Martin Fone's Blog, page 159

The Studio Crime

The Studio Crime – Ianthe Jerrold

I have a soft spot for Ianthe Jerrold as she is the only author I have come across who included a character bearing my surname, William Fone in Let Him Lie. The Studio Crime is an earlier work, first published in 1929 and now reissued by Dean Street Press for a modern audience to rediscover, is regarded as being the first of only two Golden Age Detective murder mysteries that she wrote. I thoroughly enjoyed it, a veritable page turner, even though I had twigged who the murderer was fairly on.

Central to the investigation is Jerrold’s amateur sleuth, John Christmas, who, as is the way with these stories, just happened to be in the flat downstairs when the murder was discovered. The story is laced with nods to Conan Doyle, Christmas taking on the Holmes role while Laurence Newtree plays the part of Watson, although the relationship is more robust and less subservient. Inspector Hembrow who heads the investigation for the police, is the Lestrade character and having collaborated with Christmas before is happy to have him lend a hand. The police, of course, make a pig’s ear of the investigation, pursuing the wrong man, their incompetence allowing Jerrold to impress upon her readers the brilliance of her man.

A motley collection of characters assembles at Newtree’s studio for a soiree. Among their number is a prominent philanthropist, Sir Marion Steer, a psychologist, Dr Simon Mordby, a general practitioner, Dr Merrewether, a playwright, Serafine Wimpole and her aunt, Imogen. It is a typically foggy London evening, ideal for crime, as Serafine notes, and on their way two of the guests are approached by an exotic individual wearing a red fez, asking for directions.

Newtree has an invitation to take his guests to the upstairs flat occupied by Gordon Frew, a noted collector. They hear a noise and Merrewether, Frew’s doctor, goes up to investigate, reporting that all is well. When it is time for the party to go upstairs, they find the door locked and upon breaking it down, discover Frew slumped over his desk with a knife in his back. It emerges that Frew had two other visitors that evening, a man wearing a fez and wonderfully named Pandora Shirley. To add to the confusion, the police surgeon reckoned that Frew had died before Merrewether went up to the flat and swore that he was still alive.

Inevitably, the police think that Merrewether was the murderer, but Christmas is not so convinced. Investigations reveal that Frew was not the man he appeared to be, that he had a murky past and was not above a spot of emotional blackmail. What had his past misdemeanours in the United States committed with his two other brothers to do with the case and had Mordby and Merrewether’s long-standing feud over a woman who turns out to be Frew’s estranged wife anything to do with it? And who was the mysterious man with the red fez?

There are enough red herrings and suspects with motive enough to do away with Frew to keep the momentum of the story going and the denouement cleared up most, if not all, of the loose ends. Clever as this take on a locked room murder mystery is, Jerrold’s characterisation leaves a little to be desired. Only really Serafine Wimpole, a character said to be based on Jerrold herself, really stood out, the rest being rather stereotypical. Comedic value was provided by her aunt who formed part of the set of well-to-do with little-to-do that Mordby enlisted into his clientele and, sadly, the lower orders.           

That aside, it was an enjoyable romp and I will look forward to reading more from this once popular but now rather obscure author.

Mr Stimpson And Mr Gorse

Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse – Patrick Hamilton

This is the second of Hamilton’s trilogy recounting the exploits and machinations of Ralph Gorse, published in 1953 although set in the 1920s. The book introduces us to one of Hamilton’s foremost comedic creations, Joan Plumleigh-Bruce, Gorse’s next victim. Hamilton lavishes much care and attention in drawing Plumleigh-Bruce’s character. A widow and not as well off as she would like to be, she is a terrific snob and terribly vain. With little to do except devour anything about Marie Antoinette and making her Irish maid’s life a misery, she holds court in the early evenings at a pub, The Friar, in Reading.

Among Plumleigh-Bruce’s small circle is Donald Stimpson, an estate agent, comfortably off and with aspirations to marry her. Major Parry, married, acts as a part rival, whose presence eggs Stimpson on to press his claims to her hand. Plumleigh-Bruce, although realising that marriage to Stimpson would give her financial security, finds him repulsive. It is into this little circle that Ralph Gorse ingratiates himself when he moves to Reading.

We have seen Gorse in action in The West Pier and his method of attack once he has chosen his victim is little different. He flatters and charms Joan, winning her confidence, spinning a line that he is a businessman, successful of course, and a war hero and related to a General, Joan is too. Once his flattery finds fertile ground, he seeks to move Stimpson out of the running, something he does by taking the estate agent on an ill-fated trip to a London night club and an encounter with a French lady of the night, a piece of folly that Gorse can use against him.

