FIRST BOOKS: The Templeton Case - Victor L. Whitechurch

Victor Whitechurch is best known for his short story collection Thrilling Stories of the Railway with his vegetarian detective Thorpe Hazell and for being one of the founding members of the Detection Club.  He wrote a mere five detective novels and one comic crime novel (which is not very funny at all) as well as penning the first chapter of the seminal round robin detective novel The Floating Admiral.  I was thinking a lot about that round robin novel while reading The Templeton Case (1924), his first foray into detective fiction. Reginald Templeton is found stabbed in his yacht while moored off the coast of Marsh Quay, a tiny village situated near an estuary. Sailing and boating feature prominently in the story and there are myriad suspects who were in and around the yacht before and after the murder.  Several intriguing puzzles surrounding the murder crop up leading to some excellent examples of early 20th century detection in a murder mystery.

Our persistent and clever detective is Det-Sgt. Colson ably assisted by a lawyer and inadvertent detective of sorts in the person of Canon Fittleworth.  To be truthful the Canon is an accidental obstructor of justice because he finds and pockets a distinctive cigar label rather than handing it over to the police.  For a while I thought perhaps Whitechurch meant us to think this absentminded member of the clergy was involved in a cover-up. Whitechurch, being a canon himself, would never stoop to such a sacrilege. Eventually the Canon hands over the cigar label at the inquest which leads to an intriguing sort of shell game that I immediately picked up on though I was incorrect in my assuming who did the switcheroo.

Victor L. Whitechurch in his youth

I also liked many of the supporting characters including Mrs Yayes, the owner of the local pub; a young mystery man who claims to be a painter and seems very suspicious; a handful of hired boating men; and Colson's very perceptive and imaginative wife with whom he discusses the case. She gives her husband several ideas about the murder mystery. Unfortunately towards the end of the book we meet an ugly portrayal of a Jewish man and the book descends into the typical kind of "Jew talk" that pollutes so much of early 20th century British fiction. It didn't ruin the book for me but I can imagine it would make for a "skipping it" deal-breaker for lots of readers these days.

In addition to the puzzle of the cigar label there is a clever bit of code breaking of sorts when Colson and his crew discover a blotting pad with a string of words missing some letters. We are courteously given that string of letterless words in the text and can return to it repeatedly as the story unfolds.  Colson's lawyer friend keen on puzzle solving mulls it over and using a combination of intuition, logic, and a lot of luck remarkably comes up with the actual sentence and identifies the name of a key player in the mystery.

The Crown & Anchor and Harbor View house in Dell Quay

 Templeton was an explorer and his past life in South Africa coupled with the discovery of a single raw diamond on the yacht will lead Colson to a dark motive and a web of past criminal activity.  I thought the reveal of the murderer was a delightful surprise.  Never saw it coming and it seems to be something of an original rule breaking coup. I've never encountered this twist in any detective novel I've read to date.  So hats off to Canon Whitechurch for this clever and engaging debut.

THINGS I LEARNED:  The geography was so specific in describing an estuary that Templeton's man navigated that I thought perhaps all the towns mentioned were real.  They weren't.  But I looked up those I knew were real and followed the course of the yacht as described by Whitechurch.  It lead me to the small town of Dell Quay not far form Chichester which just happens to have a famous cathedral.  I think that this is exactly the area that Whitechurch set his story. It certainly fits in with all the descriptions and definitely follows the sailing route of Templeton's hired yacht, Firefly.

As this is out of copyright I was planning to reprint The Templeton Case but someone beat me to it earlier this year.  I guess that's from whom I bought my truly cheap copy of the US first edition a few months ago.  The Templeton Case is now available in paperback and digital format from an outfit called Spitfire Publishing.  They sell their books on that giant internet source of nearly everything under the sun.  If intrigued by this review you can get a cheap eBook or modestly priced paperback.  Despite the depiction of the Jewish man at the end I thought this was rather good.  Even Jacques Barzun in his Catalog of Crime thought it was a notable effort for a first try at writing a detective novel.

