Marthe McKenna's 'Double Spy' 1938

 

Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw Library' paperback edition - 1940

A second book by Marthe McKenna based on the world of spies. I read and Blogged (16th July) on her slightly later written Hunt the Spy, so have now read two of the seventeen books written by Marthe between 1932 and 1951. Thirteen had 'Spy'/'Spies' in their title. I recorded that, although they were all published under Marthe's name, it is speculated that her husband was largely responsible for their writing. Noticing some quite unusual English words being used in this novel, I think it is more than likely John McKenna had a major hand in it, even if he was not totally responsible.

As with that of Hunt the Spy, the story involves an embryonic megalomaniac attempting to steal secrets from the plucky British in a time of increasing instability in world affairs. It commences with Lord Manstead - liaison official between H.M. Cabinet and My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty - delivering a verbal message to the latter. They include, Sir Walter Thames, Second Sea Lord, Colonel Richard Blanchard, Director Military Intelligence, and Vice-Admiral George Kingston, Director Naval Intelligence. The blue-print for the slotted wing-and-tail affair, so jealously guarded by the R.A.F. is in danger of being purloined. The Moreland Aircraft Company is due to deliver the first of the machines this day week. They go to Brainford, where test pilots of the 59th Fighter Squadron will put them through their paces....the results shown will shape the air defences of London and the counties...in the hands of a hostile spy that secret would place us in a horrible position...Kingston agrees to employ his top agent on the task: no one knew better than he that the unsung hero of secret service freely accepts the hazards and unequal penalties of espionage as part of the exciting game. Manstead asks for, and gains the name of the agent: it will be Sir Walter's nephew, Lieutenant Peter Thames, just back from a mission in the Mediterranean (which we find out later is actually linked into the main plot).

Alack and alas, Manstead does not appear to be the person he is; in fact, it is an imposter. The real Manstead was found dead, stabbed in the back of a car homeward bound. Moreover, the fake is clearly the villain and he now knows the identity of the top British agent assigned to Brainford. So begins the chase - to protect the Brainford end and to track down the enemy spy. Into the mix come several other characters: the Countess Loecelli, known as Countess "Loe", Gerta Meldoff who married Stephan Millar (Muller), notorious secret agent, who met his death in an aeroplane crash in Silesia with the famous French war ace, Paul Verrari. (The reader should not let this slip his mind). The Countess ensures her undoubted great beauty and uncanny espionage acumen will ingratiate herself in the confidence of highly placed Government officials and leaders of the haut-monde...it is more than suspected her activities are hostile to Britain. Wants watching, then; and she is watched, throughout the book. Luckily, there is a highly intelligent and brave girl of pluck on the British side. She is Elsie Bennett, Admiral Kingston's confidential secretary-cum-secret-agent in emergency, and (half-suspected by the Admiral) Peter Thames' girlfriend. When the master spy and enemy, the audacious desperado Ared Black, gets in touch with Kingston to barter, it is Elsie who is sent to treat with him. One of the compelling angles of the tale is to unmask Ared - who is he really? I half-guessed early on and got it half-right, but also proved to be half-wrong, thanks to a final twist at the end.

Peter and Elsie meet up, both only just unscathed. They are joined by a Robert Van Roy, an American agent, who also wishes to stop 'Black', whoever he is, from gaining the Brainford secrets. Van Roy is not above getting a step ahead of the British on behalf of his own government and is involved right up to the very end in various chicanery. The author, he or she, keeps up the pace throughout and after an exciting battle of wits at Brainford, the denouement comes on the High Seas, on the great liner Olypian, which sees Thames and Van Roy battle it out with Ared Black's henchman. Black himself dies most aptly, if the reader has followed the story closely. Not a bad yarn!

Paul McGuire's 'Born to be Hanged' 1935

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 11

My final book in the eleven Crime-Book Society paperbacks I bought this year. Dominic Mary (Paul) McGuire (1903-1978) was an Australian diplomat and writer. He was born in South Australia and attended the University of Adelaide, where he was the Tinline Scholar in History.  He began story writing with detective stories, publishing ten novels between 1932 and 1936 as well as a book of poetry. He claimed that his detective stories took three weeks to complete, one took only four days! By 1940, he had published fifteen mystery novels. During the Second World War, he was an officer in the Royal Australian Volunteer Reserve, Demobilised in May 1945, McGuire became the special European correspondent for The Argus newspaper. He died in June 1978, in North Adelaide, South Australia.

A good start - with its first sentence: There were innumerable reasons, most of them excellent, for Spender's death; a decent, often amusing, middle; and a rather 'losing' the narrative thread towards the end. Perhaps the famous 'curate's egg' might best describe the novel. The story is written in the first person by Professor George Collins: I am in my sixty-third year, and it is only during these last half-dozen years that I have surrendered my professional labours at Ripon and settled wholly in Seacliff...I am unmarried, entirely as a matter of my own preference: my human affections and responsibilities have been sufficiently catered for by my niece, Genevieve, who has lived with me since she was five.(Towards the end of the story, there is a footnote by Genevieve: The reader understands that I have made no alterations in Uncle George's script, which further suggests her dear uncle was now perhaps communing with Spender in the heavens.) Genevieve (now twenty-three) is a most attractive young woman, though somewhat masterful in her disposition. She hopes to marry twenty-eight year-old Jack, Admiral Blake's son, who is painter - his pictures are curious...the shapes are very extraordinary shapes indeed, and his angles would have appalled Euclid.

George introduces to the reader other inhabitants of Seacliff, the little Dorset coastal - and unspoilt - village. There is the local cabal or junta, who control the Council: Admiral Blake, a domineering personality...somewhat gruff and perhaps a little too like the eternal figures of Bateman...he has a quarter-deck manner; Commander Byng - a decent, rather dull sort of fellow who had settled in Seacliff because the Admiral had settled there. I do not admire Mrs. Byng. She seems to me a light-headed-creature: she is far too light with her tongue; Colonel Malabar, a good fellow, but he was also a decided crank in some things. He was a teetotaller and non-smoker, for one thing; little Blackstone  the solicitor and treasurer of the Golf Club, and George himself; Catchlove, the village carter with a wife who was probably of gipsy stock - both are despised by Spender; Henderson, the secretary of the Golf Club, a pleasant little fellow [whose] efficiency was not great and neither, as it appeared, was his honesty; but his manners were good, his bridge tolerable (I detest the expert at bridge); Lord Ravenscraig, whose estates bound the village on the east and north, a rancher from Canada who came to the title two years ago and now was giving his principal attention to the rehabilitation of his inherited estates - I have dined with him on several occasions; there is also the vicar, the Reverend Mr. Anselm Dunstan, a singularly patient individual, patient and tolerant to a degree beyond my understanding...he is, indeed, the most latitudinarian of men, and the embrace of his charity is embarrassingly inclusive. He seems to me the typical Anglican. Finally, there is the mysterious Mrs Quest, who arrives from America, dreadfully poor, and very, very charming: an exquisite creature, with pale golden hair, and dimpled cheeks, and troubling blue eyes: light and graceful as a petal, lissom: sometimes a little petulant, sometimes plaintive as a child, sometimes gay as an elf (George's niece is responsible for this effusiveness on George's part!)

