Death of an Editor - Vernon Loder

The newspaper crowd has descended upon Marsh House but not without an invitation. The impromptu house party consists of a gossip columnist, an advertising man, two reporters from France, and a serial fiction writer. All of them are waiting to speak with Hay Smith, editor of The Daily Record, one of the papers owned by publisher Sir James Sitheby. The guests are kept busy at recreations devised by Miss Roe Gay, a professional hostess tending to the various guests while Sir James is up in London. But no one has a chance to see Hay Smith. Right after a game of miniature golf the group disperses and someone finds Smith dead in the study. He’s been shot in the head and facing a window left open that looks out on the nearby seashore. Inspector Brews investigates this Death of an Editor (1931) and soon the murder reveals a complex web of questionable journalistic ethics and possible espionage. 

 Though I was disappointed that this mystery novel lacked the surreal qualities and outrageous touches that I thought were Loder's hallmarks this was a competently constructed and engaging police procedural.  Loder probably belongs in the camp of the "humdrum" detective novelists because his detective novels are very much about puzzling out the how and the why of the murder moreso than about exploring character or creating atmosphere.  The characters here are a bit flat and tend to fall into familiar stock roles of popular fiction.

Interestingly, Brews is the first of only two police detectives Loder created who appeared in more than one novel.  This is his second outing after his debut in The Essex Murders (1930), reviewed here under the US title The Death Pool.  While there may not be any blow guns and poison darts or murder victims who fall into their own death trap I found the complexity in this one above par for the usual Loder mystery novel.

First off, it's a quasi impossible crime.  All evidence seems to make it appear that Smith was the victim of a sniper's rifle fired from Sir James' yacht that was moored a few hundred yards form the open window of the study.  Brews finds signs that a rifle was fired from an open porthole and a strange wire mesh target was still in the porthole leading one to believe that the shooter used the intersecting wires as a sight.  when Smith's head appeared in the center intersection the shooter fired at his victim. But then why leave the wire mesh behind?  It seems not only sloppy on the murderer's part but might be manufactured evidence.  Are the police supposed to believe someone outside the house is the killer?

There is a lot made of everyone's alibis.  Some of the guests were together seemingly ruling them out while others were engaged in solitary habits.  The shooting took place almost directly after a malfunctioning car backfired several times.  No one could tell which were the gunshots and which sounds same from the ailing car. One of the most intriguing bits of evidence is the corners of several pieces of paper found still clutched in Smith's right hand.  Was something torn from his hand just before he died?  And if so, was it the killer who took the papers?  Or was someone in the study after the murder and took the papers from Smith when he was already dead?  

These several mysteries will all be explained with one of the most surprising elements being the actual method and manner of Smith's murder.  The documents in question are a sort of Hitchcockian McGuffin.  Loder never really needed to explain what they were (though he does vaguely allude to state secrets and British occupation in India);  they are merely an object "of great importance" to most of the characters in order to further the plot.  When the Home Office gets involved and wants to retrieve those missing documents an element of espionage enters the story.  Impostors, multiple chase sequences, and even Brews taking on the disguise of a gamekeeper further complicate the story as he tries to suss out the killer, find the missing weapon and attempt to recover those vitally important missing documents.  Death of an Editor morphs from a rather cut-and-dried quasi-impossible crime mystery to an engaging adventure thriller with Brews hot on the trail of a ruthless and devious French woman who holds the key to all the various mysteries.

THINGS I LEARNED: The world of bore guns or what Loder calls collector’s guns was revealed to me in the pages of Death of an Editor. Eventually the murder weapon is discovered to be a .410 bore rifle. He describes a weapon that was marketed to young men and teens in the advertising pages of boy’s magazines. I did some a-Googling and found several photos of these guns along with a couple of pages from period weapon catalogs. In the March 2022 issue of The Vintage Gun Journal I found an article titled “The Poacher’s Companion” all about these unique folding rifles. The article said this was the rifle of choice for poachers because they could easily fold up the gun and shove it out of sight into the deep pockets of their ulster or hunting jacket. Loder mentions that they were often called collector’s guns because there were used by people who collected bird specimens. Apparently the shot fired would kill the bird without obliterating the delicate body the collector would then take to a taxidermist.

QUOTES: “Look at the fever for all kinds of quack psychology in America. Every detective novel is full of it, and, what is worse for the police there, the country is infested with alienists, and experts full of mouth-filling words, who can prove that any criminal is not a criminal, but only ten years old.”

“There is a tendency...among newspapers to forget the purveying of news, and attempt the purveying of politics.”

