Almost any club year will have a host of vintage murder mysteries (and Neeru always comes up with some good candidates) – 1952 is no exception. I’m not sure when the Golden Age technically ended, so this is probably after that – the Silver Age? is that a thing? – but it has a lot in common with that era. Here’s a couple I read for this week…
Death Leaves A Diary by Harry Carmichael
I picked up Death Leaves A Diary for a pound somewhere in 2015, on the basis that any old hardback from The Crime Club is worth exploring. It turns out it’s the first of 41 books under the name ‘Harry Carmichael’, a pseudonym of Leopold Ognall who also wrote 44 books as ‘Hartley Howard’. Phew! It’s also the first to bring together the ‘detective’, an insurance assessor called John Piper, and a police offer called Quinn. If I’m honest, Quinn felt a relatively minor character and I didn’t sense all that much importance to their relationship with each other – but this page gives more info on their pairing. I was mostly amused that the detecting character shared a name with a notable theologian…
The opening line: ‘In the light streaming out of the doorway, the little man looked like a startled hare.’ John Piper is minding his own business when an old man, Fligg, beckons him in. With a mixture of kindness and curiosity, Piper follows. Fligg’s ground-floor flat, in an enormous block of hundreds of flats, has repeatedly been broken into. Nothing has been taken, and he’s never managed to disturb anybody in the act, but he is convinced that he is the target of break-ins. His proof? That his books have been rearranged:
He went hesitantly towards a tall narrow book-case alongside the bedroom door and fingered the binding of a few old books on one of the shelves. “Yes, yes! These are wrong. I always put them back in their proper order, and that’s how they were when I went out early this evening. Now they’re all mixed up. See?” He started to pull three or four volumes from the shelf, and Piper stopped him. “Couldn’t you be making a mistake?”
“No, that’s impossible. I’m always so particular. And everything in this room is like an old friend. I collect my treasures so that I’m surrounded with the rare and the beautiful.” He looked up at Piper with a strange light in his face. “They are my children. I know exactly where everything is, where I bought it, what is cost, and all about its history.”
Perhaps we can empathise! The police has dismissed Fligg as a bewildered nuisance, and Piper is tempted to do the same. He is sorry for the old man’s evidently genuine fear, but there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do. Until, not long later, he sees a small news item: Fligg has been found, hanged, in his home.
Somewhat unbelievably, the manager of the apartment building is willing to rent Fligg’s flat to Piper, including all of Fligg’s belongings – we move on, as we must swallow this detail, as well as Piper’s apparent ability to rent a flat at the drop of a hat without leaving his current home.
The books in his sitting-room help the answer to the riddle of his death. He had carefully replaced them in their proper order while Piper had watched him the night before. Only two volumes were left alone on the top shelf. Now, there were five – and three of them belonged with their fellows on the shelf below. Fligg had put them there – Piper had seen him with his own eyes.
Who had disturbed the books in Fligg’s book-case for the second time within a few hours? Why were they so important? Fligg had died because he had become involved in something in which he had no part. The little frightened mn had never climbed on to the footstool and fastened the cord of his dressing-gown round his neck. Someone had strung him up to die because… Piper didn’t know. But one thing he did know. That was murder.
And so the detection begins! It’s a fun journey, with Piper seeking out the origin of those books at a bookshop that is simultaneously shady and business-like – there are some funny moments where the proprietor interrupts threatening conversations to serve ordinary customers. He gets to know Fligg’s neighbours along the corridor, and the book is certainly packed with incident. At one point it felt like people were being attacked every few pages, and Carmichael is good at describing the intensity of these dangerous situations that makes Death Leaves A Diary feel a little more like a thriller than the usual Poirot-in-a-drawing-room puzzle novel.
