Mark Thomas's Blog - Posts Tagged "untimely-death"
Cyril Hare and the classic British Crime Novel
In an earlier blog, I wrote about toxic marital secrecy in Sherlock Holmes stories and other British classics like THE MOONSTONE and MALICE AFORETHOUGHT.
Brits have a reputation for being reserved so I probably shouldn’t be surprised that literary husbands and wives have secrets. Still, I find it odd that Mrs. Neville St. Clair has no idea what her husband does for a living in Conan-Doyle’s “The Man with the Twisted Lip.”
Cyril Hare wrote a series of novels in the 1940s and 50s, and although he doesn’t have the name-recognition of Christie or Conan-Doyle he is considered part of the golden age of British crime fiction. To me, Cyril Hare is notable for two reasons. One, he is an obvious precursor to the wonderful Rumpole of the Bailey books written in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Secondly, Hare is a much more thoughtful observer and critic of British self-restraint than any of his predecessors.
In UNTIMELY DEATH, Francis Pettigrew and his wife Eleanor deliberately mislead each other, but their mutual concern is so obvious, it doesn’t seem poisonous. Frank discovers a dead body during a fall holiday in Exmoor and testifies at the inquest. It’s a traumatic experience, reminding him of a similar incident that happened when he was young, and he suffers a serious illness afterwards. The legal inquiry progresses slowly (like they do in real life) and both Pettigrews secretly follow developments without mentioning it, each hoping to insulate their partner from any distress.
The mild deception comes to light when an ex-detective friend sends the Pettigrews a gift ham, and Frank realizes the policeman has been giving Eleanor secret updates, leaving him out of the loop. “That was a kind thought of yours,” Franks says, while admitting he was closely following local newspaper accounts, without mentioning it. “But as it happened, I was anxious not to worry you.” The mutual concern is genuine rather than self-serving. (It’s not sleazy, like Donald Trump secretly paying a stripper $130,000 to spare his wife’s feelings.)
Hare isn’t naïve, however; he knows that family members aren’t always considerate, in fact, they often save their worst behavior for each other. When the case in UNTIMELY DEATH finds its way to Chancery Court, two of the principals “were ignoring one another’s presence with an intensity possible only to close relations.”
Hare’s characters aren’t afraid of introspection. Eleanor asks Frank if he enjoyed the famous Exmoor stag hunt when he was a boy, and he thinks “how hopelessly inadequate the word ‘enjoy’ was. One ‘enjoyed’ so many things—parties, theatres, the common pleasures of life. Hunting was a thing apart—a compound of excitement and terror, discomfort and ecstasy, boredom and bliss.” Frank was a sensitive, bookish boy but he finally admits: “Actually, it was rather fun.”
It's that type of observation that distinguishes Cyril Hare’s characters from those in the Sherlock Holmes stories. There’s little complexity, little emotion, when Neville St. Clair describes his transition from poor reporter to rich beggar in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”: “It was a long fight between my pride and the money, but the dollars won at last.”
It’s introspection that separates Hare from the Rumpole books as well. Mortimer’s couples have sitcom-adversarial relationships: Rumpole famously refers to his wife Hilda as “she who must be obeyed,” and assumes the role of henpecked husband, like an intellectual Fred Flintstone.
Rumpole stories are famous for lampooning the wigged-and-robed British legal system, but I think Hare does an even better job skewering incompetence and pretention. In TRAGEDY AT LAW, a petty, self-important circuit court judge named Barber laments that there are “no trumpeters” in the official procession to the courthouse. He has a Rolls Royce, police escort, High Sheriff in regimental dress, Under-Sheriff carrying a medieval wand, Marshal, butler, and clerk, but he’s upset because wartime economy has robbed him of trumpeters. It’s all light-hearted and silly until the judge gets drunk after the day’s session and hits a pedestrian while driving back to the hotel (with expired license and insurance certificate).
