The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.41 - 1937?
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 - 1937?
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-.
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