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.
