J. J. Connington’s The Boat-House Riddle

The Boat-House Riddle was the sixth of J. J. Connington’s Sir Clinton Driffield mysteries. It was published in 1931, at a time when Connington was at the peak of his powers as a writer of detective fiction.

Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947) was a distinguished Scottish chemist who wrote detective fiction as a sideline. His background as a scientist in reflected in the clear-sightedly rational and unsentimental nature of his detective stories and it’s reflected even more clearly in the personality of his most famous series detective, Sir Clinton Driffield.

It is always a mistake for a fictional detective to decide to take a holiday. No matter where they elect to spend their vacation you can be sure that a murder will soon follow, even if it happens to be a sleepy village that has not seen a case a murder for half a century.

In this case the murdered man is a gamekeeper, employed by Mr and Mrs Keith-Westerton. The Keith-Westertons are neighbours of Sir Clinton’s old friend Squire Wendover, with whom he is staying. The man who reported the murder is Cley, a notorious poacher known to be on bad terms with the keeper. The body was bound at Friar Point’s, just across the like from Wendover’s new boat-house (which happens to be his pride an joy). There are several tracks leading to and from the murder scene but the evidence suggests that the murderer left the scene on foot but arrived by some other means, possibly by boat. To Wendover’s annoyance and embarrassment the evidence further suggests that the murderer may have set forth by boat from Wendover’s boat-house.

This is not an impossible crime story. Several people could quite plausibly have killed the gamekeeper Horncastle. The difficulty lies in the inconvenient fact that none of these people has any kind of motive. 

Attention soon becomes focused on Wendover’s boat-house. There are clues to be found there but their meaning is obscure. Why would anyone steal the motor from a gramophone? Other clues are equally confusing. A Salvation Army man was in the vicinity both before and after the murder and his explanation for his presence is most unsatisfactory. There seem to be pearls everywhere. There’s a mysterious French priest. There’s Squire Wendover’s missing screwdriver. And while Wendover has assured Sir Clinton that no-one could possibly have gained access to the boat-house it soon becomes apparent that practically everyone in the district could, and probably does, possess a copy of the key.

Connington has a reputation for complex but extremely sound plotting and that’s certainly the case here. It’s always a joy to see a master craftsman at work. This novel does break one of the unofficial rules of detective fiction of this period but that does not prevent tis from being a fine fair-play mystery.

Sir Clinton Driffield takes a unsentimental and brutally realistic (and sometimes almost ruthless) approach to crime. He is very much like the protagonist in Connington’s pioneering science fiction novel Nordenholt’s Million. When he sees what has to be done he does it, no matter how unpleasant it might be and no matter how unpopular his actions might be. And he is a natural leader. He is the sort of man who takes command in any situation, not because he enjoys power but because he assumes (usually correctly) that he is the man best qualified to do so. He understands very clearly that sentimentality can cause more suffering than hardheaded realism and clearsightedness. This might not make him an obviously sympathetic detective hero but once you realise where he’s coming from he grows on you, and in fact he’s one of the more interesting of golden age detectives. His approach is actually rather bracing. 

It’s reasonable to assume that Driffield’s unsentimental view of things probably reflects Connington’s own view and Murder in the Maze and The Castleford Conundrum are very definitely lacking in sentimentality.

Connington most certainly cannot be accused of being a mere writer of cozy mysteries.

The Boat-House Riddle is Connington at his best, which means it’s puzzle-plot mystery writing at its best. Highly recommended.

J. J. Connington’s The Castleford Conundrum

The Castleford Conundrum, published in 1932, was one of J. J. Connington’s detective novels featuring Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield and it’s a fine example of the classic British detective story of the so-called golden age.

Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947) was a distinguished British chemist who wrote an important although now somewhat neglected science fiction novel as well as seventeen detective novels under the name J. J. Connington.

The Castleford Conundrum belongs to the then very popular sub-genre of the country house murder tale.

Winifred Castleford is a particularly disagreeable woman. She is vain, stupid, vicious, manipulative and domineering to the highest degree. Her husband Philip belongs to that very unfortunate class of men, those who have married for money. Like most such men Philip has discovered that there is a very high price to be paid for such a decision. Philip has paid the price in shame and humiliation and his misery is about to be compounded. Winifred has decided to write him out of her will.

In Philip’s defence it can be said that he married Winifred largely because it seemed to be the only way to provide for his daughter by his first marriage, Hilary Castleford.

Winifred had been married before, to a wealthy war profiteer named Ronald Glencaple, now deceased. Glencaple’s two brothers, Laurence and Kenneth, have little money but they hold the firm conviction that they are entitled to the wealth of their late brother. Winifred’s half-sister Constance Lindfield also feels she is entitled to this money. In fact no-one likes Winifred but everyone seems to be interested in her money. All in all it’s an exceedingly unpleasant family. Equally unpleasant is a young man named Stevenage who has at various times been pursuing Mrs Castleford, Miss Lindfield and Hilary Castleford.

