FFB: Death Sends a Cable - Margaret Tayler Yates

THE STORY: Dr. Hugh McNeal, Navy physician and his wife Navy nurse Anne Davenport McNeal have been stationed in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where the Navy runs a telegraph station in cooperation with the American Cable Company. "Davvie" (the nickname Anne prefers) has been comforting a Navy widow grieving over her husband's recent suicide, but May Patterson is convinced that her husband Tom was murdered and that his death is related to the accidental death of another navy officer who drove off a cliff a few weeks earlier. Things get more complicated when an undercover FBI agent shows up to investigate both deaths after Mrs. Patterson leaves the naval station, heads back to the mainland and complains to the US government.  Davvie starts poking around, asking lots of questions and uncovers officers in disguise, possible German spies, coded telegraph messages, a plot to steal a resident mathematician's formula, and the truth about the two suspicious deaths.

THE CHARACTERS:  Apart from Davvie and Hugh, our lead married couple, there are only a few standouts in this very large cast. Probably because Yates finds it necessary to populate her navy base with as many possible variations on a military married couple the book often seems crowded and it's hard to focus on who you should be paying attention to.  But after the long expository first third of the book with the barrage of character introductions, relationships, friendships and other basic info the reader can settle into the story of the investigation which deals primarily with two FBI agents, Davvie and Babs van Born, niece of a rigid Navy officer.

Babs is 22 years old, seems and acts much younger, and ostensibly appears merely a babysitter/nanny for two rambunctious trouble-making boys of a snobby navy couple. She is presented at first as a starry-eyed dreamer but will turn out to be the most formidable of the gaggle of adventurous and courageous women on the base. Another standout is Bill Duncan about whom I cannot say too much without ruining some of the genuine surprises in Yate's tricky and rather complex plot.

The rest are pretty much stock characters, especially the many stodgy military men. Among the other women characers Kay Brewster, a slangy smart aleck who never seems to have a serious thought in her head, was one of my personal favorites. She doesn't seem real at all, like your favorite supporting character on a sit-com, but she has all the best lines and is often hilarious with her stinging comebacks.

INNOVATIONS: Death Sends a Cable (1938) is Yate's second mystery novel but it turns out to be more of an espionage thriller.  I have not read any of the other books in the short series, though I do have a copy of the fourth book set on Pearl Harbor which uses the Japanese attack as part of the plot.  I'm guessing that since these are military mystery novels set just before and after the start of World War 2 that spies and espionage are featured in most of the plots. Though Yates uses the framework of a detective novel in trying to uncover the truth behind the supposed suicide and the car accident the whodunnit element takes a back seat to all the spying, role playing and secretive gathering of information. The book is filled with several well done action set pieces with the final third becoming rather cinematic as the heroes and heroines race against time during the onset of a tropical storm that threatens to become a hurricane.

For the most part the book reads like many mystery novels written by women during this time period. The female characters are the strongest in the cast, their dialogue and scenes together tend to be a combination of chatty exchanges and catty gossip and there is a lot of lively wordplay and punning that on occasion gets a bit grating. Her style reminded me of Virginia Rath, Kelley Roos, Manning Long and other contemporary mystery writers who specialized in husband and wife couples who get involved in baffling and adventurous crimes. While Yates does have a clever skill with the frequent wisecacre banter, clearly inspired by Hollywood movies, it seems out of place and often the book seems to be emulating a movie screenplay. Kay Brewster, for example, reminded me more of a movie character than a person, the kind of woman that Eve Arden used to play in screwball comedies.

But when Yates is focused on the plot and the action she is in her element; the book comes alive and couldn't be more realistic and believable. Being part of a navy couple herself Yates knows the way military men and their wives think and behave and those portions of the plot make the book definitely worth reading. 
 
QUOTES:  The [gossiping women] said her husband drank in the morning so he could face the food he knew he would get at noon.

"Bull" Durham had heretofore been merely one of my favorite cable men; now he was a young magician who must, I felt, sleep on thunderclouds and eat shredded watts for breakfast.

