The Man Who Didn't Fly

by Margot Bennett, Martin Edwards (Introduction)

The British Library presents another captivating example of classic crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder.

Four men were due to fly to Dublin from England. But, when disaster struck and the plane went down over the Irish sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the flyers scattered to the winds, the police turn to the Wade family, whose patchy account and memory of their past few days hold the key to this elusive and tense mystery. Who was the man who didn't fly? And what did he have to gain by staying on the ground?

Proof in one classic crime novel that Margot Bennett's tight and suspenseful writing is long overdue rediscovery. This British Library edition also includes the rare short story "No Bath for the Browns."

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Classics, 20th Century, British Literature, Historical Fiction

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Scottish author Margot Bennett was born in 1912 and worked first first as a copywriter in the UK and Australia and then as a nurse during the Spanish Civil War before turning to writing. Her output in crime fiction was relatively small, yet successful: The Man Who Didn't Fly was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and was runner-up to Charlotte Armstrong's A Dram of Poison for Best Novel at the Edgars in 1956, and she won the Gold Dagger two years later in 1958 with Someone from the Past. She was also chosen to contribute a short story to the second CWA anthology, Choice Of Weapons, edited by Michael Gilbert.

Reviews

[Anissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

My goodness, this was tedious. Four days to read a book with fewer than 300 pages.

To be sure there's a good mystery in this story. A flight to Dublin is chartered to fly four men. It takes off and unfortunately goes down into the ocean in a ball of flames. It's then realized that only three men flew and the question becomes the identity of the man who didn't fly. It's complicated by not being sure which men were on the flight and that is the line of investigation that Inspector Lewis and Sargeant Young tackle by interviewing the Wade family. 

Mr. Wade has two daughters, Hester a medical school student home between term and teenager Prudence. All four men had interactions with the family in the days leading up to the plane crash and recollections of that time are instrumental in the solution. And this is what the main of the story and where the central mystery is weighed down and practically crushed. It's circuitous in the details extracted and yes, it feels like Lewis is pulling teeth with the Wades. Often I wondered if they were really interested in finding out the truth which was a bit strange because Hester and Prudence had romantic interest in some of the men. It felt like a stalling tactic with all their soppy melodrama and was very irritating. Hester in particular came across as completely silly and I stopped believing her to be a medical student. Prudence was similarly plagued but being an overly romantic teenager, it tracked. Mr. Wade, I just felt bad for him as his business ambition far exceeded his abilities. Money practically fled from this man and I was glad he got a bit of a reprieve by the end of having a large portion of his remaining nest egg salvaged staving off penury.

I thought the characterization of the four men was uneven, with two portrayed more vividly and the remaining two sort of disappearing in distinction for their flatness. There's one other man who appears, Marryatt, who scowls, blusters and bullies about so much as the Inspector and Sargeant are wrapping things up that I was shocked in the conclusion when he's offered as a romantic win for Hester. Just no. There's a jewellery theft connected here as well and an opera.  In the final analysis, the solution was done well enough but it was overall crushed by the weight of tiresome characters and their melodrama. 

I will of course continue reading the British Library Classic Crime reissues. The forward by Martin Edwards was of course, wonderful and had me adding Margot Bennett's science fiction novels, The Long Way Back and The Furious Masters to my TBR. 

And while this was just an okay read for me, I have to give Bennett her turn of phrase here. I have some favourite lines:

The amusing quotes:
"...He always seemed healthy and almost aggressively clean." She looked at the two detectives, who were brushed, scrubbed, shaved, creased, and shining, as if they had been preparing for inspection by Royalty."

"He looks like the kind of man who's been spoilt by his mother and kicked out by his father.

She was sixteen, not at all shy in her assumption that she had the solution to all human problem; and she added to this common adolescent feature a frightening competence.

He certainly deserved a good dinner, Hester thought, but it was a pity that good dinners involved cutting up so many things into such small pieces.