Psychoanalysts to the contrary, [Brews] did not believe that egotists killed people. Narcissism is a full-time job.

“I have the advantage and the disadvantage of being a provincial, even a country detective -- that is to say, I am expected to do the work of a wise man while being regarded as an inevitable fool.”
“Which is the most advantageous, Mr. Brews?” she asked laughing.
“Being regarded as an ass,” he replied promptly.

Hard work and team work form the basis of police investigations; with a superstructure of observation and inquiry rather than lucky intuition. But, when the ends of the threads do begin to show, there is no one better at synthesis than your experienced detective. He knots up much faster than he unravels....

FFB: Power on the Scent - Henrietta Clandon

THE STORY: William Power, lawyer, confides with his married novelist friends, Vincie and Penny Mercer, on an unusual murder involving what appears to be a poisoning by inhalation. Evidence suggests that a boutonniere found on the victim's lapel was dusted with cocaine.  The two writers are enlisted as unofficial detectives and together the three solve the murder with a very strange method of killing and even more odd motive.

THE CHARACTERS: William Power along with the Mercers appear in a brief series of detective novels by John Hazlette Vahey writing under the pseudonym Henrietta Clandon. Vahey is better known to readers of this blog as Vernon Loder whose mystery novels incorporate bizarre plots, strange murder methods and his trademark sense of offbeat humor.  Power on the Scent (1937) is the fourth book in the series of five, but only the third in which the three series characters appear together.  Powell appears alone in Good by Stealth (1937) while the Mercers go it alone in the final Clandon novel Fog over Weymouth (1938).

Penny and Vincie are novelists who specialize in crime fiction and detective stories. Penny's last work was released as This Delicate Murder, the previous novel in the Clandon series, and we find out that Penny writes as "Henrietta Clandon" adding an element of metafiction to this series. The previous case is alluded to several times and even footnoted in the text.

Penny comes up with a handful of good ideas as to how the cocaine was administered when an elaborate re-creation of a flower delivery fails to show that the rose used as a boutonniere could have held onto the powdered drug over the rough road the bicyclist travelled. When she learns that the victim had a fondness for the candy Turkish Delight she offers up the traditional coating of confectioner's powered sugar could easily have been doctored and not been noticed. That the victim is also a "snuffer" (translation for US readers: drug snorter) suggests that he may not have sensed the difference to an added sprinkling of coke on his candy. The detective work here is filled with interesting ideas and action like the flower delivery by bicycle re-enactment that Vincie performs for Power and the police.

The title of novel comes into play at various places. We get discussions of the scent of flowers, perfumes, and the apparently fading habit of people smelling flowers. When Power passes by a garden at night and smells the pungent odor of tobacco plants which he tells us release their scent at night he once again gets to thinking of botanical scents.  It turns out to be the detection climax of the book.

Overall, I would call Power on the Scent a didactic detective novel. The bulk of the detection is done via conversations at afternoon tea, restaurant meals and dinner parties. It's detection as a social gathering.  Almost all of it exclusively through dialogue as well. Late in the book is one excellent scene where Powell invites Dr. Terpis, forensic pathologist, to dinner at the Mercer home.  Dr. Terpis is perhaps the liveliest character in the entire book. He was certainly my favorite.

Terpis is described as "no more than thirty, fat, red-faced, with a perpetual smile and a hoarse laugh which broke out on the least provocation."  He is amateur puppeteer and entertains Penny's interest in the art form with tales of his puppet making and his work on writing plays for his gallery of puppets. He enjoys every course of the meal prepared for him ("It was as good as eating yourself to watch his gastronomic pleasure") and is a pleasant raconteur as well as an informative forensics expert.  When Terpis comes to discuss the case he presents fascinating details about the skull of a Great Dane that went over a cliff with one of the suspects, both perished. His findings, both macabre and pertinent to the case, will help clear up some ambiguities, decide the actual method of murder, and lead to the surprising solution to the various mysteries uncovered in the death of Montague Morgan, stockbroker and developer of a unique variety of Rennavy Rose.