With Stimpson tames, Gorse can extend his hold on Joan, introducing her to some money-making schemes. He leads her on to believe that he wants to marry her and takes her up to London for a wild week in which he encourages her to drink more than she is accustomed to. He claims he has just bought a house in the better part of Reading and a swanky car. Joan entrusts him with £500 and Gorse sends her back to the house he has allegedly bought, saying that he will join her shortly. Of course, he does not and Joan realises that she has been played for a fool, lost her reputation and much of her money. To make matters worse, Stimpson and her Irish maid exact their revenge on her by getting together.

It is hard to feel much sympathy for Plumleigh-Bruce. Hamilton has gone out of his way to create a ludicrous character who falls victim to her own snobbery and stupidity. Gorse, too, is vain and in his own way snobbish, but with a more knowing, worldly approach, and it is this convergence of characteristics that enables him to ensnare Joan into his trap.

Much of the action takes place in pubs and drinking establishments. As a notorious drinker himself, Hamilton is excellent in his descriptions of pub culture, inebriated conversations and the mechanics and effects of alcohol. His strictures on the perils of serious lunchtime sessions which renders the drinker almost insensible even if he drinks a modest amount in the evening should be a lesson to us all.

I enjoyed the book more so than The West Pier, simply because of the wonderful creation that Joan Plumleigh-Bruce is.

Crime Spree Of The Week (2)

Incredibly, we are in the middle of a Lego crime wave. There seems to big money in the colourful, interlocking, plastic bricks, so much so that they have attracted the attentions of an international ring of toy thieves.

Three suspects were caught taking boxes of Lego from a toy shop near Paris with the intention of selling them in Poland, while in Oregon last month a man was arrested on suspicion of stealing Lego to the value of $7,500.

The black market is fuelled by collectors eager to get their hands on special edition sets which are in top-notch condition and, ideally, have not been removed from their packaging. Lego Café Corner, issued in 2007 for $150, is now fetching up to $3,000 if it is in its original condition. An unopened set of the Lego Millennium Falcon is selling for in excess of $3,500. If you have a rare or valuable set, look after it.

With time on our hands during the pandemic, Lego has reported a 100% increase in sales, more grist for the criminals’ wheel perhaps. Their largest commercially available set, a model of the Colosseum, itself a Guinness World Record holder, has spawned another record, with Paul Ofema assembling all 9.036 pieces (in the right order) in just 13 hours, 37 minutes, and 36 seconds. Let’s hope he keeps it safe.

Border Dispute Of The Week

There could have been a tricky diplomatic incident when it was discovered the other day that the area that Belgium covers had been increased at France’s expense. The 620km border between Belgium and France was ratified by the Treaty of Kortrijk in 1820 and physically marked a year before by stone pillars strategically positioned along the line.

Sadly, over time the stones have been neglected and overgrown with vegetation, but a group of Frenchmen have taken to wandering around their local area in northern France, following the border and checking each stone they encountered against its original location. Imagine their horror when walking in the woods near Bousignies-sur-Roc, they discovered that the marker there had been moved 7.5 feet, reducing France and enlarging Belgium.

One of the group, Jean-Pierre Chopin, alerted the authorities and the local Belgian mayor agreed that the marker wasn’t where it should have been. It appears that a farmer from Erquelinnes had got fed up with the stone getting in the way of the tractor and moved it, giving little thought to the international ramifications of his actions.

In an attempt to resolve the contretemps, the errant farmer has been ordered to put the stone back in its original place or face a criminal charge. If he refuses, there is a possibility that a Franco-Belgian border commission, which has been dormant since 1930, may have to be convened to resolve matters.

The Devil’s Dictionary

For logophiles like myself there is nothing better than a lexicographer who takes a sardonic and humorous approach to the task of defining words that adorn our English language. One of the finest is the American poet, short story writer, journalist and sometime lexicographer is Ambrose Pierce (1842 – 1914). His peculiar take on life may have come from his upbringing, he was one of thirteen children all of whose names began with the letter A at his father’s insistence. For his sardonic wit and no-nonsense style, he was known as “the wickedest man in San Francisco”.

It seems appropriate to begin our dip into his lexicon, The Devil’s Dictionary, which started out as occasional newspaper articles and then was published in book form in 1906, with that letter.

Abdication, Bierce defines, as “an act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne”. Perhaps it is a rather regal form of absenteeism, defined as someone “with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction”.

Bierce poured his customary scorn on an abstainer calling them “a weak person who yields himself to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others”.

