Wednesday, 23 July 2025

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 cafĂ©; 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.

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