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

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Second Chance (1946), 31st entry in the Ludovic Travers series, is best described as an "in-between" novel for more reasons than one.

The Case of the Second Chance is a post-WWII detective novel, a time of austerity, social malaise and imperial decay, during which Bush was in the process of transforming the series by turning Travers from an amateur detective with police credentials into an independent private investigator – a process that started in The Case of the Murdered Major (1941). A move partially inspired by the rise of the American hardboiled detective and partially in genuine admiration for writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The Case of the Corner Cottage (1951) reportedly reads like a homage to Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930) and one of the reasons why Travers had been dubbed the "English Marlowe" during the fifties.

The Case of the Second Chance takes place over a three-year period beginning when Travers returns to London on a fourteen day leave from the army in October 1942. During this time, Travers still fulfilled his role as special consultant to Scotland Yard's Superintendent George Wharton, "considered sufficiently useful to act as George's factotum," but, upon his return, was "feeling regretful that there was nothing doing in the murder line." A dangerous thing to say or even think in a detective story, because the next morning Wharton calls him with the news that Charles Manfrey has been killed.

Charles Manfrey was a holdover of "the great days of the actor-manager" and "not too nice a character, so we've gathered," who handed out motives like they were business cards and counted plenty of enemies among his acquaintances. So more than enough potential suspects and motives to go around, but there are complications and peculiar features to the case. Why was Manfrey wearing a thin summer coat in a stone cold room and what happened to his other coat? Who was the man the cook and secretary overheard having "a fine old row" with Manfrey in his room? Why does every promising suspect turn out to have a watertight alibi? And that's not all. Travers observes to Wharton they're dealing with actors, "people used to acting and playing parts," who are unlikely "to make any slips." Prophetic words as the fourteen days come and go without an arrest or even an idea who could have delivered the fatal blow. So the investigation comes to an end and the Manfrey case is filed as unsolved.

The story picks up again three years later, in 1945, when the war has ended and Travers finds himself in-between jobs. Travers retired from his position as special consultant to go into the private detective business with Wharton, but Wharton won't be freed up until the end of the years and is spending time at Bill Ellice's Broad Street Detective Agency – a discreet, highly regarded agency they want to buy. Ellice has just been handed a blackmail job and is more than glad to have Travers' expert opinion on his prospective client and her story, but, after eavesdropping on the interview, it comes to light the client was someone who figured in the Manfrey murder case. Travers suddenly realized they were "handling dynamite." But decides to keep that information from Ellice, until he has satisfied "the itch to know just a little bit more." And carefully approach a second chance to bring Manfrey's killer to justice. Not before another murder adds one last complication to their investigation.

The Case of the Second Chance is fascinating, not only as a transitional novel, but as a snapshot of that years-long process with Travers going from still being a special consultant in 1942 to making his first, tentative steps as an independent investigator once the war had ended. Bush had began to trim down his plots ("we've broken better alibis than his") and Americanizing his storytelling in earnest. For example, Travers has a scrap and takes one on the chin from someone Wharton refers to as his "pugilistic friend" or one of the female characters frankly telling she could have had an acting career had she taken one of the "short cuts" ("...she hadn't been prepared to take them"). I can't imagine a line like that cropping up in one of Bush's mysteries from the 1920s or '30s. On the other hand, Travers speaks several times directly to the reader in a-challenge-to-the-reader or had-i-but-known manner ("maybe by now you've satisfied yourself that you really do know both how Manfrey was killed and the one who killed him"). That would have been suited for earlier novels like The Perfect Murder Case (1929), Dead Man Twice (1930) or The Case of the April Fools (1933).

So it rather regrettably and disappointing that such an interesting novel depicting the turbulent upheavals in both the world and the series itself had to settle for an exceptionally uninspired plot. Not that the plot is actually bad or ghostly thin, but the plots feels tired, labored and ultimately hoary with the ending, or the moment when all the plot-strands get pulled together left me unimpressed. A shame as The Case of the Second Chance has everything to craft a good, old-fashioned and first-rate detective novel, but finished as one of Bush's second-tier mysteries. I still think it's a shade better than other second-tier novels, such as The Case of the Seven Bells (1949) or The Case of the Fourth Detective (1951), which will no doubt please fans of Bush, Travers and Wharton. But if you're new to the series and looking for a good detective yarn, I recommend starting at an earlier or later point in the series. I consider The Case of the Missing Minutes (1936) and The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939) to be among Bush's Golden Age treasures and he rebounded in the fifties with novels like The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) and The Case of the Russian Cross (1957). More importantly, I recommend giving this still criminally underrated series a try. Even if this particular example doesn't make for a very convincing case.

The Case of the Burnt Bohemian (1953) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's 42nd Ludovic Travers novel, The Case of the Burnt Bohemian (1953), takes place during the period in the series when Travers juggled between his positions as chairman of the Broad Street Detective Agency and, what they call, "an unofficial expert" to Scotland Yard – whenever Chief Superintendent George Wharton has a case requiring more than routine police work. A specialist with an agile mind "to theorise and suggest." Bush neatly used this juggling between positions to present Travers with two separate, apparently unconnected cases that quickly turn out to be closely intertwined.

The Case of the Burnt Bohemian begins on a routine office day for Travers at the Broadstreet Agency when a prospective client calls with a request somewhat outside the daily routine.