Some country wanted that formula -- wanted it badly enough to plant agents in our most secret port. There probably isn't another country in the world, I thought, where this would be possible. We shout in the headlines of our isolation until we confuse the term with impregnability. Even in the last war, when we woke with surprise to find our country honeycombed with already well-established spy systems, didn't teach us anything. We cleaned them out and left the door wide open for their return.

THE AUTHOR: Margaret Tayler Yates (1887-1952) was born in Riverside, California and spent her early career as special correspondent for the New York World while living in the Philippines with her husband, Navy Commander R. R. Yates. In 1941 she and her husband were stationed at Pearl Harbor at the time of the infamous Japanese attack. She was sent back to the mainland and settled temporarily in New York while her husband remained in Hawaii. According to her bio on the dust jacket of Murder by the Yard she had two sons and a daughter; the sons were both in the Navy and her daughter was married to an Army Air Corps lieutenant colonel.

Anne "Davvie" McNeal Crime Novels
The Hush-Hush Murders (1937) - set on board a Navy Transport ship in the South Pacific
Death Sends a Cable (1938) - set in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Midway to Murder (1941) - set in the Midway Atoll
Murder by the Yard (1942) - set in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

FFB: Wild Justice - George A Birmingham

THE STORY: The apparent suicide of an Irishman with ties to the IRA is investigated by Chief Constable Devenish, Lord Benton, and a country parson. The detective novel plot is used to explore ongoing conflict between Irish loyalists living in England and the hatred they endure from British citizens.

THE CHARACTERS: Wild Justice (1930) is narrated by an Anglican minister who is given no name throughout the course of the book. Early on in the book he says "I am no lover of the Irish, who have always struck me as a troublesome race, but I like to be just to them." This is the overarching tenor of the book. The author, an Irishman himself, starts by poking fun at the anti-Irish sentiment that was prevalent in England at the time. The humor is mildly satiric in pointing out the narrow-minded prejudices of the narrator and others, but by the end of the book the author is clearly espousing his critical opinion of the radical Irish, the revolutionaries and terrorists who have sullied the reputation and history of the homeland he is proud of.

Chief Constable Devenish, a retired army colonel and the primary detective of the piece, is the embodiment of all that is good about Ireland. He's a war hero, affable, fair-minded, and has an admirable skill in making people feel at ease the moment he meets them. The victim and the man put on trial for murder, who happened to be the victim's dearest friend as well as an IRA member, are depicted as everything that is wrong with the country. In fact, the KC prosecuting the case uses the courtroom as his chance to malign all of Ireland as a land of rebels that celebrates "secret societies" and the men who run them. Despite what may seem to be slathering on condemnation for Ireland and its people, Birmingham does not really resort to simplistic black and white portraits of good and evil. Rather he shows the fraternal love Irishmen have for one another and presents legitimate reasons for understanding why the radical factions have such deep-seated antipathy for English law and English culture. The reader understands the Irish mindset, the stubborn beliefs they cling to, their innate sense of humor that helps them cope with trauma and hardship. And you see bigotry uncovered for what it really is.

Servant characters usually allocated to minor supporting roles figure prominently in the first half of the story, especially Bastable the bigoted butler on the Benton estate and George, the beleaguered footman. "Murder or no murder," comes Bastable's reprimand to George, "the rector and Colonel Devenish will be wanting their boots and they're to be cleaned properly before they're brought up." The business of what happened to boots overnight may seem like a minor incident to every other character in the book except George who insists that one pair was not with the rest. He eventually loses his job over the boot incident since no one will believe his story. Knowing how missing boots and the cleaning of them pop up as clues in classic mystery fiction (The Hound of the Baskervilles and Trent's Last Case come to mind) I knew these scenes were not meant to be trivial at all. True enough the boot incident will have repercussions by the end of the novel.

INNOVATIONS: There may be an entire subgenre of mainstream novels about the Irish/English conflict. I can think of The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty and Odd Man Out by F.L. Green as two excellent examples. Wild Justice is the only Golden Age detective novel I have encountered where anti-Irish sentiment and the effect of Irish terrorism on innocent citizens plays such a major part in the story. In fact these themes serve as the underlying motive for the crimes revealed in the most unexpected manner in the powerful finale.