FFB: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn - Philip Craig

US 1st edition (Doubleday, 1969)

THE STORY: A quartet of unlikely exploring adventurers set out for a little known island off the coast of Sweden. There they hope to find proof that the events described in the epic poem Beowulf were based on historical fact. Professor Cyril Ashman is sure that they will find Beowulf's tomb and a hoard of ancient treasure on the island.

THE CHARACTERS: Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (1969) is narrated by grifting poker player Luther Martingale who has a past littered with trouble and scandal. He was forced out of Weststock College by an angry manipulative literature professor who learned that Luther was responsible for getting his niece pregnant. Subsequently she chooses to have an abortion. Prof. Ashman not knowing the truth of the matter suspects that Luther abandoned her and left her to take care of matters on her own. Luther's future depends on his getting a college degree and that degree has to be from Weststock all because of his wealthy relative. Aunt Delia has taken a liking to her nephew and is proud of the Martingale men having a long history of being matriculated from Weststock. If Luther manages to graduate successfully with a degree from Weststock he will be her sole heir and stands to gain millions from her estate.

As the novel opens Luther is engaged in an elaborate scheme to win as much money as he can in a series of poker games from his very poor card playing opponents. Hopefully he can use the winnings to bribe his way back into the good graces of the Weststock admissions team. Astoundingly, he finds himself with the title to a yacht after a round of feverish games (and a combination of wily skill and incredible luck) in which he trounced a foreigner named Beorn Wiglafson. Luther having taken all his money leaves Wiglafson with no other choice but to offer up the yacht as collateral in lieu of cash poker stakes.

"Beowulf fights the dragon"
illustration by Lynd Ward
(Heritage Press Ltd Ed., 1939)

When Luther learns that Prof. Ashman has an obsession with discovering the tomb of Beowulf, who he is certain is not just a legendary figure of the epic poem but a real person, Luther comes up with a plan to make the literature professor's dream come true. Using his newly acquired yacht, a few choice crew members, and some obscure manuscripts the professor owns, he will find the island and Beowulf's tomb and burial site.

Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn is the story of the band of adventurers made up of Luther; Dottie, Luther's former girlfriend and hopefully future wife; Professor Ashman, her uncle; and Beorn who after a violent attempt to re-possess his yacht is surprisingly recruited to helm Gate of Horn and navigate safely across the Atlantic to the Scandinavian coastline. The bulk of the story is made up of a detailed nautical adventure in which slowly but surely Luther and Beorn become comrades at sea, Beorn's gruff malevolent nature gives way to his inherent affability and the two become an excellent team as they sail the alternately calm and furious ocean. Without Beorn's near supernatural knowledge of weather and oceanography Luther would never have made it to the island. When they two men meet up with Uncle Cyril and his niece (who wisely flew to Copenhagen ahead of the sailors) everyone is in for awesome shocks and marvelous surprises on the island of Beowulf's ancestors.

UK 1st edition (Macmillan, 1970)

Craig has a deft manner in sketching out his four characters. There are fascinating cat-and-mouse scenes between Prof. Ashman and Luther in both the beginning of the book and the ironic finale. He tries his best to make Dottie appear to be an independent woman not so easily taken advantage of, but we only see her through Luther's arrogant chauvinistic eyes and she often comes across as a horrible depiction of an abused woman. At one point he refers to her as "a sexy wench by any standard" and actually says this about her when she refuses his advances in their post-abortion relationship: "I watched her undulate away. If only I had the character to assault her! A good rape might do her good." It's extremely hard for me to see this as wit or ironic humor in the context of the first 45 pages. Thankfully this is the only instance of raunchy offensive chauvinism but it ruined my opinion of Craig as a writer. He was 35 at the time and working in a liquor store after being fired from a college for being too liberal with his teaching methods and too coarse in his writing. Callow youth? Who knows.

