The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder

Edgar Wallace first introduced his detective Mr J. G. Reeder to the world in his 1924 novel Room 13. Although Mr Reeder played a subsidiary role in the novel the character’s potential was obvious to Wallace and in 1925 he penned a short story collection, The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder, in which this unlikely sleuth would take centre stage.

Mr J. G. Reeder works for the Public Prosecutor. He is a quietly spoken middle-aged man who dresses in a very old-fashioned manner and sports even more old-fashioned whiskers. He is to all outward appearances a harmless and slightly pathetic nonentity. Many members of the criminal fraternity have made the error of taking these outward appearances at face value; all have paid heavily for their mistake. As a Scotland Yard inspector remarks in one of the stories Mr Reeder may look like a frightened rabbit but in reality the animal he most closely resembles is the deadly green mamba. One bite and you’re dead in two seconds.

In his early career Mr Reeder had specialised in the detection of bank robbers and forgers, and more particularly counterfeiters. His appointment to the Public Prosecutor’s office offers him the opportunity to come to grips with a much wider sample of the criminal classes.

Mr Reeder considers himself to have a criminal brain. He know what a criminal is likely to do before the criminal himself is aware of it, and he knows all their weaknesses and the best ways of exploiting them.

The eight short stories in this collection deal with a disappearance at sea that is less innocent than it appears to be, with a Hindu criminal mastermind, counterfeiters, dissipated members of the nobility, embezzlers, a fraudulent scheme for finding sunken treasure and an assortment of gangsters. There are frequent murders, more often than not carried out by unusual and exotic means.

In the 1920s Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) was the reigning king of the thriller writers. His output was staggeringly vast and his sales were, by the standards of the day, astronomical. At one point it was estimated that one in every four books sold in Britain was authored by Edgar Wallace. He was execrated by the critics but he took no heed of such minor annoyances and his books just kept on selling.

While most of Wallace’s books were out-and-out thrillers, this being the genre that brought him his greatest fame, The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder sees him turning his hand to the detective story, with considerable success. His plots are outrageous but cunningly contrived and there is not a single weak story in this collection.

Mr J. G. Reeder is a delightful creation. Despite his mild-mannered appearance he is one of the most intriguing of all fictional detectives. Wallace followed up the success of this collection with two more novels and another short story collection featuring this oddest of sleuths. The character would appear in several movies and in an excellent late 1960s television adaptation of The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder.

Wordsworth have published two of the Mr Reeder novels, Room 13 and Terror Keep, along with the first Mr Reeder short story collection in a volume entitled The Casefiles of Mr J. G. Reeder. This volume represents outstanding value for money.

The Mind of Mr J. G. Reeder is magnificent entertainment from a master story teller and I recommend it very highly indeed.

The Man in the Red Hat

Richard Keverne is one of those writers who, quite successful in their own day, are now entirely forgotten. His real name was Clifford Hosken (1882-1950) and he wrote books under that name as well as under the name Richard Keverne. After military service in the First World War he worked as a schoolteacher and journalist and that is the sum total of the information I have on him.

Keverne was known as a writer of thrillers although it appears that he wrote detective stories as well, although that is merely a surmise on my part based on the fact that the heroes of at least some of his books were policemen, Inspector Mace and Inspector Artifex.

The Man in the Red Hat was published in 1930. A wine merchant named Mark Wickham meets a man named Fanshawe, quite by accident. Fanshawe is about to set off for Asiatic Turkey, apparently in quest of ancient manuscripts. Their conversation turning to painting Fanshawe happens to mention that an elderly aunt of his, a Miss Buckingham, owns a Gainsborough that as far as he knows has not been seen by anyone apart from his aunt for many years. Wickham is extremely fond of 18th century English paintings and expresses a desire to see this picture on the off-chance that it might really be a hitherto unknown work by that renowned artist.