As for Dr. Ralph Spender? He was a scrubby man: scrubby-faced, scrubby-mannered, scrubby-minded; scrubbiness was with him an instrument to probe and prod and torture his unfortunate acquaintances...he blackmailed  his way on to the committee of the Golf Club; he picked his teeth and quoted from H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw at dinner-tables (both picking and quoting done with a horrid Fabian glibness); he made love to other men's wives; he spread tittle-tattle and barbed each arrow of scandal with malice all his own; he swore at his servants, lent them Karl Marx, and measured the whisky in front of his man... All in all, a thoroughly decent fellow then, who delighted in making enemies. George couldn't stand him: I can play golf with a dishonest financier, but I cannot endure a man who openly sneers when I slice my drive. Moreover, Spender intends to build bungalows on the revered cliffs of Seacliff. He has to be dealt with. But by whom?

It is Henderson who discovers Spender hanging from a wayside tree, with a placard across his chest reading Death To  All Traitors. The story develops around George trying to disentangle the motives that nearly all the above named would have for murdering Spender. There is plenty of light - often ironic - humour, some of it at George's expense. often initiated by his niece; quite a lot of 'name-dropping' throughout: these include Virginia Woolf, the Powys family, Wyndham Lewis, D.H. Lawrence, Warwick Deeping and Mrs. Leavis. I enjoyed the novel, but there are definite signs that the author may only have taken three weeks - or less - to write it. The characters are well drawn, but the plotting is uneven. He loses his way with a long explanation of Mrs Quest's mysterious background and the final unmasking of the murderer is underwhelming.

Bruce Graeme's 'Unsolved' 1931

The Crime-Book Society No. 10

This is the second of Graeme's books I have read (so far) in the series, but one that does not involve his hero Blackshirt. It's what one might term a 'country house mystery', with most of the action taking place at "The Elms" - a crazy building, of no particular design, of no regular height and no uniformity whatever. A place of nooks and crannies, of large windows, of small windows, of plain-glazed windows, of leaded windows...a casual succession of wisteria, laburnum, and jasmine at varying seasons. Virginia-creeper, of course...it was a lovable house, a mischievous house. And it was the home of the Clavering family, a home in Kew where from the upper windows one could glimpse the Botanical Gardens.

The first chapter sees Maurice Clavering speeding down the Great North Road in his slim sports model Bentley, with his prospective bride, Helen Lowe. They are going to meet Maurice's mother. Welcome pleasantries out of the way, Mrs (no Christian name yet, but we find out why towards the end of the book) Clavering, then drops a bombshell. "Have you told Helen about - about your grandfather, Maurice?...it is an unpleasant story, Helen, now more than thirty years old. It was in the year 1901..."  Only when the reader reaches the last chapter, Chapter XXIII, is there a return to the 'present'. 

In 1901, another Clavering is making his way home; this time with a brand new bride - Constance, née Strangeways - and this time David and Constance are transported in a brougham pulled by two mares, Bessie and Lassie! Arriving, they meet the other inhabitants of the house: Tom Gibbons, an old retainer and butler, whose shoulders were bowed now; his wife, Ann, a dear old lady in service to the family for over forty years; and their niece, Kitty, not so much a rabbit as a frightened, fragile Dresden-china doll;  old Mrs Clavering - so short as almost to be dumpy. She was so round, so white, so pure, so frail, and yet so forceful. Her hair was snow-white, though she was not yet fifty four; Norman Clavering, David's older brother - seemingly more massive, but rather more swarthy, more commanding, and his wife Beatrice - she was strikingly handsome. Her features were firm and well-defined, suggesting a piece of classical Greek statuary;  the black-sheep of the family, Frank, who rolls up drunk to the evening meal; the much younger Godfrey, who is blind from birth; and the four boys' father, Maurice Clavering. who has been seriously ill in bed but perhaps improving enough to make a full recovery. In addition there is Nurse Hamilton - very fine nurse...far too pretty to be a dragon, and too young - who is ministering to the old Clavering. Everything appears hunky-dory; wedding presents are given to David and Constance by the family, and off they all go to bed. By now, we have reached page 70.

Then the shock: old Maurice Clavering, far from getting better as was the prognosis, dies that night - having thrown up ghastly green bile on his way out. The family medic, Dr. Finnemore, is summoned.  Far from agreeing to hand over a death certificate, he pronounces the dreaded words: he was poisoned.

From then on, it is a case of finger-pointing amongst the Claverings and Gibbons; an unsympathetic involvement of a Chief Inspector Davisson a CID from New Scotland Yard - he was not brilliant but thorough - who questions everyone in turn, without much success;  the ghastly proceedings at the Coroner's Court, where a shaking Frank Clavering proceeds to attract very unfavourable attention. It would be to give away too much to provide any more details of the storyline; suffice it to say that one Clavering commits suicide, but not the real murderer, who only confesses as he lies dying from the result of an aeroplane crash. We also find out which is the Mrs Clavering at the beginning of the story. The final few pages put a very different slant on several of the Claverings, particularly the old man Maurice. The title, Unsolved, is accurate because that was the findings of the jury in the Coroner's Court.

The book's strength lies in the psychological study of the Clavering family. As Nurse Hamilton remarks scornfully: they worshipped anybody with the name of Clavering. One would think there was no other family but them worth while on earth. Some critics have argued that the novel is riddled with appalling class prejudice - of the good middle/upper class against the beastly plebs. Yes, there are pretty strong comments about the latter during the Coroner's Court proceedings: the bestial, grinning, lecherous-minded public; and Norman's comments to his mother: the average man and woman is rotten to the core when it is a matter of gossip or scandal...hypocritical, church-going public...if you could see into the souls of people you would least suspect to be rotten, you would find them a stinking morass of vileness. Strong stuff!. However, readers should always be careful to distinguish between an author's own view and those that he puts in the mouths of his characters; and it was, after all, written in the 1930s not in our own very different days.

Grierson DIckson's 'Soho Racket' 1935

The Crime-Book Society No. 9

I haven't been able to find out much about Grierson Dickson - not even his birth and death dates. Apparently, he was a fighter pilot in the RFC during the Great War and, after its ending, he tried his hand at film acting and the navy. Eventually, he settled down as a civil servant, concentrating on fraud investigations. This was apt, as his hobby was a study of criminology. It was a time when the West End dope trade was at its peak; he tried to help a friend who got involved with drug traffickers. This brought him into close touch with the famous Sergeant 'Tim' Coleman, the CID specialist in dope cases stationed at the old Vine Street station. With Tim's help, he privately investigated many evil little Soho clubs then flourishing as the rendezvous of criminals. This led to his first novel, Soho Racket, published in 1935. The Paperback Revolution Blog online has this to say about the Crime-Book Society author: Hutchinson had Hugh Clevely, Seldon Truss and Grierson Dickson. Fine authors they may have been, but it has to be said that they have made little mark on literary history.

