Cecil F. Gregg's 'Inspector Higgins Hurries' 1934 and Eden Phillpotts' 'A Voice from the Dark' 1925

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.41 - 1938

Never having heard of the author before, I looked him up online. There is very little about him, except that he was a chartered secretary and accountant, who was more action-oriented and less cerebral than many Golden Age mystery writers, with strong overtones of the sensationalism from earlier in the [20th] century. He wrote over 40 crime-books, 35 of them with Inspector Higgins as the protagonist, starting with The Murdered Manservant (1928) and finishing with Professional Jealousy (1960). Other  novels in the series were The Three Daggers (1929) Murder on the Bus (1930), Inspector Higgins sees it through (1934). Clearly, both Gregg and Higgins enjoyed quite a Fan Club.

What of this tale? The subtitle, in brackets, is Being a day in his life; it takes place between 10.30 p.m. one evening and exactly 24 hours later. It is certainly a breakneck story: not the dreaded stream of consciousness beloved by some authors (whom I shan't name) but a breathless account of a rapid stream of events. Higgins is standing in for his boss at New Scotland Yard, Chief-Inspector Dryan, who has suffered a convenient attack of lumbago. He is to speak at the 21st annual dinner of the Society of Writers. Although nervous, Higgins does well and is congratulated by the secretary who gives him a lift home. Then he turned, opened the gate, and strode up the gravel path. On his front doorstep was a dead body. There is a dagger in his back. Another dagger then flies through the air, just missing him. So, we are off.

He chases a man who jumps in a car; Higgins leaps onto its back but falls off when struck in the face. Stopping another car, he finds it contains none other than his wife and the lumbago-martyr Dryan. They take off in pursuit of the baddies. That car ends up falling down a cliff; but, when searched, there is no-one in it. The trio discover a nearby darkened house on the cliff-edge. A sinister man lets them in but then locks them in a dark room. It is apparent there are at least four others in the house, with guns. Dryan manages to escape; eventually Higgins and his wife also get out, by a death-defying descent on a rotting metal ladder down the cliff face. Just in time; the house blows up. It is now 4.45 a.m. Leaving his wife behind, Higgins steals a dinghy to board a ship which had been waiting for the four crooks. He manages to get on board and hides away. A Royal Navy destroyer appears (alerted by Dryan to search for the crooks' boat) and Higgins swims over to it. The crooks' vessel is escorted up the Thames and Higgins is taken by a police launch to Westminster Steps and New Scotland Yard.

Very thick fog hampers everyone's movements; the bad guys as well as the police. When Higgins' wife returns home it is to find it ransacked; meanwhile, Dryan has been attacked and rendered unconscious in his own office. Papers have been stolen - relating to the 'Waters' case, which both officers had been working on for many months. A desperate (and breakneck) attempt is made to capture the miscreants; Higgins is attacked, drugged and thrown in the Thames; but through superhuman effort manages to get back ashore, confront his dastardly criminal and solve the case. The master-mind behind the whole criminal activity is revealed and has a spectacular end. It means there is another dead body on Higgins' front doorstep. 24 hours separated the two stiffs. Jerusalem! What a day! Certainly, and just within the realms of possibility.

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.36 - 1938

This is the third Phillpotts mystery I have read in the Crime-Book Society's series. I enjoyed reading the other two - Found Drowned (1930) (Blog 20 July 2025) and Bred in the Bone (1933) (Blog 31 January 2026) - and I enjoyed this one, the earliest of the three to be written. The author is particularly good on the psychology behind the characters' actions and motives; it meant the story was quite believable throughout. I was pleased that what appeared to be supernatural turned out to be entirely man (or woman) made.

55-year-old detetective John Ringrose has retired from New Scotland Yard and has come to stay at an old friend, Jacob Brent's, Old Manor House Hotel on the Dorset coast. Two long-stay ladies are the only other occupants: Mrs Bellars, an 84-year-old lady struck with paralysis, and her maid, Miss Susan Manley. Ringrose chats to the women and then goes off to bed. and soon slept and slept well. And then a voice in the room awakened him...a child cried out in pain and terror. "Please - please - I will be good, Mr Bitton! Don't let him see me - don't let him come - please - please!. Ringrose searches the room and the one next door. Nothing. But it happened again, four nights later. He confides in Mrs Bellars and Miss Manley. They tell him that a child died in the room more than a year ago. It is the story of little Ludovic Bewes, a frail and delicate 13-year-old lad. He was ill, with shot nerves. Arthur Bitton was the servant looking after him. Ludovic's father, Lord Brooke, had died in an accident in the Italian Alps, leaving two orphaned children - 'Ludo' and an older sister, Mildred. Ludo had regular nightmares, so, one day when Bitten was absent, Miss Manley searched the two rooms. She finds, on top of a wardrobe, a head, with stiff red hair springing up off it, and a face you might see in hell...great yellow eyes, and a hole for the nose, and a mouth set with long teeth like a dog's...it was shocking! It looked alive, for the eyes were glass, and evil properly stared out of them. Clearly, it had been used by Bitton to terrify Ludo. No wonder the child pined away and died.

Ringrose decides to investigate. The cold-blooded, calculated slaughter of a child awakes the heartiest passion for justice. Returning to London, he takes on the persona of one Alec West, a retired manservant (such as Bitton) and travels to Bridport where Bitton lived with his wife. He strikes up a friendship with the man, probing all the time about his past. Then he pounced. He invites Bitton to his rented apartment in Bridport; they chat over whisky in a darkened room. The clock had just struck eleven...the outline of a red, conspicuous object crept into the light at Ringrose's shoulder, and a thing lifted its head over the chair and looked steadily at Bitton. The creature's skull was the size of a large coconut, and from a low brow sprang scrub and scarlet hair. Nose it had none, but beneath two pits that took its place there gaped lips; and the mouth opened and shut silently, revealing dog-like fangs that glittered. Its yellow eyes also shone with life, and the head moved on an invisible neck. Not Salvator Rosa, nor Edgar Poe from his ghoul-haunted woodlands, ever conjured a monster more loathsome or compact of vileness. Well, it works. The head reappears behind a book in Ringrose's study; then outside Bitton's bedroom window whilst his wife is away. The Result? He commits suicide. Ringrose destroys the repulsive puppet.