When Winifred is found dead there’s not the slightest doubt that her passing is regretted by nobody. The possible motive for the murder hinges on the very complicated situation surrounding Mrs Castleford’s will, or rather wills. There are two wills but there is a possibility that neither may be valid. The disposition of Winifred Castleford’s substantial wealth will be very different depending on which will, if any, proves to be valid. To add a further complication the various suspects all had different beliefs as to the exact state in which Winifred’s testamentary affairs stood at the time of her death.

And all of the suspects had plausible motives other than money for wishing to see Winifred Castleford depart this vale of tears.

Inspector Westerham is an able man and his investigations have been thorough and methodical but the murder is still far from solved when the Chief Constable, Sir Clinton Driffield, finds himself drawn into the case. Driffield’s friend, the Squire Wendover (who appears in many of the Clinton Driffield mysteries) is the agency by which Driffield becomes involved.

Driffield is not one of the more amiable of fictional detectives but although his methods sometimes appear to be a little insensitive there’s no question that he is a man who gets results, and in his own way he’s an intriguing character.

Connington is now largely forgotten outside the small circle of hardcore aficionados of the detective fiction of the golden age but this neglect is very unjust. Connington’s plotting is as skillful and as intricate as any devotee of crime fiction could wish for. And while he was one of the group of English writers dismissed by critic Julian Symons as constituting the “humdrum school” of detective fiction he was in actuality a fine writer who knew his craft.

Connington’s science fiction novel Nordenholt’s Million demonstrates his interest in difficult moral dilemmas and in the psychology of men who are natural leaders and who must face the terrible choices that leadership entails. Sir Clinton Driffield is a man of that type as well, the sort of man who may appear arrogant and insensitive but who in fact simply have a keen sense of reality. Reality can be very unpleasant but refusing to face reality can be more unpleasant still. Sir Clinton Driffield will never be tempted into a willful refusal to face reality.

Connington also had the ability to create unlovable but fascinating minor characters. Not one of the characters in this novel could be described as being the type of person one would like to be intimately involved with but not one of them fails to engage our interest.

The Castleford Conundrum is a worthy representative of the detective fiction of the interwar period at its best. Highly recommended.

J.J. Connington's The Sweepstake Murders

The Sweepstake Murders is a 1931 Sir Clinton Driffield mystery by J.J. Connington. Connington was a pseudonym of Scottish scientist Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947).

This is a tontine mystery, but it’s a tontine mystery with a twist because it doesn’t start out as a formal tontine. A tontine of course is an arrangement in which a group of people combine to invest in something and the entire proceeds go to the last surviving member, or to those still surviving by a certain date. It’s obviously a perfect setup for a murder mystery.

In this case Squire Wendover, in the course of an evening’s play at bridge, gets roped into joining a syndicate which is to buy nine sweepstakes tickets. In the unlikely event that they win a prize the winnings will be equally shared between the nine members of the syndicate. Two very unlikely events now transpire. Firstly the syndicate wins a great deal of money. And secondly, one of the nine dies before the prize can be collected. There was no specific clause in the agreement to cover such an eventuality. Now there are likely to be legal difficulties with the heirs of the deceased syndicate member. At this point it seems wise to convert the informal agreement into a more or less official tontine. You can file that decision under ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time.

To paraphrase slightly a memorable remark made by M to James Bond, to lose one member of a syndicate might be an accident, to lose two might be a coincidence, but to lose three has to be enemy action. And after the third death Inspector Severn knows he’s dealing with murder. Every single shred of evidence points unequivocally to all three deaths having been accidental but the inspector still knows it’s murder.

The tontine setup naturally suggests that the murderer must be a member of the syndicate, which limits the number of suspects, but there’s another interesting twist here. Several members of the syndicate sold off parts of their share so that there are now a number of possible “shadow” members of the syndicate who of course would also have motives but then there’s a possibility these shadow members aren’t shadowy at all.

The tontine setup also has the advantage of limiting the circle of suspects without limiting them to a single location as in the classic country house murder. And Connington comes up with a fine murder setting in Hell’s Gape, a rather frightening geological curiosity.

Dead men tell no tales, but a dead man’s camera can tell some very interesting tales indeed. And it can tell a tale in intricate detail, if only you know how to extract the information. The photographic evidence is one of the highlights of The Sweepstake Murders. This is not a spoiler - it’s blindingly obvious that the photographic evidence is going to absolutely crucial but while Connington makes no attempt to hide this (in fact he draws attention to it in the most extravagant way) he still manages to keep us guessing as to exactly what it is that is lying there in those photographs waiting to be noticed.

While Sir Clinton Driffield plays an important role in this story for most of the book it’s really Inspector Severn’s case. And Severn approaches the matter in a way that would warm the heart of Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French. Severn has very few clues to work with but he has an extraordinarily ability to squeeze every single drop of information out of those clues. In fact he’ll keep returning to the same clue and find that he can give it one more squeeze. If Connington belongs to what critic Julian Symons scornfully described as the Humdrum School of Detective Fiction then The Sweepstakes Murders is hardcore humdrum. If a case can be solved by dogged perseverance in routine police work then Severn can feel confident of success. A successful detective is one who will persevere to the bitter end, knowing that the truth is there somewhere among all the inconsequential details, buried like a needle in a haystack. Going through the entire haystack may be a daunting task but if it has to be done then it has to be done.