The story revolves around quite a small geographical canvas of central London, which I know well from my university 'tramping' days. Grierson Dickson, so the blurb at the front of the paperback informs us, was a young man, of varied experience, who has had the extraordinary fortune to sell every article and story he has ever written. This, his first novel, was written in a little flat at the top of a tall block whence one looks out on about twenty miles of central London. It was all written in longhand, and took just six weeks to complete. The story sprang from a report which reached the author from underworld sources that certain gangsters, expelled from America, were hoping to start activities in England. 

The very first sentence sets the scene: Marks, the "fence", died in a gutter in Gannet Street, Soho, which is not a nice place to die. The whole story is one of sleaze - nearly all the characters are sleazy; the buildings are sleazy; the streets and surroundings are sleazy. If the author was portraying the 1930s accurately, then Soho was a place to avoid. Who killed Israel 'Izzy' Marks, and why? To find out the answer is the job of Superintendent 'Cissie' Marlow of Scotland Yard, supported by a New York captain, Corrigan, over from the States to track down an Irish-American James Geary. Corrigan is sure Geary, who is fast setting up a ruthless gang in the area, is involved in the murder. There to aid Corrigan is Casey, the steadiest patrolman in the ninth precinct.

Caught up in the proceeding are the Borchi family: Sam, owner of a local café; his wife Martha, short, fat dark-skinned, greasy-haired; and his beautiful daughter Julia - the object of the lewd impulses Marks dignified by describing as his love. Her problem is that Geary also fancies her (a damned fine jane). Then there is Anne Robbins, operator at the telephone switchboard of the nearby Hotel Bedivere, who has a very obvious 'stalker' Terry - a sad-eyed boy who stands in silent worship every evening in a doorway opposite the hotel. Another character, Michael Brandon - who is a reporter for the Daily Messenger - covers the murder and also falls for Anne. He gets quickly caught up in the bewildering, and dangerous, events that quickly unfold  after Marks' demise. Geary is determined to crush any opposition to his takeover of the area, and that means Sam Borchi. Geary's thugs include Foley, a crafty-eyed man [who] looked like a third-rate undertaker, which in fact he was; and Eitel, a serious young German who is to prove the real totally ruthless bad-egg of the story.

There are some amusing touches amongst the seediness. The Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, having put Marlow on the case, was happier now, and foresaw an additional incident for the book of reminiscences which would occupy the weary days of his approaching retirement. ("Chapter Nine - Sleepless Nights on the Gannet Street Mystery"). All does not end well for several of the characters; deaths have to occur to liven up Soho's days and night (both Julia and Terry do not survive, nor does old Mrs Borchi or Geary himself); but good will triumph and a nice twist at the very end ensures Eitel does not get what he saw as his just deserts. Michael and Anne, however, are due to live happily ever after.

Andrew Soutar's 'Night of Horror' 1934

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 8

This is the last of the Crime-Society paperbacks I read on holiday; actually, I finished this on the plane coming home. Andrew Soutar (1879-1941) was born Edward Andrew Stagg in Swindon. He married Elspeth Soutar Swinton in 1907, adopting her second Christian name as his authorial surname.  In the Great War he made a fine record as an aviator, and after the Armistice served with the British forces in northern Russia. He was a newspaper correspondent, but is better known today (if at all!) for his novels, which were often serialised in newspapers. He also wrote pulp adventure stories for magazines. At least 24 of his novels were used as bases for movies - nearly all in the silent era.  His novel writing spanned from 1910 until his death in St. Austell, Cornwall in November 1941. The vast majority were written before 1933, when the first of the Phineas Spinnet books - The Hanging Sword - was published. The last one - A Study in Suspense - completed the 14 book run. Night of Horror (1934) was the second in the series.

A Reviewer of The Hanging Sword quoted Soutar as saying that he wrote mystery novels as a relaxation from the strain of writing long and serious novels. He regarded this mystery work as a tonic! The book introduced the reader to Phineas Spinnet, a private investigator with an immense ego and vanity. He hires an assortment of ex-cons to help him in his investigation agency and even has a former prisoner, Timson,  as his butler and manservant. There is more than just a shade of Margery Allingham's Albert Campion and his factotum, Magersfontein Lugg. Campion, in turn was meant to be a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey. Such an incestuous literary lot! I find Campion hard to stomach; so too does Spinnet's inordinate boasting irritate. Perhaps his endless cutting remarks and sarcastic barbs is a reminder, as one critic suggests, of that wonderful acerbic Don Rickles of the late 20th century chat show and Dean Martin Roasts fame.

Night of Horror commences one evening when a Charles Barton comes to Spinnet's house to ask him to locate his sister, bride of Lord Dargot, of Stoney Ridge, a country house in Sussex. Barton believes his sister is in some danger, but Spinnet feels the man is insane (in fact, he had recently passed a couple of years in a mental institution). Barton leaves, but is found dead just twenty yards outside Spinnet's house having been injected with poison. Spinnet is told this by Janith O'Mallory, an Irish girl, one of the youngest, but possibly the most trusted of his servants. Janith also inform Spinnet that she is going to be married to an out of work Irish engineer, Dennis O'Brien. Spinnet disapproves of this strongly; in fact of her marrying anyone. He then leaves to view Barton's body at the local mortuary. While he is gone, Lord Dargot arrives - he was a man of between forty and fifty years of age. His hair was already grey, and the corners of the eyes were rutted...he had the eyes of the dreamer; the features were delicately cut; only the teeth robbed him of distinction, for he appeared not to give them any attention, and they were discouraged, even yellow. Unmistakably a villain, then. Dargot takes one look at Janith and faints! Spinnet returns to find Dargot has recovered, but Janith gone. Timson then brings in a cigar box from the post, which Spinnet opens. In doing so he ran his thumb against one of the tiny nails by which the lid was fastened. It causes a small wound. Dargot leaves; Spinnet collapses; he has also be poisoned! A huge dose of whisky saves him, but  it is clear some Dick Dastardly character is trying to get rid of him.

Very early one, the author make it clear that Lord Dargot is a homicidal maniac, so the novel turns out to be a thriller rather than a detective story. Is Lady Dargot even alive; why does Lord Dargot try to get hold of Janith (I got the clue right from the start, when he fainted) - in fact, he succeeds in employing her as his Secretary at his gloomy mansion. What does the black-bearded landlord of the Smugglers' Arms near Stoney Ridge know; why is he so nervous - is he a deluded 'goodie' or an out and out 'baddie'?; what are Lord Dargot's main plans, apart from keeping secret the whereabouts of his wife and the obvious intention of superseding her with Janith? What part does Goby, Dargot's dumb servant play? The Night of Horror inevitably takes place in the House of Horror - Stoney Ridge. Much of the plot is preposterous, but this is palliated by the touches of humour and amusing characteristics of the participants, such as Janith and the lugubrious ex-jailbird Timson. There is a long-running gag which focuses on the latter's drinking most of Spinnet's Napoleon brandy - hidden in the most unlikely places but always tracked down by by the butler. 

I see Soutar has contributed another book to the Crime-Book Society paperback series - No. 19 Kharduni. I shall look out for it!