Truly the best part of the book is Beorn. The way Craig manages to transform his character from indignant and malevolent poker loser to comrade at sea to deceitful Judas is remarkable. Beorn is described as a giant Viking, ageless in appearance, menacing in his physicality, and otherworldly in his knowledge of Mother Nature and her fickle ways. At one point I was certain it would be revealed that he was an immortal descended from Beowulf's ancestors and warrior colleagues. As it turned out I was not far off the mark. There is one glaring clue Craig gives very early in the book and does not refer back until the climax once the four adventurers reach the island. It's an ingeniously calculated moment. I'm sure most readers will miss it and the climax will come as a nifty and gasp inducing surprise. Beorn is genuinely the best character in the book and it is thanks to his magnetic presence I whipped through this 190 page novel in practically a single day.

THINGS I LEARNED: As you can imagine sailing and ship navigation are prominent throughout the story. I learned loads of yachting terms and all sorts of unusual facts like the use of a completely different set of sails during stormy weather.

Beowulf, illustration by Lynd Ward

There are several sections that discuss the history of the Beowulf epic poem, its various translations, and the continuing (at the time) debate on whether or not the poem is based on historical fact. Prof. Ashman uses Schliemann's discovery of Troy as proof of the historicity of Homer's Iliad as the basis for his own expedition to prove Beowulf was real. Among the many facts I learned (perhaps relearned since I did study Beowulf in my high school Brit Lit class) was the earliest English translation dates to about 1000, three centuries after its initial Scandinavian composition.

The novel's title comes from a passage in The Odyssey when Odysseus is speaking to Penelope of dreams and she answers him that dreams are hard to understand. The passage Ashman quotes from memory is: "Twain are the gates of shadowy dreams,/The one is made of horn, the other ivory;/Such dreams as pass the portals of ivory/Are deceitful, and bear tidings that are unfulfilled./But the dreams that pass through the gate of horn/Bring true issue to whoever of mortals behold them." Beorn's yacht is named Gate of Horn.

QUOTES: It was no surprise that men of those times, unlettered, unable to know anything of the world beyond their senses, except for what old men and bards told of past days and far lands, were so filled with fatalism and superstition. In literal darkness, it is easy to accustom yourself to the fragility of life, to the necessity of bravery, and to the ready belief in monsters. How else could a man of that time feel? Without books to tell him of his history, to keep his mind sure, in the accumulated experience of the men who preceded him and wrote down their experience, he was, in every generation, a First Man in an unknown world.

Men alone, without history. No wonder that the bards sang of heroes, for the people were in need of heroes to prove by their might and valor that men could survive or, failing that, could, in death, triumph against their enemies and, nearly, death itself.

(courtesy of philiprcraig.com)

THE AUTHOR: Philip R. Craig was born in 1933 in Santa Monica California, raised on a small ranch in Colorado. He studied religion and philosophy at Boston College during the late 1950s where he facetiously claimed he really majored in fencing and minored in bridge (two pastimes that crop up in his mystery fiction much later in his life). In 1962 he achieved an MFA in creative writing at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and went on to teach English and writing at several small colleges in Massachusetts. Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn was published by Doubleday's Crime Club in 1969, but he would not have another novel published for two decades. He is best known for a series of mystery novels set on Martha's Vineyard where he and his family eventually settled (his wife was originally from Edgartown). A longtime member of several crime fiction writing associations and attendee of many mystery writing conferences Craig's career includes over twenty mystery novels and one cookbook written in collaboration with his wife. He died in 2007. For more on his books and a detailed and wittily composed biography visit his website, still maintained by his family.

FFB: Death on the Outer Shoal - Anne Fuller & Marcus Allen

THE STORY: Hammerhead Island, pop. 27. This community of fishermen, their wives and children, have no official organized government nor any police force to ward off crime. When the gruesome accidental death of one of their most beloved citizens, kindly “Preacher” Phineas Benson, turns out to be murder they find themselves with a dilemma. Do they call in the police from the mainland or deal with the crime themselves? It’s up to Jeremiah Corbett, the oldest and most respected leader, to investigate and decide whether the islanders’ “eye for an eye” philosophy should be instituted in meting out Justice.