An accident, he noted, was “an inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws”. Bierce was not a fan of lawyers and went to town in his definition of an accomplice. “One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney’s position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting”.

An accordion he defines as “an instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin”, a sentiment with which I concur. You could add the bagpipes to that. Accountability is a management buzzword these days. For Bierce it was “the mother of caution”. Many a true word is spoken in jest.

Ramsbury Single Estate London Dry Gin

I always experience a frisson of excitement when I approach the gin section of my local Waitrose store and find that the buyer has added a new line to its extensive range plucked from the bewildering store of plenitude spawned by the ginaissance. We all have our go-to favourites but for the adventurous in spirit, there is always an added pleasure in trying something new. Ramsbury Single Estate London Dry Gin has long on my list of must-tries and I could not resist putting a bottle into my shopping trolley.

It is the product of the Ramsbury Brewery, based in Wiltshire, which began its operations in 2004 with the idea of turning their wheat and barley grown on the estate into a range of premium beers. It took a further eleven for them to realise their dream of producing a range of spirits in an ecologically friendly and sustainable manner. The bottle design went through a bit of a revamp in January 2021 and features a picture of the Ramsbury farm on the inside of the back label and the precise coordinates of the field in which the wheat which is used to make the base spirit is grown. You cannot help feeling the pride with which they present their gin.

The bottle itself is a highly tactile, a slightly slimmer version of a Plymouth gin bottle made from a pale green glass with Ramsbury embossed on the front shoulder which leads to a short neck with a grey cap featuring the head of a ram and a cork stopper. The labelling is crisp and distinctive with the ram’s head featuring prominently. It completes an elegant and impressive look.

The starting point for the gin is the base spirit which is made from a traditional baker’s wheat known as Horatio wheat which is milled into a rough flour, placed into a mash tun together with yeast and warm locally sourced water and allowed to ferment for between three and five days. Spent grain is fed to the pigs and cattle while the wastewater is filtered through a reed bed system. The mash is distilled, diluted and heated in a pot-still before being transferred to a 43-plate copper column still where it reaches an ABV of 96.5%.

Nine botanicals – juniper, orris root, cinnamon, liquorice, orange peel, angelica, coriander, lemon, and homegrown fresh quince – are added to the resultant neutral grain spirit in a 140-litre gin still, where it is heated, condensed, and collected. After dilution with water to its final fighting weight of 40% ABV it is filtered and bottled and ready to go. I have encountered quince as a gin botanical once before, in Warner Edwards Harrington Botanical Garden Honeybee Gin, but there it was one of 26 botanicals and its distinctive taste was rather drowned by the honey.

There is always a risk, I feel, adding a botanical from leftfield to what is otherwise a classic line-up for a London Dry Gin. It can either get lost in the mix becoming little more than a marketing ploy or the distillers are tempted to enhance its contribution at the risk of unbalancing the whole. I was interested to see how the Ramsbury Gin distillers handled the conundrum.

On the nose the initial hit was of juniper and citrus but almost as if arriving late to the party the quince made its presence known, not a noisy gate crasher but interesting enough to attract attention. In the mouth this beautifully clear spirit has a smooth, almost oily texture, with juniper, citrus and peppers to the fore. Rolling the spirit around my mouth I then began to become aware of more floral hints and the quince. The aftertaste is long and pronounced, a pleasing melange of spice, pepper and quince, rounding off a very elegant and satisfying drink. Adding a premium tonic seemed to bring forward the quince, not to the detriment of the spirit but sufficient to enhance its presence.

I found it a very enjoyable experience and interesting twist to the London Dry style.

Until the next time, cheers!

Sable Messenger

Sable Messenger – Francis Vivian

Francis Vivian was the nom de plume of Nottinghamshire journalist, Arthur Ernest Ashley. This is the second of ten novels he wrote featuring Inspector Knollis and was published in 1947, six years after the opener, The Death of Mr Lomas and is reissued by Dean Street Press. In fictional terms, life has moved on by five years and Knollis has transferred to Scotland Yard. But such is Sir Wilfrid Burrows’ high regard of him that the local Chief Constable does not hesitate to ask for him to assist when the local effort fails to come up with a lead.

A Knollis adventure is not an adrenaline-fuelled, rollercoaster of a ride. It is a full-blooded police procedural as the detective plods his way through a mountain of leads, examining, demolishing or confirming alibis narrowing down the possibilities. He will say “something is going to happen in the next thirty minutes but I’m not sure what it is” and, sure enough, something does and he might even admit to thinking what happened would have happened. Knollis keeps his cards close to his chest, but in fairness to Vivian he plays fair with the reader. All the leads and clues are scrupulously declared and so the reader can entertain themselves, if they so choose, with trying to unravel the puzzle before Knollis reveals the answer.