Dr. Arthur Chale, a psychiatrist, believes his life is in danger ("we deal with all sorts of queer people, you know") and wants to know whether the agency can "supply some sort of bodyguard." Travers advises Chale to go to the police for protection, "it's their business to do the job for nothing," but he doesn't want publicity nor name the person who's threatening him – agreeing to discuss the matter personal the following day. This strange phone call does not sit well with Travers who immediately begins to dig around for background information on the psychiatrist, which "produced a story of blackmail, hypnotism, collaboration with Germans and a probable shooting against a wall" ("all the ingredients needed, in fact, for a popular thriller"). That's only one-half of his problem. The other half comes when Wharton calls to ask him come to a place called Borden Walk in Chelsea.

A reclusive, completely unknown painter, Vandyke Sindle, is found stabbed to death and badly burned in the north top studio of the Chelsea flat in Borden Walk. Sindle was found lying face down in a little bonfire, but the fire was discovered in time to prevent it from consuming the whole place. And the body. However, Sindle's back was badly burned with his face and hands entirely destroyed ("even the dental plates had gone"). So was the fire started to conceal the cause of death or the victim's identity? Travers then begins to uncover links between the case of the so-called nervous psychiatrist and the burnt bohemian cemented when a second murder comes to light and Chale failed to meet his appointment. A problem as pretty as it's tricky!

I recounted in past reviews how Bush pivoted from the traditional, 1930s British whodunits to the realism of the American hardboiled school, of Raymond Chandler, slowly transforming Travers from an amateur detective into a private investigator – who narrates his own cases. This transition was not without some rough spots or growing pains resulting in a few poorly plotted novels (e.g. The Case of the Fourth Detective, 1951), but Bush rebounded around the mid-1950s. While the plots were trimmed down affairs compared to the elaborately-plotted 1930s titles, the plots began to resettle along classical lines (e.g. The Case of the Three Lost Letters, 1954) and Bush appeared to draw on the detective stories he probably enjoyed reading earlier in the century. The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956) feels closer to the work of J.J. Connington and R. Austin Freeman than his own work from the '20s and '30s. You can say practically the same about The Case of the Burnt Bohemian with the emphasis on the problem of blurred, destroyed or faked identities rather than picking alibis apart. The term alibi is probably uttered fewer than a half dozen times, but the problem of identification, obscured pasts and possible motives offer the two detectives with plenty of material to check up on or theorize about. Props to Bush for revealing that one “twist” well before the ending, because that possibility should be gnawing away at every reader at that point. So instead of trying to draw out a cheap surprise, Bush used it to send Travers and Wharton back to the drawing board to start again from scratch.

The Case of the Burnt Bohemian is an engrossing, fairly clued and cleverly constructed detective novel, but even more than that, I enjoyed seeing Travers and Wharton back together again – both of whom can be counted among my favorite detective characters. When this series and the genre was its height, Bush nailed the relationship dynamics between the amateur detective and professional policeman perfectly with Travers and Wharton. Travers even gets upstaged a couple of times by the theatrical Wharton to show he's no Lestrade. Travers describes their collaborations as "a peculiar, haphazard, spasmodic kind of association" in which Wharton ("as Grand Inquisitor") takes care of the routine, while Travers "supposed to have the right kind of manners to interview the right kind of people" and permitted under Wharton's scrutiny to theorize. Travers explains: "if I'm wrong, the theory was mine. If it looks promising, it's ours. If it happens to be a winner, I ultimately discover that it was his." Or, when Travers points out the clues/tells they missed, Wharton nonchalantly responds, "funny you should miss a thing like that."

It's one of the elements making the 1930s and early '40s titles a highlight of both this series and the Golden Age detective story. It's therefore sad to see Bush had obviously grown tired of Wharton and had no more need for him as a character. Travers is even becoming tired of his shenanigans. Bush began to fade him out of the series, before quietly retiring him after his brief appearance in The Case of the Russian Cross (1957). Wharton in these 1950s novels does feel a bit like a relic from the series past, but I'll always appreciate the "Old General" and it was good to see him back again with Travers this late in the game. And tackling a worthy case to boot. Highly recommended to fans of the series.

The Case of the Dead Man Gone (1961) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Dead Man Gone (1961) is the third of the last ten Ludovic Travers mysteries published during the "Dark Age" that came after the abandonment of the Golden Age, known as the Swinging Sixties, during which many of yesteryear's greats penned their lasts – not all of them bowed out gracefully. Curt Evans wrote in his introduction to this last batch of Dean Street Press reprints how Bush's surviving contemporaries struggled to understand and adept to the changes of the post-war world. John Dickson Carr's response to a decade "capable of producing psychedelic psychopaths like Charles Manson" was to "prudently beat a retreat from the present into the pleasanter pages of the past." Christopher Bush and Ludovic Travers, on the other hand, were chameleon-like in adjusting themselves to those changes.

Ludovic Travers stepped out of the murky twenties as a 1930s amateur detective, or special consultant, whose early cases are elaborately baroque, densely-plotted affairs centering on closely-linked murders and unbreakable alibis. Dead Man Twice (1930), Dancing Death (1931) and The Case of the Chinese Gong (1935) are good examples of Bush's baroque period. Over the next few years, Bush matured as a writer and produced some of his finest contributions to the British Golden Age detective novels like The Case of the Missing Minutes (1937) and The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939). This is also the period in the series which introduced the future Mrs. Travers (The Case of the Leaning Man, 1938). But the first radical changes to the series came along with the outbreak of the Second World War. The series went from third-person to first-person narration and Bush began to trim the baroque to create leaner plots and puzzles. While still keeping most of the distinctive elements of the earlier novels. Travers slowly transitioned from a private consultant into a private investigator who would eventually become the head of the Broad Street Detective Agency.