THE CHARACTERS: Death on the Outer Shoal (1934) is another surprising discovery in a subgenre I like to call country noir. The rural community on Hammerhead Island is perfectly rendered in every detail from the rigorous descriptions of trawl fishing to the finely tuned ear for New England regionalisms and speech patterns that accent the characters’ dialogue. Jeremiah (Uncle Jerry) Corbett is ostensibly the protagonist but this novel seems more like an ensemble theater piece with each of the supporting character getting their moment to shine. Jean McKenzie, a young nurse who as the only medical professional on Hammerhead acts as the surrogate coroner to help Corbett. Jean verifies that the wounds in Benson's neck are not made by the fisherman's gaff stuck there but by a knife because the stab marks have clean edges and go deeper than the gaff's pronged hook. She also finds contusions on his scalp that prove he was stunned by a blunt object in order that Benson could be arranged in the nets near the gaff and then stabbed to give the appearance of an accident. There are gossipy women spying on the Committee men, Otto Wolfe the irascible lighthouse keeper with grudges aplenty, and Hank Thomas, the local alcoholic and wife beater all who have riveting scenes with Corbett.

Widow Grimshaw is perhaps the remarkable figure among the many supporting players. Following the death of her husband Captain Grimshaw she has gone into a permanent state of grief dressing only in black, disappearing into a huge hooded cloak, sporting a scowl cemented into her wizened face. As far as most people are concerned her interminable grieving and anger led to a spiraling descent into madness. The way Fuller and Allen describe her she might as well have stepped out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne story. If her appearance were not foreboding enough Widow Grimshaw points her accusing crone’s finger and lets loose with regular tirades denouncing everyone in sight. She is like some Puritanical witchfinder with a fervent desire for vicious retribution. She has a habit of heaping her curse on anyone who dares antagonize her.

Her antipathy to all allows for the introduction of another sinister influence – the collective hatred toward the Portuguese fishermen who live in nearby mainland town of Byport. While the Widow’s is the ugliest of bigotry expressed in dialogue, for her niece married one of the immigrants, none of the others on Hammerhead are too fond of the Portuguese either. Nick Dianno and his family tend to be singled out by name regularly. Nick is viewed as an opportunistic wheeler-dealer looking for his chance to buy up land. In the estimation of the citizens that will only ruin the heritage and life of Hammerhead Island and everyone is determined to keep the Portuguese off the island.

INNOVATIONS: The idea that an entire community needs to turn detective to root out an evil scourge is something that you usually find in horror fiction. The preservation of the land's purity, their insular lifestyle, and the inhabitants' desire to keep out foreigners and "outsiders" smacks of the kind of secrets that made fictional places like Cornwall Coombe, Summerisle and Crowhaven Farm the kind of town you'd never call home. And though most likely unintended it was hard to dismiss the vigilante mentality of how Justice prevails on Hammerhead Island. Too often someone quotes the Biblical "eye for an eye" concept that serves as the citizens' primary code of morality.  There are shades of not only Hawthorne here, but eerily prescient hints of the plots of modern thrillers like Harvest Home, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and even Death Wish.

When Hank Thomas is brought before the Committee for drunkenness and wife beating then punished with a beating by a leather thronged scourge I cannot help but think that the authors intended this to be taken as a scene of appalling horror, especially considering that Hank is lashed five times by each of the five Committee members. It's an unexpectedly brutal scene that had me gasping. When it's all over and Hank is about to leave the tavern backroom where he received his beating he breaks down and weeps uncontrollably. It's a mix of horror and sympathy that I was both unprepared for and a bit awed by.