But that was just the servant, even if he had murdered the little boy. The real culprit was the younger brother of Lord Brooke and uncle to Ludo. Both were dead, and he was now the new Lord Brooke. The rest of the story details how Ringrose has a battle of wits with a very clever and evil man. A man whose one passion in life was collecting ivory; who could rarely afford this without his elder brother's financing him, but who now had all the wealth he needed. Scenes include Ringrose staying at Lord Brooke's country house at Brooke-Nort under another alias; and northern Italy. The denouement is skilfully done, but not before Phillpotts takes us into the mind of Lord Brooke (having done so very well with Arthur Bitton). The sub-plot involving Ludo's sister Mildred, and a young doctor based in Italy is woven into the main story. Finally, back at The Old Manor House Hotel, Ringrose finds out about the original 'child's voice' in the night. The author is one of the more erudite contributors to the Crime-Book Society's series.

Edward Shawcross' 'The People's Emperor. The Unlikely Rise and Spectacular Fall of Napoleon III' 2026

Faber & Faber first edition - 2026

Edward Shawcross' Prologue opens with the disaster at Sedan in September 1870, which led to the Emperor Napoleon III surrendering to the Prussian/German army and subsequently being ejected from his throne. Before the fighting started, one French general said (in French, of course), "We are in a chamber pot, about to be shat upon". A devastatingly accurate comment. Few had predicted the disaster; but, as the author states, few had predicted that Louis-Napoleon would become Emperor. His story is one of unlikelihoods - his daft dream to recreate the Empire of his uncle, Napoleon I. Not all observers were as rude as Victor Hugo, who came to despise Louis-Napoleon, and who castigated him as Napoleon le Pétit. Karl Marx called the first Napoleon's regime as a tragedy and the third's as a farce. And yet, by 1870, Louis-Napoleon had ruled for longer than his uncle and over, by and large, a stable regime. Between 1848 and 1868, French exports tripled. Paris was transformed into a monumental capital, a centre of modernity. Through success in the Crimean War and Austria's defeat in northern Italy, France had become a European (and global) superpower. It is due to the author's skill, that the story of Louis Napoleon's unlikely rise and spectacular fall, is cogently explained.

Although I had read biographies of Louis-Napoleon and the France of the third quarter of the 19th century before, I found Shawcross's first 150 pages, detailing Louis-Napoleon's early life and numerous failures before 1848, extremely helpful in explaining this 'unlikely rise'. Above all, it was the name. Napoleon I, by forcing his younger brother, Louis, the comte de Saint-Leu, to marry Hortense de Beauharnais (his wife Joséphine's daughter by her first marriage), hoped to establish a dynasty. Napoleon's older brother, Joseph, had no male children, so any male offspring of Louis and Hortense would be next in line to the throne after their father (are you following?!). Two sons were born:  Napoleon-Louis and, in1810, Louis-Napoleon. (In fact, when Napoleon I divorced Josephine and married again, he did have a male heir - subsequently to be known as Napoleon II, but who was never to reign.) After Napoleon I's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Hortense and her two boys settled in Switzerland, having bought the chateau of Arenenberg above the shores of Lake Constance. This was to be Louis-Napoleon's main base from the age of seven to 31. There has been a Napoleon Museum at Arenenberg since 1907.

Two people dominated Louis-Napoleon's thinking - his mother and his revered uncle (who died at St Helena in 1821). He did visit his father, who lived in Rome, but the two were never close - the latter regularly chastising his son for his silly dreams and regular failures. When, in 1830, the reactionary Charles X, who had succeeded his brother Louis XVIII in 1824,  was overthrown and Louis-Philippe, became king, it was clear there was little popular support for the latter. Louis-Napoleon, apparently, thought the law banishing his family would soon be revoked and he could return to France. No such luck: Louis-Philippe renewed the law. However, both Napoleon-Louis and Louis-Napoleon had other exciting fish to fry: the cause of Italian nationalism. They soon got involved with Rome's revolutionary underworld, and both brothers then joined the Carbonari revolt against the Austrian occupation of northern Italy in 1831. However, not only did the revolt fail, but Napoleon-Louis died of measles in the retreat. Louis-Napoleon escaped, with his mother, first to Paris (causing an intense embarrassment for Louis-Philippe) and then to London, before returning to Arenenberg. 

The next seventeen years saw Louis-Napoleon seemingly no nearer his self-proclaimed destiny. He wrote - his Réveries politiques, published in May 1832, was awash with fantasies about the Empire and was a manifesto hoping to resurrect Bonapartism; he travelled - to England, where he marvelled at the country's industry and technology (e.g. travelling on a railway for the first time); he made love to various women; and he plotted. He realised, though, that his ambition was not matched by his achievements. I know that I am much through my name, nothing through myself." But, as Heinrich Heine, said, 'Napoleon' is for the French a magical word which electrifies and dazzles them... Louis-Napoleon tried his best; his message was simple - populist, radically democratic and heavy on Napoleonic nostalgia. He attempted an uprising in Strasburg in 1836 and ended up in prison. The punishment for treason was death, but Louis-Philippe had no intention of creating a martyr; instead, he packed Louis-Napoleon off to America. Not for long; he returned to London. He lost his mother in October 1837; however, he was soon back to conspiring. He wrote Des idées Napoléoniennes in the British Museum Reading Room - another political manifesto. Then, in 1840, he 'invaded' France again. It was another fiasco. Landing near Boulogne, with a few die-hard Bonapartists, he was quickly captured and sent off to gaol once more. Ironically, that same year Napoleon I's remains were transported from St Helena to Paris and a splendid tomb in the church of the Invalides. Meanwhile, his nephew was in Ham prison, north-east of Paris, told he would remain there for the rest of his life.

He spent his days reading, writing, wenching and plotting. For nearly six years, he whiled away his life; then, in May 1846, he escaped, dressed as a workman. Reaching England, he picked up the London Society where he had left off in 1840. His father died that July. With Napoleon II and Napoleon-Louis also dead, Louis-Napoleon was at last the actual heir to the Bonaparte legacy. He was now aged 37 and had really achieved nothing. Then 1848 dawned. The famed author and politician Alexis de Tocqueville, had warned I believe that we are at this moment sleeping on a volcano. He was right. That year, Louis-Napoleon, the achiever of virtually nothing and exiled from France, was in the foothills. Just four years later, on 2nd December 1822, he was atop the volcano, as the Emperor Napoleon III. A lucky break? Perhaps; but one can argue he made his luck. 