A regrettable side-effect of moving the series into an altered, post-WWII Britain is a very rough, transitional period during the late 1940s and early '50s when the overall quality was severely lacking – e.g. The Case of the Seven Bells (1949) and The Case of the Fourth Detective (1951). Bush rebounded as the fifties moved on and began to write some excellent mystery novels, but sleeker and less ornamental than those he wrote in the 1930s. The complexity usually comes from two, or three, minor cases tightly twisted together (The Case of the Russian Cross, 1957) or the circumstances in which the murder is committed (The Case of the Flowery Corpse, 1956). The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) is Bush's most successful attempt to balance the Golden Age whodunit and the post-war private eye novel.

So the post-1940s Bush novels proved to be more rewarding than their reputation suggested. Just very differently from those 1930s novels. The Case of the Dead Man Gone is a fine example of the differences and similarities between Bush's early and late-period novels. The Case of the Dead Man Gone begins, as usually at this point in the series, when an apparently routine job comes knocking at the door of the Broad Street Detective Agency.

Ludovic Travers had never seen a woman quite like Mrs. Hugh Wilson enter their office and she has a fairly simple, straightforward request. Mrs. Wilson has come on behalf of a relative who couldn't afford to pay a private inquiry firm and wishes the remain anonymous, but wishes to find a man named Richard Sambord. A former music-hall artist, The Great Sambrino, who enjoyed some success with a second-rate Houdini act ("Sambrino never was in the same class as Houdini..."). Ten years ago, Sambord "was sent to prison for some offense or other" and "after that he seems to have disappeared." It does not take long for Travers to learn Sambord served a two-year prison term for manslaughter. However, the task is easy enough and Sambord is quickly traced to the winter quarters of the Granding Circus. While tracking him down, Travers handed out a few business cards specially printed for the occasion, but one of those cards turned up again unexpectedly five days later.

Superintendent Jewle, of Scotland Yard, calls Travers to asks him to immediately come to River Cottage in Ambourne. River Cottage is the private residence of a private investigator, George Peplock, who "had been shot clean through an eye" and the person pulling the trigger "searched the house methodically and burnt every scrap of paper that was incriminating" – leaving everything clean as a whistle. Only overlooking the business card tucked away in a small coat pocket. So how did the card handed out in the Sambord search found its way in the pocket of a dead detective? Travers remarks to Jewle, "the older I get, the less I believe in coincidences." A mighty big coincidence brings another problem, "a fantastic thing," to their attention.

On the night of the murder, a driver was coming down the road near River Cottage and spotted a body lying against the low hedge of one of the gardens. The driver turned around and warned the police, but, when they arrived, "there wasn't a sign of a man." However, the driver who found the man swears he was dead and not stunned or shamming ("I saw plenty of dead during the war"). This is one of many complications along the way like the true role and motives of the client, the possible links to a refugee relief organization, numerous trails leading back to Canada or Canadians and the maddening, possible involvement of a third, unknown man ("...our old enemy, the third man").

If you're familiar with the series, you can probably spot a glimmer of similarity between the murder of Peplock and the disappearing body and those early, 1930s titles plotted around two closely-linked murders/bodies (The Case of the Bonfire Body, 1936). Bush makes it very clear those were different times and how much has changed since then. Travers reflects how in the old days, the days of George Wharton, he had a quasi-official standing, but "the Yard was under new management, so to speak, and those days had gone." To quote the man himself, "all I could do now, to slake that incurable curiosity of mine and insert myself somehow into the case, was to keep my mouth shut and watch which way the wind blew." So the relationship between Travers and the police has completely changed. Travers now often has to weigh the interests of his agency against those of his clients and Scotland Yard. And they don't always play open card with each other ("Jewle didn't want me as an onlooker..."), which only adds to the often complicated position of Travers in these later cases ("...what the poet calls the tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive"). So an entirely different dynamic between the private and official detectives compared to those earlier novels, but then again, that's what Bush was aiming to do.

Another thing that intrigues me about these late-period Bush novels, historically, is the integration of television into everyday life. Travers watches the headline news on television and remarks early on in the story, "I don't look much like the television detective." There are characters involved in the case who were interviewed for a TV show and quite late in the story there's reference to two people questioned by the police, but they are television fans and had it on from five o'clock ("they wouldn't have heard a rocket, let alone a gun"). Ludovic and Bernice Travers watch a pop concert in The Case of the Empty Grave (1961). A very minor, perhaps unimportant, historical detail, but a fascinating one considering the series began in 1926. Years before the first serious experiments and developments in television broadcasting were being made. I should also note here that the earliest known reference to TV can be found in E.R. Punshon's The Bath Mysteries (1936). Bobby Owen is given a tour of a luxury apartment containing an expensive, experimental television set, but it was turned off as nothing was being broadcast at the time. There were only twenty-five years between the throwaway reference in The Bath Mysteries and the beginning of the TV's domination over the living room as shown in The Case of the Dead Man Gone. I thought that was worthy of highlighting, but let's return to the plot.