Death on the Outer Shoal was published by E. P. Dutton as part of their "Dutton Clue" imprint.  Included in this book is one of the standard "Stop!" pages that challenge the reader to pause, collect up all their notes (if they made any), think over all the clues presented and try to solve the mystery.  This is, in fact, a rare example of a very fairly clued mystery from Dutton. Some clues are subtle, others blatant and it might be rather easy for a veteran detective novel reader to weed out the correct killer from all the suspects. But the full truth may also come as a real surprise when all is revealed. The ultimate Justice is even a bit ironic with a subversive rather than an Old Testament touch.

Click to enlarge

QUOTES:  Widow Grimshaw: "Am I the only one who speaks to the [Portuguese]? Is Hammerhead the only spot for meeting and talking--and planning? The world is wide. Thieves find straight paths to each other."

"If I but knew [who killed my husband]!" Her old face became hideous with hate. "On him I would heap my curses--curses, not of words, but of blood--and Death!"

Soon the little harbor echoed with the throb of engines, and the Hammerhead fleet of trawlers was once more on its straggling way toward the fishing grounds. In each boat was a man dreading the night, whose dark, uncertain hours stretched ahead of him, and yet glad that here, at last, was work to be done.

And in each home on the sea-beaten island, an anxious woman wished silently that her man was safe within doors, and prayed that he might come back to her with the next day's sun.

THE AUTHORS:  I could find little biographical data on Anne Fuller and Marcus Allen. I have an inkling that they were perhaps married, but that may not be true at all. My only clues come from the dedication pages in their two mystery novels. Their first mystery Blood on Common Ground (1933) is dedicated to Al Fuller, clearly a relative of Anne's (husband? son? brother?) and also the artist who drew and signed the frontispiece map of Hammerhead Island that illustrates this post. However a bigger clue appears on the dedication page of this novel which reads "To Louise and Richard Connell."  Could that be the same Richard Connell who wrote the iconic short story "The Most Dangerous Game" I asked myself?  Indeed it is.

Richard Connell was married to Louise Herrick Fox in 1919. Louise, like her husband, was a writer and at one time a playwright. Later she became involved in the publishing world first as a proofreader and then a prominent editor for Condé Nast publications. When Connell decided to give up his amazingly prolific career as a short story writer (close to 200 stories appeared between 1929 to 1940) he opted as many writers did for the life of a Hollywood screenwriter. He and Louise eventually settled in Beverly Hills.

Could Fuller and Allen have been part of the movie scene during the 1930s when this book was written? When Connell was just reaching the height of his popularity as a writer of scripts and stories for moviemakers?  Death on the Outer Shoal certainly has a very cinematic feel with its dramatic fishing and boating scenes, the setting of the island itself including the lighthouse and cliffsides, the often heightened dialogue, and an exciting courtroom-like finale. It could've made a gripping movie and might have been written as a scenario prior to it becoming a novel. Anyone who has knowledge about these writing duo your input will be greatly appreciated for filling in the missing details.

VERDICT OF US ALL: The Shadow of the Wolf - R. Austin Freeman

JJ at "The Invisible Event" has revived the once somewhat regular meme on the vintage mystery blogs in which participants ramble on a particular topic. This month we talk about our favorite book by a writer who we don't care for or have avoided over time because we just don't like his or her style of mystery writing. Took me a while to come up with one for this because most bad mystery writers in my experience don't really have much to recommend in their overall work unless you want to read the books as self-parodies or "Alternative Classics." But that's not the point of this week's topic. So I had to reach back in time to remember one single book by a writer who I just don't read anymore because... well... frankly he bores me to death. And that's R. Austin Freeman.

Freeman as we all know was a pioneer in the scientific detective short story and also the inverted detective story. He also wrote several inverted detective novels but only one of them stands out in my mind as something rather remarkable. The Shadow of the Wolf (1928) is one of his more complex mystery novels loaded with the kind of arcane scientific talk (like a long dissertation on the formation of barnacles on a ship) that aid Dr. John Thorndyke in tracking down his elusive murderous prey. And yet despite what might have been yet another droning, boring book I found it utterly fascinating. There's a paradox worthy of Father Brown. It's one of the few Thorndyke novels that I found truly suspenseful. Another of Freeman's inverted detective novels we therefore know the identity of the murderer in The Shadow of the Wolf from the outset. Thorndyke's methods, however, are so odd and unusual in this novel, a nautical mystery about ships and the sea, that I was transfixed. I tend to write a lot about the "Things I Learned" in books of this type and there is a lot to fill the head of the insatiably curious reader in The Shadow of the Wolf.