Francis Pettigrew appears in this novel as well and is in the awkward position of helping the flawed judge because he thinks ‘British justice’ is a vitally important fiction for society. He’s a bit like Socrates, worried that undermining one aspect of the law will send the whole edifice tumbling. (Pettigrew also loves Judge Barber’s wife, Hilda, which is a painful complication.)
As an aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if John Mortimer lifted the name “Hilda” from Hare’s book and applied it to his own ultra-strong female lead, Hilda Rumpole. There are other name-echoes from Hare’s books, like a justice Pomeroy in UNTIMELY DEATH and Pomeroy’s wine bar in the Rumpole series.
All of Hare’s plots hinge on obscure legal issues. In AN ENGLISH MURDER, the crime occurs because House of Lords members are technically barred from serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer. So, the villain, Mrs. Carstairs kills Lord Warbeck and his heir Robert so that a cousin will automatically assume the title and give up his government position. The cousin’s job, Exchequer, will therefore be open to her talented husband. UNTIMELY DEATH is about a character “creating a base fee” so that an inheritance can pass to his daughters, rather than be “entailed” through the male line.
That sort of thing is interesting, I suppose, but it’s the honest introspection of characters like Pettigrew that make Hare’s books really enjoyable. In TRAGEDY AT LAW, Pettigrew sums up his feelings about justice Barber’s drunken traffic accident: “In a way, it gave him a certain grim pleasure to find his enemy in this undignified predicament, but that was more than counterbalanced by disgust that one of His Majesty’s Judges should have disgraced himself in such a way. There was probably not a judge on the bench whom Pettigrew had not, at one time or another, criticized, lampooned or held up to ridicule. . . He knew them too well, had studied them too closely, to have any illusions about them. But for the bench as a whole, he felt a deep unspoken respect. . . it was the symbol of what he lived by and for. . .”
As far as readers are concerned (especially modern readers) Justice Barber is just a pompous A-hole who gets exactly what he deserves: disgrace and, ultimately, death. But Pettigrew is a bit like Raymond Chandler’s idealistic heroes, a nerdy Phillip Marlow, who doesn’t mind fighting and losing, even when no one else seems to notice there is a battle being waged.
Brits have a reputation for being reserved so I probably shouldn’t be surprised that literary husbands and wives have secrets. Still, I find it odd that Mrs. Neville St. Clair has no idea what her husband does for a living in Conan-Doyle’s “The Man with the Twisted Lip.”
Cyril Hare wrote a series of novels in the 1940s and 50s, and although he doesn’t have the name-recognition of Christie or Conan-Doyle he is considered part of the golden age of British crime fiction. To me, Cyril Hare is notable for two reasons. One, he is an obvious precursor to the wonderful Rumpole of the Bailey books written in the 70s, 80s and 90s. Secondly, Hare is a much more thoughtful observer and critic of British self-restraint than any of his predecessors.
In UNTIMELY DEATH, Francis Pettigrew and his wife Eleanor deliberately mislead each other, but their mutual concern is so obvious, it doesn’t seem poisonous. Frank discovers a dead body during a fall holiday in Exmoor and testifies at the inquest. It’s a traumatic experience, reminding him of a similar incident that happened when he was young, and he suffers a serious illness afterwards. The legal inquiry progresses slowly (like they do in real life) and both Pettigrews secretly follow developments without mentioning it, each hoping to insulate their partner from any distress.
The mild deception comes to light when an ex-detective friend sends the Pettigrews a gift ham, and Frank realizes the policeman has been giving Eleanor secret updates, leaving him out of the loop. “That was a kind thought of yours,” Franks says, while admitting he was closely following local newspaper accounts, without mentioning it. “But as it happened, I was anxious not to worry you.” The mutual concern is genuine rather than self-serving. (It’s not sleazy, like Donald Trump secretly paying a stripper $130,000 to spare his wife’s feelings.)
Hare isn’t naïve, however; he knows that family members aren’t always considerate, in fact, they often save their worst behavior for each other. When the case in UNTIMELY DEATH finds its way to Chancery Court, two of the principals “were ignoring one another’s presence with an intensity possible only to close relations.”