Miss Buckingham is kind enough to invite Wickham to come to her house to see the picture and Wickham is more or less convinced that it really is a Gainsborough. And now slightly odd things start to happen, things that persuade Wickham that he has happened upon something of a mystery. Miss Buckingham suddenly and for no obvious reason gives up her very charming Georgian house and goes to live with Douglas and Una Gaymer. Wickham takes an immediate dislike to the Gaymers. Then Miss Buckingham asks Wickham to sell the painting for her. The transaction that follows arouses Wickham’s suspicions, and these suspicions are further encouraged by something that the old lady’s companion tells him, something that could be construed as having very serious connotations.

Wickham is not a detective, he is merely a wine merchant and not even a very good wine merchant. Nonetheless he finds himself drawn into a situation that will force him to play at amateur detective. He is somewhat reluctant to do so but he has not a shred of evidence that he could take to the police, and yet he feels more and more sure that something sinister is going on. And of course what is really going on turns out to be quite different from Wickham’s initial suspicions.

Keverne unfolds his plot at a rather leisurely pace. This proves to be a strength rather than a weakness. Mark Wickham is an ordinary sort of fellow, not at all the sort of man who becomes involved in extraordinary events. And at first the situation seems merely odd rather than sinister. Wickham is inclined to believe that there is really nothing very serious going on but his curiosity and a strange feeling of responsibility to Miss Buckingham prompt him to probe a little deeper. And as he does so the situation seems more suspicious although it is no doubt merely a case of an elderly and eccentric old woman being taken advantage of. Certainly it could not possibly involve anything more serious, like murder.

Wickham behaves as an ordinary sort of man would behave. He is reluctant to believe that he may have stumbled upon a crime and that the crime might be a very serious one.

Wickham might be ordinary but he has a romantic streak in him. He does not like to see innocent people victimised and he is possessed of a certain doggedness that he himself had never suspected. He certainly had never imagined himself cast in the role of hero. He would be infinitely relieved if he could walk into the nearest police station and hand the matter over to someone better versed in such matters than himself, but since he has insufficient evidence to cause the police to ac he pushes on. Having started on the trail he cannot abandon it.

While this book can perhaps be regarded as a thriller you’d have to be prepared to accept a very broad definition indeed of thriller. It is most definitely not a thriller of the John Buchan-Sapper-Dornford Yates variety. It is more of a low-key mystery thriller (although much more of a mystery than a thriller) with the emphasis on suspense rather than action and derring-do. Its hero is most certainly not remotely in the Bulldog Drummond mould.

Keverne’s style is also much more low-key, in fact closer to the style we associate with the so-called “humdrum” school of detective fiction. That’s not to suggest that Keverne’s writing is in any way dull. He knows how to build suspense gradually but inexorably and his prose is straightforward but pleasing, and he has an ability to sketch in the personalities of minor characters quickly but deftly.

This is a story in which we know the identity of the culprits fairly early on but what we don’t know is exactly what it is they’re up to. Their intentions are clearly criminal but we’re not certain exactly what crime or crimes they’re conspiring to commit.

The Man in the Red Hat is an engaging and generally entertaining story and one has to wonder why its author has been so completely forgotten. My judgment is that, as long as you accept that it’s a mystery rather than a thriller, it’s worth a look if you can find a copy.

Slippery Staircase

English crime writer Edith Caroline Rivett (1884–1959) wrote under the pseudonyms E. C. R. Lorac and Carol Carnac. Slippery Staircase appeared in 1938 under the E. C. R. Lorac banner.

Martia Vannery, the daughter of a famous artist, owns a large Regency house in London. The house has been divided into a number of flats with Martia retaining the ground floor and studio. While a party is in progress in the studio the body of an elderly woman is discovered at the bottom of the staircase leading to her attic flat.

When the police arrive on the scene they find what is apparently a clear-cut case of accidental death. In fact the evidence at the scene appears to make any explanation other than accidental death completely impossible. There’s just one tiny thing bothering Inspector Robarts - the two people who discovered the body gave conflicting evidence about the discovery. This small detail is enough to bring Scotland Yard into the case, and Detective Chief Inspector Macdonald believes that despite the overwhelming evidence in favour of accidental death the case is worth further investigation.

Macdonald is a Scot and a very dogged one. He has infinite patience when it comes to unravelling a complicated case and this case is nothing if not complicated.