Sadly for Inspector Severn all his painstaking work isn’t enough. Sir Clinton Driffield certainly understands the vital importance of the routine legwork but he also has the ability to look at the jigsaw puzzle that has been so painstakingly pieced together and see the pieces that just don’t quite fit, the pieces that seem to be superfluous and the ones that seem to be missing. Often very very small pieces but they all matter.

The solution is dazzlingly complex. There were other writers who possessed the same degree of mastery when it comes to plotting but I don’t think there were any who could actually surpass Connington when he was at the top of his form. The Sweepstake Murders is a bravura performance. Very highly recommended.

The Two Tickets Puzzle

The Two Tickets Puzzle (sometimes known as The Two Ticket Puzzle) is a 1930 detective novel by J. J. Connington. Connington is best known to fans of the genre for his Sir Clinton Driffield mysteries (such as the excellent Murder in the Maze) but The Two Tickets Puzzle is one of his two mysteries featuring Superintendent Ross.

A body is found in a first class compartment of the 10.35 local train from Horston to Hammersleigh. The man had been shot several times. It’s clearly murder but the bullet wounds are very puzzling. Two different calibre bullets were involved but several of the shots to the man’s head did very little damage.

Superintendent Ross and his very thorough assistant Inspector Mornington manage to identify all of the passengers in the first class carriage and the third class carriage behind it. The murder could only have been committed by someone in one of those two carriages. There are plenty of clues and a couple of obvious suspects but Superintendent Ross is not satisfied by the evidence. And he has to explain how Farmer Chepstow’s prize ram was shot a week earlier - that luckless sheep may hold the solution to the mystery.

This is very much in the police procedural mould. It’s also quite similar in both style and structure to the Inspector French mysteries of Freeman Wills Crofts. Superintendent Ross’s approach to crime-solving would please Inspector French - Ross also has a passion for patient methodical investigations. He is the sort of policeman who will not even contemplate making an arrest until he is entirely satisfied that every single element in the case has been accounted for.

Those who dislike golden age puzzle-plot mysteries will groan at the sight of maps and railway timetables but devotees of this school will be as delighted by these things as Superintendent Ross. Connington demonstrates his ability to construct an intricate plot that almost equals Crofts at his best.

Superintendent Ross is not exactly a colourful detective. In fact he’s a lot less colourful than Connington’s usual series detective Sir Clinton Driffield. I suspect this is why the book was not written as a Sir Clinton Driffield novel - this is such a purely plot-driven tale that Connington needed a detective who would not distract the reader with his own idiosyncrasies. 

While the emphasis is on the unraveling of the complex plot the novel ends with a surprising amount of action - in fact it reaches its climax with a car chase and a shoot-out!

Everything a fan of golden age mysteries could desire can be found here - unbreakable alibis, the vital importance of piecing together the correct sequence of events, the importance of placing the murderer at a precise location at a precise time, an abundance of clues, puzzling forensic evidence, a focus on the tiniest details which initially seem unimportant, tangled motives, even a crucial will. Connington plays pretty fair with his reader - if the reader chooses to leap to conclusions or to misinterpret vital clues that’s all part of the game. The correct clues are there in plain sight.

This is in fact a textbook example of the fair-play golden age puzzle-plot mystery and it’s a joy to watch a master of the genre go through his paces.

Highly recommended.

Murder in the Maze

Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947) was an eminent British chemist who had, under the name J. J. Connington, achieved considerable success as a writer with his 1923 science fiction novel Nordenholt's Million before turning to detective fiction. 

Murder in the Maze, published in 1927, was the first of his Sir Clinton Driffield mysteries.

Sir Clinton Driffield is the Chief Constable. As such he would normally leave the actual investigations of crime to his subordinate officers but Sir Clinton Driffield prefers a much more hands-on approach. In fact in this novel he conducts the entire investigation himself.

Driffield is a somewhat acerbic sort of man. He also deliberately cultivates an extreme ordinariness in his appearance. Anything he can do that might lead a criminal to underestimate him is a plus in his book. In this case this quality will be particularly important, since at a crucial stage it is absolutely imperative that the criminal should make the mistake of assuming that Driffield has been guilty of a rather foolish act of negligence.

Driffield is also a policeman who is not averse to taking risks, even quite serious risks.

As the title suggests a maze will play a vital part in this story. The maze is located at Whistlefields, the country house of Roger Shandon. The maze is an unusual one, having two centres rather than one. It is also rather more elaborate that the mazes to be found at other country houses. The maze will be the scene of not one but two murders, carried out more or less simultaneously at the two centres. The victims are twin brothers which leads to the suspicion that one of the two may have been killed in error, a case of mistaken identity. Sir Clinton Driffield is however keeping an open mind on that point.

This is essentially a classic country house murder with a strictly limited cast of possible suspects. There is one difference however, one circumstance which might indicate that the murder was not an inside job.

Connington often gives the impression in his fiction that he has a rather jaundiced view of humanity. This reaches an extreme in The Castleford Conundrum, a detective novel which contains not a single genuinely sympathetic character. This tendency is not quite so marked in Murder in the Maze but this novel certainly has its share of disreputable and morally dubious characters. It has to be said that Connington was rather good at creating such unsympathetic characters, and at making them interesting in spite of themselves. 