The people determined that the revolution would not be stolen, unlike in 1830. Louis-Philippe fled. Louis-Napoleon wrote to his cousin from London: "I must be master." The monarchy may have fallen again, but the bourgeoisie were terrified of the Socialists. The magical name of Napoleon appeared to fill a void. From London, the repeated refrain was that Louis-Napoleon would make France great again. The Parisian crowds cheered, Vive l'empereur!. He returned to take up his place in the Assembly. His speech was disastrous - had he failed again? One newspaper editorial read: There is in this world an adventurer without spirit, without talent, without merit of any kind... Yet, throughout France, Napoleonic propaganda was working; he was seen as the anti-establishment candidate for the presidency. On Sunday, 10th December, the largest experiment thus far in history took place. Louis-Napoleon received more than 5.5 million votes, his opponent just under 1.5 million. But the Assembly had passed a law stating a president could not be re-elected; the next election would be in 1852. It was the start of a three-way power struggle between republicans, monarchists and Louis-Napoleon.

The new president's message was order, authority, religion and the welfare of the people at home and national dignity abroad. He used provincial tours to cement his popularity; he repeatedly invoked the magic name of his uncle; his coterie warned that the alternative was chaos. On 2nd December 1851, Louis-Napoleon staged a coup d'etat. He declared universal male suffrage restored. The carrot. The stick? In the largest crackdown against political activism so far in 19th century France, 27,000 people were arrested and 10,000 deported to Algeria. Then a plebiscite was held as to whether the people backed the coup d'etat. More than 7.4 million voted yes; only 640,000 no. There were 1.5 million  abstentions. Stability and order were preferred to liberty. Voting had been carefully managed; it was an illiberal democracy.

Louis-Napoleon was 41 years old; two-thirds of his life had passed. Harnessing the masses behind him was where his originality lay. On 2 December 1852, he signed the decree establishing what he had long dreamed of - the Second Empire, and as a hereditary monarchy. It was to last for the next eighteen years. I have spent so long on Louis-Napoleon's earlier life, because it explains so much of his behaviour and the successes and failures of his time as Emperor. He believed absolutely in his own star and he willed his fantasy into reality. His centrist message pitched between revolution and reaction was perfectly attuned to mass democratic politics. Make France Great Again (now, where have we heard that message?) He became the first directly elected head of state in history. He was one of the first to realise that conservative ideas could be popular to the masses. He ruled France for longer than anyone since Louis XV (died 1774).

This Blog is too long as it is. Suffice to say, detailed commentary on his time as Emperor can wait. Under his rule banking was reformed (the 1850s were boom years); canals were dug, roads made, wasteland reclaimed; by 1859 the nation's railway network had tripled; thanks to Baron Haussmann, Paris was the centerpiece of ambitious programmes of modernisation; train stations, bridges, schools, hospitals, sewers and department stores were constructed; a new central market, Les Halles was created; he was a major instigator of the Suez Canal. His foreign policy had mixed results - success in the Crimea and, to a certain extent, in Italy; failure in Mexico and, above all, against Bismarck. And he married - Eugenia Ignacia Agustina de Palafox y Kirkpatrick, a young Spanish aristocrat. She gave him an heir - Napoleon Eugene Louis Jean Joseph - to be known throughout his short life as the Prince Imperial. Never popular with the French élite (Marie Antoinette springs to mind), she was nevertheless her husband's 'strength and stay'. She forbore Louis-Napoleon's constant affairs and supported him through thick and thin. It is perhaps apt that the three of them are buried abroad - in the crypt at St. Michael's Abbey at Farnborough, Hampshire, an abbey which Eugénie herself had founded.

Hugh Clevely's 'The Wrong Murderer' 1935 and Bruce Graeme's 'An International Affair' 1934

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.41 - 1938

Hugh Clevely was chosen to start the Crime-Book Society's paperback series, with his The Gang-Smasher  (see my Blog for 16th July 2025). The Wrong Murderer is the third of his to appear - I have yet to track down the second, Gang Law (No. 15). I sketched out a brief history of his life in my previous Blog. What I didn't know, until I subsequently read it on another site, was that Clevely was discovered dead, aged 66, in a weir on the River Stour near Poole in Dorset, covered in blood. That mystery was never solved. It would make for an interesting Crime-Book Society paperback.

The Wrong Murderer starts well. Two Friends, Terence Mahony and Billy Ross are speeding from London to Hampshire, where they are to join a big dinner party. Two other guests were to make up the company - Elsa Little, a young film actress, and Ambrose Lawson, a business friend of Ross. Terence has just returned from four years working in China  (of interest is that in The Gang Smasher, the hero had just got back from China - had the author also been over there?); he is finding his old friend rather boring. They stop at a wayside inn at Bagbury for a drink; whilst there, the platinum blonde barmaid reads aloud from the evening paper: young society girl missing from home..."  Billy appears to be strangely affected by this and, in a temper, tells Terence they must suddenly be on their way.  About two miles further on, they heard the booming roar of a powerful engine behind them...Billy increases their speed to 60 mph (wow!). Not fast enough for the bullets that ensure their tyres are punctured, the car leaves the road and ends upside down in a ditch. Worse, Billy is seriously injured and taken to hospital - whatever happened, Billy Ross would be a helpless cripple for the rest of his life. And the reader has only just reached the end of Chapter I.

Terence is not a man to let things lie - he was of tough, stringy build, stood about five feet ten in height, weighed about twelve and a half stone...his chin was obstinate...an excellent natural athlete...had represented his school at boxing (just like the hero John Martinson in The Gang Smasher, then - the reader knows those fists are going to play a part in the ensuing tale) and his father was an Irishman. When Ross manages to tell him that a gang, led by Lawson no less, kidnap and then dope people - then let them go and continue to sell them dope, Terence is determined to be on their trail. Elsa, apparently, was to be next on the list. He visits Elsa in Chelsea, where she lives with her uncle, Vincent Little. Though small and childish-looking, there was an air of great health and vitality about her; she radiated personality. Inevitably, Terence is caught up in her radiation. Whilst at the house, Lawson himself turns up: he was strikingly good-looking. His hair was dark, with a central parting; his eyes were dark, with a slight upward slant to them...his clothes were beautifully cut, and he wore them with an air of distinction. The reader is not fooled; he is clearly a mauvais œuf.