Eden Phillpotts' ' "Found Drowned" ' 1930

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 7

When I know next to nothing about an author, and before I start a Blog, I usually search the Internet for basic information. This time, I rather wish I hadn't. Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960)  was born in India to an officer in the Indian Army and his wife. Three years later, the father having died, the widow brought her three young sons back to England and settled in Plymouth. In 1879 Eden, aged 17, moved to London to work as an insurance clerk. Fascinated by the stage, he aimed to become an actor. Realising he would never be good enough, he turned to writing and, for around 50 years, he churned out three or four books annually. Over 250 works included poetry, short stories, plays, mysteries and novels, the latter usually set in rural Devon. Only 10% of his output can be classified as crime/detective fiction and it was not until 1921, when The Grey Room was published, did he regularly produce works of that genre. Between 1921-30 he wrote eight such-like novels and between 1931-44 a further eighteen. "Found Drowned" was published in 1931. He died at his home in Broadclyst near Exeter in December 1960.

So far, so good. However, in an interview in 1976, his daughter Adelaide informed a researcher that her father had regularly engaged with her in some form of sexual activity - from the age of 6 or 7 until she was thirty-three. He also actively stopped her from having relationships with other men (in 1929, he wrote against that Jew...the damned swine...that sort of vermin who was one of her suitors.) When she did finally marry in 1951, her father never met her again, even though she tried to re-establish contact. Not good.

"Found Drowned" revolves round Dr. Meredith, a local doctor, who investigates the death of a banjo player found in a cave, initially suspected to be a suicide. It is set in a coastal village near Daleham and develops into a complex case involving the wealthy Sir Max Fordham's household, a missing antiques dealer and delves into a significant question of identity. It soon becomes a murder story, rather than one of a suicide. Dr Meredith, now retired from his practice, is determined to investigate with the eventual help of his friend Inspector Forbes, the Governor of a local H.M. Prison, who initially disagrees with his prognosis. Meredith introduces himself and his friend in the first chapter. I am a little, inconspicuous person of forty-five years old, with a high forehead, slate-coloured eyes, commonplace, clean-shorn face and rather high shoulders. I am unmarried; my health is excellent...observation rather than activity was always my strong suit... as for Forbes, he is a shrewd  officer with a practical outlook upon life...his opinion of my intelligence is his weak spot.

Meredith is called out one rough night in early October to view the body of a banjo man, John Fleming, missing for six weeks - he had been found, with an unopened letter in the breast pocket of his jacket. It was from his girlfriend Milly, posted whilst on a yachting cruise in the Mediterranean. She was a Miss Mildred Abbot, maid to Lord Fordham's wife. The tragedy was that Fleming appeared to have committed suicide thinking she had disowned him (the envelope had his landlady's writing not Milly's on it!) Meredith conducted a private examination of the body in the mortuary and intuitively felt the body was not Fleming's. Neither had he drowned, as the clothes had never been in the sea at all. The dead man was to my mind unquestionably older. A further visit to the mortuary by Meredith proves there was not a drop of water in the dead man's lungs AND that he had been poisoned. His hypothesis is that Fleming confronted a fellowman - either dead or alive - and changed places with him. "One smells murder", I began calmly. Meredith is sure Fleming will now link up with Milly, keeping his own existence secret. Meredith follows clue after clue: someone boarded a luggage train around the time of the death; he was seen booking a passenger train to London. Meredith visits the Fordhams in their mansion and is introduced to Thorne - Sir Max's factotum and valet and chief steward on their yacht Mignonette. A man to watch. Milly, however, has gone off by train to her 'brother'. Meredith's suspicion increases. And so it develops. The doctor travels to Ealing, to interview Fleming's landlady, who fortuitously (for the plot) receives a letter with money inside. Meredith recognises the handwriting as being Fleming's. Proof that the young man is alive.

Doggedly pursuing clues, Meredith discovers who the dead man was (a London Jew); interviews the widow and her friend; uncovers a story of blackmail and theft;' and, of course, the murderer. The ending is not totally a surprise, but quite neatly done.

The novel, like all the others I have been reading, is 'of its time'.  The author clearly has a poor opinion of the lower class: what we English are now breeding in greatest abundance is rotten brains; and those inferior brains will be called to control the life of the country in the near future...Statesmanship has been prostituted to vote-catching under the absurdity of universal suffrage and all modern legislation is directed to support the unfit, so that intelligent, responsible people, over-taxed and over-governed shrink from the honourable obligations of family...any microcephalus idiot, or half-wit, can breed, and thousands on the very borderland of imbecility are breeding. Education does not reach these people and birth-control sighs after them in vain... 2025 anyone?!

And, near the end of the novel: Forbes and Meredith discuss the prospect of another War. "We can only hope we shall not win it," I said, "for another victory, under the present low-watermark British statesmanship, (it is a Labour Government in 1929-30) will mean national extermination. However, we need not dread another victory. The industrious bugs of Socialism are sucking the nation's life-blood pretty steadily now..."  How very topical!

Sydney Horler's 'Tiger Standish' 1932

 

The Crime-Book Society  No. 6

Sydney Horler (1888-1954) has not had a good press from his more famous peers. Literary reviewers of the time, such as Compton Mackenzie and Dorothy L. Sayers were dismissive of his work, while more recent critics have been even more scathing, calling his plots unbelievable and among the worst of British thriller writers. Born in Leytonstone, Essex he was educated at Colston School in Bristol. His first job was with the Western Daily Press in 1905. He later moved to London to write for the Daily Mail, but also worked in the propaganda section of Air Intelligence in the Great War. After the war he became a sub editor of the John O'London's Weekly; he left in 1919 after a big row with the editor. He decided to become a full-time writer, and made his name with his first crime novel, The Mystery of No. 1 in 1925. It is clear that writers such as Edgar Wallace and 'Sapper' influenced his works, which became hugely successful. According to A.E. Wilson, friend of Horler from an early age, Edgar Wallace had remarked, That fellow Horler is going to be a dangerous rival. By the 1930s,  his books had sold an estimated two million copies. He wrote around 158 novels. Often being serialised in the News of the World, the stories reached the biggest newspaper readership in the country. He died in a Bournemouth Nursing Home in 1954.

Colin Watson, in his compelling, if slightly controversial, book, Snobbery with Violence, Crime Stories and their Audience (1971) has a whole chapter devoted to the author, entitled Excitable Sydney Horler. Watson argued that Horler's work owed more to 'Sapper' than to Wallace. It was breathless, trashy stuff, vitalised by the deeds and chatter of such super-heroes as his Tiger Standish...who could have been Bulldog Drummond's twin brother... just as he has a way with a girl, so he has a way with an enemy. A terror to his enemies, a hero to his valet and a male-angel to his wife! Standish epitomised the aggressive masculinity that Horler, and many of his readers, found reassuring. Effeminacy was reprehensible and was linked to vegetarianism and even classical music! Pacifist novelists were wasting their time and talents. It was Tiger Standish who, perhaps, most represented Horler's outlook and credo. In a dozen books - from Tiger Standish (1932) to House of Jackals (1951) - his hero bestrode the stage almost like a superman.