While Connington was renowned principally for his skill in plotting he does not neglect psychology. The ideal detective tale is one in which only the actual murderer could have physically committed the crime, and at the same time the murderer proves to be the one person who could psychologically have been the guilty party. Murder in the Maze fulfills both of these conditions.

The maze itself is a kind of gimmick, or at least could have been a gimmick in the hands of a lesser writer. Connington however makes us feel that this is a crime that really could not have been committed anywhere else. The setting is an absolutely indispensable part of the murder, or in this case murders.

Murder in the Maze is a work by one of the best crime writers of his era, at the top of his form. Highly recommended.

J. J. Connington’s Mystery at Lynden Sands

Mystery at Lynden Sands, published in 1928, is one of J. J. Connington’s earlier mysteries featuring Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield. Driffield is having a pleasant holiday at the seaside and of course as any fan of mystery fiction knows when a detective decides to take a holiday murder is sure to follow him.

The murder victim is Peter Hay, an amiable and much-loved old man who acts as caretaker at Foxhills, the estate of the Fordingbridge family. Foxhills is not very far from the hotel at Lynden Sands when the Chief Constable has been hoping to enjoy his little vacation. Peter Hay didn’t have an enemy in the world and he apparently died of natural causes but Dr Rafford refuses to sign the death certificate. Those odd marks on the victim’s wrists worry him just a little.

Inspector Armadale is a little uneasy as well, in fact uneasy enough to request the Chief Constable’s personal assistance on the case.

The Fordingbridges are having a drama of their own. Paul Fordingbridge’s nephew Derek hasn’t been heard from in years and it is assumed that he was killed during the war. Now Derek has suddenly turned up. Derek claims to have been wounded during the war, which explains why his face is so disfigured as to be unrecognisable. The wound affected his mouth as well, which explains why his voice is also unrecognisable. His handwriting has changed as well, due to the loss of two fingers. There are no fingerprints on file for Derek so there’s no possibility of identifying him positively in that way. Paul’s sister Jay is however perfectly certain that it is Derek. She is in touch with the spirit world and the spirits assure her that Derek is still among the living.

Then a body is found on Neptune’s Seat, a rock in the sea that is uncovered only at low tide. There are quite a few sets of rather interesting footprints on the beach and they seem likely to turn out to be vital clues.

There are all kinds of dramas going on and they all seem to be connected with the Fordingbridge family. The connections between these dramas are however very unclear. Solving any of the mysteries is going to require the tying together of all these threads. Both Connington as author and Driffield as detective succeed in doing so and doing so with great skill.

This is fairly typical of Connington at his best. The plotting is intricate and very tight. Sir Clinton’s approach to the investigation is uncompromisingly logical and rational. His old friend Squire Wendover is naturally involved, and just as naturally the good-hearted Wendover can’t help seeing the case in purely emotional terms.

Inspector Armadale is an efficient and thorough investigator and entirely professional. Not surprisingly he and Wendover clash since the inspector is not a man to allow emotion to distract from his duty.

Towards the end there’s a definite thriller flavour that starts to creep in. One could almost go so far as to say that there’s a hint of Edgar Wallace. This is a classic puzzle-plot mystery with the emphasis on fair play and on the methodical sifting of clues but the touch of excitement and drama at the climax is welcome nonetheless.

There are a few far-fetched moments, as there always are in golden age mysteries, but Connington has a knack for making them seem perfectly plausible.

Sir Clinton Driffield is perhaps the most ruthless, and is certainly the most unsentimental, of all golden age detectives. He is at his most ruthless in this novel. He has also has a breathtakingly acid tongue. It makes him of the more interesting fictional detectives. Maybe it’s easier to respect him than to love him but he’s unfailingly entertaining.

Mystery at Lynden Sands is immensely enjoyable stuff. Highly recommended.

Nordenholt’s Million

Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947) was a distiguished British chemist who wrote very successful golden age detective stories under the pseudonym J. J. Connington. He also wrote one science fiction novel which became a classic of its type.

Nordenholt’s Million, published in 1923, belongs to the post-apocalyptic sub-genre of science fiction. An accident produces a particularly virulent strain of denitrifying bacteria. These bacteria have the effect of removing nitrogen from the soil. In normal circumstance they do no harm but this virulent strain proves to be catastrophic in its effects. It transforms rich farmlands into wastelands.

The novel was clearly set in the near future, an age in which large-scale air transportation has made communication and travel over long distances safe, convenient and rapid. This proves to be humanity’s undoing as it allows the devastating bacteria to colonise one part of the Earth after another. Britain’s grainlands are the first to be affected but soon the food-producing areas of the United States, Canada, Argentina and Australia are similarly ravaged. Humanity faces famine on a scale never before imagined. In fact the famine will be on such a gigantic scale that the survival of civilisation, and even of the human race, seems to be in the gravest peril.

The British government does what all democratic governments do in a crisis. It calls meetings. It arranges conferences. It begins talks. It discuses option. It sets up committees. But in fact none of the options considered has the slightest chance of success, or of preventing the deaths of countless millions.