Terence not only foils an attempt to capture Elsa at the Royal Albert Hall, but, having disguised himself as one of the gang (camouflaged with the rest as a monk!) also tracks down the recently kidnapped girl, Ruth Fraser - a slim girl with a boyish figure, candid, slightly freckled features, a small determined chin, and very clear dark eyes. Who is going to be the lucky girl to nab Terence by the end of the story, Elsa or Ruth? I think the determined chin, however petite, may well win. Ruth's guardian, Gerald Lee-Ramsden (handsome with aquiline features), turns out to be a wrong'un, determined to grab her inheritance before she reached twenty-one. Terence gets help from the unlikely source of an east-end gang, including Fatty Bassett, Barney Flynn, 'Chippy' and 'Slim'. The tale develops into good, knockabout fun. The Golden Centipede Dance Club, situated in a little courtyard just off a shabby street in Soho, turns out to be the centre of the nefarious kidnapping trade. Luckily, Inspector Kennedy of Scotland Yard, assigned the case of tracking down the kidnappers and Terence, realises fairly quickly that the latter is on the right side of the law and works with him to bring the rotters to justice. This includes shutting down the 'Dance Club'. Every so often, Terence's fists do the necessary job on a baddie.

All ends well: Lee-Ramsden is killed by Lawson, who cornered by Terence and the police, commits suicide; Billy Ross did not die, but remained a cripple, wheeled about in an invalid chair for the rest of his life (well, he had been involved in the kidnappings); Elsa not only has success in a film but looks like getting hitched up with Inspector Kennedy ("he's rather an attractive man, you know", says Ruth); and Terence asks Ruth to marry him. I couldn't do that. If I married you now, after all that's happened, it would be too much like the ending of a film story." But, dear reader, they kissed and wedded bliss followed.

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.43 - 1938

Unlike The Wrong Murderer, this was an unsatisfactory story for me. John Perryman a free-lance journalist, is a regular caller on a retired C.I.D. man, Alan Ackroyd (referred to from then on as A.A.).  The latter is filling in a jigsaw puzzle. Ackroyd says it is rather like life and the latest idea is to solve mysteries by putting the puzzles together, the completed picture divulging the situation. The retired detective has made up his own puzzle from photos relating to a case he handled some years back. A great idea for a detective yarn; so, why did it not gel with me? Six pages from the end, I found an answer: 'But tell me, John, why are you not quite satisfied with the yarn? Because it has not a definite thread? Because it has too many characters? Because it is a story of bits and pieces, so to speak?' The 'bits and pieces' were really just that and they were linked together too artificially for my liking. 

Ackroyd persuades Perryman to start filling in his jigsaw. A woman's face appears: one of the prettiest faces he had ever seen. Thick, brown, wavy hair crowned a high, intelligent forehead. Large, dark eyes laughed up at him. So did the pair of lips - curved, vivid, sweet. Aha! the reader thinks - she is to be the heroine of the tale. Well, no. We meet Dimity Cardew in Chapter Two, when Tim Connor - driving on the wrong side of the road - nearly crashes into her car. Smitten, he extricates his vehicle from a farmyard drive and follows her at speed. Catching up with her, he tries to arrange a meeting. No chance - she fails to turn up the following day. And we don't meet them again until Chapter Nine. Instead of Dimity, Tim is accosted by an old school chum, George Wentworth, also down pursuing a girl, Gwendoline Matthews, who we find soon enough is Dimity's cousin. A plan is concocted for the two men secretly to join the girls and Gwen's parents on a cruise around the Mediterranean. At the start of Chapter Eleven, A.A. tells Perryman, "I think we can safely leave Dimitry Cardew and Tim Connor to themselves for the time being". Too true, the reader doesn't meet the party again until Chapter Twenty, 94 pages later. They were just a bit-part of the story, not the main course. 

Instead, we are treated to a rather convoluted tale involving Supt William Stevens of the C.I.D. of New Scotland Yard, who is on an enforced holiday in Malaga - after a road accident in London - linking up with the local detective, Senor Comisario Nicasio Barroso of the Cuerpo de Investigacion y Vigilancia, to investigate the murder of 'Herbert Kerr', found dead in an hotel. He had come from Gibraltar and had been seen with a French-speaking woman - the undoubted murderer. It transpires that Kerr is an alias for a British officer named Thomson. The two detectives are joined by Inspector Pierre Allain of the Süreté Générale, who had worked with Stevens on previous occasions. He is very much a ladies' man (again, relevant to the plot). Between them, (and with the unlikely aid of Tim Connor's artistic ability) they track down the murderer. It is a tale of espionage, involving a half-French, half-German woman, who goes under various names - Anne Durand, Fräulein Hilda Glaschen, Mmle Ninon de Brissac,  a seemingly emotionless Englishman, Keith Franklin (whom we find at the end is a Russian spy). One assumed that Thomason was killed for handing over Gibraltarian military secrets; but no, the reason is explained in quite a clever twist at the end.

The story is simply too disjointed; the coincidences too ornate; most of the characters too lacking in sympathy; for it to be an enjoyable read. We know the author was a persistent traveller, making frequent trips to Europe; this shows in the sections of the book which read rather like a travelogue. Moreover, the rather turgid explanations of the Spanish police system - which runs from page 125 to page 130 - is simply tiresome. If I was to give Clevely's tale a B+, then Graeme's would have to be a B-. 

Edgar Wallace's 'The Hand of Power' 1930

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.39 - 1938

Edgar Wallace comes across as a master story-teller; or, to use an old-fashioned phrase - he can certainly spin a yarn. Some authors carefully set out the structure of their novel before embarking on the main writing: e.g. Daphne du Maurier published her Rebecca Notebook, which by-and-large charted chapter by chapter the sequence of events later followed in her famous novel. Others tend to 'go with the flow' and somehow arrive at the end (often with some bits that didn't really fit, or characters discarded or minimised as a tale developed). If Wallace is one of the latter, then he was a very skilful writer. Certainly, with The Hand of Power, a prior construction of a character chart would seem more likely. The 62 shortish chapters weave a complex story around a large cast of personnel.