We first meet him on the football field, playing for the Swifts - the famous Metropolitan team - against Aston Villa; he is being cheered on by 50,000 hysterical enthusiasts. With just two minutes to go, the score stands at 1-1; can the five feet eleven inches high, twelve stone two pounds of bone and muscle "Tiger" score a winner? Of course he can. Horler was also a football journalist, so he knew his onions. Tiger, the most talked-of amateur footballer in the country, has been brought in to plug a weakness - the centre forward position.  Although the other, professional, players may have cavilled, they all come round to acknowledging that the son of Lord Quorn wasn't too bad after all. Moreover, after the match, Tiger strips in the changing room: he was as personable naked as he was clothed - there was blood and race about the lean flanks, the slim waist, and the muscular chest. Here was a man, one could be ready to swear, who treated his body with the respect it deserved. No wonder so many others did too. A pity about the ugly face with its scar on the left cheek, but that seemed to add to his attraction! Certainly the bandy-legged, 42 year-old "Benny" Bannister, an ex-professional football player with twenty years' experience and now Tiger's loyal servant, thought so.

Tiger lives in a spacious 375 Portland Place flat, served by Benny; Mrs McTaggert - the Scottish housekeeper; and Kitty, the Irish maid (who, inevitably, secretly has a crush on him). Tiger, however, has no intention of ever getting married. Add to this group Richard the Lion, the half-Persian cat, and you have a scene of very English upper class bliss. All this to to be shattered by Sir Harker Bellamy, Chief of Q. I, a branch of the British Secret Service, (Bellamy has already featured in three other of the author's books). He has another 'job' for Tiger (shades of James Bond), a Secret Service freelancer, which means travelling to Italy. The only reason this does not happen is because Tiger subsequently receives a letter from an "S.D." asking for help: All the world is calling you a sportsman. If you are what the newspapers claim you to be, would Tiger help the writer! Of course he will. A cry for help outside his flat settles it. It is S.D., who is about to be kidnapped. Tiger sprints to the rescue. She was in a bad way, leaning against a lamp-post. Tiger noticed dark rings beneath her eyes, saw the droop of the lovely mouth, and felt steeped in compunction. And so begins a rip-roaring tale of British pluck, both from Tiger and S.D., now revealed as Sonia Devenish, who is being pursued by the devilish Three.

Two of the three suddenly request admittance:  16 stone Hamme, a mixture of well-bred gentleman and country oaf...stout of body, but weakish of brain; and the Italian Dr. Carlimero, a small, pernickety, neat gigolo type which Tiger loathed! There is no room for a positive attitude about foreigners in Tiger's or Horler's mindset. In fact, at least two references to Jews are positively anti-Semitic; an attitude the author was well-known for in real life. Typically, the story is one of 'baddies' trying to recover jewels (the Waterbury rubies). Sonia's stepfather apparently double-crossed them just before he died (suicide whilst of unsound mind. Hmm.) and the Three think Sonia knows where the jewels are hidden. The tale drags in other interesting characters (mostly bordering on caricatures) - an older friend of Sonia's; a two-bit actress acquaintance of Tiger's; Sonia's stepfather's lawyer; an American named Scarpio - this Overlord of the American Underworld - (who, urged by the lust of possession, has come over to collect the loot) and the Mr. Big of the 'Three'. Throughout the book, Horler's strengths and failings as a writer shine brightly. Almost virulently xenophobic and contemptuous of the common herd, his attitudes do not read well a century later, but they may well have been prevalent between the two world wars. Certainly, his books were immensely popular. Maybe they were caricatures, but his characters are quite good fun and his narrative style has some pace to it. One can see why he would have been invited to dinner by Edgar Wallace rather than Dorothy L. Sayers.

Bruce Graeme's 'Blackshirt Again' 1929

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 5

I enjoyed this book by Bruce Graeme - one of the better ones of the nine Crime-Book Society thrillers I have recently read. Graeme (1900-1982) was a pseudonym for Graham Montague Jeffries. He was born in London in 1900 and served in the Westminster Rifles Regiment in the Great War. Throughout the 1920s, he worked as 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.  He also wrote under the pseudonyms David Graeme (claiming he was Bruce's cousin), Peter Bourne, Jeffrey Montague, Fielding Hope and Roderic Hastings.  He produced more than 100 books, including a few history and true crime works. He created six sleuths but probably the character he is best known for is Richard Verrell, alias "Blackshirt", a professional thief who becomes a successful crime novelist (I hope it wasn't autobiographical!). There were nine novels in the series, starting with Blackshirt in 1925 and finishing with Blackshirt Strikes Back in 1940. Black-Shirt Again (1929) was the third published.

The first chapter sets the flavour for the rest of the book. 'Sir John Wakefield' addresses a room full of dancers who have been invited to his house for a Ball. He says his wife's jewels have been stolen, but he will order all the lights to be switched off and thus give the thief a chance to return the necklace and watch to him. In the unrelieved blackness, the dancers collided, here, there and everywhere...nevertheless the dancing continued. The lights went back on. Sir John still stood in the middle of the room, a sad expression on his face. "I am sorry," he said brokenly, "now I shall have to call in the police." He leaves the room. Then, pandemonium breaks out; guest after guest realise their own valuables have been stolen while the lights were off. Meanwhile, the real Sir John Wakefield is trying to get out of a locked room upstairs. Blackshirt, dressed in immaculate evening clothes, strolled away, whistling cheerfully to himself... Another successful heist! 

He was a criminal who always worked dressed in black - black shoes, socks and trousers, black shirt, black mask, black hat, black gloves; as dark as the shadows which he never left... By working alone, with a meticulous attention to detail, he had never yet been arrested.  The irate Sir John, angry that  Scotland Yard appear to have no answers, engages the services of one William Russell, a horsey little individual, who styled himself a confidential inquiry agent, and was as cunning as he was unscrupulous. Once himself a gaol-bird, he had become a police spy, known as a "dip".  One of the themes of the story is the attempt of Russell to find out who exactly Blackshirt is and to catch him. The author sprinkles nice touches of humour throughout the taler, much appreciated by this reader.

Linked to this strand is another, involving one Betty Warrington (she of the exquisitely-chiselled chin...healthy curling lips...delicate bloom of her soft cheeks, long curling lashes...) who had been given her dead mother's jewels on her 21st birthday a year ago by her uncle. They were amongst the valuables stolen at Sir John Wakefield's party. Russell, by chance overhearing a conversation in Hyde Park where Betty is bemoaning her loss to her friend Norma, hatches a cunning plan.  Knowing that Blackshirt was regarded as a 'sport' by Scotland Yard, he gets a journalist friend to put an ad. in his paper with a reward for anyone returning poor Betty's jewels. The scene now shifts back to Hyde Park, where the popular novelist, Richard Verrell, is sauntering homewards. Grabbing an evening paper, he reaches his flat and is drawn to a half-column - Domestic Tragedy of a Theft. It uses hyperbole to stress Betty's anguish at her loss. Verrell/Blackshirt is hooked! He decides to return the jewels - under his man-about-town garb he is dressed in his black outfit. He travels to No. 61Argyll Road, manipulates the locks and bolts to enter and is about to place the loot on the girl's dressing-table, when she wakes up. He noted that her eyes were still red from weeping, that her face was white and drawn..."I have come to return your jewels" What a goodish egg. Moreover, he notices that her wrists have red marks and quickly realises they have been made by her (nasty) uncle. Betty helps him to escape the trap Russell had laid, which meant police pounding on the door. Blackshirt calls the fire brigade to the house, knocks out the first fireman who comes up the ladder to Betty's bedroom and, carrying the girl in a fireman's 'lift', escapes down the ladder!