In this crisis one man emerges who sees clearly what has to be done. His plan seems brutal but it is the only way in which something can be salvaged from the wreckage. Nordenholt is a fabulously wealthy financier who has little interest in finance. His interest is in people, and in what makes them tick, and in the ways that people can be persuaded to do things. He is not interested in power as such, but he is keenly interested in the workings of power. And he is the one man who not only sees what has to be done; he has the energy to carry out his mission.

Some readers have seen Nordenholt as a monster or even a fascist. This is rather unfair. Connington is at pains to explain Nordenholt’s character to us, and Nordenholt is a man of exceptional humanity. He is simply clear-sighted enough to realise that the choice is between saving part of humanity or in letting all of humanity perish. Nordenholt is a man who likes humanity too much to stand by and see it destroyed completely. The steps which need to be taken involve serious ethical dilemmas but Nordenholt’s plans at least offer some hope.

Nordenholt’s plans encounter countless obstacles. The denitrifying bacteria leaves the soil useless. The nitrogen can be replaced but the process requires enormous amounts of power. It is doubtful if enough power can be produced over a long enough period to produce enough of the precious nitrogenous mixture that offers the only hope that there will be a harvest the following year. There is a faint ray of hope though - the brilliant physicist Henley-Davenport has been working on a project to unleash the practically unlimited power of the atom. If he can succeed then atomic power might produce the power that is needed.

While it’s a gripping story of survival the core of the book lies in the moral dilemmas faced by the leaders of the survivors. Survival can only be achieved by making decisions that seem impossibly brutal. And is survival worth the cost if the cost is the end of civilisation as we know it? This is a story of hope but also a story of tragedy. The tragedy is not limited to the deaths of millions; it also embraces the death of a whole way of life.

If he is to save the remnant of humanity Nordenholt will need to assume a degree of power that will make him a dictator. A democratic government simply will not and could not make the decisions that are necessary. This assumption of dictatorial, powers is necessary but there is a price to pay, and Nordenholt will have to pay the price as well. Can a man achieve unlimited power without being corrupted, and without losing his own humanity? In 1923, with the horrors of the First World War still a vivid memory and with the age of the dictators already beginning in Italy and Russia these questions assumed immense importance. Many intellectuals persuaded themselves that totalitarianism was both necessary and desirable (and many intellectual today still seem to share those beliefs). Connington was at least able to see the inevitable consequences and to understand the price that would have to be paid. Connington understood the realities of power and he understood that leaders sometimes have to accept a necessary evil if it is the lesser of two evils. Connington could see the advantages of totalitarianism but he could also see the costs.

Nordenholt’s Million is one of the more interesting early post-apocalyptic science fiction stories, offering a more thorough examination of the social, cultural and political consequences of disaster. Recommended.

The Case with Nine Solutions

J. J. Connington’s The Case with Nine Solutions, published in 1928, is fairly typical of the crime fiction of the 20s although it does go very close to breaking one of the cardinal rules of golden age detective fiction.

Connington (real name Alfred Walter Stewart), was born in Glasgow in 1880 and had a distinguished academic career as a chemist. He is best known as the author of the early science fiction classic Nordenholt's Million, published in 1923. He wrote seventeen crime novels. He died in 1947.

The Case with Nine Solutions has a very intricate plot and a surprisingly high body count - it involves no less than four murders! The first murder is discovered by accident. A Dr Ringwood is called out to a case on a very foggy night and goes to the wrong house by mistake, where he finds a dying man. The man has two gunshot wounds, including a lung would that proves fatal. The Chief Constable, Sir Clinton Driffield (who figures in several other mysteries by Connington), arrives on the scene. The house does not have a telephone so in order to ring for the coroner he has to go to the house next door, where he finds a second body. Ironically this is the house the doctor had been called to.

Sir Clinton and Inspector Flamborough receive a series of mysterious letters that appear to come from an eyewitness to the crimes. The first of these missives leads to the discovery of the third body.

There is a fairly obvious suspect for at least two of the murders but unfortunately for Sir Clinton this suspect could not possibly have committed the third murder, and since the three murders are obviously connected this seems like a fatal objection. And as the investigations proceed it becomes clear that there are several other equally promising suspects. And then comes the discovery of a fourth body. Even more distressing is the possibility that not all the killings are actually murders.

The title is inspired by Sir Clinton Driffield’s method of crime-solving which involves tabulating a series of possible solutions, solutions which involve various permutations of murders, suicides and accidents. Sir Clinton finds that are nine possible permutations.

While Inspector Flamborough is technically in charge of the case it is Sir Clinton who takes the leading role. In fact Flamborough functions as a kind of Dr Watson, allowing Sir Clinton to explain key details of the plot. Poor Flamborough turns out to be something less than a detective of genius. Driffield is very much in the mould of the brilliant detective who sees through the fog of multiple suspects and red herrings and knows who the killer is from a very early stage. But of course both Flamborough and the reader are kept in the dark. Excessively brilliant detectives can sometimes be irritating and Driffield’s habit of pointing out Flamborough’s analytical deficiencies might have that effect on some readers.

