain some type of locked room, impossible crime or miracle problem. Very often the books had combinations of all three in the often convoluted and excessively melodramatic plots he concocted. So why is he forgotten these days? Well, to be perfectly honest he was not a very good writer. The books are somber, humorless and contain dull passages of didactic dialog in which his detective, Dr Eustace Hailey, pontificates on "modern" psychology and "newly discovered" scientific methods. Reading them seventy years after they were originally published can provoke reactions ranging from the disconcerting to the risible. On occasion Wynne does a good job of combining his outlandish methods of doing in fictional characters, his love of melodrama and scientific lecturing with sound story telling and a unique atmosphere and theme. One of those instances of where he gets it right is in The Room with the Iron Shutters.

I'm willing to forgive Wynne for the drawbacks in his books. I'm in them for his frightening ideas about committing murder and disposing of corpses. Often there are fantastic elements that seem to border on science fiction horror worthy of an episode from Fringe or The X-Files. Wynne was one of the first crime writers to use the following unusual murder methods: poison cat claws, anaphylactic shock through insect bite, blood poisoning, and miniature surgical blades hidden in everyday objects. He also managed to find numerous ways in which to have the corpse reanimate for its last dying breath. Many of his victims suffer cruel deaths traveling from one place to another while dying agonizingly from their wounds. In some cases the victims are completely unaware that they've been mortally wounded. The reader should expect a wild ride when he picks up a book by Anthony Wynne.

The basic set-up for this one: Lord Gerald Glen is discovered dead in his locked and shuttered study. He has been stabbed through the heart. No weapon is found in the room. The room was watched from both inside near the locked door and outside where the iron shutters of the title were bolted shut. The majority of the detection is devoted to close scrutiny of the room itself and its architecture. It is gone over umpteen times throughout the course of the story in an attempt to discover how the murderer managed to escape. The rest of the time is spent in trying to figure out who is telling the truth. There are plenty of liars in this book and many lies of omission that impede the investigation for both Dr. Hailey and the clever policeman Inspector Verrey. Verrey even manages to come up with the first viable and logical solution to the murder. But he forgets one piece of evidence that plays a crucial part in the actual solution. Hailey, of course, gleefully points this out to the inspector.

Hanging over the story is the presence of alcohol. I can't recall encountering a detective novel where the victim is an avowed teetotaler and a crazed proselytizing teetotaler at that. For Lord Glen his abstention from alcohol has become a dangerous monomania. Two of the suspects will be revealed to be alcoholics. Glen's vehement feelings towards those characters and his slighted relationship with them both affect the events that follow his death. Wynne gets a lot of mileage out of this. I thought it well done and an intriguing period style temperament in a murder victim. It also allows for logical reasons for characters to lie, then recant, then lie again. And in the instance of the second murder the alcoholic's secret hiding place for his stash of brandy nearly saves him from his own death. How's that for originality in a detective novel? For once Dr. Hailey's discussions of abnormal psychology (the behavior of alcoholics, in this case) makes sense and have a firmly accepted resonance to them. Usually his psychological observations are weak and flimsy seen through a modern reader's eyes. At one point, Hailey makes mention of "the deeper mystery of the man" in discussing the personality of the murderer. When that deeper mystery is ultimately revealed the reader is faced with an intriguing personality type with an unusual motive for murder, one that may even strike a resonant modern chord.

There have been issues taken with the fair play aspect of this particular title. Without a deeper knowledge of 1920s experimental radiology and hematology (both are discussed cursorily in the context of the story) you may never completely solve the murder of Lord Glen. For this reason there is a surprise in the final chapters that is indeed unfair, but I never care about this when reading the detective novels featuring Dr. Hailey. It's like playing cards with a really good bluffer. You know you're going to have to accept that most of the time he's lying about what's in his hand but you accept it and go ahead and make a bet because that's part of the excitement of the game. You raise the stakes yourself. When you're proven wrong anyway you can't be angry because you made the decision to be fooled from the start. That's how I feel about reading these books by Anthony Wynne.  I want to be completely taken in by a great bluffer and, flaws and all, I admire that talent.

IN BRIEF: The Red Lady (1935) - Anthony Wynne

Sir Mark Fleet is stabbed in full view of an audience while delivering a speech in front of a painting called "The Red Lady." Although it was possible for someone to hide behind the painting it is determined that no one was in the crammed space even though it was cleaned as if to obliterate footprints in the dust. It appears that it was impossible for anyone to have stabbed Sir Mark and yet he was killed. Later the body is taken from the bedroom prior to it being delivered to the coroner for an autopsy. It is found on a burning haystack. Why would someone steal the body and set it on fire?

Dr. Hailey starts to uncover a strange financial scheme that led to Sir Mark leaving a sizable legacy to a young woman who he barely knew. In trying to get to the bottom of this mess Hailey discovers that Sir Mark had recently consulted with a spiritualist. So Hailey himself visits the spiritualist under the pretense of contacting the spirit of Sir Mark to find out why he left the money to the girl. Through the medium he learns of yet another young woman who knew Sir Mark. No sooner has the information been divulged the medium is stabbed amid some typical contrived Wynne business and in chasing the intruder out of the séance room Hailey discovers the body of the butler also stabbed.

Before the novel is through two more people are killed -- one in a similar apparently impossible stabbing death. Faster moving than most earlier Wynne books, heavy on dialogue, but plods down a bit with all the rigmarole about the financial chicanery and the writing of the wills that were behind the motive for the deaths of Sir Mark and all the other victims. Still out of Wynne's high output of sometimes dreary, often humorless mystery novels this is definitely one of his best.