INNOVATIONS: As "Henrietta Clandon" Vahey indulges in a self-consciously witty style, overflowing with puns, epigrams and arch humor.  It's a humor reminiscent of Restoration comedies of Wycherley and Etherege and seems utterly out of place in this detective story plot with its grave consequences involving murderous rage and drug abuse.  Other writers use this arch humor to great effect like Christianna Brand and Colin Watson without characters willfully drawing attention to their own cleverness.  I was bothered by how delighted Penny and Vince were with each other when they came up with yet another ridiculous pun.  Even Powell joins in on the game. The dialogue is loaded with the kind of epigrammatic sentences you find too often in the plays of Oscar Wilde. People don't talk this anywhere except in books, on stage and in cocktail comedies of 1930s American cinema. In a detective novel that does not start out as a farce the self-conscious humor sticks out like a sore thumb. This is not to say I didn't find some of it clever or amusing; some of it is (see QUOTES section). However, when the characters comment on their cleverness and practically pat each other on the back when some witticism is delivered I was rolling my eyes.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The victim's nephew Charles Sibbins has hired Powell to look into his uncle's suspicious death. He's a playboy and spendthrift who at the start of the book is hunting bongos in Afirca.  I always though a bongo was a type of drum. Guess again! Bongos are a type of striped antelope with distinctive curved horns indigenous to to Western Africa. (see photo)  Currently there are only 150 still living in the wild.  Luckily, their home is a preserve in the Kenyan mountains where hopefully they are safe from marauding poachers who seem to be solely responsible for the decimation of hundreds of animals species in that continent.

Penny refuses to use the hateful term macrocarpa to describe a hedge behind which Morgan was found. She says why say that when its easier and smarter to use cypress. A macrocarpa is, after all, a form of cypress -- the Monterey cypress, in fact. The very type of cypress clinging for life on the cliffs of Carmel, CA that has been photographed innumerable times and appears all over the internet.

On page 158 there is this sentence: "Noses, 'narks' as they used to be called, are very useful but rarely men with any moral sense." This is most likely the origin of the crime world slang term spelled as 'narc' in the US. I always thought narc was derived from the word narcotic. Nark and nose here are meant as slang for police informer. Nark first appeared in print in 1859 as the Merriam-Webster wizards of lexicography and etymology informed me. They suggest it derives from nak, Romani (the Gypsy language) for nose.

Another odd word on page 175 "Morgan...might be tempted to risk his money on a stumer..." sent me to the internet dictionaries once more. I learned that this is British slang for fraud or failure, especially a horse race that was rigged or fixed. It can also refer to the person who was victimized from such a rigged horse race.

And -- of course-- dog in the manger cropped up again! ("There was no suggestion of tender passages between them. He was either a dog-in-the-manger, or she was a superlative typist. They are, I hear, rare in the City.") For those who are counting that makes the third appearance of the phrase in two months for the books reviewed here. How have I never heard or read it until this year?

QUOTES: Summing up Charles Sibbins, an avid hunter, as a loudmouth coward Power says:
"You take it from me that if bongos went about with sub-machine guns Sibbins wouldn't collect many."

"You're spoiling the whole thing! You people full of commonsense are the death of all imagination!"

Impartiality is a gift of the gods and they are more sparing of it than anything else.

"The fact is that Withers has got the wind up, and I always find it pays to let the wind do its work," [Penny said]
"Very right," Vincie agreed, "practical and alliterative."

Vagueness is a virtue in a practicing policeman. He can always say that he didn't mean what you mean.

"I warned him against that dog several times. In fact, I hated the beast. It may seem unkind to say so, but over-kind and friendly people, and over-affectionate dogs are definitely dislikeable."

"Does it not occur to you that a man or woman tells the truth more often when he is rude, then when he is civil and polite?"
"Politeness is as much an enemy of the truth as oil is of friction."

EASY TO FIND? But of course! How's that for a welcome surprise. Four of the books written by Vahey using the Clandon pen name have been reissued by the prolific vintage crime novel reprint publisher Dean Street Press. In addition to Power on the Scent you can purchase a copy of Good By Stealth (already favorably reviewed here and here), Inquest and This Delicate Murder. All four were officially released on March 2 and are now available for sale in paperback and digital formats. The original UK editions of the Henrietta Clandon mystery novels are extremely scarce. None of them were published in the US during Vahey's lifetime. Some like Fog over Weymouth have not been available in the used book market in decades. There are a handful out there, but I suggest that you purchase the new editions as they include informative introductory material by Curt Evans who offers up his usual biographical tidbits and insights into the writer's work.

FFB: Death at the Wheel - Vernon Loder

THE STORY: Two bodies found in cars, both shot dead, within days of one another.  The first is a policeman who has been investigating a sting of jewel robberies. The second corpse is a two bit (or six penny since this is England) fortune teller who calls himself Osiris. The question is - are these two murders or a murder and suicide? Rufus Tate (aka Osiris) seems to be implicated in the jewel robberies and it appears he may have killed the cop and then himself. Arthur Way, the Sulcote chief constable, doubts the verdict at the double coroner's inquest. Too many oddities make the suicide highly unlikely. With the help of a large crew of police, both local and Scotland Yard officials, as well as some surprise ideas from Clare, his fiancee, Arthur uncovers a very strange truth.