As far as ingenious use of clues there is a section in which a typewriter with a German keyboard turns up twice and the accidental use of umlauts (ä, ö, ü) is a telltale clue in a letter sent to the accused. Our parson narrator, who has been working on a monograph on medieval Irish monasteries, is called upon to use his knowledge of "old Irish" to authenticate the letter which employs several phrases in Gaelic, or Erse as the British characters call it here. The linguistic bits though not entirely fair play clues are fascinating. But the typewriter clue is perhaps the most damning piece of evidence. The discussion of the German typewriter keyboard comes up three times in the novel and astute readers will be able to use those scenes to unmask the killer long before the rest of the characters figure it out.

The closing argument of the defense attorney in the climactic murder trial is a brilliant example of legal rhetoric. He manages to do some clever reasoning and does his best to sway the jury to a verdict of not guilty by playing up reasonable doubt, the crucial phrase that can acquit a man of a crime.

QUOTES: On the narrator's inexpert participation at a hunting party: "I missed rather more than usual, and I always miss more than I hit. This does not trouble me, for I have a feeling that a parson ought not to be an expert at killing things, except, of course, fish."

"I am not an expert in Irish affairs but I hold strongly that it is a mistake to assume that anything that happens or ever has happened there is reasonable."

"I wondered at and greatly admired the way [Devenish] dealt with a fanatic like O'Callaghan. I should just as soon have tried to make a joke to an American Methodist Minister about Prohibition."

"He had been foolish enough to slay his man in England, a country in which the old-fashioned prejudice against unauthorized killing still survives."

Bastable's bigotry: "...there wasn't much blood, sir. So Mrs. Mudge informed me. Not so much as might be anticipated, considering that the parties concerned were both Irish."

Bastable again: "Now, I'm Church, sir, and I've always voted Conservative. But what I say is, that if a man would rather be Chapel [Roman Catholic] and vote Liberal that's his business and no affair of mine. But the Irish is different from us, sir."

James Owen Hannay , circa 1930s
photo ©Pirie MacDonald,
courtesy National Portrait Gallery

THE AUTHOR: "George A. Birmingham" is the chosen pen name of James Owen Hannay (1865-1950). Hannay was born in Belfast, educated in Ireland and was ordained a Church of Ireland clergyman in 1889. He served at various churches throughout Ireland and was an army chaplain during WW1. In 1922 he joined an ambassadorship to Budapest. After his time in Hungary he settled in England and remained there for the rest of his life. He began writing novels in 1905 focusing on his critical view of Irish politics in his first novel The Seething Pot. Then he turned to comic novels for which he is best known continuing his critical viewpoint in a gentle satirical vein. Late in his writing career he wrote a handful of detective and crime novels the most noteworthy being The Hymn Tune Mystery (1930), also with a clergyman narrator, that deals with the murder of an organ player and a clever cryptogram that can only be solved with a knowledge of reading music.

THINGS I LEARNED: Stumbled across a very unusual word: peccant - guilty of committing sin. The sentence where this is used: "It was horrible to feel that a fellow human being, however guilty he might be, was being walled in, as they say peccant nuns sometimes were in the dark ages." That's some metaphor!

I was caught up in the section on Gaelic grammar and vocabulary. It went on for about ten pages but I never found it boring. Learned all about the placement of vowels, subtleties in Irish grammar that affect connotation and meaning, and that A chara dhilis is the way to write "My dear friend" in a Irish letter salutation. Also that the Gaelic name Diarmuid is pronounced something close to "Jeermood" in English.