As you’d expect from the author’s background chemistry plays a crucial role in the plot. Most of the characters involved in the case work in a chemical research institute and their knowledge of chemistry has an important bearing on their possible guilt.

Connington’s style is fairly straightforward without ever being dull.

The novel ends in a rather more apocalyptic way than is usual in golden age detective fiction.

The plot is tied together cleverly enough but the bending, if not the outright breaking, of the cardinal rule mentioned earlier might be disapproved of by golden age purists. On the whole though it’s fairly entertaining and certainly worth a look.

J.J. Connington’s The Brandon Case (The Ha-Ha Case)

J.J. Connington’s The Brandon Case (AKA The Ha-Ha Case), one of his Sir Clinton Driffield mysteries, was published in 1934.

Alfred Walter Stewart (1880-1947) was a distinguished scientist who wrote a notable science fiction novel and quite a few mysteries featuring either Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield or Superintendent Ross.

Jim Brandon arrives at the Edgehill estate to have a serious talk with his brother Johnnie. Their father inherited the vast Burling Thorn estate and an enormous income and ended up with even more enormous debts. He then borrowed more money to pay the debts. The only way out is to sell Burling Thorn but they can’t because it’s entailed. There is a way around the problem but it will need Johnnie’s co-operation. Unfortunately Johnnie is both foolish and stubborn and he’s now fallen under the influence of a scoundrel by the name of Laxford. What really matters is that Johnnie is about to come of age and when that happens the tangled affairs of the Brandon estate are likely to reach crisis point.

To add to the difficulties there seems to be something going on between that young fool Johnnie and Mrs Laxford, a young pretty woman with hot eyes.

Jim was met at the station by Una Menteith, another pretty young woman living at Edgehill whose position there is not at all clear. Also staying at Edgehill is a somewhat disreputable chap named Hay.

A decision is made to go out and shoot some rabbits and a terrible accident occurs. Inspector Hinton is by no means happy with the circumstances, particularly the bloodstain situation. The coroner’s jury brings in a verdict of accidental death but Hinton feels that the matter is worth further investigation.

Inspector Hinton is a competent policeman whose main fault is that he’s clever, but not quite so clever as he thinks he is. He is also ambitious. He is very keen indeed to become Superintendent Hinton. A big case is what he needs and he has a feeling he may have found one.

The financial tangle is much more complex than it seemed to be and the more the inspector finds out the more complex it becomes.

There’s also the matter of the escaped lunatic, a man who may at times be quite sane and even sharp-witted and at other times have no idea what is going on and no memory of anything that has happened.

There’s no impossible crime angle to this affair. The crime, if there was a crime, has a number of very straightforward very plausible solutions. The difficulty is the number of entirely plausible explanations and the number of entirely plausible explanations.

Inspector Hinton, whatever his faults, is thorough and he is also more than willing to make use of Beauty’s formidable private intelligence-gathering service. Beauty is in fact a Miss Tugby, a servant with an extraordinary capacity for finding out about other people’s private affairs. Beauty provides the inspector with some extremely interesting pieces of information.

Sir Clinton Driffield does not make his appearance until very late in the story. This is also the case in some of the other J.J. Connington mysteries. Driffield is the Chief Constable and of course Chief Constables do not usually intervene in any direct manner in their subordinates’ investigations, unless the subordinate manages to make a complete hash of things or runs into a brick wall. Fortunately for Connington’s readers that is not an uncommon occurrence.

There’s some fascinating stuff in this tale about the extraordinary complexities that could arise when an estate was entailed, especially when a curious custom known as borough-English is involved. This is a legal custom that in some circumstances gives the youngest son the rights that would normally devolve upon the eldest son.

It’s not overly difficult to figure out the identity of the murderer. The real interest lies in how it was done (it was much more complicated than initial appearances suggested), and in the much more difficult problem of proving it. Motives turn out to be more complex than they seemed to be as well. Inspector Hinton does plenty of detecting, sometimes to good effect. He does most of the very necessary routine investigating. Of course Sir Clinton Driffield is the one who finally solves the problem. He provides the equally necessary brilliant insights into what the clues really mean.

All in all a very satisfying detective novel. Highly recommended.

John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes

John Wyndham (1903-1969) had been writing professionally since 1925 and had a couple of science fiction novels published in the 1930s (including Stowaway to Mars) but it was not until  The Day of the Triffids was published in 1951 that he achieved real success. He followed The Day of the Triffids with another post-apocalyptic novel, The Kraken Wakes, in 1953.

In fact all four of Wyndham’s best known novels (The Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos) are either post-apocalyptic or at least deal with deadly threats to the survival of civilisation. All four approach these themes in slightly different ways. In The Kraken Wakes the menace comes from beneath the sea.

Or at least it might come from beneath the sea. And then again, it might come from the stars. This novel relies for its terror on the sheer alienness of the threat - an unseen enemy whose motivations remain horrifyingly inexplicable. Wyndham understands that it is best not to try to explain the nature of the threat. If the danger is comprehensible it can be faced but in this case the danger remains stubbornly beyond the powers of anyone to understand.