This book is a fine example of two of the major obsessions of golden age detective fiction - apparently unbreakable alibis and apparently impossible crimes. The murder method in this case is exceptionally bizarre and unusual. If all this is not enough Lorac also throws in secret staircases!

The breaking of the seemingly air-tight alibis depends on split-second timing. Whether one of the residents of the house arrived home at 3.19pm or 3.20pm becomes an important matter. Macdonald’s unveiling of the murder method involves timing a series of complicated manoeuvres down to the very second.

You might think this obsessing over seconds would stretch credibility a little, and you’d have a point. Nonetheless the plot is most certainly ingenious.

The suspects are an assortment of fairly interesting characters all of whom seem to have something to hide.

Slippery Staircase is an entertaining example of the detective fiction of the golden age and it’s definitely worth a look.

Amelia B. Edwards' All Saints’ Eve

Amelia B. Edwards (1831-1892) was a successful writer of both crime stories and ghost stories, although she was to become even better known as a distinguished Egyptologist. She was also an indefatigable traveller, an obsession that furnished her with the backgrounds for so many stories set in various parts of Europe.

Her writing was admired by Charles Dickens who published many of her stories in All the Year Round, especially in the special Christmas numbers of that journal which featured stories of ghosts and other mysteries.

The stories collected in the Wordsworth volume All Saints’ Eve include stories of both the supernatural and stories of murder and mystery. About half of the stories fit into each of these two categories.

Her ghost stories are, sadly, less than impressive. To stand out amid the countless such stories that were published during the 19th century a ghost story needs to have at least one of four things going for it. It has to surprise the reader, it has to have an atmosphere of dread sufficiently strong to produce genuine chills, it has to be terrifying, or it has to create a feeling of the uncanny - of things that are but that should not be. Alas Edwards’ ghost stories fulfill none of these criteria. They are predictable and commonplace and the pay-offs to these stories invariably fall rather flat. She leads us to believe that something truly strange is going to happen and we are inevitably disappointed by the triteness of her endings. These are routine ghost stories, competently written but still no more than routine.

Her mysteries are not sufficiently mysterious to be particularly interesting and they lack sufficient suspense to be exciting.

The Four-Fifteen Express is one of her most celebrated ghost stories and while it is slightly better than the others included in this volume it still lacks any real impact.

Cain is moderately interesting, a story of a painting with an unfortunate history, but again we are left expecting more than the story delivers.

A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest has only a very faint suggestion of the supernatural, or perhaps rather we should say the paranormal, and it is one of the few stories that manages to generate some tension. It is also one of the few stories in this collection which actually makes us fear for the safety of the protagonist, and this is perhaps one of the gravest flaws of the other stories - we never feel any real suspense, any sense of menace. It’s a reasonably successful story.

A Railway Panic and The Guard-Ship at the Aire are all too typical in that they really don’t go anywhere. There’s perhaps some moderate excitement but there’s really nothing there to compel the reader’s interest.

The title story is the most ambitious tale here and it’s possibly the most successful, its advantage being that it has an actual plot that leads somewhere and it has a few twists to keep things interesting.

Whether you’re a fan of ghost stories or of mysteries you’re really quite safe to give this collection a miss. Wordsworth have done a splendid job at making the works of many unfairly forgotten writers available to the modern reading public at ludicrously cheap prices. There are many collections from this publisher in their Tales of Mystery and the Supernatural series that are much more worthy of the reader’s attention than this one.

On the while, disappointing and not really worth seeking out.

Death Walks in Eastrepps

Francis Beeding’s detective novel Death Walks in Eastrepps was published in 1931. At one time it apparently had a huge reputation although it is now almost forgotten. Or at least it was forgotten until Arcturus re-issued it in paperback in their Crime Classics series in 2011).

Francis Beeding was the pseudonym used by Hilary Aidan Saint George Saunders (1898-1951) and John Palmer (1885-1944). They wrote both thrillers and detective novels under this name, their best-known book being probably The House of Dr. Edwardes which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock as Spellbound.

Death Walks in Eastrepps is a serial killer novel, although the killer does not conform to modern ideas of what motivates such murderers. The murderer could however be described as a psychopath.

