The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.18 - 1937?
Off I go on another run of Crime-Book Society paperbacks. 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 - 1937/8?
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 thriller s 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.
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