I rarely go back to Freeman's books because they belong to an old-fashioned type of detective story that no longer excites me. His obsession with all things related to Egyptology gets tiresome; his characters don't ring true as human beings to me; and his often stodgy prose hasn't aged well. But I will always recommend The Shadow of the Wolf for its faster than normal pace (for Freeman, that is), its unusual subject matter, and a story that unravels with true suspense and a couple of thrilling surprises.

TUESDAY CLUB: Death under Sail - C. P. Snow

The shipboard mystery or nautical mystery novel is just as prevalent in the Golden Age as those set on a train. Death on the Nile may very well be the quintessential detective novel set on board a ship. Freeman Wills Crofts is better known for his train mysteries but he wrote quite a few with ships and yachts including The Sea Mystery, Mystery in the Channel, The Loss of the 'Jane Vosper', and Mystery on Southampton Water (Crime on the Solent in the US). A small sampling of other titles: Hate Ship by Bruce Graeme, Singing in the Shrouds and A Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh, and Too Much of Water by Bruce Hamilton.

The American writers were just as good at setting murders on board luxury yachts, cruise ships, military craft, submarines and rowboats just as well as their British counterparts. S.S. Murder by Q. Patrick tells of a bridge party on board a yacht and one of the card players being done in. Obelists at Sea by C. Daly King is the debut detective novel featuring the erudite and long winded Dr. L. Rees Pons. John Dickson Carr's shipboard mystery The Blind Barber is more farce than detective novel, but as Carter Dickson Nine-And Death Makes Ten (aka Murder in the Submarine Zone) is rather unique in that the ship featured is a military cargo carrier that is been temporarily assigned as a passenger ship and the plot brings up all sorts of maritime laws during WW2 including how the blackout rules in England extended to ships and cruise lines. Rufus King made an entire career of writing about killers dispatching their victims at sea in titles such as Murder on the Yacht, Murder by Latitude, The Lesser Antilles Case, Murder Masks Miami and many, many more.

This may lead you to believe that I'll be writing about one of these American shipboard mysteries and I thought I was going to do so, too. That is until I uncovered my very old copy of Death under Sail (1932) and decided to finally give it its long overdue examination.

A wherry yacht and all its parts

Roger Mills, physician and yachting enthusiast, invites six friends on an excursion through the Broads, the system of rivers and lakes in Norfolk. The morning after picking up Ian Capel, the oldest guest and narrator of Death Under Sail, Roger is found shot dead still holding on to the tiller in the stern well (see plan of The Siren below). Though the murder in C. P. Snow's very first work of fiction (and first of only two detective novels) does indeed take place on a ship -- specifically a wherry yacht -- the majority of the book actually takes place on land. The yachting party is confined to a bungalow several miles down the River Bure and a short jaunt up the River Thurne in the Norfolk village of Potter Heigham. There they stew, fester and fret doing their best to endure the Puritan tirades of shrewish housekeeper Mrs. Tufts and undergoing absurd interrogations from Det.-Sgt. Aloysius Birrell who seems to have learned most of his techniques from one volume of criminology and about a dozen detective novels.