Well, the plot is a bit of a mixed bag. There are perhaps too many independently moving parts, conveniently coming and fitting snugly together, but nothing too convoluted or stretching credibility beyond all reason – merely a bit of convenient luck in some regards. And one of the characters was a bit too inconspicuous, which made that person obviously involved. I don't think many readers will be puzzled how that person relates to some of the other characters. On the other hand, there were some genuinely clever and inspired bits and pieces to the overall plot (ROT13: yvxr gur oynpxznvyvat fpurzr naq jul gur zheqrerq qrgrpgvir obhtug gur qrgrpgvir ntrapl) or the clever motivation for the two additional murders. I think many of you will agree that using corpses as story padding cheapens any detective story, but Bush handled them with a skilled and experienced hand. I particularly admired the motivation behind the third, last-minute murder. Something you would expect to have turned up a time, or two, before, but struggle to come up with even one other example.

The Case of the Dead Man Gone has a few smudged and imperfections, but, on a whole, a solid late-period Bush title that's still infinitely better than most of what passed for detective fiction at the time. Bush deserves so much more recognition for trying to conserve the essentials of the Golden Age detective story by trimming it down and presenting in a sleek, stylish form that matched the era. Recommended to fans of the series, but people new to Bush and Travers are advised to start at an earlier point in the series. You can only truly appreciate the best of these 1950s and '60s titles, if you're familiar with its Golden Age roots.

A note for the curious: I ended my review of The Case of the Empty Grave that the next stop in the series was going to be back-to-back or twofer review of The Plumley Inheritance (1926) and The Case of the Prodigal Daughter (1968). The first and last title in the series, because like the idea of the historically contrasting the England of the 1920s and '60s. And how much the detective story changed between 1926 and 1968. But decided to do that another time. Maybe before the end of the year.

The Case of the Extra Grave (1961) by Christopher Bush

Earlier this year, Curt Evans broke the devastating news that his friend, "the publisher Rupert Heath of Dean Street Press," died unexpectedly of heart failure on March 6, 2023, aged only 54 – which is no age to die. Rupert Heath's untimely passing also spelled the end for Dean Street Press. It's perhaps cliché to say that the shortest lived stars shine the brightest, but it certainly applies to Heath and DSP as their contribution to the current reprint renaissance can't be overstated.

This renaissance age of reprints began over twenty years ago as the internet provided a new market place to smaller, independent publishers and came to fruition in 2010s. A breakout moment came in 2014 when the British Library reprint of J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White (1937) unexpectedly became a "runaway bestseller." After that, it appeared as if the floodgates were truly opened and the newly founded Dean Street Press had a huge part to play in pushing the reprint trend into a full-blown renaissance. Heath took an industrial approach to bringing obscure or long out-of-print authors back by republishing 5-10 novels at a time. So it took less than a decade to accumulate a catalog of over 500 novels that include the (partially) complete works of writers like Brian Flynn, Robin Forsythe, Ianthe Jerrold, Harriet Rutland and E.R. Punshon. The name that for me will always be synonymous with Dean Street Press is Christopher Bush.

Between 2017 and 2022, Dean Street Press reissued all of Bush's sixty-three Ludovic Travers novels. A series, taken as a whole, possessing the same variation and balance, quantity-quality wise, as the entirety of the DSP catalog as Bush was capable of adjusting with the times – unwittingly creating a microcosm of the changes the genre underwent from the 1930 to the late '60s. Curt Evans wrote in his introduction to the last baker's dozen of reprints that Bush "managed rather better than the Queen of Crime to keep up with all the unsettling goings-on around him, while never forswearing the Golden Age article of faith that the primary purpose of a crime writer is pleasingly to puzzle his/her readers." So the series began as elaborate, lavishly-plotted 1930s detective novels crammed with unbreakable alibis, paired corpses and the occasional impossible crime. During the war, Bush switched the narrative style from third-person to first-person and began trimming the baroque from the plots. This also started Travers transformation from an amateur sleuth to the head of the Broad Street Detective Agency.

Travers completed his transformation into a private investigator in the early 1950s when the series had shed all of its baroque to become genteel private eye novels with sleek, classy plots. Now complications, like murder, arose from ordinary crimes and routine cases like blackmail, theft and missing persons or valuables. The Case of the Russian Cross (1957) is an excellent example from that period, but sometimes you got a novel like The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) that hearkened back to those earlier novels. The subject of today's review tried to combine some of the old and new in its first and second halves.

The Case of the Extra Grave (1961) is Bush's 55th Ludovic Travers novel and my first foray into the 1960s period of the series. A regular client of the Broad Street Detective Agency, John Hill of the United Assurance Agency, asks Travers to investigate a problem with a personal link. Hill's great-uncle used to run a modest, specialized jewelry store, "principally in the antique side of the jewellery trade," which was taken over by his nephew, Julian Matching – who lived under the "dominating influence" of his elderly mother. When his mother died, Julian cut loose from his old life and got married to "the last woman his mother would have picked." Julian met Mary Hyson at Frascoli's Restaurant where she performed as the vocalist for the dance band under her stage name, Moira Delane. The old, stuffy family home, "a Victorian monstrosity," was modernized and refurbished, but there home life was a happy one. This culminated with Moira doping a glass of port one night, packing all her belongings and disappearing with several pieces of antique jewelry valued at several thousand pounds.