The first Chapter - The Men of the Moor - starts well: A gale of wind and rain swept across the barren face of Dartmoor, that ancient desolation. The howl and shriek of it came to Betty Carew above the rattle and roar of the motor engine as the old car grunted and groaned up the steep hill...at the top of the hill the full force of the gale caught them and all but brought the car to a standstill. Rain smacked viciously against the screen, whipped under the lowered brim of her hat, thrashing her face till it smarted intolerably. All it needed was for the Hound of the Baskervilles to appear. In fact, the only other sentient being near her was one Dr. Joshua Laffin, more of whom later. Suddenly, a figure with a red lantern appears in front of them. He seemed to be dressed in a long, close-fitting gown like the habit of a monk...Her mouth opened wide in wonder and fear - the head was shrouded in a cowl that covered the face - and she saw only a gleam of eyes behind narrow slits cut in the cloth. Worse is to come, as Laffin is asked to follow the figure into the darkness; then Betty hears the sound of deep-chested voices of men, chanting and Dong! the deep boom of a bell. Thankfully, Laffin returns but answers none of Betty's questions. Fifteen months (and most of the book) later he offered a solution to the riddle of the moor.

We soon learn that Laffin is not a nice man (he had hard, brown eyes, that glared without winking, vulture-like in their dispassionate intensity), who rules his ward (much later, the reader finds he had forced the much younger Betty to marry him!) with a rod of iron. In London, we meet Clive the ninth Lord Lowbridge, the impecunious aristocrat, whose classics features were those that the old Greek sculptors gave to the heroes of mythology, he had the clear eyes and the frame of a trained athlete; Laffin had been his family's physician in Bath and Clive's tutor. Clive and Betty are, at the very least, on affectionate terms. There is a quick scenery change to the Pawter Intensive Publicity Services (familiarly called Pips), run by a Mr. Pawter, no less. Employed as an assistant is a young man who is to emerge as the undoubted hero of the story - Bill Holbrook (twenty-three and pleasantly featured, except for a nose that was slightly bent. He played football, and once a great international had used his features as a jumping-off place - was the latter Argentinian?!), first cousin to Pawter and ex-newspaper reporter. Pips wants a story about Betty, who it transpires in in the acting profession. 

In quick succession, the author pulls in the other characters who are going to drive the tale: Captain Harvey Hale, seventy-five by fifty coarse inches of muscle and bone; a red-faced, fish-eyed, heavy-jawed skipper, without either ship or ticket and desperate for a job; Benson, the taciturn man-servant to Clive Lowbridge - who we find out at the end is not who he appears to be; La Florette, the thin-lipped French dancer at the Orpheum, where Betty also worked. She turns out to be an East Ender who lives with her mother and is jealous of Betty's far superior looks. A great character, but I never really caught on to what value she brought to the story. Far more important  to the tale are The Proud Sons of Ragousa, many of whose members turn out to be a cross between Freemasons (with its lodges, Twenty-Third Degree, priors and, at the very top, the Grand Prior) and something far more sinister. (Remember the hooded figure on the moor? It will all fall into place by the end). The story-line, which inevitably was all to do with greed, is far too convoluted for a short Blog such as this, even if I did understand it all. Suffice it to say, all the above characters are increasingly part of a gripping, if nasty tale. One must add two more important participants: Inspector Bullott, usually working in the Records Department of Scotland Yard, but now drawn into tracking down a murderer and the nefarious goings-on within the Ragousa; and Toby Marsh - one of the cleverest cracksmen in London; he's only been caught once, and that was by accident. Both are to play vital parts in the rather long drawn-out denouement, which takes place on the transatlantic liner Escorial, which at one stage is being thrillingly chased by two English warships - the Sussex and the Kent -  and a American cruiser through banks of fog and too-close-for-comfort icebergs. I must admit, I had suspended my disbelief quite early on. But, all good fun and the baddies (the main one I did not twig, when they were unmasked at the end) got their just deserts and Betty not only found out her real name and that she was wealthy, but that Bill Holbrook was for her.

Robert Curtis' 'Corpses Can't Walk' 1936 and Andrew Soutar's 'Silence' 1930

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.38 - 1938

Robert Curtis (1889-1936) was private Secretary to Edgar Wallace. Meeting for the first time in 1913, and after serving in the Great War, he was reunited with Wallace in 1918. One of his roles was to copy out the master's dictations; he accomplished this at such speed that he was known as the fastest secretary in England. After Wallace's death, he completed several of his unfinished manuscripts, film scripts and plays into novels in the style of Wallace. He also wrote several original novels. Corpses Can't Walk was published shortly after Curtis' death.

Curtis has produced an interesting, if not particularly gripping, straightforward tale of dering-do. Once we read that the batty but harmless Professor Jonathan Stone has invented a cheap means of manufacturing gold, then we know he is in for trouble. Sure enough, not long after a visit from a short, fat, with greasy hair and a double chin rotter called William Smith,  who wants to purchase the invention. the worst kind of trouble does occur. Smith not only had an ample waist line and pendulous cheeks, but had flabby-looking hands and a trace of a foreign accent. In other words, he is the typical pick-off-the-thriller-shelf rogue. The offer of £100,000 to Stone is not enough to tempt him. When Smith watches the professor replace the cardboard box with the formula in his safe, then burglary and worse is sure to follow. And it does. Mersham Manor House is raided, but the safe is found empty; the place is ransacked and the professor is found dead, with a knife in his back.