THE CHARACTERS: Death at the Wheel (1933) features a large cast led by Arthur Way, a rural chief constable at odds with the more experienced city cops of Scotland Yard.  Arthur, however, sees this unusual set of crimes as an opportunity to shine as the detective he always wanted to be. He has some very ingenious ideas how to approach the crime and is complimented for his contributions.  Scotland Yard should be assisting only at his instruction but that doesn't stop Assistant Commissioner Cance from setting up a rather unethical undercover operation with his ace detective Inspector Brow. When Arthur stumbles upon Brow in the disguise of a fly fisherman on holiday he becomes very angry.

Meanwhile, Clare's stepfather Holroyd Sayce is targeted as the primary suspect as the mastermind of the jewel robberies.  Sayce happens to be in the jewelry business making it all the more likely that he may be involved with a ring of thieves who are all carnival workers who have always been nearby each time a home was burglarized. 

Loder's signature wit is not lacking here. Clare Winkton is definitely a highlight with her brash wit and good sense. Clare is always teasing her stepfather nicknaming him Holly and treating him irreverently. Paradoxically she also seems to be protecting him from the police.She provides Arthur with one of the cleverest ideas when they brainstorm about where Smith, the master crook, might be hiding out.  She also points out to Arthur that a slip of paper that he is convinced is an intricate code is actually nothing more than a series of dates and initials.  The reader knows this as quickly as Clare does. In his attempt to prove himself a great detective Arthur does tend to overthink a lot of the obvious

Also I liked the bit part of Sir Guy Lunt, owner of an amber necklace that was stolen and broken up for its gemstones. Lunt is a foppish hypochondriac with a malingering case of "bronchitic tendencies." He reminded me of the vile Frederick Fairleigh in Collin's The Woman in White who never stepped out of his dressing gown and complained of aches and pains while pawing over his pornographic drawings.  Sir Guy Lunt is just as ludicrous, a perfect satiric creation and one more character in Loder's collection of worthless aristocrats who pop up frequently in his mystery novels.

INNOVATIONS: Too many cooks may spoil the broth, but too many policemen don't spoil this detective novel. There are a slew of policemen that I didn't really think I needed to keep straight. The more that were added to the story the more I kept thinking that this might have been Loder's attempt to imitate Henry Wade.  By the midpoint of the novel I was truly impressed with how different this was form the usual Loder detective novel which is usually brimming with eccentric touches, bizarre murder methods and outlandish incidents.  In a high contrast to his first eight books Death at the Wheel is grounded in real crime, murder committed with guns, dogged police work and career criminals.  It's a genuine police procedural and one of the best of its type by any of his contemporaries.  Loder can stand shoulder to shoulder with Wade, Nigel Morland or Helen Reilly, three of the best practitioners of true police procedurals, meaning detective novels that not only show us how police solve crimes but also explore the culture of police stations and the collegiality of policemen.

Guns & bicycles!  The murder weapon was
manufactured by this company based in St. Etienne.

Loder manages to juggle parallel storylines and we follow Arthur's raw edged, ingenious and experimental style of detection which is in strong contrast to the polished technical police work of the Scotland Yard men and local police.  The book might very well have been called The Case of the Three Shells for the bulk of the novel deals with the bullets, casings and shells of a French made .22 handgun, the murder weapon in both shootings.  Arthur spends a lot of time thinking about three .22 shells, where they were found, the lack of fingerprints on some when they should be present. He creates a variety of involved experiments like  the one with a pair of trousers worn by one of the victims. Arthur tires to discover if a fingerprint on a shell casing could be worn away over time if placed in a tight fitting pocket. He also studies wear patterns in the fabric to determine whether or not a gun could have been habitually carried in a certain pocket in the trousers. This was a fascinating section of the book showing off Loder's masterful plotting techniques and unusual ideas about crime solving.