Carmichael’s tone is really enjoyable. He’s a very able writer, giving a good sense of place – particularly Fligg’s crowded apartment – and does a nice line in humourous dialogue. Piper, for instance, is sharp-witted and uses sarcasm as part of his arsenal in dealing with people he doesn’t trust. I enjoyed this quick exchange:
“Let us not explore my affairs too closely, Mr –” He wrinkled his brows. “How silly of me! I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
“By a remarkable coincidence,” Piper said, “so have I.”
It’s a fun read, even if I didn’t spot that Quinn was a character of particular significance. And, come to think of it, I don’t think there was a diary at any point. Death Leaves A Diary is just a good title, I suppose.
The actual solution to the murder mystery doesn’t make an enormous amount of sense, and Carmichael widens the scope of the scheme so much that the initial set-up of Fligg’s faux-suicide in his messy room feels like a distant memory. I always prefer it when the mysteries are a little more domestic and restricted, but it didn’t particularly matter. What makes Death Leaves A Diary fun is the tone and Piper as a character. It’s a rattling adventure that doesn’t really satisfy anybody looking for an ingenius puzzle, but will totally satisfy the reader after an enjoyable tale – a rattling good yarn, intelligently told.
A Private View by Michael Innes
Another pseudonym for the second of the mysteries – Michael Innes is the name under which J.I.M. Stewart wrote crime fiction, and A Private View is somewhere in the middle of a series where John Appleby is the leading police detective – or, indeed, Assistant Commissioner. This series appeared from 1936 to 1986, so it’s an impressive pedigree and longevity – and this is the first I’ve read, which hopefully didn’t matter too much.
The private view of the title is of the ‘at an art gallery’ variety. Alleby is not to the manner born at a private view, but puts on a good face of being interested – and even going along with the conversation when it’s suggested that he might want to invest. Of particular interest is an abstract piece titled ‘The Fifth and Sixth Days of Creation’ by a little-known artist called Gavin Limbert. Midway through the exhibition, the painting goes missing…
I thought it might be a clever spin on the locked-room mystery – how does an enormous painting go missing in a packed gallery? – but sadly Innes tidies up this intriguing opening in a handful of words, and it certainly isn’t the main mystery of the book. Instead, they discover that Gavin Limbert’s recent death – initially thought to be suicide – is probably murder. And that’s when the mystery truly begins.
Perhaps one issue with joining a series detective this late in said series is that Innes doesn’t feel the need to introduce Appleby thoroughly. As such, I never really felt that I understood him. He’s certainly quite brusk when it comes to dead bodies, amusing on the topic of intellectual snobbery and Emperor’s New Clothes, and not reluctant to get into action. I did appreciate his relationship with his wife Judith, and enjoyed the section of the novel where she was centre stage the most.
What I really enjoyed about A Private View was the tone – there are some very funny exchanges, often with characters who topple over into grotesques:
“About the night of the police raid, Lady Clancarron.” Judith’s interruption was made in some haste. “Did you see anybody who might be described as a hunted man?”
“All men are hunted, child. By the Spectre of Vice.”
“Of course. But I mean an actually hunted man – one who looked as if he were in actual danger from some – some physical pursuit and assault.”
Meanwhile, Innes can’t help having some fun at the expense of modern art:
Appleby took a look. The picture space was entirely occupied by what appeared to be the representation of a work of statuary in an improbable green marble. The figure, a female one, was ingeniously contorted so as to provide the form of a solid cube; and the effect was the more striking in that the subject seemed to be an advanced case of dropsy complicated by elephantiasis. The upper limbs had approximately the same girth as the torso, and the neck had a greater circumference than the head. Appleby cast round for an appropriate word. ‘Chunky,’ he said.
The actual plot and solution take us into the realms of gangs and spies and all sorts of things I find much less interesting than domestic squabbles – and the tone is really more thriller than detective fiction. There is a solution at the end – which includes quite a lot of suspending disbelief – but I think Innes works harder at adrenaline-giving moments than he does at detective work. It’s not my favourite spin on this genre, but the amusing, sharp writing definitely helped.