However, this is not before the story's hero, Michael Pollard, has got involved. The 25-year-old is a recent member of a secret service unit and lives in a comfortable flat on the top floor of a large block in the West End. He is supported by George, a thick-set man, with a cauliflower ear, who serves as valet, cook, housemaid, and general factotum. Pollard is rung up by Joan Chailey, the professor's niece, calling for help from Mersham - something terrible has happened...then the 'phone went dead. So, off our hero goes, in his long, low-slung, slender two-seater...a greyhound of the road. On arrival he is met by the Professor, a man of striking appearance - tall, slim, with black hair brushed straight back from an intellectual forehead, a pale, thin face, with prominent cheek-bones, and a rather spare, closely cropped black beard. he had dark eyes - so dark that they seemed to be absolutely black...[he had] a small black mole on his left cheek-bone. What a sinister description; surely not the professor? No, it isn't. It is Carl and his assistant is the aforementioned Smith, who is really Schmidt. Pollard naively accepts a glass of whisky and...then came darkness and silence. When he comes round, he finds Joan locked in a room upstairs. Everyone else has disappeared. Thus begins the tale and the subsequent attempts to track down Schmidt and the tall, thin man - who turns out to be Carl Dana, leader of a gang of international cut-throats, who has already captured a Foreign Office secret and had then turned to acquiring the professor's gold discovery.

It's all good, if not clean, fun. Pollard's car plays its part in several chases; an aeroplane is involved at the end (luckily Pollard can add flying to his many talents); Carl is supported by the mysterious Zora Vanoff - who is in it just for the money - and his henchman Zornoff, who had murdered the professor. Joan is knocked out and imprisoned again, but will not divulge the whereabouts of the professor's little blue book containing his golden mysteries. A mysterious Chinaman is brought into the story - this only makes sense at the end. Schmidt meets his just deserts through Dana's revolver; and Dana himself makes a much more spectacular end. And the reader knows how things will turn out for Pollard and Joan, as the clue is in the very last sentence - Her eyes were very tender, and she was beckoning him out into the garden.

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.40 - 1938

One of the reasons I am enjoying reading the Crime-Book Society's offerings, is that their writers offer up a variety of styles and stories. Andrew Soutar's tale couldn't be more different from Robert Curtis'. Apart from the very last Chapter (no. XIV) of Silence, the narrative is by Rupert Orion, a minor painter and a member of the Secret Service. He is in love with the much younger  Irene Padua, a magical beauty, who adores her youthful cousin Orlando Padua. Unfortunately for Rupert, Irene has fallen for Glenister Howard, who also turns out to be a member of the same secret service. Rupert and other spies - Carriman, Maccabe, Bruce and Glenister are summoned to a meeting by their boss Colonel Fitzbean.   Orlando, a very clever boy, has invented something which could affect the future of the world. The Colonel opens a box, which contains a small nickel-plated object that suggested a hypodermic syringe. It was so small that it could have been carried in the waistcoat pocket without inconvenience. A stray cat is brought in; the syringe is levelled at it; it drops dead! Call it the silent death, or the silent pistol, as you will... Tiny pellets holding poison can be fired - the propelling force is radium - and kill anyone in a crowded room without the shooter being suspected. 

Within a fortnight, Prince Kashnir is to visit the country; the Colonel was fearful that such a device could be used by Indian trouble-makers against the Prince. So he successfully offered £100,000 to the inventor; hence the object was in the room. Then a 'buzzer' sounds; the Colonel, after listening to the call, rushes out of the room and drops dead. On the left breast of Colonel Fitzbean there was a tiny puncture no larger than that of the head of a pin. And what is far worse,  the 'pistol' has disappeared. On a few more occasions, the same fate awaits others: Maccabe; a fortune teller Madame Zodalan; a wealthy American, Peskett Grisch, who dies at the Opera in Paris . Each time, Rupert is at hand to try and figure out who is responsible. He meets up with Prince Kashnir in the French Capital and offers to escort him to England. However, he is drugged! I had slightly lost track of who was doing what to whom by now; but followed the story to New York. Here, yet another victim, Rochelle, an American investigator, dies in a taxi after saying goodbye to Rupert.

Then, Chapter XIII, where all is explained by Rupert Orion; it is confirmed in the final chapter, which is written by Glenister Howard. Well, this reader, for one, never saw the denouement coming. In fact, I had to look back to one or two events depicted in earlier chapters. Only, then did I 'twig'! Well done, the author, even though once or twice I found the story a bit of a struggle.

Bruce Graeme's 'Hate Ship' 1929 and Basil Carey's 'Left for Dead' 1934

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.18 - 1937?

This is the third novel of Bruce Graeme's I have read, all in the splendid Crime-Book Society's paperback series, published by Hutchinson. The other two were Blackshirt Again (Blog 19 July 2025) and Unsolved  (Blog 24 July 2025). A reminder that Graeme (1900-1982) was a pseudonym for Graham Montague Jeffries. Born in London in 1900, he served in the Westminster Rifles Regiment in the Great War. Throughout the 1920s, he was a reporter at the Middlesex County Times. He also worked as a film producer during the 1940s. Apparently, he was a persistent traveller, making frequent trips to Europe and the USA.  

The main problem with this novel is the whole artificiality of the story. The reader is asked to believe two highly unlikely premises. Firstly, that the main protagonist of the tale - Peter Martin, an employee of the England and Wales Mutual Provident Assurance Co. - who is desperate to achieve fame as a writer, but has totally failed for some years to produce anything of literary value, is summoned to the offices of an elderly solicitor, Silas Cotterill. The latter has charge of the Will of the recently deceased John James Fleming, the editor of Fleming's Magazine - a judge of a good story, and a literary detective. Martin had regularly sent Fleming his work, only to have them returned as examples of an incapacity to write, whether it be over plot or character. Martin's other main ambition, almost as strong as my urge to write - I am insane to travel, to see the world. Well, amazingly, both his wishes are about to come true. The solicitor tells him that Fleming has left him in the Will his magnificent yacht, the Breeze, with a sufficiently large annuity to cover its upkeep entirely, plus a personal annuity of £500. There are, however, certain conditions. By the end of that year, Martin must sell six entirely original and new stories (we never hear of this condition again!); he must follow a set itinerary (Monte Carlo, Grand Canary, Rio de Janeiro, before returning home); and he must accommodate certain guests on board. Who are they? Everyone of them were present in the house of old Judge Fleming, John James' father, the night he was murdered! As if that wasn't unlikely enough, all those individuals accept the invitation to go on the voyage without questioning why they had been gathered together again.