There's no satisfaction in throwing some fish into a frying pan. If a meal can't be a poem, it isn't worth cooking.

The "Eff that guy!" quotes:
"I remember having a financial crisis in Persia. I left it with forty-two thousand owing. I paid back every penny, except what I owed the Persians. Money! I never think of it." 

"Do you know, I did rather like South Africa," Maurice said easily. "I haven't been there for years- I know they have their racial troubles, very regrettable. I couldn't approve less, but perhaps it was the tension that made it seem so exciting. It's like a game of chess, you know- White to play and mate in three moves- but Black has most of the pieces."

The "Just because it's cynical doesn't make it untrue" quote:
"People fall in love and they die, and no amount of poetic advice has ever helped them to do either of those things more successfully. They are interested in love for a few years, and later they are afraid of death. But they are always interested in money. Everyone, everywhere is interested in money all the time. There's never been an age when people agreed so heartily to be interested all at once in the same thing."

[Adelyne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I honestly have not the slightest clue what I have just read, and that's not for lack of trying. I know that sometimes books written this long ago require more concentration on my part to follow the plot, because the language usage is not quite what I'm used to, and given the accolades on the back of the copy I have, I really wanted to at least understand what was going on.

It's a very different type of story - finding out which man didn't fly being central to the story - and okay, it initially looked like something fairly promising as even the introduction was not what I had expected from the title. I thought "the man who didn't fly" referred to someone who, as a matter of principle, didn't fly, rather than a man who simply was not on board this particular flight (I received this book as a gift, and had not read the blurb before). That was a good start, throwing the unexpected my way almost immediately.

Once the premise was established, I was initially of the impression that this is central because it would later transpire that the whole crashing of the craft was a carefully plotted act by the man who didn't fly, hence his choice to not fly, and perhaps there would be some description of why he wanted the men on board to die. But this idea isn't touched on much at all, or even acknowledged as the most straight-forward interpretation of what had gone on . Much of the book is instead devoted to the officers going around speaking to people, most prominently the Wade family (who seem to have something to do with each of the men who could be the one that didn't fly). The conversation rewinds to the two days before the flight and takes the reader through what the men did during those two days, revealing - surprise surprise! - that each of the men had secrets of their own. "Conversation" is also a rather generous term to use to describe what went on, as everyone seemed incredibly chatty for a book character, and there was a lot of what felt like monologuing as what one character said (in response to another) didn't always relate to the point of the original speaker. It didn't help in the slightest that all the characters felt incredibly one-dimensional, and I reached a point where I struggled to distinguish who was who.

By the time we got to the day before the flight (maybe two-thirds way through), this was starting to read more and more like a "what happened in this peaceful little village" type of general fiction book rather than a crime/mystery. I think the example quote on Goodreads is fairly representative of the book as a whole: Super long, goes around and around in circles to the extent that it wasn't clear any more what was important and what was not. I read till the end just to see how it would end, as it was a relatively short book, and wasn't really surprised myself when I ended it with a shrug and an "oh, okay".

I appreciate the efforts of the British Library to put together this collection of stories, and have discovered many delights that I otherwise would probably not have picked up. But they do tend to be quite hit-and-miss, with this one in particular a solid miss. 1.5 stars, 2 on Goodreads on the account of finishing.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A puzzling mystery…

A plane crashes en route to Dublin. Four men were supposed to have been going on the trip, but only three boarded the plane. There were no survivors and no bodies have been found. The first problem is that no one knows which of the four men is the one who is, presumably, still alive. The second problem is that he hasn’t turned up, explaining why he missed the flight. Inspector Lewis and his assistant, Sergeant Young, have to backtrack through the last day or two to see if they can identify the man who didn’t fly, and find out why he has disappeared…

This is a very odd crime novel. I assumed the crime would be that the plane had been deliberately destroyed, meaning that the pilot and passengers had been murdered. But this idea never seems to feature much. Maybe back in the 1950s, planes were always falling out of the sky en route to Dublin so it didn’t seem so suspicious? Instead, Lewis and Young seem to be merely trying to identify the dead and the living, for the sake of the inquests. And yet I couldn’t quite swallow the idea that two relatively high-level officers would be assigned to such a task. Fortunately, however, it soon transpires that all four of the men had secrets, so the lack of an obvious crime soon fades into the background as the investigation begins to centre on what they’d all been up to in the days before the flight.

