Book Corner – November 2020 (3)
Quick Curtain – Alan Melville
Detective fiction comes in all shapes and forms and Quick Curtain, published in 1934 and reissued as part of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series, is pretty left field. Whilst it works as a conventional whodunit and howdunit mystery, it is also a gentle send up of the literary genre as well as the theatre industry. It is delightful, quite funny in parts and has an amusing twist at the end.
Melville was a broadcaster, writer and playwright and his theatrical expertise, rather like John Bude’s, comes through loud and clear throughout the book. It looks like a play in prose, starting off with a play bill for Douglas B Douglas’ latest theatrical blockbuster, Blue Music. Each chapter ends on a cliff-hanger, in the way that soaps and melodramas do, and the writing is crisp and sharp, just enough to set up the character or location to allow the plot to move on. No word is wasted.
All the theatrical targets are there, cynical theatre promoters, theatre goers who are prepared to queue for days and pay through the nose to attend the latest sensation, veteran thesps with personal problems and petty jealousies, critics who file their copy before they see the play and spend their time in the bar. You get the picture. Melville is clearly having fun.
The opening night of the dress rehearsals is going well until we get to Act II when the lover and star, played by Brandon Baker, is meant to be shot by the character played by Hilary Foster. A shot rings out at the right moment, but it is a live bullet. Baker has been killed, the curtain is rung down and the performance abandoned. Later Foster is found hung in his dressing room. Did Foster kill his rival or was the scene a blind for another person somehow to murder the actor?
In the audience was Inspector Wilson from Scotland Yard and his journalist son, Derek. Wilson is an unconventional detective, working from home, holding little truck for conventional police procedures. Together with his son they form a comedy duo as they set about unearthing what really went on in the theatre, their conversations are among the highlights of the book. Far from convinced that what happened was what they saw in front of their eyes, they develop increasingly elaborate theories and lines of enquiry. When one leads to a dead end or proves to have been impossible, they simply move on to their next theory and try again. Having two deaths on their hands increases their difficulties in reconciling what went on with their half-baked theories.
In keeping with the theatricality of the book, when they are convinced that they know how the murder was accomplished and who did it, they arrange the arrest of the culprit in the bowels of the theatre using a theatrical trick. Whether they got the right person, I will leave you to discover for yourself.
Dorothy L Sayers, when reviewing the book, took Melville to task for not playing fair with the reader and for playing fast and loose with the clues and detective conventions. She may have had a point, although Sayers was no saint in that regard, but this misses the point of the book. It is a glorious send up of the genre and should be enjoyed as such. A great read.