A bonus for Martin, is that the self-described old, stick-in-the-mud, dry-as-dust solicitor, Cotterill agrees to  come on the voyage. The rest of the story details the events of the night the Judge was murdered and which character was in what room of the old lawyer's house. They are a motley crew: Rex and Olivia Fleming, brother of the late John James; Denys Lisle, her mother Mrs Ann Lisle and maiden aunt Miss Gertrude Warrington; their friend Newton Chester; the old judge's butler, Jenkins; Raymond Grant, a friend of the family; John and Freda Friedlander, old friends of Mrs Rex Fleming; and, finally, the Rev. Donald Trollop. One has to be the murderer, as no one else could have got into/escaped from the house on the evening in question. Martin's task is to find out the culprit before the voyage ends.

The journey is uneventful, if mildly tense, until the others discover why they have been invited on board (surely, they can't all have been that dumb?) and what Martin's role is. From then on it is, as the title says, a Hate Ship. Cotterill explains to Martin the layout of the Victorian dwelling where the murder took place and in which room each of the individual were when the shot that killed the judge rang out. As the voyage progresses, we watch Denys Lisle and Martin fall for each other; we learn that both Jenkins and Newton have a criminal past (the latter's real name is found to be William White, supposed to be serving a life sentence in Dartmoor for another murder). On the final leg across the Atlantic, not only is there a well-described storm, but motive after motive is brought to life and untangled. I was not really surprised when the culprit was unmasked. The person does meet a grisly end: then the bow of the vessel pitched, a crashing overturning wave rose to meet it; [x]was picked off the boat as if they had been a piece of wood, then hurled into the churning, raging waves...the thunder crashed their requiem. The final explanation of how Judge Fleming - revealed as tartar, a dictatorial tyrant - met his end was quite ingenious and plausible.

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.31 - 1937?

I don't have much to say about this novel - hence it is tagged on the end of my comments on Hate Ship. As usual, when I know nothing about an author, I turned to the Internet for information. I was very surprised to read that Basil Carey was a pseudonym and the author was female -  Jessie (Joy) Baines (1898-1942) - who also wrote as Richard Hawke. Born in Plymouth, she wrote a few thrillers between 1926 and 1937, dying young, aged only 44. I was surprised to find out she was a woman author, as the story felt very 'masculine' (if one is allowed to pass comments like that these days). It was also, from pages 12 to 237 of a 252 page novel, thoroughly miserable.

It is the story of a 'weedy' young man, Lambert, whose sailor father drowned at sea and whose mother died soon after; destined for a children's Home, he runs away and joins a little trading vessel as a ship's boy. He ends up on an old ship, Fanny Davis, sailing the China Sea under an irascible and tyrannical master, Maultry. The ship gets into trouble and the whole crew are forced to abandon the vessel. Lambert manages to save his small black box - what appears to contain a valuable heirloom. He is betrayed by another shipmate, one Danvers, and not only does Maultry manage to seize the box but, at the same time, inflicts severe injuries on Lambert, which leaves him with a permanent limp. For the next two hundred pages, it is one hard luck story after another for Lambert, who is determined to track Maultry down and recover his box. If anything could go wrong, it did; whether on land or at sea. 

Nearly everybody appears to be dishonest and, or, seedy.  I had no empathy, or even sympathy, with any of the characters (pock-marked, beady-eyed women or drunken oafs) or places - Macassar, Bangkok, Saigon, the Java Sea. It is an area of the world I have no affinity with.

I did have a smidgeon of sympathy for Lambert at one stage. What sense was there in trying to conquer Maultry? He saw himself as a fool who beats a rock with bare hands. In this time of utter dejection all his plans seemed like dirt. He asked himself why he had ever been so mad as to suppose that he would find the box still in Maultry's possession. Long ago it must have been broken open, its contents ravaged by Maultry's greedy hands. A wild-goose chase, hey? His thoughts grew bitter and more sombre as he considered the folly of supposing that he would ever achieve his ends. However, this was on page 143; there was another 100 pages to go - of self-pity, misery and hard luck. Yes, Lambert's sheer bloody-mindedness, doggedness wins out at the very end, but what a slough of despond. He gets his box back; he gets the girl he had wanted throughout; and I get some relief from putting this debilitating tale back on the shelves.

G.P.R. James' 'Philip Augustus' 1831

Colburn and Bentley first edition - 1831

Another three-decker under my belt; and another G.P.R. James tale, this time one of his earliest, being the fifth (and only two years after his first novel, Adra or the Peruvians.) Philip Augustus was written in less than seven weeks; James received £600 from the publishers Colburn and Bentley (he was given the same amount for his De L'Orme, published  a year earlier). Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832-1914), the poet, novelist and critic, regarded the novel as the author's best work. It is of note that James was living at Maxpoffle House, near Melrose at the time of the novel's publication. J.G. Lockhart later wrote: Mr James and his lady...were welcome additions [to the visitors of the dying Sir Walter Scott] - and frequently so - to his accustomed circle...Sir Walter...seemed when in the midst of his family and friends, always tranquil - sometimes cheerful. On one or two occasions he was even gay; particularly, I think, when the weather was so fine as to tempt us to dine in the marble-hall at Abbotsford, or at an early hour under the trees at Chiefswood. Apparently, on one occasion, James rode over the hills to Abbotsford with eleven dogs of every size and description gambolling and yelping at his heels. Scott would have loved that! It was earlier the the same year that Scott had written to James Skene: I beg to introduce a literary man of great merit who might be called James of that ilk, since he is James of James. Scott died in September 1832 and, partly in memory of the friendship, James named his first child, born two months later, George Walter James.

As usual in his novels, James weaves facts and fiction, real-life persons with creatures of his imagination, skilfully together. He sets his tale in the period from 1199 (just after Richard I of England's death) to around two years' later. Philip Augustus, King of France, has to deal with enemies within and without his realm, particularly in the period when his whole kingdom is placed under a papal Interdict. James peoples the historical events with a goodly array of villains  and heroes. 

Villains?  

Above all, King John of England, who is depicted as personally murdering the rightful King of England, his nephew Arthur. John Lackland, the meanest and most pitiful villain that ever wore a crown... in whose dark recesses lurked a cruel heart.