It starts in a very low-key way. Radio documentary broadcasters Michael and Phyllis Watson are on their honeymoon, on board the ocean liner Guinevere. A strange red light appears in the sky, followed by several more. It’s decidedly odd and rather mysterious but intriguing rather than frightening. They learn that these red lights have been seen a number of times in various places, but always at sea. It at least provides them with material for a radio spot.

Then ships start to disappear. They are steaming in calm seas and there are no explosions. They simply sink, and do so within a matter of a couple of minutes. It gradually becomes apparent that the sinkings only occur in very very deep water. There is no obvious connection between the strange red lights in the sky and these unexplained maritime disasters although it does vaguely occur to Michael Watson that two sets of odd unexplained incidents, one following not long after the other, might be too much of a coincidence.

There is worse to come. Much worse. It takes a long while for the public (and even longer for the government) to accept that humanity is at war. At war with mysterious forces from the depths of the deepest ocean, implacable and inscrutable. And it increasingly appears to be a war that humanity is likely to lose, with a very real danger of civilisational collapse.

Wyndham is usually regarded as being a writer very concerned with the likelihood of the disappearance of a traditional English way of life that he loved very much. Certainly his heroes tend to be rather ordinary Englishmen and the action is usually set in a rather idyllic part of the countryside (in The Kraken Wakes the hero and his wife spend most of their time living in a cottage in Cornwall). 

There are however a couple of things that stand out very clearly in this novel that are often overlooked in discussions of Wyndham’s writing. It’s extraordinary the extent to which Wyndham anticipated the survivalist movement. In both The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes those who survive the initial disasters form themselves into tight-knit self-sufficient communities and they must defend those communities from those less provident individuals who threaten to swamp them. And they defend those communities with guns. In the post-apocalyptic worlds of John Wyndham anyone not prepared to arm themselves with guns has no chance of long-term survival. In The Kraken Wakes Phyllis Watson even makes an impassioned speech on the rights of the people to have guns with which to defend themselves, and the wickedness of the government in trying to restrict gun ownership. It’s a point of view one doesn’t quite expect from an English author writing in 1953.

The novel is also absolutely scathing in its condemnation of the incompetence, short-sightedness, stupidity and outright malevolence of British government. It’s interesting to compare this novel to an earlier British post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, J. J. Connington’s 1923 best-seller Nordenholt’s Million. Connington sees the government as having the role of preserving civilisation in the face of disaster. Wyndham on the other hand portrays government as not merely useless in such a crisis, but as a positive hindrance. So it is quite possible to interpret The Kraken Wakes as a pro-gun libertarian novel. Perhaps it’s the fact that Wyndham’s style is so English and so cosy that has led people to overlook the novel’s more startling features.

In this novel Wyndham also displays an extraordinary cynicism towards democracy in general, another feature of his fiction that is generally overlooked.

The Kraken Wakes is a story in which the apocalypse creeps up on civilisation very slowly. At first, and for several years, there seems to be no real danger at all. Then the danger becomes more real, but still strictly limited, nothing to panic about. It goes from there to being a considerable menace but it still seems very unlikely that civilisation itself could be threatened in any way. Years pass before the threat becomes existential. This is an unusual approach for a post-apocalyptic novel but it’s highly effective.

Wyndham also, thankfully, avoids the dreary cliché of having humanity responsible for its own demise. 

The Kraken Wakes has been somewhat overshadowed by The Day of the Triffids and The Midwich Cuckoos and oddly enough (given Wyndham’s immense popularity as a science fiction writer) has never been adapted for either film or television. Its low-key slow-burn approach makes it an interestingly different kind of post-apocalyptic novel but it’s one that is well worth seeking out. Highly recommended.

best vintage crime reads of 2015

I read 36 crime novels this year. All of them would I think qualify as golden age detective fiction. Oddly enough I did not read a single hardboiled crime novel. This may reflect a gradual change in my tastes - the hardboiled style appeals to me less than it once did.

The publication dates of the books I read range from 1894 to 1958. I have tried reading modern crime fiction but mostly it just doesn’t do anything for me and these days I try to confine myself to reading stuff that I’m going to like - or at least to books that there’s a good chance I’ll like.

Picking my ten best reads of the year was tricky, as always. Here’s my list. They’re in publication date, not order of merit. I’ve included links to my reviews.

Freeman Wills Crofts, Sir John Magill’s Last Journey (1930)

J. Connington, The Two Tickets Puzzle (1930)

Anthony Abbot, About the Murder of the Circus Queen (1932)

S. Van Dine, The Kennel Murder Case (1933)

Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Sulky Girl (1933)

Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr), The Plague Court Murders (1934)

Ronald A. Knox, Double Cross Purposes (1937)

Rufus King, Murder Masks Miami (1939)

Clyde B. Clason, Dragon’s Cave (1940)

Christopher Bush, The Case of the Second Chance (1946)

If I had to pick one outstanding title from the list it would have to be Sir John Magill’s Last Journey.

my favourite reads in 2016

These were the vintage pop fiction novels that most impressed me in the past year, with links to my reviews.