EASY TO FIND? I found this book through serendipitous browsing at BookMan BookWoman, a used bookstore in Nashville, during a weekend getaway earlier this month. The store was having a sale -- $9.95 for every hardcover mystery book no matter what the price marked inside. How fortuitous! (as some Victorian character might exclaim.) I took every vintage mystery I could find that I didn't already own. Wild Justice was the most unusual and the oldest in the small pile of books I purchased. I already knew of Birmingham from my reading The Hymn Tune Mystery several years ago. To my surprise an internet search turned up 14 more copies of Wild Justice mostly of the various Methuen editions, but none with a complete DJ like mine. My copy is a 1935 reprint. It apparently was selling well -- the 1935 edition is the fifth printing since it's original publication in 1930. There are also US reprints from Jacobsen out there to buy. All but one are reasonably priced ranging from $5 to $15. Such deals for a rather excellent yet utterly forgotten detective novel by an undeservedly forgotten writer. I doubt there are any digital copies, but I didn't bother to look for them.

FFB: The Medbury Fort Murder - George Limnelius

THE STORY: Loathsome Lt. Lepean is found with his throat cut and his head nearly severed from his body in a locked room at the isolated Medbury Fort situated on the Thames. Lepean was not at all admired among his fellow soldiers. The arrogant, sneering soldier was a known user of women and is revealed early on to be a ruthless blackmailer. There are at least four men who had very good reason to kill Lepean, two of them were being blackmailed. Was it one of them who slew the soldier or someone else?

THE CHARACTERS: At the start the story is told from the viewpoint of Major Hugh Preece who meets Lepean and faintly recognizes him from his good looks and his superior insinuating manner. A flashback occurs and we are taken to West Africa where Preece served alongside another soldier, Victor Wape, who also will end up at Medbury Fort fifteen years later. The West African flashback is one of the most enlightening pieces of writing I've read in a long time. I learned all sorts of arcane tidbits about African culture (circa 1914) and the British military presence there. But it is a courtroom scene with a horrifying conclusion that is the main reason for this flashback. That and the revelation of how Preece and Wape both knew Lepean in their past. We also learn how Preece met his wife Claire, his romantic fling with a stage actress named Prunella Lake, and a bit about Wape's personal life.

Lepean's murder is solved by three different policeman: a local constable who is not all that competent, Inspector Paton of Scotland Yard, and his superior officer Chief Inspector McMaster. All three do their part in uncovering key evidence in the unusual locked room murder which seems to have been inspired by a famous detective novel. This is told to us when Major Preece describes in detail how he plans to kill Lepean early in the book. When Lepean is found murdered exactly as Preece planned there is a strong suspicion that the major was the killer. But the story, of course, will turn out to be not all that simple.

Prunella also plays a primary part in the crime. We know that she urged Preece to eliminate Lepean who knew of a secret liaison between the two. It's not just because Prunella is now married to a prominent aristocrat that she fears exposure. There is something much more damaging to her reputation and her comfortable life. She writes a letter to Preece hinting at murder and instructing him to destroy the letter after he reads it. Claire will also enter the picture and will turn amateur sleuth in order to save her husband from the gallows when it appears that he is the primary suspect in the murder.

INNOVATIONS: This is one of the most unique novels I've read in early 20th century crime fiction because it is both an inverted detective novel and a true detective novel. It seems from the beginning that Limnelius was inspired by the books of Anthony Berkeley for we will follow Major Preece from his planning stage to the actual crime. But the book is told in third person and we get all sorts of viewpoints throughout the novel. On the night of the murder we are fairly certain that Preece did not follow through with his plans based on some events that happen prior to the discovery of the body. Yet there is an ambiguity about whether or not he did kill Lepean by the time he is discovered dead.

If you know the famous novel (which is mentioned twice over the course of this book) that Preece used as inspiration then you will also be looking for certain evidence and behaviors. There are a few specific incidents that make it possible for at least three different men to have killed the vile blackmailer, but odd clues and items keeps turning up that make the case very difficult to sort out. When one character asks Inspector Paton if he has any clues he says nothing. But we hear his thoughts: "Yes,...plenty of clues. Too many clues; but no evidence, and no motive." Paton is referring to the discovery of three different possible weapons -- a scalpel, an African machete found on the grounds, and a curved French bayonet hidden in a corner of the murder room. Other curious bits turn up like what was in the ashes of the fireplace in Lepean's room and what McMaster finds when he examines the broken down door. By the end of the book the revelations of what actually happened on the night of the murder uncover not only a surprise killer, but three other unexpected twists in the plot. The reviewer for The Bookman in the November 1929 issue called this a "...brilliant and well-written piece of detective fiction with a good plot." Nicely understated, I'd say.