Perhaps I was a bit jaded when I read this but, frankly, I couldn’t be bothered playing the amateur thief. I devoured the pages, a tribute to Vivian’s easy style and ability to keep things moving, but I didn’t feel the need to go much further. The set up seemed to me a tad dull and I was left wondering whether the set of circumstances really would lead up to someone killing another.

The novel finds us in deep suburbia, Westford Bridge to be precise, full of aspiring couples replete with their petty jealousies and seething with grievances. The victim, Robert Dexter, has answered a knock at his door of the ludicrously named but totally apt Himalaya Villas, and been stabbed to death. His wife, Lesley, described as a snob in the opening sentence of the book, finds him and screams. The wife of the neighbour, Mrs Rawley, who answered a knock at her own door a minute or so earlier, quickly appears on the scene and summons the police.

On the face of it, it seemed a pretty senseless and random murder. At best Dexter was little more than middle management in a local firm and, apart for a passion for collecting Elizabethan poetry, lived a quiet life. But as Knollis digs into the circumstances in more detail, he finds jealousy and rivalry at play and that Dexter has his hands on a valuable medieval manuscript, the eponymous Sable Messenger, which belonged to an elderly priest and which his cousin, Richard Dexter, had found in a priest’s cupboard. It becomes, as the plot unfolds, more of a device to bring another credible witness of the events into the open and to unearth the rivalry of the two Dexters for the hand of Lesley.

The book enters Freeman Wills Crofts’ territory when Knollis works out how the murderer could have escaped via the convenient river running behind Westford Bridge, by a study of and experiment with currents.

The opening sentence of the book reads like the beginning of a lecture on the insurance principle of proximate cause: “If Lesley Dexter had not been a snob her husband might have lived out his three-score-and-ten years”. Her attempts at social climbing, dragging her reluctant husband with her, sets in motion a series of events that leads to his demise. Whether they would really end up in a cold-blooded murder, for which the end result, if caught, was the death sentence, I somehow doubt.   

I hope the series will contain some more satisfying stories.

The Crime At The Noah’s Ark

Molly Thynne only wrote six crime novels, three of which featured the chess-playing Dr Constantine, and I have been eking them out as it never does to have too much of a good thing in a short space of time. It seems odd to be reviewing a book set around Christmas at this time of the year but I have read so many books during the pandemic that not wanting to turn this blog into an ersatz Goodreads that’s how the scheduling has panned out. Anyway, it is never too early to plan your festive season reading.

Published initially in 1931, it has been reissued for a modern readership by the indefatigable Dean Street Press. The story starts on familiar and somewhat hackneyed ground. Bad weather forces a group of disparate travellers, including Constantine, to abandon their plans to reach a luxury holiday resort where they were going to spend Christmas, and seek refuge at the Noah’s Ark, a hostelry large enough and under patronised enough to accommodate them all. The party is a motley crew, including a best-selling author, Angus Stuart, a pair of spinster sisters, Lord Romsey with his son and two daughters, Major Carew who is rather too fond of the bottle and the ladies, the attractive Mrs Orkney Cloude, the careless American widow, Mrs van Dolen, who is famed for her collection of fine jewels, her secretary, Miss Hamilton, a gigolo in the form of Felix Melnotte and a shy accountant by the name of Trevor.

In what is essentially an extension of a closed room mystery, Major Carew gets himself murdered and Mrs van Dolen is relieved of her jewels. Are the two crimes linked and who, among the guests, perpetrated the crimes? Into this heady mix, Thynne adds a shoal of red herrings, a dash of love interest, masked men who disturb guests during the night, a spate of car tyre slashings and a general atmosphere of paranoia and unease.

Responsibility for investigating and solving the goings-on at the Noah’s Ark falls upon Constantine, ably assisted by Stuart and Soames who do much of the heavy lifting aka nightime vigils and jumping in and out of windows, while the amateur sleuth directs operations using his heightened observational powers. Thynne has saddled herself with quite a cast list, augmented even further when you add in the poor landlord and his staff, who would probably have preferred a quiet and unprofitable Yuletide to the mayhem that the sudden influx of unexpected guests has caused. To her credit, though, each of the characters is well-drawn and it is easy to keep tabs on who is who as the narrative progresses and who to discount and who to focus on.

