They Never Came Back
A review of They Never Came Back by Brian Flynn – 230520
Considering that it was originally published in 1940 and the fortunes of the Allied forces in the Second World War at the time, They Never Came Back, the twenty-sixth in Flynn’s Anthony Bathurst series and now reissued by Dean Street Press, is a poignant title. Anyone picking it up thinking that it would tell a story of heroic derring-do, of men making the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the security of their homeland, would have been in for a surprise. Instead, this is a slightly bonkers murder mystery-cum-thriller from a writer who is never content to stick to a tried and tested winning formula, but twists and bends the detective genre to extract every ounce from it.
If the title was a cynical ploy to tap into the zeitgeist, it failed as the book fell out of print and languished in obscurity for decades. All credit goes to Steve Barge and Dean Street Press for fighting its corner and getting it back on its feet again. Set in the world of boxing, the men who never come back are three promising boxers who receive offers that are too good to be true, promptly disappear and their bodies are found washed up on the Sussex shoreline.
The book begins with Bathurst in full Holmesian mode, receiving a late-night visit from a drenched and distressed woman, Flora Donovan, who implores him to use all his powers to locate her husband, “Lefty”, who having received a letter a week earlier went out and has not been seen since. Bathurst accepts the challenge and has some remarkable luck in getting some early clues, even at the cost of a blow to the jaw.
Liaising with Inspector MacMorran of the Yard and fearing the worst for Donovan’s safety, he discovers that another boxer had disappeared in similar circumstances and that the body had deep and unusual lacerations to the upper body, but not the hands and wrists – an important point as it turns out – and enormous bird-like footprints by the body. At one point Bathurst suggests that the attacker might have been a Pteranodon. It is that kind of book, populated with picaresque characters from the demi-monde, conveniently bearing easily identifiable physical traits, laced with the odd sporting toff like Sir Cloudesley Slade, and veering from the conventional murder mystery to a pastiche of a penny dreadful at the drop of a hat.
As well as setting up the plot the first half of the book is concerned with a forthcoming bout for high stakes. Slade’s nominated champions, first Donovan and then Jago, disappear and are killed and his son, Godfrey, steps into the breach. The book’s set piece is a description of the fight which is thrilling and worth a read. In a break with the previous pattern Godfrey disappears after the bout and the second half of the book sees Bathurst and MacMorran on the hunt to find him as well as to determine who was responsible for the disappearance and brutal murders of the three boxers.
It is a story of mania, sadism, and the Sporting Life. I quickly realised it was going to be one of the stories where you would need an enormous slice of Bathurstian luck to have a chance of working out the whodunit and whydunit and so just sat back to enjoy the ride. It was great fun and while the resolution was even more bizarre than the setup, it all sort of made sense. I can imagine that it was the escapist literature that the times demanded and when it is done well, there is nothing wrong with that. Perhaps not a book to start with if you are new to Flynn, but fans will not be disappointed.