Some of the early part follows the usual detective story format of Lewis questioning locals, but soon he hones in on the Wade family, who seem to have had connections with all four of the men. From then on it’s told partly through members of the family giving their recollections, mixed with a straight third-person narrative of what they’re telling. Again odd, but it does work eventually, after a rather slow and confusing start. Mostly we see the action from the perspective of Hester, the older of Mr Wade’s two daughters. She’s a sensible young woman, who is worried that her father seems bent on speculating with his small remaining fortune on the advice of one of the plane’s passengers. Another is the Wade’s lodger, a strange, nervous man who seems almost paranoid at times. A third man is a neighbour and long-time friend of the family. And the fourth is Harry, a ne’er-do-well with poetical aspirations, with whom young Hester is beginning to fancy herself in love. So the family is as keen to know who has survived as the police are, and readily co-operate in telling all they know of the days leading up to the crash.

The basis for the plot is all a bit silly really, and not terribly credible. But the actual plotting of the mystery element is excellent – it’s a real puzzle, based on clues and logic and elimination. The reader has as much chance as the police to work out the identities of the men on the basis of the clues given. Needless to say, I didn’t, although some parts of the story were easier to guess at than others. The characterisation is a bit contrived to serve the plot, and I must admit it took me ages before I could tell most of the missing men apart without checking back each time to remind myself which was which. Harry the poet and the Wade family members are much better drawn, especially Hester, who provides a rare character to care about amidst the many unlikeable and unscrupulous people in the cast.

Overall, I have rather mixed feelings about it. I enjoyed the second half much more than the first, and suspect it would greatly appeal to people who enjoy the challenge of a clue-based logic puzzle. It’s not quite as successful in terms of character and motive, but these aspects are still strong enough to give an enjoyable background for the puzzle elements. One for the mind rather than the emotions, I think.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

[Wanda Shuster · Rating 2 out of 5]

While reading this novel, I really tried to remember the time frame of when it was written and set. At the beginning I thought oh, what fun...but then it meandered with accounts and conversations that were so boring. The characters were very one dimensional and the females, I can't believe I'm saying this, seemed hysterical. I had to check again that a female wrote this book. I never really understood this description...but maybe it only seemed this way because of the endless dialogue and the characters not written to much depth.

[B.V. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scottish author Margot Bennett was born in 1912 and worked first first as a copywriter in the UK and Australia and then as a nurse during the Spanish Civil War before turning to writing. Her output in crime fiction was relatively small, yet successful: The Man Who Didn't Fly was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger and was runner-up to Charlotte Armstrong's A Dram of Poison for Best Novel at the Edgars in 1956, and she won the Gold Dagger two years later in 1958 with Someone from the Past. She was also chosen to contribute a short story to the second CWA anthology, Choice Of Weapons, edited by Michael Gilbert.

But thereafter, a bit of mystery regarding Bennett herself began. She essentially stopped writing crime fiction, something discussed by Martin Edwards both on his blog and in the foreword he wrote for the Black Dagger Crime Series edition of The Man Who Didn't Fly. Bennett only wrote for television for awhile—including the early 60s UK adaptation of the Maigret novels by Simenon—with the exception of two non-mystery books (one of which had the intriguing title The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Atomic Radiation), before abandoning writing altogether in 1966. She died in 1980 at the age of 68.