From then on, quite cleverly, Blackshirt not only evades the police but goes in search of Betty's jewels which have again disappeared from her room that same evening. The thief had to be either the fireman left in the room or the policeman who had eventually forced open the bedroom door.  The following chapters, dealing with Blackshirt's tracking down, in turn, their home addresses and searching their premises are well-written, with several amusing flash-points. And all the while, Russell is attempting - and failing - to unmask him. Blackshirt not only discovers who the real villain of the story is, but returns to Sir John Wakefield's house in the last chapter tor a hand over all the stolen jewels from the Ball. But, in a delicious twist at the end, did he? A great tale.

Baroness Orczy's 'Unravelled Knots' 1925

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 4

Baroness Emma Magdalena Rozálla Mária Josefa Borbála Orczy de Orci (18965-1947) was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwright, best known for her series of novels featuring The Scarlet Pimpernel, aka Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy English fop. She was also well-known as a regular writer of detective thrillers, often publishing the short stories in magazines. Unravelled Knots  originally appeared in the London Magazine (1923-4) and in Hutchinson's Magazine (1924-5).

The Man in the Corner - the weird, spook-like creature with the baggy trousers, the huge horn-rimmed spectacles, and the thin, claw-like hands that went on fidgeting, fidgeting, fidgeting, with a piece of string must be one of the most unprepossessing characters in detective (if not literary) history. The character first appeared in The Royal Magazine in 1901, in a series of six 'Mysteries of Great Cities'. The stories are told by an unnamed lady journalist who sits at the same table and reports their conversations; later collected in book form, the lady journalist was then named Polly Burton.  A second group of stories, The Case of Miss Elliott came out in 1905. Un-Ravelled Knot, therefore, was the third in the series. The man and woman journalist meet up in the ABC teashop on the corner of Norfolk Street and the Strand. Polly brings him details of obscure crimes baffling the police, which he helps her to solve. The Old Man is this balding watery-eyed figure in violently checked tweed who is, however immeasurably vain about his detecting talents. Polly can be (regularly) sarcastic about him, but she realises she is very much the learner during their meetings.

The meetings in Unravelled Knots take place after an absence of twenty years and sees a development in the Old Man's character from the two earlier collections of stories. I must admit to not being a particular fan of short stories. They need a rather different skill-set to write, compared with full-length novels, and a different approach from the reader. I like a full-blown and much longer narrative and find, inevitably, characters cannot be fleshed out in the detail I would like. However, some of these  short 'cases' were quite well done. The first story, The Mystery of the  Khaki Tunic, revolves around a piece of the material being found clutched in a dead spinster's hand. Add to this, a clever use of a wet coat, a dripping hat and soaked boots, and the real murderer is unmasked by the Man in the Corner. I liked The Mystery of the Ingres Masterpiece - the substitution of a real Old Master for a fake, but not by the person the reader thought had done it. I also found The Mystery of the Dog's Tooth Cliff and The Mystery of the White Carnation cleverly done. In fact, the thirteen stories, which end with the atmospheric A Moorland Tragedy, are not too bad at all! A pity that the Man in the Corner himself is such an unattractive proponent.

Polly, rightly as it happens as Orczy wrote no more of the Man in the Corner, ends the stories this way:

I wonder if I shall ever see my eccentric friend again. If I do I shall see him sitting in his accustomed corner, with his spectacles on his nose, and his long thin fingers working away at a bit of string - fashioning knots - many knots - complicated knots - like those in the cord by the aid of which an entrance was effected into that shop in Hatton Garden and diamonds worth £80,000 were stolen. A nice twist!

Edgar Wallace's 'On the Spot' 1931

The Crime-Book Society No. 2

I must admit I thought Edgar Wallace was an American. In fact, Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was as English as they come, being born in Greenwich into poverty. Leaving school aged 12, he joined the Army at 21 and served as a war correspondent for Reuters and the Daily Mail during the Boer War in South Africa. Returning to London, heavily in debt, he began writing thrillers to raise income, publishing books such as The Four Just Men (1905). He serialised short stories in magazines and, in 1921, he signed with Hodder & Stoughton and soon became an internationally recognised author. Failing to get elected as one of Lloyd George's Independent Liberals in 1931, he sailed for America, still heavily indebted - usually to racing  and Hollywood. He worked as a scriptwriter for RKO. He died suddenly from undiagnosed diabetes, during the initial drafting of King Kong in 1932. Wallace wrote 18 stage plays, 957 short stories and over 170 novels, 12 in 1929 alone. More than 160 films have been made of his work. He was, apparently, the first British crime novelist to use policemen as his protagonists, rather than amateur sleuths as most other writers of the time did.

On the Spot was one of Wallace's last novels and originated from a play written in 1930 (dictated in just four days!). It was his greatest theatrical success and was inspired by a visit to the USA and, in particular, by the Saint Valentine's Massacre of 1929 in Chicago. The play launched the career of Charles Laughton, who played the lead Al Capone character, Tony Perelli. It lasted for 342 performances on its original West End run. It transferred to America in October 1930 and ran for 167 performances in New York. 

If I am honest, it is not really my kind of novel, which came out in 1931. I am not keen on gangster stories or on those set in America, especially places like 1930s Chicago. The first paragraph typifies the tone of the book: Tony Perelli was not yellow, either by his own code or judges by standards more exacting. It was yellow to squeal to futile police, but not yellow to squeal to one's own crowd, and squeal loudly, about injustices suffered. It was yellow to betray a pal, but not yellow if the pal had not acted square or if he himself was yellow; even then it was yellow to tip off the police about his delinquencies. The honourable thing was to take him to some lone place and "give him the works". And this is what happens to "Red" Gallway, a safe-breaker, con man, hold-up man and keeper of questionable establishments. He makes suggestive remarks to Min Lee, Perelli's Chinese 'squeeze'; he argues with Perelli; he talks to the police Chief Kelly; three big mistakes. He gets shot on Perelli's orders. Vinsetti is another, more important gangster, who crosses Perelli, but he is sharper than Gallway he saw the red light and became cold and cautious and watchful.

Perelli had an espionage system which was well-nigh perfect. He had clerks in the banks who furnished him with particulars about his own people. He knew to a cent their balances, would be instantly informed about the transfer of money or stock to another country...Thus, he knew if any member of his coterie was intending to cut and run. Another rum cove to be put 'on the spot' is Con O'Hara, a noisy man, something of a brute, a boaster with a striking wife, who Perelli wants to usurp Min Lee. It's no surprise when Perelli himself kills O'Hara in his drawing room. As the latter drops to the floor, all Perelli can say is, "Don't soil my carpet, you bastard". It's surely poetic justice that Perelli dies, shot by his own factotum, Angelo. As Chief Kelly says, in the last three lines in the book: "The law got you, Perelli. Not my law, but your own law. And that's the way of it."

The real Capone died in his bed in Florida, surrounded by his family, of heart failure due to apoplexy.