THINGS I LEARNED:  At the end of Chapter 10 Clare makes this quip in reference to Smith, the burglar the police are hunting: "No one would knowingly put Charles Peace in the post of chief clerk, where jewels were bought and sold."  I had no idea who Charles Peace was and so off I went a-Googling.  I guess I should have known because he turns out to be one of the most notorious criminals in the history of British criminology.  Peace, a talented musician, in the guise of a travelling violin player and bric-a-brac peddler committed multiple burglaries over a three year period. He became wanted for two murders and one attempted murder of a policeman. He was pursued by police, arrested and tried in 1879. In a record breaking 12 minute jury deliberation Peace was found guilty and executed.  Peace has been immortalized in the penny dreadfuls of Victorian fiction, has music hall songs written about him and his life story was filmed at least three times. The most well known movie of his life and crimes may be The Case of Charles Peace (1949) directed by Norman Lee.

Arthur Way utters this odd sentence late in the book: "If he died, he died very suddenly. And like the dead donkeys, which they say no one ever sees, sir, he buried himself rather mysteriously."  I figured this was some sort of British slang so I went looking in various reference books. I'm not sure I got the actual origin, but this fit as close as possible. I was looking for something to do with dead donkeys never being seen. What I found is a "dead donkey" comes from the world of journalism, a phrase that refers to a story that is so trivial it can be killed to make room for more newsworthy story that deserves to be in print. Supposedly the phrase comes from a 1990s UK sit com called Drop the Dead Donkey and many people think it was created by the writers. But obviously since the phrase appears in a book in 1933 it's a lot older than the TV show. If anyone knows more about this odd allusion and phrase, please let me know in the comments.

QUOTES:  One of these mystery story writers would have made something of that, he mused. There would be a masked gang...with headquarters in some riverside dive. Clare would be their languid queen, at one moment in a Paris gown at some elegant hotel, at another clothed in black tights burgling the suite of a duke...

Arthur Way was a man with an active mind, and even the most busy of country Chief Constables finds that the routine of his job does not highly try his faculties. The idea of doing a bit of detective work on his own appealed to the boy which is latent in most of us.

"Good luck to you," said Cance, "but try to use your imagination, Brow! Common sense is a fine thing, but there isn't much of the X-ray about it!"

Clare: "...I could have skipped down to the gun-room, got one of Holly's shotguns and peppered the brute.  I wasn't really afraid."
That was like her.  It had always struck him that she was both cool and courageous.

EASY TO FIND? If you want a real book you're out of luck. It's a rarity.  But the good news for readers who have Kindle devices and live in the UK or Europe is that you can purchase a digital copy of Death at the Wheel from Black Heath Classic Crime.  TomCat has been reading the Nicholas Brady books put out by Black Heath so I guess they're OK. The fact that they don't have their own website makes me think these are pirated digital books and I'm not comfortable helping to promote them. But if this is the only way you can read the book, then go ahead and spend your money on them. They are ridiculously cheap, that's for sure.

It's a solid police procedural, one of Loder's better books filled with creative ideas and invention.  But as such it's very different from the weirdness that was displayed in the more original and bizarre mystery The Shop Window Murders recently reprinted by HarperCollins.

FFB: The Shop Window Murders - Vernon Loder

Tobias Mander is the founder and owner of Mander Department Store, his brainchild for an innovative place that will combine "cheapness with luxury." He also is an airplane fanatic and has an engineering lab in his home. Having procured many of the best experts in the retail trade he is set to open the flagship Mander store to the accompaniment of much fanfare. One of his more audacious publicity stunts was to have his new design for a portable gyrocopter unveiled by having the flying contraption land on the roof of the store much to the chagrin of police and local authorities who felt it unsafe. He dubbed the invention the Mander Hopper. Marketed as "a plane you fold up in a room and land in a tennis court" the retail wizard was planning to sell them his store and was taking orders prior to starting a manufacturing line. All those plans come to a crashing halt when Tobias Mander is found dead during the opening festivities. Someone shot him, dressed him up as a mechanic, and placed him among other mannequins in a display window at the front of the store.

All this unfolds in the first chapter of The Shop Window Murders (1930) one of Vernon Loder's more complicated and highly unusual detective novels. The events at the store's gala opening become stranger once the police arrive. They find that one of those storefront mannequins, a woman dressed in an outlandish costume adorned with a print that advertised the Mander Hopper, is not a mannequin at all. It's Effie Turnour, fiancée to the store's manager Robert Kephim. And she's dead too. She's been stabbed and placed in a chair in an unflattering pose right next to Mander's corpse. Someone obviously was not happy about Mander's plans to take over the retail world.

Enter Inspector Devenish, another of Loder's humane and intelligent policemen. He's willing to admit he's flawed, eager to listen to what everyone has to say no matter how hysterical or ranting they become. But woe to the fiendish murderer behind these bizarre crimes for Devenish is sharp enough to envision all angles and possibilities. During the investigation he uncovers department store rivalries, a conspiracy behind the actual identity of the inventor and desiger of the Mander Hopper and a hotbed of vice among the store's employees.