In The Man Who Didn't Fly, four men are scheduled to take an ill-fated chartered flight to Dublin that crashes into the Irish Channel. Although the bodies can't be recovered, it becomes evident that only three men were on board the plane, yet all four are reported as missing. Inspector Lewis and Sergeant Young have their work count out for them trying to coax clues out of unreliable witnesses including the Wade family, Charles and his daughters Hester and Prudence.

The lives of the Wades intersected with all four of the missing men: Harry Walters, a desperate poet, who was in love with Hester Wade; Joseph Ferguson, a businessman who wife was more interested in Harry; Morgan Price, a nervous guest of the Wades; and Maurice Reid, something of a family friend. Slowly but surely, Lewis and Young piece together the details of the days leading up to the flight, finally uncovering the name of the missing man. But that just sets up a new problem: what happened to him and why?

Bennett's artful plotting was enough to capture the attention of the producers of NBC's Kraft Television Theater who created an episode in 1958 based on The Man Who Didn't Fly starring then 27-year-old William Shatner, Jonathan Harris (Dr. Smith of Lost in Space) and Walter Brooke (guest star in just about all TV series in the 60s, 70s, and 80s). The book was also chosen by Julian Symons as part of his 1958 "100 Best Crime Stories" for the London Sunday Times.

[Margie]

One of the craziest books I've ever read. I hated every page of it. I can't imagine how it ever got past a publisher.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dame Agatha Christie and Her Peers
An intro by Martin Edwards tells us this novel (1955) was nominated for a Gold Dagger Award AND across the pond an Edgar Award, then went unpublished for decades. Imagine, also in 1955, Highsmith's sensational "Talented Mr. Ripley" went relatively unnoticed*. AND, Christie's "Hickory Dickory Death" (yes, 1955) was nominated for nothing but has never been out of print!**
Cast - 2 stars: Dry except for young thief Jackie, but he's only around for a few pages.
Atmosphere - 1 star: Dry. Surprisingly so.
Plot - 3: Four men charter a plane which crashes. One man doesn't board. Interesting!
Investigation - 1 star: 200+ pages of...chatting about poems and cooking and crushes...
Resolution - 1 star: ....but what about Jackie and....oh never mind.
Summary - 1.6 stars: This is a logic problem (Harry was not in Africa, Morgan smoked, Maurice likes whiskey) you might find in a puzzle magazine but stretched out into a novel. Solid idea poorly executed.
*Wow, how times change!
**A LOT!

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...

[Elisabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5-ish stars. I have to admit I was a tiny bit disappointed that this one didn't have very much to do with...flying. But that's neither here nor there. It's a highly original plot, and my slightly lower rating has more to do with annoyance/skepticism at the way the characters behave. (Your lodger is hiding in his room insisting "they're going to get me," your unreliable boyfriend is snooping around trying to see what's hidden under the floorboards, there's a stranger in the garden informing you that he's stalking your family friend who is about to abscond with your father's life savings, and...you're not panicking, only rather disturbed?) I did enjoy the character of Prudence, the spunky teenage sister (I cracked up at her complaining "why does every recipe that tastes good involve so much chopping?"), and the detective sergeant. Overall reaction, a book that could have been brilliant if the character development had been a little more believable.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very British mystery, concerning which out of four men did not make it on to a plane which crashed, leaving three passengers dead. Meandering, well written and a believable conclusion. I enjoyed this.

[Darius Ostrowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I started getting into this I was rather confused about how this was going to work out. Four men were scheduled to be on a flight, three showed up, and the plane went down in the sea without a trace. Who missed the flight, and where was he now?

The bulk of the book is the recollections of the Wade family, who were involved with all 4 men. The last 2-3 days around the ill-fated flight are recollected in great detail, which gives this book an odd feeling - more of a soap opera, or drama, or even a play. Young people falling in love, a ne'er do well poet who's an expert on sponging off of others, a renter who's falling apart with secrets, a young thief caught in the house looking for something, a potential con-man being pursued by a mysterious Australian.