Hare’s characters aren’t afraid of introspection. Eleanor asks Frank if he enjoyed the famous Exmoor stag hunt when he was a boy, and he thinks “how hopelessly inadequate the word ‘enjoy’ was. One ‘enjoyed’ so many things—parties, theatres, the common pleasures of life. Hunting was a thing apart—a compound of excitement and terror, discomfort and ecstasy, boredom and bliss.” Frank was a sensitive, bookish boy but he finally admits: “Actually, it was rather fun.”
It's that type of observation that distinguishes Cyril Hare’s characters from those in the Sherlock Holmes stories. There’s little complexity, little emotion, when Neville St. Clair describes his transition from poor reporter to rich beggar in “The Man with the Twisted Lip”: “It was a long fight between my pride and the money, but the dollars won at last.”
It’s introspection that separates Hare from the Rumpole books as well. Mortimer’s couples have sitcom-adversarial relationships: Rumpole famously refers to his wife Hilda as “she who must be obeyed,” and assumes the role of henpecked husband, like an intellectual Fred Flintstone.
Rumpole stories are famous for lampooning the wigged-and-robed British legal system, but I think Hare does an even better job skewering incompetence and pretention. In TRAGEDY AT LAW, a petty, self-important circuit court judge named Barber laments that there are “no trumpeters” in the official procession to the courthouse. He has a Rolls Royce, police escort, High Sheriff in regimental dress, Under-Sheriff carrying a medieval wand, Marshal, butler, and clerk, but he’s upset because wartime economy has robbed him of trumpeters. It’s all light-hearted and silly until the judge gets drunk after the day’s session and hits a pedestrian while driving back to the hotel (with expired license and insurance certificate).
Francis Pettigrew appears in this novel as well and is in the awkward position of helping the flawed judge because he thinks ‘British justice’ is a vitally important fiction for society. He’s a bit like Socrates, worried that undermining one aspect of the law will send the whole edifice tumbling. (Pettigrew also loves Judge Barber’s wife, Hilda, which is a painful complication.)
As an aside, I wouldn’t be surprised if John Mortimer lifted the name “Hilda” from Hare’s book and applied it to his own ultra-strong female lead, Hilda Rumpole. There are other name-echoes from Hare’s books, like a justice Pomeroy in UNTIMELY DEATH and Pomeroy’s wine bar in the Rumpole series.
All of Hare’s plots hinge on obscure legal issues. In AN ENGLISH MURDER, the crime occurs because House of Lords members are technically barred from serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer. So, the villain, Mrs. Carstairs kills Lord Warbeck and his heir Robert so that a cousin will automatically assume the title and give up his government position. The cousin’s job, Exchequer, will therefore be open to her talented husband. UNTIMELY DEATH is about a character “creating a base fee” so that an inheritance can pass to his daughters, rather than be “entailed” through the male line.
That sort of thing is interesting, I suppose, but it’s the honest introspection of characters like Pettigrew that make Hare’s books really enjoyable. In TRAGEDY AT LAW, Pettigrew sums up his feelings about justice Barber’s drunken traffic accident: “In a way, it gave him a certain grim pleasure to find his enemy in this undignified predicament, but that was more than counterbalanced by disgust that one of His Majesty’s Judges should have disgraced himself in such a way. There was probably not a judge on the bench whom Pettigrew had not, at one time or another, criticized, lampooned or held up to ridicule. . . He knew them too well, had studied them too closely, to have any illusions about them. But for the bench as a whole, he felt a deep unspoken respect. . . it was the symbol of what he lived by and for. . .”
As far as readers are concerned (especially modern readers) Justice Barber is just a pompous A-hole who gets exactly what he deserves: disgrace and, ultimately, death. But Pettigrew is a bit like Raymond Chandler’s idealistic heroes, a nerdy Phillip Marlow, who doesn’t mind fighting and losing, even when no one else seems to notice there is a battle being waged.
