Glittering Prizes
A review of Glittering Prizes by Brian Flynn – 230812
Considering that Glittering Prizes is the twenty-eighth in Brian Flynn’s Anthony Bathurst series, it is a surprise that he still continues to surprise us. Originally published in 1942 and reissued by Dean Street Press, this is an ingenious murder mystery which, when boiled down to its essence, is less than the sum of its parts. Once more, he succeeds in wrong footing his reader, experimenting with the form and tropes of the detective fiction genre to produce a book that is both entertaining and elicits a sharp breath of astonishment, at least from this reader, as the resolution is revealed.
There are elements of a classic country house murder mystery in that a wealthy American, Mrs Warren Clinton, has invited a motley crew of characters to the hotel she is staying at in Remington for an intriguing soiree. Each of the nine invitees are outstanding in their respective fields, their invitations pander to their egos, and have been invited to participate in a scheme to save the British Empire.
After a dinner, they are set two tasks, to associate another word with a set of nine obscure words, and to undergo a short interrogation about their skill set. The two who are selected by Mrs Clinton following the exercise, Angela Ramage and Wilfred Denver, are found murdered in embarrassing circumstances, having each been shot in the left eye, and Mrs Wilton has disappeared, her body being found later in a trunk in the left luggage office at Waterloo station.
Flynn makes great play of the sense of paranoia and suspicion engendered by the Second World War. Subsequent communications to the remaining seven threaten serious reprisals if they give information about certain obstruse particulars pertaining to the case and sign off with Heil Hitler. There is a mysterious German couple who had rented a flat in Remington which they left around the time of the Remington murders and in whose window they had displayed on occasions a red and on others a blue model of a dachshund, a sign which a retired member of the British Intelligence, Playfair, one of the nine invitees, informs us was used during the rise of the Nazis. In other words, is there a Nazi plot to thwart Wilton’s plans to save the British Empire?
It being a murder mystery, though, a prudent sleuth would be wrong to rule out basic human emotions. Is there a story of a couple of thwarted lovers looking for a way to get together and who will stop at nothing, no matter how fantastic it might all seem, to be together?
I will not spoil your enjoyment, but Flynn excels in constructing an edifice of fantastic misdirection and red herrings, before sending it crashing to the ground with a sharp prod of logic and cold reality. Bathurst, who works with his regular sidekick from the Yard, McMorran, seemingly get nowhere with their investigations, and it is only when Bathurst takes a fresh look at the motives and movements of certain individuals that the truth is revealed.
Flynn plays fair with his readers, all the necessary clues are in the text, but it requires an attentive and diligent reader to spot them, especially as he chooses to detail the reactions of each of the invitees to Mrs Wilton’s curious request, their responses to the investigator’s questions, and their responses to the subsequent threats. Cleverly Flynn builds layer upon layer of detail, making it difficult to see the wood for the trees. It is a great tour de force and is up there amongst my favourite Flynn novels.