So the problem appears to be fairly straightforward, "try to discover the whereabouts of Mrs. Matching and recover the jewellery," but Travers receives information and begins to uncover clues suggesting something else all together. Moira's car is found abandoned near a train station with all of her baggage crammed into the boot and empty, recently filled-in grave is found in the garden. Julian believes the grave was meant for him. And the doped drink was intended to kill him. However, Moira had mastered "the art of fluent lying" and had been involved with that great unknown of the detective story, "X." A lover-confederate who could have nicely stashed her away somewhere, until everything quieted down. And could that lover-confederate be the rising pop singer, Rocky Carlisle?

That plot-thread gave the story a scene that now stands out as it was obviously intended as a sign of the times, but, more than sixty years later, it's quaint and homely. Chapter 9 ("Low-Brow Half-Hour") has the Travers sitting at home in front of the fire and reading about Rocky Carlisle in the Radio Times. So they turn on the television set to watch the pop sensation perform on the B.B.C. to a shrieking audience. I realize this is an incredible minor scene, perhaps not even worthy of highlighting, but it drove home (very simply) how much has changed culturally, technologically and personally since such faraway novels like The Perfect Murder Case (1929) and The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939). Anyway, back to the story.

The first half of The Case of the Empty Grave is concerned with Travers trying to figure out what, exactly, happened to Moira and when, and what, to tell the police in a worst case scenario. I can't even hint at the developments in the second-half, but Bush played on one of his own homespun devices often employed in his 1930s novels (SPOILER/ROT13: gur cnverq pbecfrf zheqrerq jvguva n fubeg crevbq bs rnpu bgure va qvssrerag ybpngvbaf, ohg guvf gvzr, gb nqq n zbqrea gbhpu, vg gbbx n juvyr sbe gur qrpbzcbfvat obqvrf gb or sbhaq). Not nearly as a complicated as in those earlier novels nor used to craft one of those cast-iron alibi, but really liked the false-solution spun out of these developments and discoveries. Sordidly suitable to the times and overall plot. By comparison, the correct solution feels like Bush took the long way round and Travers forcefully ignored a not unrealistic possibility to arrive at a somewhat obvious conclusion. Most of my initial suspicions were on point, but Bush did a credible enough job in drawing attention away and allowing the unfolding story to sneakily fill in the details. Admittedly, the correct solution effectively threw some of the earlier scenes in a different light.

So, on a whole, The Case of the Extra Grave can be summed up as a briskly paced, well-written novel from Bush's twilight years genuinely attempting to do something clever with the plot, but not always with same shinning brilliance as thirty years previously. However, I think you can only truly appreciate Bush's 1950s and '60s mysteries, if you have followed how Travers evolved over the decades. Curt Evans noted in his introduction not all of Bush's colleagues fared as well as he did when it came to staying abreast of the times, "John Dickson Carr, an incurable romantic, prudently beat a retreat from the present into the pleasanter pages of the past" and Agatha Christie's "strivings to understand what was going on around her collapsed into the utter incoherence of Passenger to Frankfurt and Postern of Fate." That makes the series somewhat of a rarity as not every Golden Age detective aged and changed along with the years quite like Travers, which is rare enough, but to do it simultaneously with the style of storytelling and plotting that do not feel out-of-touch is no mean feat. One of the many, many reasons why Christopher Bush is my favorite name to have come out of Dean Street Press. Recommended with the caveat that new readers should begin at a much earlier point in the series.

On a final, semi-related note: the next time I return to this series, I want to tackle The Plumley Inheritance (1926) and The Case of the Prodigal Daughter (1968) either back-to-back or do a twofer review. A first and last detective novels in long-running series tend to be marred by inexperience or wear-and-tear, but The Plumley Inheritance ("this is the England of village cricket, vicars and country gardens") and The Case of the Prodigal Daughter (drugs, pop music and discotheques) sound like a fascinatingly historical bookend to one of the most fascinating series the Golden Age has produced.

The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Dean Street Press

If you're a casual mystery reader who looked at our little niche corner on the internet, you might get the impression that the prevailing belief is that locked room mysteries and impossible crime fiction is the pinnacle of the genre – a final form if you will. That's not true. It's only a small faction of the fandom riding their favorite hobby horse into the ground. I'm perhaps more guilty of riding that hobby horse to pieces than most, but I love a good, old-fashioned or classically-styled detective story and a body in a hermetically sealed room is not a necessity. Even though you don't always get impression from this blog. So let's put the spot light on some classic, non-impossible Golden Age mysteries.

In 2015, Dean Street Press began what seemed, at the time, to be the Herculean task of filling the immense, gaping hole that the still sorely missed Rue Morgue Press left behind. But they have tackled that task head on in an almost industrial way. Not content with simply reprinting one or two titles from a specific writer, DSP turned them out in badges of five or ten at a time. Sometimes even more than that. So in less than a decade, DSP has republished nearly five-hundred Golden Age mystery novels that include the complete works of once obscure or long out-of-print writers like Christopher Bush, E.R. Punshon and Patricia Wentworth. They're currently working on the doing the same for Brian Flynn with Glyn Carr possibly being next in line to go through a round of reprints. But what are some of the best titles DSP brought back from obscurity?