Eastrepps is a quiet seaside resort town in England. It is always busy in the tourist season but nothing really notable has ever happened there. That is until the Evil arrived. The Evil is the name given by the press to an unknown killer who appears to murder without any comprehensible motive. The first victim is Mary Hewitt, the sister of a retired army officer, Colonel Hewitt. No-one can imagine any plausible motive for the slaying, and when another corpse turns up the case seems even more confusing, there being no obvious link between the two victims even though there is little doubt that they were killed by the same person.

At length the local police have to confess themselves baffled and the Chief Constable calls in Scotland Yard. Detective Chief Inspector Wilkins is put in charge of the investigation.

The plot also encompasses a fifteen-year-old fraud case, dual identities, an insane nobleman and an unusual murder weapon.

Although it deals with what would later be described as a serial killer the structure follows the pattern expected in golden age detective fiction. It adheres to the generally accepted rules that governed the fair-play mystery novel of its era, although it does go rather close to breaking one of the rules. I will not indicate which rule as that would involve a major spoiler.

I had a number of issues with this book. Most notably I had reservations about the ending, and about the motive of one of the chief suspects.

This is one of those golden age detective tales that includes a lengthy epilogue in which the killer’s methods and motivations are explained in detail. I have no problems with a brief rundown of the killer’s activities that clarifies one or two minor points but I’m always suspicious when the explanations turn out to be lengthy and detailed. It gives me the impression that perhaps the author is not entirely confident that readers will find his plotting and his choice or murderer convincing or plausible. In this particular case I had such concerns the moment the identity of the murderer was revealed and the subsequent lengthy explanations only served to make my concerns more acute.

The other problems I had with this novel are largely a matter of personal preference. I have never been particularly fond of serial killer stories and I am a trifle suspicious of crime stories with a body count as high as this boasts. But I emphasise that this is entirely a matter of personal taste and should not be taken as a criticism.

This novel also includes a rather protracted courtroom scene. I personally felt it was a little too protracted.

Those reservations aside Death Walks in Eastrepps is not entirely lacking in entertainment value, and the plot is certainly ingenious enough.

The authors also wrote thrillers under the Francis Beeding pseudonym and I do intend to attempt one of these thrillers. I suspect that their general approach might be more suited to this genre.

Conan Doyle's Sir Nigel

Sir Nigel, published in 1906, was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s prequel to his very successful 1891 historical novel, The White Company.  Sir Nigel tells us of the early career of Sir Nigel Loring.

Conan Doyle believed that his historical novels represented his best work and as much as I adore Sherlock Holmes I’m inclined to agree with him.

In 1349 England had just endured the ravages of the Black Death. Young Nigel Loring is the only son of the celebrated knight Sir Neil Loring. The Loring family has fallen on hard times. Nigel lives with his mother and a handful of servants. A large proportion of the family estates has been lost to the neighbouring Waverley Abbey in a series of disastrous law suits. Not surprisingly Nigel nurses a considerable resentment towards the monks.

The conflict between the Abbey and the Loring family takes a strange and fateful turn when Nigel saves the life of one of the Abbey’s servants. As a reward he is given the very horse, an immensely large and powerful horse, that has just gone close to killing the servant. The sacrist of the Abbey, Brother Samuel, believes the horse to be so wild that no man could possible ride it. Nigel Loring, despite his slight stature, is a young man of exceptional spirit and courage. He tames the horse. Nigel now has a horse that would serve as a very fine war horse.

Nigel yearns to follow in the footsteps of his distinguished ancestors and to make a name for himself as a brave soldier and a noble knight. Unfortunately, although he has a horse, he has no armour and no money to buy a suit of armour. Without armour he can scarcely hope for an opportunity to join the wars in France and fulfill his ambitions, but fate is about to step in. As an indirect consequence of his quarrel with the Abbey he makes the acquaintance of Sir John Chandos, the most renowned knight in England (who also happens to be a most skillful military leader). Nigel is off to the wars as Sir John’s squire.

Nigel is accompanied by the archer Samkin Aylward, an archer of formidable skill who is destined to be a faithful follower and lifelong friend to Nigel.