QUOTES: "...this looked as if it were going to develop into one of the those "mystery" cases, so dear to the journalist, so repugnant to the best instincts of the professional detective."

"To discover the romantic sensual man it is unnecessary to probe very deep. Even a middle-class, plain, and respectably married detective is not entirely immune from the occasional indulgence in daydreams in which he pays the dashing and intensely amative hero."

"Then, fatally, for Prunella, he remembered her origin. She was not a genuine aristocrat. He might have married just such another as Prunella Lake himself. No! With hardly the slightest twinge of regret, he put the temptation from him. It was, in a sense, a triumph for the moral value of British snobbery."

THE AUTHOR: Lewis George Robinson used the pseudonym "George Limnelius" for two detective novels. Limnelius comes from his mother's maiden name Limnel. The Medbury Fort Murder is his first and most successful mystery novel. He based much of the plot on his personal experience as a medical officer in the Royal Army where he served during the first World War. though I found no proof of his being stationed in West Africa I am positive that he must've been there based on the concentrated detail of African geography and culture.

Map of West Africa from 1910 showing
probable locations in The Medbury Fort Murder

THINGS I LEARNED: I had a devil of a time trying to figure exactly in which African country Preece and company were stationed. Limnelius uses the outdated British names, circa the 1920s and some dating back to the 18th century, for all the towns and countries and regions. He names a river that either doesn't exist (Rene) or had its name changed. He refers to Mandingo as both a language and a region, the Mongola Valley (couldn't locate it) and a city called Sakene (another strike out). He mentions Senegalia (another passé name) but not Sierra Leone which was British occupied at the time. He talks of French Equatorial Africa which at the time took up about one third of the continent. I have a feeling the flashback in West Africa took place in what is now Sierra Leone, but it was very hard to pinpoint.

The term mammy palaver refers to both the gossip of African women and is a slang term the Brits used to talk euphemistically of sexual relations between white men and African women. Palaver apparently is not only an African term that means gossip but the act of sex itself. The Brits borrowed that slang term and mixed it with their own pejorative "mammy" for any African woman. There is a lot of race talk in the flashback sequence and much of it reveals some of the less attractive by-products of colonialism that began in the 17th century and still existed in the early 20th century.

The gruesome surprise that takes place during the climactic courtroom sequence in the flashback has a eerie resonance for what is going on in both Africa and the Middle East with the rise of brutal terrorists who look back to their ancestors in meting out gory retribution.

I also learned more than I ever cared to know about slaughter practices in a kosher butcher shop. The visit Chief Inspector McMaster makes there provides a major clue to the solution of the mystery.

EASY TO FIND? Only a handful appear for sale on the various bookselling websites. Copies start at a mere seven bucks and run upwards to $63. None of the copies I found came with the apparently very rare dust jacket. There are no paperback reprints that I know of, either in the US of the UK where it was originally published. There is only one US reprint in hardcover from Grosset & Dunlap. Of the two books Robinson wrote under his "George Limnelius" pen name The Medbury Fort Murder is the easier to find. There's even an eBook version at Hathi Digital Trust!  The Manuscript Murder (1933), his second and last mystery, is extremely scarce.

UPDATE, NOV. 2017:  Thanks to a reader in Spain (I think) I have just learned that George Limnelius wrote a third mystery -- Tell No Tales (1931, Bles).  There is only one English language edition  from the UK publisher and no US edition at all.  And apparently at least one Spanish translation as well (see comments below).  I would guess that this third book (which I had never heard of until today) must be the most difficult one to find a copy of these days.

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This is the third of many 1929 books I am reading and writing up for the "Crime of the Century" month long celebration of mystery novels that were published in that year. Previously reviewed were The Secret of Sea-Dream House and The May Day Mystery. More 1929 book reviews are on the way!

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.