It all comes together quite nicely, although a bit predictable as to what happened to the fourth man.

[Virginia · Rating 1 out of 5]

If Lewis Carroll and O. Henry had collaborated on a mystery novel this might be it. It had one-dimensional characters, silly dialogue and two of the dumbest females anyone ever came up with. (Hester is on vacation from medical school and I wouldn't let her tie my shoes she was so ditzy.) The mystery doesn't start to gel until the very end and by that point I just didn't care about any of it. The cover, which was sadly the best part of the book, along with my misreading of the blurb, led me to believe it was post-war espionage with a great ending. Those letters on the airplane wing are code for "don't even bother."

[Pirate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quixotic imaginative thriller. Well written and original. Good read and hats off to those who brought this 1955 whodunnit out of retirement...came close to winning the inaugural Gold Dagger award. Martin Edwards comments wryly this is the second time he has written an introduction for a reprint of the book...may there be a third and a fourth as it is worthy of it. As he remarks it is a shame Margot Bennett's output was limited as she found screenwriting more lucrative for she had a sublime talent.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Closer to 2.5. I wanted to like it more, and I'm glad I was not the only one confused by the plotting and the misleading premise.

[Niki (nikilovestoread) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just could not get into this one. The story premise sounded good, but the writing was quite boring and the dialog and interactions between the characters was often annoying. Much of the time, it seemed like characters popped up that we were supposed to know with little introduction. Maybe I was so bored that I missed specifics, but I couldn't bear to read anymore and just skimmed the solution at the end.

[Tim Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's not a proper detective novel at all. It's a study in human relationships. It reads like Steinbeck. Everyone follows their own delusions and disappointments. Tell us about the rabbits. It's all rather sad.

Hester and Prudence are nice girls, and deserve better than to be mere foils for the male characters.

The basic premise is sound and original. But the execution needed to be much more exciting, or if that was impossible, funnier.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. While I enjoyed the writing quite a bit, there's a lot of talking. The mystery itself is kind of unusual and if you are looking for a thriller, or even some action, look somewhere else. But it was engaging as an audiobook, and I might try another from Bennett someday.

[Zwaantje · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was leuk boekie maar zat niet veel sfeer in het verhaal voor de rest wel spannend.

[Darlene Messenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1955, this novel was highly regarded as coming from an author who mysteriously ended her career at the peak of renown. This edition includes a rare short story. "No Bath For the Browns"- a deliciously dastardly tale of a renovation!
I read a few reviews prior to my own reading of this book. They weren't at all promising. So I just address them in general. This novel is about an arranged flight to Dublin in which four men planned to travel but only the pilot and three men's bodies are recovered from the wreckage. What happened to the fourth man? The back of book notes declare this book " an innovative and thoroughly entertaining inversion of the classic whodunit " I concur!! It is a death investigation. Accident or murder? The background information is the key to the investigation but when our detective sergeant attempts to interview the family, witnesses, etc the whole thing becomes farcical. I can see how confusing this book could be to someone unfamiliar with the likes of Wodehouse, or British wit in general. For me, however, it was delightful!!! It's a social tale of money, sloth, greed, avarice, interspersed with humor and human frailties. Perhaps it needs some notation to clarify the wording of the humor. But I digress. I thought it an absolute gem of a book! Funny, laugh out loud clean humor plus an ending I didn't fully see coming...love that about the classic British crime novels; plus the introduction notes on the author make this a welcome edition to the British Library Crime Classics list.

[Farar Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do like a mid-century British mystery and even more, I like one written by a woman. This one is particularly fun because we know the end result from the start - a chartered plane went down over the Irish Sea, and a bunch of rascals were killed. But which bunch?

[Derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed views about this book. It is a classic British mystery. Four men are scheduled to fly in a chartered plane from England to Ireland. However, one of the men doesn’t show up at the appointed time and the plane leaves without him. The plane crashes, killing the three men and the pilot. It is known who the four men are, but not which one missed the flight or where he may now be. The story is told mainly through the vehicle of police interviews of various people and flashbacks to events during the 2 days preceding the flight. Obscure clues are scattered appropriately throughout. The story contains a lot of comedy based on some disreputable individuals and the way some are coping with trying to maintain their inherited aristocratic lifestyle in a decaying manor house with dwindling resources. The police figure it out based on the clues and loose ends are wrapped up. There is a mix of characters including among others a naive 16-year-old girl, a master conman, a mysterious character or two, and a sometimes poet of dubious morals. All of this should result in the type of story I enjoy and give 4 or 5 stars, but it just didn't resonate with me. The comedy aspects were too overdone, the arrival of two unconnected strangers at a crucial point in the story is not plausible and their separate actions odd beyond belief.

[Todayiamadaisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charter flight goes down in the Irish Sea. The flight was booked for four passengers, but only three took off. The missing passenger doesn't come forward. What happened to the man who didn't fly?

An oddly structured book, this: police quickly home in on a family — Mr Wade and his two daughters — who knew all four passengers, and who reluctantly tell the story of the last few days before the fatal flight. Also interviewed are the wife of one of the passengers and a mysterious Australian who has been lurking in the village. The book then turns into a logic puzzle, as the police and witnesses reassemble all the evidence to work out who was on the plane.

A weirdly talky book, mostly dialogue, mostly people talking at, rather than to, each other; it reminded me of reading a play. Not remotely believable, with an unnecessary, improbable and cursory romance tacked on in the last chapter, but interesting enough structurally to hold the attention.

(The book also contains a short story by Bennett, "No Bath for the Browns", about a family that moves into a terrible new house.)

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no problem with crime fiction writers who moved towards making the genre literary rather than puzzle oriented. However, there is a balance to be struck and here that is not the case. The writing propelled the story forward, not the plot nor, indeed, the characters.

As with "The Wife of Bath" the characters here were either colourless or one-dimensional. An interesting structure and premise with detailed flashbacks was all there was to it. Otherwise it was predictable and clichéd.

The depiction of the "nouveaux pauvres" and the financial chancers of the 1950s is accurate, so I found historical interest here. But there is little by way of detection until near the end and rather a lot of irritating and inexplicable behaviour-would a medical student really have no idea about concussion and be unable to ascertain quickly if someone were dead?

Even the surprise at the end was no surprise.

I came back to this having stopped, one third in, a year ago. I found it easier going than anticipated.

Again, a somewhat grudging 3.5 stars.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four passengers are scheduled to take a charter flight from England to Ireland. Only three show up, and when the plane crashes into the sea, there's no way to know who took the flight. The police expect the missing man to show up, but that isn't happening. So they must investigate, and they're lead to Hester Wade and her family, who had ties to all four men. There's a businessman, an investor, a poet, and a mysterious hypochondriac. Hester must deal with a pathetic burglar and an arrogant stranger from Australia who has a grudge against one of the missing men.

[Tuesdayschild · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I was anticipating a weightier matter to be the driving factor at the core of this mystery, there wasn’t one; and, the reveal was pretty disappointing.
The narrator helped hold my interest and I thought he did a good job with the Aussie bloke.

[S Richardson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very amusing.

A weird mixture of Virginia Woolf and Stella Gibbons in style. After a while I found this book quite pleasing,like vague memories of books I read in holiday houses on rainy days, when young.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different take on the murder mystery as Margot Bennett starts with a plane crash and through Inspector Lewis and Sergeant Young they discover why only three people died and which member didn't fly. Although the story can drag the payoff is worth it.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: a plane crashes and four men are reported dead yet one didn't fly. Interesting. Inspector Lewis follows the clues.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very different. Enjoyed it.

[Farah Mendlesohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird. Very weird.