The Hafner Gyroplane
From a postcard series illustrated by Howard Leigh, March 1938

The cast of characters is a lively one. There's Mann, a night watchman who turns out to be another in a long line of mystery fiction characters similar to Sayer's Bunter and Allingham's Lugg. Mann was a batman to store executive Jameson Peden-Hythe during WWI and he still retains a loyalty to his older comrade who saved his life on the battlefield. Devenish suspects Mann assumed Peden-Hythe guilty of the murders and in order to protect his battleground Samaritan altered the crime scene and manufactured fake evidence. Or how about Webley the embittered and hostile mechanical engineer who claims that Mander stole the design from him? He's suspect number one in Devenish's book. Webley's belligerent attitude doesn't help clear his name any faster even though he seems to have an ironclad alibi. There is also Mrs. Hoe, a shrewd journalist always popping in at the most unexpected times. Devenish is impressed by her insight and intelligence. But Mrs. Hoe is hiding a secret of her own and has an interest in the murders other than great newspaper copy and eye-catching headlines. She is keeping tabs on a couple of the suspects for more personal reasons. Finally, there is a platoon of Loder's usual lower echelon policeman some of whom provide comic relief. One able-bodied sergeant in particular is responsible for uncovering the most unusual piece of evidence that eventually leads to the startling conclusion.

US 1st edition (Morrow, 1930)

I'd love to go into great detail about the denouement which once again showcases Loder's most unique trademark in all his detective novels, but I'd definitely be giving away the game if I elaborate any further. Suffice to say that Loder is fascinated with the idea of criminals who get their comeuppance even before the police know a crime has occurred. There always seems to be one victim who falls prey to their own scheming.

If you are ever lucky enough to come across a copy of The Shop Window Murders (yes, my friends, it's an incredibly scarce title) you ought to snap it up. This book is not only entertaining it may be Loder's most complicated and original spin on a gimmick he seems to have invented. If he didn't invent it, then he certainly perfected it. Other than in the work of Anthony Wynne, who has his own favorite tricks like the twice murdered corpse, I have yet to come across so many variations on such an odd idea for detective novel crimes. While I'm recommending this book I would suggest you keep your eyes out for any book with the Vernon Loder pseudonym on the cover. They make for fascinating reading and are as different from the standard whodunits of his colleagues as champagne is to soda water.

UPDATE: Fantastic news! As of November 2018 The Shop Window Murders has been reprinted by HarperCollins as part of their continuing reissue of all of the books in the Detective Crime Club Classics imprint which originally appeared in the 1930s. The book is available in hardcover or digital editions. I hear that I'm mentioned in Nigel Moss' introduction. And this blog post is quoted on the DJ. Exciting!

IN BRIEF: The Death Pool - Vernon Loder

US 1st edition (William Morrow & Co., 1931)

Mystery writer Ned Hope is excited to have purchased Fen Court for the unheard of sum of £750 when at face value the property is worth several times more. Imagine his surprise when in making a tour of the grounds he comes across three corpses in the ornamental pond. His bargain basement purchase is sure to hit the sub-basement level in property values. Not to mention inviting visits from morbid scene of the crime tourists. What’s a mystery writer to do but solve the mystery of the three bodies.

Hope is “hired” by Bell, his reporter friend, to do a series of articles on the mysterious drowning deaths. Bell tells Ned that his assignment is to be a sort of experiment in feature writing. Ned, primarily a fiction writer, will report on the facts of the crime and as those facts are presented he will work out his own solution. Ned is joined in his combination investigative reporting and amateur detective work by his fiancée Nancy Johnson.

The victims of The Death Pool (1930) are Mr. Habershon, his ward Maysie Rowe and her lover Ivor Rainy. The two young people were thought to have eloped and left the area. In uncovering the multiple layers of a very strange relationship between the three victims Ned and Nancy begin to think that Mr. Habershon killed the other two and then did either did himself in or through negligence accidentally drowned. Most impressive is how Loder manages to invent the different combinations of victims and killer and how each died. Accidents made to look like murder and murders made to appear suicide are only two of the multiple solutions the duo dream up. Amazingly, the final reveal is even more complicated than Ned or Nancy could have imagined.

Inspector Brews makes his debut here doing his best to appear low-key and officious. “As a matter of routine--” is his favorite phrase and becomes something of a running gag throughout the novel. He often frustrates Ned who, after delivering what he thinks is a scoop on the case, learns that Brews knew of it already. As in other Vernon Loder mysteries Ned as amateur detective takes center stage, does most of the legwork and theorizing while Brews, the official detective, retreats into the background then delivers up the correct solution in the final chapters.