Seldon Truss' 'They Came by Night' 1933

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 2

This, the second of my Crime-Society novels, starts well: Body found on Terrace of House of Commons. I immediately made a mental list of who I hoped it might be; but Seldon Truss is writing about the 1930s not 2025. If you look for Seldon Truss (1892-1990)  on the Internet, there are reams of headings about Anthony Seldon's demolition account of Liz Truss' time as Prime Minister. Not helpful. In 2010, another reviewer simply said of the author, he's almost assuredly unknown to any but the most serious collector today. This is probably equally true fifteen years later. Truss was born in Wallington, South London, and was a film director as well as a prolific author. He was the creator of Chief Inspector Gidleigh, a CID detective (24 novels); Detective Inspector Shane, a Scotland Yard detective (6 novels); and Detective Inspector Bass (3 novels). He also used the pseudonym George Selmark. They Came by Night (1933) is among the other nine books he wrote.

The first chapter then goes on to introduce three characters who are integral to the storyline and who all read The Evening Mail's headline and short accompanying note: firstly, a  a shabby and ill-favoured loafer; secondly a man in the comfortable lounge of a Piccadilly Hotel - a big man, massive both in height and girth, and his full-moon, hairless countenance was puckered genially as he read; and, finally, in Whitehall, a spare-built [man] with greying hair and keen, tired eyes. The second chapter swiftly takes us into the very centre of England, where we meet the undoubted hero of the story: John Worth, an infantry captain with a War record in the Intelligence Department,  who is presently in a car belonging to Lord Marchington, the Foreign Secretary, and driven by the latter's chauffeur. They reach the little village of Hayling-Bois, where they gaze on an amazing sight: in the centre of a field adjoining the graveyard an immense pile of faggots had been erected, and surmounting these, lashed to a decrepit rocking-chair, a stuffed effigy garbed in rusty black clothes with an ancient top-hat above its grinning cardboard mask, perched drunkenly. Recent rain meant that, so far, there was much smoke and little fire. Guy Fawkes' Day? No - it is to burn an effigy of a local unpopular landowner, who locals think had murdered his wife. The fires now begins to burn; then, Worth notices one of the effigy's hay-stuffed gloves was beginning to singe. Suddenly, the hand twitched. What a brilliant start to the novel - shades of the Wicker Man! Worth and the chauffeur leap into action and rescue the 'effigy'; the hat and the absurd, leering mask came away together in a fluster of hay, disclosing the deathly white features of a girl.

It is hard for the subsequent story to live up to that opening; but, by and large, it does. The girl is taken to the early Georgian manor house of Montague Clayden and she proves to be Daphne Manners, the step-child of Clayden, my late wife's daughter. Clearly, there are rum doings afoot. Clayden, who had abnormally large eyes in a wasted face and who appeared to Worth to be a sour-faced eccentric (surely, that's a clue to his being a wrong-un), is further apparently shocked to hear that Daphne had been drugged. A garage bung full of petrol further adds to feeling something is not right. Can all this be relevant to Worth's original mission, to uncover a vast and diabolical conspiracy against the country? He is told by his superiors, which include Marchington, that Major Seton Richardson, the greatest daredevil of the War, now in retirement, due to his war wounds which included being nearly blinded, had unearthed details of the conspiracy. However, Richardson had disappeared! Hence Worth's journey to Hayling-Bois, where worrying cases of blindness have occurred. These cases will multiply alarmingly during the story and, obviously, are bound up with the conspiracy; Clayden has several unsavoury henchman, one of whom is an absurd little figure in a neckcloth, whose glass eye (I should have seen the clue there and then) glinted with an extraordinary effect of savagery. He goes by the name of Comrade William Smithers, of the Young Red Workers. He needs watching!

The scene switches to Whitehall, where Marchington is in discussion with the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the Home Office pathologist  - they fear that the few cases of blindness will develop into a thousand a day. It is a declaration of war. The enemy? The Lilliputian and semi-barbarous State of Mongoria - on the shores of the Caspian Sea! Mongoria want to establish a powerful state and they need capital for road, rail and dock development. In return for supplying serum to cure the cases of blindness, they require complete immunity from any reprisals and an indemnity of £25 million pounds! Not a bad idea for a thriller. The Prime Minister is relaxed: a big task for one man, but Worth is a big man. And so John Worth proves to be. Working with the gorgeous Daphne Manners (Worth later sees her in a slender chiffon frock as a breath-taking little vision of sheer beauty that caused his heart to leap), he manages to outwit the Mongorian thugs. Perhaps rather far-fetched, but good fun. What one might call a rollicking-yarn. We could do with these particularly when one is confronted with such dire national and international news daily in the media. In fact, we could do with a few more John Worth and Daphne Manners characters in charge today.

Hugh Clevely's 'The Gang-Smasher 1928

 

The Crime-Book Society No. 1 

Having nearly finished collecting the Jarrolds 'Jackdaw' Crime Series, I have - like a moth to a candle flame - now embarked on another paperback flight; this time The Crime-Book Society Pocket Library. I have purchased the first eleven in the series, and have read eight of them whilst on holiday in Greece. 

Hugh Clevely starts the series - he also wrote No. 15 'Gang Law' and No. 41 'The Wrong Murderer'. Clevely was born in Bristol in 1898 and was a bank clerk at the start of the Great War. He enlisted in the Grenadier Guards in April 1915 and was posted to France in March 1917. Wounded in August, he returned to England but transferred to the RFC in March 1918. After the War, in March 1922, he joined the British Gendarmeries section of the Palestine Police as a Sergeant but left in the Spring of 1925. On his return, he found himself without either a job or money, his most prized possession being an old type writer. He lived for three months on 7/6 a week, in a disused furniture van in the middle of a Sussex wood! He set to work on the type writer and became a prolific writer of novels, publishing 23 books under his own name between 1928 and 1955. He wrote a further nine under the pseudonym Tod Claymore. He was also one of the dozens of authors who wrote for the story paper The Thriller in the 1930s - other writers included Leslie Charteris, John Creasey, Edgar Wallace, Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham. After the 2WW, Clevely contributed a dozen or so titles to the hugely popular Sexton Blake series. He died in 1964.

This tale is a fairly breath-taking account about the man nick-named 'The Gang-Smasher', a gigantic red-haired figure of a man yet human and attractive withal. It is the story of a born fighter, who sets out to smash the all-powerful Tortoni gang... John Martinson had worked his passage home from China only a week before the story begins. He was an educated man, who could shoot, fence, box, wrestle, command a battalion, and speak five languages. Walking aimlessly in a London fog, he deals with a pickpocket and an enquiring policemen in the same way - one to the head the other to the solar plexus! A quarter of an hour later the booking-clerk at the Paddington Station hotel was astonished by a large, deeply tanned, and very shabby man, with an ugly face, a bent nose, and the most aggressively red hair that he had ever seen, who smiled contentedly in a queer, lop-sided manner as he asked for food and drink immediately and a room for the night.