I wanted to do one of these publisher-themed five-to-tries or top 10 lists and initially planned doing a top 10 favorite translations from Locked Room International, but the intention of this post is to take a break from those damned locked room puzzles. So that left me only with Dean Street Press as enough of their reprints have been discussed on this blog to compile a top 10 best favorite reprints. That was easier said than done and had to give my favorite writers a handicap by limiting the list to one entry per author. So no desperate attempts to convince you Christopher Bush's Cut Throat (1932) is not shit, if only you tried to make it through to the end without getting despondent. It appears to have worked. 

 

Top 10 Favorite Reprints from Dean Street Press (in chronological order):

 

The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye (1928) by Brian Flynn 

The ongoing run of Brian Flynn reprints has left me spoiled for choice, but decided to go with the obvious suspect and the 2019 Reprint of the Year Award winner. A case with Flynn's typical Doylean touches as Bathurst investigates a murder involving Royal blackmail and a magnificent, blue-shaded titular emerald. While that might sound like a typical, dated 1920s mystery novel, Flynn provided a solution shining with all the brilliance of the coming decade that makes The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye a classic of the '20s. 

 

The Night of Fear (1931) by Moray Dalton 

This pick is perhaps a little out of season to bring up now, on the tail-end of March, but The Night of Fear is one of the earliest and best country house mysteries at Christmas from this era – in addition to being Dalton's most accomplished detective novel. A well-spun drama that begins during a Christmas party concluding with a game of hide-and-seek in the dark and the discovery of a body, which the police try to pin on the blind Hugh Darrow. But how to prove his innocence? A must read for the December holidays.

 

Murder at Monk's Barn (1931) by Cecil Waye 

“Cecil Waye” was the third, previously unsuspected penname of John Street, better known as “John Rhode” and “Miles Burton,” who wrote four once extremely obscure novels under that name. Three of the four are so-called metropolitan thrillers, but Murder at Monk's Barn is, plot-wise, in the traditional style of his Rhode and Burton mysteries. Where the book differs is the tone and characters. The detectives are a brother-and-sister team, Christopher and Vivienne Perrin, who were a hold over of the 1920s Young Adventures like Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. So while the mysterious shooting of an electrical engineer comes with all plot-technical expertise and ingenuity expected from Street, Murder at Monk's Barn is no humdrum affair as the two Bright Young Things livened up the whole story. 

 

The Case of Naomi Clynes (1934) by Basil Thomson 

A predecessor of the contemporary police procedural and ultimately a very simple, uncomplicated and straightforwardly told story of a crime, which nonetheless succeeded in creating complex and intricate plot-patterns. A plot that excelled with simplistic beauty. More importantly, I remember The Case of Naomi Clynes as a surprisingly warm, human crime story with some decidedly original touches to the ending.

 

The Case of the Missing Minutes (1937) by Christopher Bush 

It has been observed that Christopher Bush was to the unbreakable alibi what John Dickson Carr was to the impossible crime, which makes The Case of the Missing Minutes his version of The Three Coffins (1935). Regardless of what the book title suggests, The Case of the Missing Minutes is not some dry time table or math puzzle. It can actually be counted among Bush's best written, most well-rounded and certainly bleakest of his earlier detective novels with a meticulously put together plot that runs like a Swiss timepiece. 

 

Murder on Paradise Island (1937) by Robin Forsythe 

Some of you probably expected a title from Forsythe's short-lived Algernon Vereker series, like The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933) or The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936), which took an interesting approach to plotting a detective story – spinning a great deal of complexity out the circumstances in which the bodies were found. Murder on Paradise Island is a standalone mystery and has a much lighter touch to the plot, but the backdrop and circumstances the characters find themselves makes it his most memorable contribution to the genre. A cross between Anthony Berkeley's Mr. Pidgeon's Island (1934) and a Robinsonade as a group of survivors of a ship disaster get washed up on the pearly beaches of a desert island in the middle of the Pacific. 

 

Bleeding Hooks (1940) by Harriet Rutland 

Arguably, the best and most deserving title to have been reprinted by DSP as well as my personal favorite of the lot. A pure, Golden Age whodunit set in a Welsh fishing village with an inn catering to fly fishing holidaymakers, but the Fisherman's Rest becomes the scene of murder when the vulgar Mrs. Mumby is found dead with a salmon fly deeply embedded in her hand. The doctor concludes she died of combination of poor health and shock from the wound, but the detective-on-holiday, Mr. Winkley, suspects foul play. There's a neat little twist in the tail. John Norris called the book “something of a little masterpiece.” I agree! 

 

There's a Reason for Everything (1945) by E.R. Punshon 

The return of E.R. Punshon's Bobby Owen series to print also posed a difficulty in picking a favorite, because Punshon allowed his Bobby Owen to age and evolve as a character. And tended to try something different every now and then. So there are differing periods in the series that feel distinct from one another, but decided to go with strongest, most intricately-plotted detective novels. A complex detective story concerning a murdered paranormal investigator in a haunted house, vanishing bloodstains and a long-lost masterpiece by Vermeer. A great demonstration of Punshon's ability to erect and navigate labyrinthine-like plot without getting tied-up in all the numerous, intertwined plot-threads. 