First off the best detective novels I read in 2016:

Freeman Wills Crofts, Mystery in the Channel (1931)

J.J. Connington, The Boat-House Riddle (1931)

Anthony Abbot, About the Murder of Geraldine Foster (1931)

John Rhode, Dead Men at the Folly (1932)

Christopher Bush, The Body in the Bonfire (1936)

Carter Dickson, The Judas Window (1938)

Miles Burton, Death at Low Tide (1938)

Rex Stout, Some Buried Caesar (1939)

Clayton Rawson, The Headless Lady (1940)

Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Baited Hook (1940)

Hake Talbot, Rim of the Pit (1944)

And then my favourite non-crime reads of the year:

F. Van Wyck Mason, The Branded Spy Murders (1932)

Hammond Innes, The Blue Ice (1948)

Donald Hamilton, The Removers (1961)

Alistair MacLean, Ice Station Zebra (1963)

John le Carré, The Looking Glass War (1965)

Gavin Lyall, Shooting Script (1966)

Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud

The Black Cloud was the first novel by the eminent British astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle. The Black Cloud sold well when it appeared in 1957 and was the beginning of his successful second career as a science fiction writer.

A young Norwegian scientist at Mount Palomar Observatory notices something odd on a series of photographic plates. It’s a cloud, presumably a gaseous cloud. That in itself is not surprising. Such cloud are common. What is surprising is how quickly it’s grown over the course of two weeks. This suggests that the cloud is moving towards our solar system, possibly quite rapidly.

At about the same time a British amateur astronomer also notices something odd - perturbations in the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. Dr Christopher Kingsley makes some calculations based on the amateur astronomer’s findings and the results are startling. He immediately gets in touch with the Americans at Mount Palomar.

The cloud, for it is a gaseous cloud, turns out to be moving very rapidly indeed and directly for our solar system. Further calculations produce results that are not just startling but positively alarming. When it reaches us this cloud will completely block the sun’s rays, possibly for some weeks. The question is what effect this will have on life on Earth. Can such a disaster be survived?

A secret research establishment is established at Nortonstowe in England staffed by top American and British scientists, joined by a Russian astrophysicist and an Australian radio astronomer. Their job is to figure out exactly what is likely to happen and what can be done about it.

This is very hard SF, with quite a bit of maths for those who like that sort of thing. If (like me) you don’t like that sort of thing it doesn’t matter since Hoyle explains things fairly clearly.

Much of the interest in the second third of the book involves political and moral dilemmas, with Kingsley taking what is at times a frightening dispassionate view of the realities of the situation. This is a science fiction impending apocalypse story that reminds me a lot, in its tone, of J.J. Connington’s 1923 classic Nordenholt’s Million which also deals with the possibility of very tough decisions having to be made for the sake of survival.

Things get even more interesting in the final third when Kingsley reaches some astounding conclusions as to the nature of the cloud. It may be intelligent. It may be alive.

If it has intelligence it’s clearly going to be a very different kind of intelligence. This is one of those First Contact stories in which the question arises as to whether any kind of communication can be possible with something so alien. Will it even be possible to know if the cloud is hostile or benign? Does the cloud even recognise that it is dealing with intelligent life? Is the cloud’s survival compatible with human survival? Hoyle handles this aspect of his story extremely well.

The Black Cloud also raises all sorts of questions about the rôle of scientists, scientific ethics and the relationship between science and politics. It could be dangerous if the scientists at Nortonstowe gain too much power but it could also be dangerous if they have too little power. Hoyle handles this aspect of his story in an even more interesting and provocative manner. Hoyle is very cynical about politicians but he’s also somewhat sceptical of scientists who think they understand political and moral issues.

This is high-concept science fiction in the Arthur C. Clarke mould. Hoyle, like Clarke, has limited interest in characterisation although he is slightly more interested in the subject than Clarke. Dr Kingsley is a remarkably intelligent man with some astounding blind spots of which he is entirely unaware. The other characters are really little more than cardboard cut-outs. Which, in this type of science fiction, doesn’t matter at all.

The Black Cloud has some high drama and some genuine tension, it contains some intriguing scientific speculations (as a scientist Hoyle was a bit of a maverick) and some thematic complexity. This is excellent hard SF that doesn’t ignore the human factor. Highly recommended.

A few years after The Black Cloud Hoyle co-wrote the superb BBC science fiction series A for Andromeda, the novelisation of which I’ve reviewed here.

best reads of 2018

These were my favourite reads of 2018. They’re listed by publication date, not in order of merit.

Here’s the list, with links to my reviews.

H. C. Bailey, Mr Fortune Speaking, 1930

J. J.  Connington, The Sweepstake Murders, 1931

Henry Wade, Constable Guard Thyself! 1934

John Dickson Carr, The Burning Court, 1937

C. S. Forester, The Happy Return, 1937

Donald E. Keyhoe, Complete Adventures of Richard Knight vol 1, 1937

John P. Marquand, Think Fast, Mr Moto, 1937

Rex Stout, Black Orchids, 1942

Christianna Brand, Tour de Force, 1955

Leigh Brackett, The Secret of Sinharat, 1964

Gavin Lyall, Midnight Plus One, 1965

Peter O’Donnell, Modesty Blaise, 1965