UK edition is known as The Essex Murders

Loder’s skill in creating quirky supporting characters is exemplified in the person of Cornelius Hatch. An avid ornithologist Hatch provides for some great scenes and a very different sort of local color. He wants to publish a book of spectacular photographs of birds and their nesting behaviors. The photographs will play a large part in the plot and will add to the mystery when Brews begins to suspect that Hatch is an impostor.

The unusual clues include a discussion of Brazilian coffee, the discovery of a thermos with no fingerprints, a car wiped clean of fingerprints that should show signs of one of the victims having driven it, and a mysterious light seen in the window of a cottage on the grounds of Fen Court. Loder does his best to lay out all the evidence to the reader, but in the denouement presents one crucial bit of information completely out of left field. It is something Brews digs up on his own but the reader is never made aware of until a few pages from the end. Occasionally, Loder cheats and it’s the only flaw that keeps him from being one of the top tier of detective novelists from this era.

NEGLECTED DETECTIVES: Superintendent Cobham

Superintendent Cobham is on the case in Between Twelve and One (1929) by prolific (but sadly overlooked) Golden Age detective novelist Vernon Loder. Cobham is a likable detective who does an early form of what Columbo did -- he misleads suspects into thinking he's absent-minded or less than intelligent.  He also has the habit of humming operatic arias and music hall tunes while puttering about the crime scenes or waiting for suspects to be show into his office. He's one of the more human and eccentric characters I've come across in a long time.

THE CASE:  Speculating financier Mr. Cupoli invites nine of his investors to his home for a weekend. While entertaining his guests he plans to make an announcement about the project in which they have put their money -- an industrial plant that will extract nitrates from polluted air.  Before he can meet with his guests he is taken ill by an apparent overdose of cocaine. Next morning after a rousing and frightening thunderstorm Cupoli is found stabbed in his bedroom.  His body is found half hanging out a window and medieval poniard is on the floor. But there is no blood on the poniard.  The textured design of the blade should've caught flash or viscera, the medical examiner tells Cobham. However, the blade is absolutely clean. The poniard does not appear to be the weapon. What then caused the fatal stab wound?

Cobham does some nimble detection.  Most of the time we get fair play mode but sometimes it's of the "he put it in his pocket" variety.  That is, Cobham finds a piece of evidence and pockets it or does something inexplicable and the reader hasn't a clue what it means. Case in point -- the chair in Cupoli's bedroom.  Cobham marks an X on the chair's underside then removes it to his office at Scotland Yard. Why? We only find out in the final chapter. And it has a great significance to what happened to the actual murder weapon.  But the true detection in the novel makes up for these slight cheats in the narrative.

One of the better sequences involves the discovery of scratches on the outside window ledge indicating the use of a grappling hook. Later a grappling hook is retrieved from a pond. The hook is covered in fish spawn and bears traces of oil. The police will also find a brand new rope attached to a windlass of an ancient well that has been saturated with brackish, non-potable water.  Cobham will eventually prove that the murderer went to great lengths to give the impression that someone climbed into the bedroom window using the rope and grappling hook, but his genius lab workers prove this all to be a charade. Comparison of well water and pond water; the life cycle of the roach, a fish that lives in brackish water, and other arcana enter into unveiling one of the most elaborate red herrings I've encountered in the genre.

There is are several clever sequences.  One involving the investigation of the ancient well and what they find there. Another when Cobham asks suspect Vance Maud to give him a tour of a country club. He especially wants to see the locker rooms.  Maud thinks the policeman has lost his mind, but nonetheless obliges with his odd request. Clive Merton, Cobham's right hand man, is also baffled. He thinks Cobham is being frivolous and unprofessionally curious about the operation of a country club and not focussing on the real reason for being there which is to find the possible hidden location of some missing money. But of course it's all Cobham's sly way of further proving his theories.

UK 1st edition under the original title
(Collins, 1929)

The detection in this novel is much improved from The Mystery at Stowe. Cobham's sham act manages to fool not only the innocent among the suspects but the arrogant murderer as well.  It's a shame that this appears to be his only appearance in Loder's vast output as he is one of the more original policeman characters of this era. The uncanny similarity to Lt. Columbo one I couldn't get out of my head.  For that reason I think this book would be of great interest to fans of that brilliant TV series.