Before leaving England Nigel vows to perform three deeds of honour in order to prove himself worthy of the love of Mary, the daughter of a jovial but aged knight

Nigel’s sea journey to France proves to be very eventful indeed, involving the pursuit of a French spy and an encounter with a Spanish fleet. It also offers Nigel the opportunity to perform the first of the three noble deeds in furtherance of his vow.

Many further adventures await Nigel in France. The glorious English victory at Crecy in 1346 had by no means diminished the military strength of France and the Hundred Years War had scarcely begun. The adventures of the young squire will find their culmination at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, the epic victory won by a half-starved and heavily outnumbered English army commanded by Edward, the Black Prince.

Historical novels of the 19th century had all too often focused entirely on the glory and adventure of medieval warfare whilst ignoring the brutalities and cruelties that were part and parcel of medieval life. The writers of our own day who attempt historical fiction in a medieval setting tend to make the opposite mistake, concentrating on the brutality whilst ignoring the virtues of the medieval period. Conan Doyle struck precisely the right balance. In the pages of this novel you will certainly find brutality and cruelty, but you will also find honour and indeed chivalry. The people of the Middle Ages did not view the world in a way we view it. Medieval warriors were capable of a ruthlessness that shocks modern sensibilities but they were equally capable of acts of quixotic mercy and humanity that seem equally strange when viewed from the vantage point of the 21st century.

Conan Doyle was (quite rightly) contemptuous of historical novels that, in his words, draw the 20th century and label it the 14th. Unlike modern practitioners of historical fiction Conan Doyle wanted to capture the spirit of the 14th century. He did not want his medieval Englishmen to behave like contemporary Englishmen. Whether he succeeded in truly making his characters faithful to the reality of the Middle Ages there is no question whatsoever that he succeeded in making them very unlike the people of his own day.

There is equally no question of his ability to write magnificently entertaining historical novels. Sir Nigel is absolutely packed to the rafters with action and adventure, and with colourful and immensely fascinating characters.

Conan Doyle was one of the greatest writers of historical fiction of his own or any other age. I cannot think of anyone who has excelled him at this art and I consider myself to be reasonably well read in the genre.

Sir Nigel is very highly recommended indeed.

The Chief Witness

Herbert Adams (1874-1958) was an English writer of detective stories during the so-called golden age. He was successful enough to have had around fifty titles published but is nowadays all but forgotten. He has fallen into such obscurity that I have been able to find out almost nothing about him.

I can’t even find out for certain when this novel was first published. I’ve seen it attributed in different sources to 1935, 1939 and 1940. There’s no reference to contemporary events in the story, something that might have given a clue to the actual date.

The Chief Witness is one of a series of novels he wrote featuring amateur detective Roger Bennion and it appears to have been one of his most highly regarded works.

It’s certainly based on a very clever idea. Solicitor Alexander Curtis is found in his home, dead from a gunshot wound. As he fell he knocked over and broke a clock. The time at which the clock stopped gives the police the exact time of death - two minutes to eleven at night.

Some miles away the body of Alexander Curtis’s brother Frederick is found, also dead from a gunshot wound. As he fell his wristwatch was smashed, thus establishing the exact time of his death - two minutes to eleven on the same night.

That’s the sort of coincidence that Roger Bennion is not prepared to accept. The police are  at first inclined to suspect suicide in both cases but quickly realise they are dealing with murder in both cases. They are not happy about the coincidence either but they soon find themselves with very strong suspects for both killings. The trouble is that if these suspects are guilty there would seem to be no connection whatsoever between the two crimes. Roger Bennion is absolutely convinced that there must be a very strong connection indeed between the two killings. In fact he is certain that both brothers must have been slain by the same murderer or murderers. That of course raises the question of the apparently simultaneous nature of the murders but Bennion is confident he can find a solution to explain that.

What follows is a fairly typical golden age detective story but the gimmick of the two simultaneous murders is clever and it’s cleverly worked out.

Roger Bennion isn’t a particularly colourful detective but at least he isn’t irritating. You could say much the same for Adams’ prose - it isn’t fancy but it gets the job done.

On the whole The Chief Witness is a rather entertaining read, and it’s a book I can recommend to fans of golden age crime novels.