The novel at first appears to be a parody of the detective novel. Birrell comes off as a comic character from the moment of his entrance where his apparent reckless driving of a police motorboat causes a violent wake to capsize the dinghy sending three men into the river. Contrasted with Birrell, is the omniscient amateur sleuth Finbow who is a friend of Ian Capel's and who Capel calls in to help investigate the puzzling death of Roger Mills. Finbow spends much of his time observing, flattering the suspects into revealing themselves, and eavesdropping on people's private conversations like any good amateur detective of the Golden Age would do. Ethics have nothing to do with crime solving where Finbow is concerned. He also spends a lot of time expounding some of Snow's own personal beliefs which interestingly will serve as the foundation for his later mission in life as spokesman for the scientific mind. All these mini-lectures seem to be thrown in to distract the reader. But Snow has plotted the book in a devious fashion and despite the lectures that appear to be filler the book is actually very much in the fair play tradition.

There is a lot of talk about the routine that develops on a ship when people travel in such a confined space like the Siren. The murderer must have been aware of who did what and where they went every morning, Finbow surmises. Ian is therefore eliminated from the start as he has only been on board the Siren for a single day and night. Not long enough for anyone else to know where he might be when Roger was shot. The rest of the detective work is done along these lines. Snow might have been influenced by the detective novels of Anthony Berkeley who was a pioneer in stressing the importance of psychological motive and human behavior in crime fiction. There is not much physical evidence to review. Rather, Finbow is more interested in why Avice is so frightened and why her crying seems to be more acting than genuine, why William remained shirtless on the morning of the murder and the importance of how he undresses, why Tonia appears to be in love with Phillip but may be masking a hidden love affair, and why Christopher needed to get out of his wet clothes so quickly after the capsizing of the dinghy. These "psychological insights" are what lead Finbow to eliminate most of the suspects eventually leading him to the identity and motive of the killer. He develops a list of five important questions that include all the suspects and each question is answered in grand detail in the final chapter. It is only then that the reader learns that everything mattered, each incident and discussion was essential to the story. It's all brilliantly done with some bravura misdirection that even the most seasoned detective fiction aficionados will not spot.

THINGS I LEARNED: Though not much is discussed about the wherry itself or the Broads I needed to satisfy my curiosity and so I looked up all sorts of photos of Norfolk locales mentioned along the rivers shown on Finbow's map. Then I visited a fascinating website with photos of families and friends on their wherry yachts and got to see just how the Norfolk towns looked at the time when Snow's novel was set and even earlier. In fact, the bulk of the photos are from the post World War I era. You can look at the same photos if you so desire by going to Broadland Memories.

MCC is mentioned in passing but I had no idea what the characters were talking about. The passage is here: "Tradition, my boy," William broke in sharply. "Like the M.C.C. and Public Schools. Doing a thing twice is good enough reason for doing it forever." Based on the linking of tradition with MCC and public schools I'm guessing William means the Marylebone Cricket Club which controlled the way both amateur and professional cricket was played for over three centuries. From the info I looked up the MCC still owns the copyright on cricket rules that were created back in the late 18th century. Apparently another group known as the ICC (International Cricket Club) is trying to wrest control from them and make a more harmonious, less rigid rule governing board for international cricket playing.

One of the many Penguin reprints

EASY TO FIND? Yes, indeed. Luckily, Death Under Sail was chosen as one of the "Top 50 Detective Novels from 1900-1950" by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Taylor. That selection allowed the book to be reprinted multiple times since its original 1932 publication. Several paperback reprints are available in the used book market in both US and UK editions. And you can still find a few copies of either the Doubleday Crime Club 1st edition (US) or the Collins Crime Club 1st edition (UK) if you're willing to shell out $75 or more. The prices for the paperback reprints, of course, are much more reasonable and there are literally hundreds of copies out there. Happy hunting!

* * *
This is my second post on travel in detective fiction which is the theme for May for the group of vintage mystery fiction fans who call themselves "The Tuesday Bloggers." Other links are here:

Throw Mama (or Anyone Else) from the Train! - Bev at My Reader's Block
Christie on Holiday - Moira at Clothes in Books
Why Set a Murder Mystery on Holiday or a Mode of Transportation? - Kate at Cross-Examining Crime
This Train Is Bound for Gory - Brad at Ah! Sweet Mystery
 Coach Tours to Crime - Helen at Your Freedom and Ours