Innocent III, of an imperious and jealous nature...as keen and clear-sighted as he was ambitious, he was clearly disliked by Philip and the author (and me!). The king's anger when Innocent tells him to forsake his new wife is profound: if in the meanwhile this proud Prelate yields me my wife - my own beloved wife - why well; but if he dares then refuse his sanction, his seat is but a frail one; for I will march on Rome, and hurl him from his chair... Innocent was one of the most powerful of the medieval popes, exerting a wide influence over the Christian states of Europe, claiming supremacy over all of Europe's kings. The Catholic Church ruled over all through the strength of superstition - called out by Scott, James and me.

Jodelle, a fictional mountebank and member of the roaming outlaw bands of the Cotereaux, a subgroup of the infamous Routiers, who deceived nearly all he came across - English and French. He meets a deserved dastardly death at the end of De Coucy's spear, but not before he had mortally wounded the latter's Fool.

Guillaume, the Count de la Roche Guyon - a slight, fair youth, of a handsome but somewhat feminine aspect. He turns out to be a bad oeuf and also dies in battle against Philip's forces..

Heroes? 

Philip Augustus, tall, well-formed, handsome...with the manly florid hue of robust health, exposure, and exercise [whose] eyes seemed to speak that keen and quick sagacity, which sees and determines at once, in the midst of thick dangers and perplexity....(well might he need this prowess for, as the author remarks - the existence of a monarch, without his lot be cast amidst very halcyon days indeed, is much like the life of a seaman, borne up upon uncertain and turbulent waves) there was grace, and repose, and dignity, in his whole figure. The king seemed to have two spirits. There was the one that, bright and keen and active, mingled in the busy scenes of politics and warfare...and there was another, still, silent, deep, in the inmost chambers of his heart...here he had a world apart from aught else on earth, wherein the Spirit of deep feeling swayed supreme; and thence issued that strong control that his heart ever exercised over the bright Spirit of genius and talent, with which he was so eminently endowed. It was his love for Agnes de Meranie.

Count Thibalt D'Auvergne, who also loved Agnes but who suffered in silence, even going mad for awhile and, finally, giving his life for his monarch. "I admire the King though I love not the man".

And the other main hero, the fictitious Guy De Coucy, a brave young warrior, back from the Crusades with D'Auvergne, who falls quickly in love with Isadore but whose father forbids the relationship. Guy (often literally) battles through the story, steadfast in his love  and loyalty to King Philip, imprisoned by King John at one stage but eventually helping his monarch overcome the odds in a major battle. 

William Longsword, the Earl of Salisbury, the illegitimate brother of King John, is one of the few Englishmen to come out well in the story. He saves De Coucy's life and is repaid, in turn, at the end of the tale.

Perhaps, the most tragic figure is Prince Arthur Plantagenet - a slight, graceful boy, of about fifteen, sprang into the room. He was gaily dressed in a light tunic of sky-blue silk, and a jewelled bonnet of the same colour, which showed well on his bright, fair skin, and the falling curls of his sunny hair... endowed with a thousand graces of person and of mind, Arthur still had that youthful indecision of character, that facility of yielding, which leads the lad so often to do what the man afterwards bitterly repents of.

The most annoying character was Gallon the Fool.  Originally one of the jugglers who had accompanied the second Crusade to the Holy Land, he had been made prisoner by the Infidel; and, after several years' bondage, had been redeemed by De Coucy. Never did a more curious physiognomy come from the cunning and various hand of Nature. His nose was long, and was seemingly boneless; for, ever and anon, whether from some natural convulsive motion, or from a voluntary and laudable desire to improve upon the singular hideousness of his countenance, this long, sausage-like contrivance in the midst of his face would wriggle from side to side, with a very portentous and uneasy movement. As if that's wasn't enough to put any observer off, his eyes...had in themselves a manifest tendency to separate, never having any fixed and determined direction, but wandering about apparently independent of each other, - sometimes far asunder, - sometimes, like Pyramus and Thisbe, wooing each other across the wall of his nose with a most portentous squint. The reader gets the picture. Unfortunately, James also gave to his character the (extremely irritating, to me at least) additional expletive Haw, haw, haw! or, more than once, Haw, haw, haw! Haw, haw, haw! every time the Fool spoke. 

Entangled in the account of the machinations of monarchs, popes and nobles is the story of two loves - one destined for happiness after travail; the other destined for tragedy after happiness. Philip, after the death of his first wife, married Ingerburge, sister of Canute, King of Denmark; but on her arrival in France, he was seized with so strong a personal dislike of her (shades of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves), that he instantly convoked a synod of the clergy of France, who, on pretence of kindred in the prohibited degrees, annulled the marriage. Philip then married Agnes de Meranie, daughter of the Duke of Istria and Meranie. James uses his novelist's skills to portray a genuine love affair - between the manly monarch and the 19 year-old fair girl, with her light hair floating upon her shoulders in large masses of shining curls...with her full, soft, blue eyes. Alas, thanks to the megalomania of the pope, the union will end in tragedy. On the other hand, De Coucy finally gets his girl, the gorgeous Isadore of the Mount, slight in figure, but yet with every limb rounded in the full and swelling contour of woman's most lovely age. Her features were small, delicate, and nowhere sharp, yet cut with that square exactness of outline so beautiful in the efforts of the Grecian chisel. Her eyes were long, and full, and dark...the hair, that fell in a profusion of thick curls round her face, was as black as jet...her skin as smooth as alabaster... I hope Mrs James approved of this outpouring.

Rather like Scott, James plays fast and loose with chronology. Philip and Agnes married in 1196 and separated after the papal Interdict (1199-September 1200). Agnes died - possibly in childbirth - in July 1201. Arthur does not 'disappear' until 1203. The Battle of Bouvines, between Philip and Otho's forces does not occur until 1214. The author has 'telescoped' all these events into just two years. The novelist's licence? 

There is the usual padding - required for a three-decker - mainly of descriptions of the environment and weather, and witticisms which fail to raise a smile: "Art thou sure thou knowest the way, urchin?" cried the man, in a wearied and panting tone, which argue plainly enough, that his corpulency loved not deeply the species of stumbling locomotion, to which his legs subjected his paunch... But I forgive these minor failings, as James spins a good yarn.