In his room, he searches what he had purloined from the pickpocket. An address (Sylvester Brown...) on a piece of paper, five cigarettes  and a cigarette tin with at least £400 in £1 notes! The following day, be spent £30 odd buying a refit of clothes, then travelled to the address on the piece of paper. He encounters Susan Brown - a very pretty girl, her dark, shingled hair, parted in the middle, fell in attractive waves on either side of her forehead, and formed a pleasing contrast with the clear, warm tints of her complexion. Her eyes were dark, tender with the dreaminess of youth, but shining with a light of humour and intelligence that gave a delightful air of animation to her face. Her mouth was small and red, a mouth that would very easily tempt men to forget themselves...What's not to like? Martinson, being a toughie but uncomfortable with girls, takes the whole book to succumb - in the last couple of pages she hears him say, luckily for my piece of mind there's nothing I can imagine myself hating more than being married. Equally luckily for him, he is no seer.

It is Sylvia who tells Martinson about the feared and ruthless Tortoni gang. Apparently, they want to kill her brother Sylvester. The latter turns up and says the gang recently knifed his friend Ted Williamson to death and he himself had received a threatening telephone call - don't talk or you die!  Well, Martinson 's reaction is obvious: I'm going after them. And so he does, over the next 260 pages. First, he relieves one of the gang of the stolen Duchess of Midhurst's diamonds, worth £60,000+. Before going to see the Duchess, he makes it clear his whole enterprise has no place for a woman. Sylvia responds: You seem to have a very poor opinion of girls, Mr. Martinson. I suppose that very brave and tremendously clever men always have. Or perhaps it's because you're what is called 'a man's man.' Are you? Do you smell of tweeds, and tobacco, and have you got an Irish terrier named Pete who's your best friend? What a girl! Martinson's meeting with the Duke and Duchess also includes a Comtesse de Varenne, who summons her friend Captain Vandaleur to verify the jewels. Are both of the latter what they seem? Of course not, or there would be no plot. And clever Martinson knows they are crooks from the start.

Scotland Yard get involved; Martinson inches every closer to finding out who the leader of the Tortoni gang is; the deaf and dumb Professor André, a neighbour of the wealthy Mrs. Somerville, whose jewels are also stolen, is clearly a Person of Interest; and the novel builds to a thrilling climax in the English Channel. It's a fairly convoluted, but well-controlled plot, and I enjoyed the flashes of humour interspersed amongst the skulduggery.  I look forward to purchasing Gang Law before too long.

Marthe McKenna's 'Hunt the Spy' 1939/40?

 

Jarrolds publishers - 1939/40?

I began collecting the Jarrolds 'Jackdaw' Crime Series paperbacks a few years ago and have managed to purchase 12 of the original 16, published between 1939 and 1940. The two Moray Dalton works (Nos. 15 and 16) and Alan Kennington's She Died Young (No. 9) are proving elusive. However, I received from Zardoz Books - that excellent paperback bookseller in Westbury, Wiltshire - only this morning the fourth book I was after: Marthe McKenna's Double Spy (No. 12). Once I have read it, I shall Blog on it. There are two others (at least), in addition to the numbered sixteen, which have been traced and, though unnumbered, I have detailed as No.17# and No.18#. Van Wyck Mason's, The Cairo Garter Murders, the first of these, I failed to win on Ebay - my top bid was beaten by another, more wealthy, collector.  I did track down another of Marthe McKenna's spy novels - again from Zardoz Books. This was the first of nine crime paperbacks I read on our recent holiday in Greece - all of which I will be Blogging on in sequence. Like Van Wyck Mason's book, the cover price has gone up from 6d. to 9d. A casualty of the Second World War.

 

The story of the author is at least as interesting as her spy books. Marthe Mathilde Cnockaert, born in West Flanders, Belgium, in 1892, began studying at Ghent University's medical school, but her studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the Great War. She was conscripted as a nurse at a German military hospital in her home village. She was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans for her medical service. Transferred to the German Military Hospital in Roulers, a family friend revealed she was a British intelligence agent and that she wished to recruit Marthe to an Anglo-Belgian intelligence network operating in the town. Such was the latter's success in passing on important military intelligence, she was mentioned in dispatches on 8 November 1918 by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and was made a member of the French and British Legions of Honour. She married John 'Jock' McKenna, a British army officer. Her memoir I Was a Spy - ghostwritten by her husband and published under her married name in 1932 - had a foreword by Winston Churchill. The following year, saw it made into a Spy Thriller movie, with Conrad Veidt as Commandant Oberaertz and Madeleine Carroll as Marthe. The film was voted the best British movie of 1933 and Carroll as the best actress in a British film that year.

Of the 17 books written by Marthe between 1932 and 1951, 13 had 'Spy'/'Spies' in their title. Although published under Marthe's name, it is speculated that her husband was largely responsible for their writing. In the Second World War, Marthe was listed in 'The Black Book' of prominent subjects to be arrested by the Nazis in case of a successful invasion of Britain.  After the war, the McKennas returned to Marthe's family home in Westrozebeke. Their marriage ended around 1951 and Marthe died in 1966.

Hunt the Spy tells the story of the inimitable British secret agent Jim Archer and a beautiful London shop girl, Susan Denton, who innocently becomes entangled in a sinister spy plot. Susan's close friend, and fellow worker at the outfitters Rayon and Crepe, has married Andrew Blair, a staid uncommunicative young man, who is an assistant to a Professor Justin MacArdle, who is working on some secret assignment in the small town of Bayleigh on the Thames Estuary. Strolling along window-shopping in Bond Street, Susan is accosted by a tall, slim young man, tanned of face, short dark crispy hair and glittering laughing eyes. He pretends he has mistaken her for someone else, but the tone of his deep caressing voice and other attributes soon enable him to wangle his way into her affections. The reader soon finds out (before Susan herself) that he is a dastardly spy - leaning towards the Germans but, more importantly, totally out for the highest bidder. What is he after? - Professor MacArdle's 'secret' invention, which could help turn the tide in a future war. Nicholas Talos, for such is he, at their first dining out, gives Susan a sparkling brooch (the reader should keep this in mind for a future episode).

A burly chauffeur is sent to pick Susan up for the next date, but is attacked and Susan is 'rescued' from a difficult situation. Her rescuer? "My name is Archer - Jim Archer" (shades of "Bond. James Bond.") of the British Secret Service. Archer takes her to meet a friend, Philip Glade, who is immediately attracted to Susan.  Archer tells Glade that "Talon is a brilliant misfit. A God in forehead but at heart a fiend...he is a magnificent beast...he is the complete international spy..." He also explains that MacArdle's invention will possibly give Britain a cast-iron defence against air bombers (no wonder Talon wants the blueprint - to sell it to the highest bidder). The story develops with Susan not only visiting Rayleigh to see Muriel but also  going to a fortune-teller, Madam Sigratta, who is obviously up to no good. The latter appears to have links with Talon. In fact, it's all good, if dangerous, fun and the author can spin a promising yarn, with plenty of mishaps and near escapes on the way. Good and Britain will, of course, win out, as does Philip Glade with Susan Denton. Moreover, as the very last paragraph states: But, damn it all, it was well worth it. Professor MacArdle would recover the complete plans of his invention, and the day that saw its completion would be the signal for Britain's roar to be heard rumbling round the world. And this time it would roar with a set purpose, not of frightening persecuted insanity, but of carrying soothing peace to all men's minds. So, bah! to Hitler and his toughs.