 

The Threefold Cord (1947) by Francis Vivian 

So far, The Threefold Cord still stands as the best written, most ingeniously plotted of Francis Vivian's detective novels I've read to date. Inspector Knollis is dispatched to the village of Bowland to investigate wholesale pet murder at the home of a local and unpopular furniture magnate, Fred Manchester. Someone twisted the necks of the two family pets, a budgerigar and cat, before placing a silken cord loosely around their broken necks – which proved to be a prelude to a gruesome ax murder. Vivian expertly tied the present-day murder to the story of a public hangman who died under mysterious circumstances before the war. Every piece of the puzzle fitted beautifully together to form an inevitable conclusion.

 

The Heel of Achilles (1950) by E. and M.A. Radford 

Edwin and Mona Radford, a mystery writing husband-and-wife team, who specialized in forensic detective stories in the tradition of R. Austin Freeman's Dr. John Thorndyke series occasionally peppered with challenges to the reader (e.g. Murder Isn't Cricket, 1946). Their often tightly-plotted detective stories somehow were all but forgotten until DSP reprinted half a dozen of them in 2019 and 2020. The Heel of Achilles is an inverted mystery with the first-half following the murderer as he executes, what he thinks, is the perfect crime. The second-half brings their detective, Dr. Manson, to the scene who begins to laboriously poke holes into the killer's supposedly watertight plot. A cold, impersonal examination of a crime that meshed very well with the intimate and personal opening half depicting the murderer and his crime. A genuine classic of the inverted mystery.

The Case of the Treble Twist (1958) by Christopher Bush

Christopher Bush's The Case of the Treble Twist (1958) is the 51st mystery novel in the Ludovic Travers series and the first title from the last consignment of Dean Street Press reprints, which began in 2017 with the extremely obscure, long out-of-print The Plumley Inheritance (1926) and concluded in 2022 with The Case of the Prodigal Daughter (1968) – counting sixty-three novels in total in addition to a standalone thriller (The Trail of the Three Lean Men, 1932). I haphazardly skipped through about half of the series and actually wanted to return to an earlier point in the series like The Case of the Three Strange Faces (1933) or The Case of the Leaning Man (1938). Something about The Case of the Treble Twist caught my attention.

This last baker's dozen of Bush reissues is introduced by our very own in-house genre historical, Curt Evans, who wrote how "the sun finally begin to set on that storied generation" of the genre's Golden Age as the 1960s began to dawn on the horizon. And the last remaining, half-dozen survivors of that generation tried to adjust or adept as the world around them "strayed farther from the whimsically escapist death as a game aesthetic of Golden Age of detective fiction."

John Dickson Carr retreated into the mists of time to set "his tales in bygone historical eras where he felt vastly more at home," while Agatha Christie "made a brave effort to stay abreast of the times" (e.g. The Third Girl, 1966) before "her strivings to understand what was going on around her collapsed into the utter incoherence" – e.g. Passenger to Frankfurt (1970) and Postern of Fate (1973). Christopher Bush turned out to be the most adaptable of his generation and he saw the writing on the wall as early as the 1940s. The Case of the Murdered Major (1941) shifted the series narrative style from third-person to first-person and Travers became the permanent narrator in the next book, The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942). So began the transformation of Travers from a typical, British amateur detective to an Americanized licensed private eye, which was a process not without some growing pains as the elaborately baroque plotting, time-linked murders and unbreakable alibis were phased out or toned down to make way for leaner, slightly more realistic storytelling, characterization and plotting. However, Bush carried on "the Golden Age article of faith that the primary purpose of a crime writer is pleasingly to puzzle his/her readers" as novels like The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954), The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956) and The Case of the Russian Cross (1957) can attest.

So a 1950s Christopher Bush novel titled The Case of the Treble Twist, published in the US simply as The Case of the Triple Twist, caught my attention. When the introduction promised Bush's "most ingeniously contrived cases from the Fifties, full of charm, treacherous deception and, yes, plenty of twists, including one that is a real sockaroo," I decided to move it to the top of the pile.

Ludovic Travers, director of the Broad Street Detective Agency, opens the story with remarking, "there was something unique about the Case of the Treble Twist" as "it isn't often one gets a preview of a case or hovers round its fringes four years before it breaks." But that's what happened. Four years ago, "on a dirty night of October," Travers bumps into a very good friend, Chief-Inspector Jewle, who looked worried as he has a string of jewel robberies on his plate and the police barely has a clue how the culprits disposed of the loot – except a whisper or two about "a really high-class fence." On the other hand, Jewle has a potential suspect, Harry Tibball, who runs a restaurant and popular gym in Soho, which must have cost him a packet and his story of getting lucky on the race track smells fishy. Nothing either the police or Inland Revenue could disprove. So they decide to pay Tibball's establishments a visit and, years later, what happened there would flash across the mind's eye of Travers "as if a film of that evening had miraculously been run off," but the two-chapter prologue doesn't end there.

Several months later, Jewle calls Travers to tell him about a recent robbery, "one of those wages snatches," but the handkerchief obscuring one of the robber's faces slipped and was recognized as Tibball's general factotum, Frank Conward. Only problem is that has an alibi provided by his employers daughter, Gloria. But the case apparently came to an unexpected close the Elmhurst robbery. Louis Speer is an Italian-born, naturalized British jeweler who came to England following Mussolini's rise to power to continue his "modest but high-class manufacturing business," which often brought him to mainland Europe to buy stones. Tibball and Conward knew Speer had been in Antwerp and expected him to bring back a parcel of stones. So they broke into the house, coshed the elderly Speer and picked open the safe, but all they found was "a certain amount of cash and some oddments of jewellery worth about three hundred pounds." And, while trying to escape, their getaway car collides with a telegraph pole. Conward got out of the wreck unharmed, but he got caught that same day and eventually sentenced to four years in prison. Tibball didn't survive the crash. That effectively closes the case even though some questions remained unanswered. Who was the mysterious fence at the back of the diamond snatching business? What happened to the money and scant jewelry from the Elmhurst job?