Of all of Loder's books Between 12 and 1 -- which was originally published in the UK under the bland title Whose Hand? -- is the easiest to get a hold of.  A few copies are available for sale via online bookselling sites and one copy can be had for as little as $10.

FIRST BOOKS: The Mystery at Stowe - Vernon Loder

Let's talk darts, gang. Poison darts, that is. And blowguns. Not exactly the most convenient way to do in your enemy. Cumbersome to carry. No element of surprise in the attack. Imagine whipping out a blowgun that has been cleverly stowed down your sleeve or, perhaps if your agile and flexible, down your trouser leg. The minute it's out your victim is sure to hit the pavement and run for his life. And how far does that blowgun poison dart have to travel? No real range, is there? Even the most healthy of respiratory systems and an exhale of hurricane strength isn't going to get that dart to travel more than the length of your average Golden Age drawing room.

Why then is a blowgun employed so regularly in old movies and vintage detective fiction? For the artistry of it all, I guess. You have to admit it's one of the most ostentatious ways to dispatch your enemy. Sure to make the tabloid headlines and maybe even the front pages of the legitimate press.

Poor Margery Tollard is the victim of a poison dart in The Mystery at Stowe (1928) by Vernon Loder. And it looks like Elaine Gordon, renowned South American explorer and travel lecturer, may be the guilty one with the strong lungs. Artifacts recently purchased from Elaine by Mr. Barley, host of a dinner party at Stowe, have been prominently displayed in the front hall. One of the darts foolishly left out in the open is missing from the small container hung beside the pipe. It ended up in Margery's neck and her body was found in front of an open window in her bedroom. Who is the killer with the flair for artistry and ostentation?

The murder investigation is handled mostly by Jim Carton in collaboration with local police. Recently returned from Africa, Carton had been charged there with some police work. He learned how to read tracks in the dust, look for signs of broken twigs, and other "bushman techniques" necessary for a detective in an undeveloped wild region. Carton puts his African skills to use and does some impressive work going over the grounds outside Stowe. He and the police also discuss the possibility of the blowgun as a red herring a la Christie's Death in the Air (written seven years later). Then Carton's imagination gets the better of him and he starts dreaming up ways that a poison dart can be fired without the use of a blowgun. From an air rifle, for example. Now if only he can find one somewhere around Stowe. Maybe that shifty Jorkins has one, muses Carton. Jorkins, the gamekeeper, was outside at the time of the murder and claimed to see a woman in a nightgown in Margery's room. Trying to implicate Elaine that's what he's trying to do that shifty Jorkins.


Blowgun or punaca & dart bag from Yagua tribe (Columbia & Peru)

Why is Jim Carton so determined to hang the crime on Jorkins and why such a baroque murder method? Because he's in love with Elaine, you silly reader. He must clear her name and win her heart at all at once. At times Carton is more interested in getting Elaine eliminated as the prime suspect rather than uncovering the truth. But this is a detective novel written in the 1920s. What else did you expect?

I enjoyed this book immensely. It was preposterous and entertaining and often witty. A sense of humor in these kinds of detective novels is essential. The opening scene was enough to keep me reading. Two women are playing a competitive game of billiards and gossiping about Ned Tollard, Elaine, and Ned's neglected wife Margery. You just know from their dishy talk that one of those three people is going to end up dead. They paint a picture of Elaine as a femme fatale of the worse kind, Margery as a downtrodden wife, and Ned as a dashing virile man who would set any woman's libido afire.

This year I've been focusing on detective fiction written between 1927 and 1931. This first mystery novel by Vernon Loder, a completely forgotten British writer who was nonetheless incredibly prolific, is one of the best I've read in a long time. The creativity invested in the plot, the many possible ways the crime could've been committed, Jim Carton's inventive experiments using one of the women as his accomplice, a gimmick that calls to mind a very famous Ellery Queen novel (also written much later than this book), and the truly surprising -- borderline genius yet utterly insane -- solution all qualify as criteria for a book I'd love to see back in print.

More Vernon Loder books will be reviewed in the coming months. Only a few of his books were published in both the UK and the US with the majority of them receiving only UK publication. And yes, I fear I must report that most of his books are hard to find. His bibliography is far too long to post here. For a complete list of his many pseudonyms and all of his mystery novels which I have painstakingly verified and arranged in order by each correct pseudonym, please visit the Vernon Loder page at the Golden Age of Detection wiki.

READING CHALLENGE UPDATE: Halfway done with my basic requirement for the  "Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2013 - Scattergories" sponsored by Bev at My Reader's Block. The book fulfills the category Scene of 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