The whereabouts of the jewels and who ultimately stole them is relatively easy to deduce, but the underlying motives and crime prove more problematic. I’m not sure Thynne plays totally fair with her readers and although I had my suspicions as to what it was all about, I had not put all the pieces together by the denouement. I will not spoil your enjoyment but, suffice to say, not everyone is who they seem to be.             

I don’t think Noah’s Ark ranks as one of her best books, but if you are looking for a bit of light-entertainment to keep you amused as you slump in an armchair after a heavy Christmas meal, you cannot do much better than this. It is fast paced and well-written, a tad eccentric and delightful fun.

Miss Mole

Miss Mole – E H Young

E H Young, the nom de plume of Emily Hilda Daniell, was a best-selling novelist in her time but after an undeserved period of obscurity her works are now finding a new audience, thanks to this reissue from Dean Street Press under their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. Originally published in 1930, it was her seventh novel and marks the midpoint of her literary career which spanned from 1910 with A Corn of Wheat until 1947 with Chatterton Square, published two years before her death.

This is not my normal reading fare and I must confess I found it a little bit of a struggle at times. Young is fond of a long rambling sentence and the narrative was a little disjointed, episodic with no obvious flow. It is only some way through the book that, for example, we realise that Miss Mole has saved a man from committing suicide between meeting her cousin and slipping out on the pretence of buying some thread, both of which are recounted at length in the first chapter.

When I had finished the book and thought about it, it dawned me that Young was representing stylistically some of the characteristics of her heroine, someone ever watchful and on guard, sparing on the details of her past, the truth emerging piecemeal, clues and hints that have to be seized upon and fleshed out. In her private life Young was also secretive, living in a menage à trois, something hidden for forty years and knew much about the themes that run through this book, the tensions that exist between secrecy and truth, appearances and integrity.     

Miss Mole, a farmer’s daughter, has earned her living (just) as a governess or companion to a succession of difficult women and when we first encounter her she is on the verge of dismissal. Although competent in her work, Miss Mole doesn’t suffer fools gladly and, unusually for a servant, will voice her opinion or displeasure, a trait which gets her into hot water. Thanks to her cousin, Lilla, something in the society of Radstowe aka Bristol, she soon secures a position at the household of the non-conformist minister, Reverend Corder, as governess and mother-substitute to his two daughters. Corder’s nephew, Wilfrid, also shares the house and he has little time for his uncle. Miss Mole feels at ease in his company and gradually opens up to him.

Miss Mole also finds solace in the company of the old man who lives next door and Mr Blenkinsop, a lodger in the house she has taken refuge in between jobs. Much of the book centres around Miss Mole’s discomfort as a skeleton from her past emerges in the form of Mr Pilgrim and Blenkinsop’s ill-judged decision to take her back to her childhood home. Miss Mole’s cunning plans to hide the truth and her flippancy towards Corder means that she is often moments away from the sack and a life of penury. What might make for a bleak, tragic tale is rescued by Young’s (and Miss Mole’s) wit and a romantic finale which secures her future.

Thematically, the book deals with morality and the contrast between behaviour that is considered socially acceptable and Miss Mole’s true morality. She has a heart of gold and does good for all she encounters but her reputation and finances are always on a knife-edge because her guilty secrets would be seen as a challenge to the teachings of the church and the prevailing social attitudes of the time. Young shows that much of what the church teaches is hypocritical and that Miss Mole for all her faults is a role model to follow.    

I found it a thought-provoking book with many interesting insights. I was glad I read it, but I am not sure I will read any of her other books.

Coffin Of The Week (3)

I always think that it is worth giving a little thought about how you want your funeral to go. When you get down to it, there’s a lot to consider.

Take the coffin. Do you go traditional, sustainable, or something a little different, designed to put a smile on the mourners’ faces? If the latter, you might want to bear in mind Dying Art, a company based in Auckland in New Zealand.

Run by Ross Hall it is a custom coffin business, which transforms specially-made blank coffins with fibre board and plywood to add some detail and uses a latex digital printer for the design. Depending upon the design, the coffins can cost between $3,000 and $7,500 NZD. Among the designs Ross has created are a fire engine, a sailing boat complete with cabins, sail, rudder and metal railings, Lego blocks, and a chocolate bar.

The inspiration came when Ross sat down to plan his own funeral. He has chosen a red box with flames on it. His cousin, Phil Maclean, was sent off in a doughnut-shaped coffin, prompting an initial gasp from the mourners and then a wave a laughter.

If you’ve got to go, do it in style. For more details follow the link below:   

Caskets