Three years come and go, Travers is contacted by Speer's daughter and American son-in-law, Carlotta and Harvey Dawson. After the robbery, a very shaken Speer packed up and moved to the United States with Carlotta where she met her husband. Now her father has passed away and told on his deathbed there had been more to the robbery than he told, because he had a collection of antique jewelry in the house with a combined value somewhere in "the neighbourhood of forty thousand pounds." The collection belonged to a very well-known family and Speer had agreed to make paste duplicated, which is why he had to secretly pay the family out of his own pocket following the robbery. However, the loot was never recovered and Conward must have cached it somewhere, anywhere between Elmhurst and Liverpool, covering an area "well over a hundred miles" and "maybe with twists and turns" – like a needle in a haystack. Conward is to be released from prison in ten days' time. What they want is Travers to tail Conward when he gets out to see if he goes to the hidden cache.

This is the point in the story where The Case of the Treble Twist becomes a little unusual in both plot-structure and storytelling. Travers takes on the case, sort of, but uses the ten days before Conward is released to have a busman's holiday and takes that time to make leisure inquiries into the old robberies and the people involved. Only to make his final decision on whether to take case or defer it to someone else when Conward comes out of prison. So all he does to do is a little fact collecting and wool-gathering while he visiting the old crime scenes, interviewing people who were either involved or in the neighborhood and retracing steps as he constructs possible scenarios ("it's no use finding a theory and not working it out"). And without any new crimes, like more robberies or a murder, there's no immediate need to find all the answers. Travers later admitted to Jewle that he had been merely amusing himself "in a very shameless way," which blinded him to the serious proportions the case was morphing into as the zero hour of Conward's release drew closer. Not until someone goes missing and a gruesome murder is discovered is that Travers begins to pick at the double-crosses that developed into a treble twist over the years in earnest.

I suppose my summation can come across to some as a slow, meandering detective novel lacking any urgency or interesting crime until the final act, but The Case of the Treble Twist is a short, surprisingly fast-paced mystery with Bush taking pleasure in toying with his readers. I mean, Travers suggesting (ROT13) gur cbffvovyvgl bs n guveq zna evtug nsgre vagebqhpvat gur orneqrq Uneirl Qnjfba vzzrqvngryl znqr zr fhfcvpvbhf bs jub npghnyyl qvrq va gung pne penfu. Pbhyq vg or gur guveq, haxabja zna unq orra vqragvsvrq nf Gvoonyy naq gur Qnjfbaf jrer npghnyyl Gvoonyy naq uvf qnhtugre. Naq qvqa'g gur fgbel zragvba fbzrjurer gurl unq frcnengr orqebbzf. Ohg pbhyq fbzrbar punatr gung zhpu va whfg guerr lrnef? Fvpxarff pbhyq qb vg. But you can't completely discard the possibility as Bush pulled similar vzcrefbangvba fghagf before. Successfully putting me on the wrong track until the story reminded me of that small, but important, detail.

Even though the only flashy thing about the plot is the stolen jewelry, The Case of the Treble Twist has enough, old-school detective interest between Travers busman's holiday and the unraveling of the treble twist – all done in a very discreet, unassuming way. The kind of discreteness you can expect from an organization like the Broad Street Detective Agency!

So, on a whole, The Case of the Treble Twist stands as yet another one of Bush's first-class and classy detective novels from his 1950s periods, which naturally differ enormously from his 1930s or even '40s output. Bush tried to keep a flicker of the Golden Age going during a time when nearly all of his contemporaries had either retired or passed away. I think Bush proved he was the most successful of his generation at adapting the traditional detective story to the changes and upheavals of the post-war world without compromising, or demolishing, every single thing that makes good crime-and detective fiction. Trimmed down plots, more emphasis on characterization and a little more grounded in reality? Yes. But most of them turn out to be really good, classy and trim detective stories. The Case of the Treble Twist is a good, old-fashioned one at that!

The Case of the Russian Cross (1957) by Christopher Bush

The Case of the Russian Cross (1957) is Christopher Bush's 50th detective novel and celebrated his Golden Jubilee by dedicating the book, "in sheer astonishment," to himself, which is a little weird, but taking the history of the series into consideration, Bush had ample reason to be self-congratulatory – adapting and changing with the times like few of his contemporaries. Curt Evans wrote in his introduction to the new Dean Street Press reprints that "new fashions in mystery fiction were decidedly afoot in the 1950s." Bush was ahead of the time and slowly began to transform Ludovic Travers from a special consultant, or unofficial expert, to a private investigator beginning with The Case of the Kidnapped Colonel (1942). Finally ending up as the owner of the Broad Street Detective Agency. 

A chance in direction likely influenced by the American hardboiled school of detective fiction and in particular Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels (see Evans' introduction to The Case of the Magic Mirror, 1943). Unavoidably, there was a transitional period during which the quality of plots took a hit as the series began to shed its Golden Age baroqueness, notably The Case of the Seven Bells (1949) and The Case of the Fourth Detective (1951), but Bush was back in the game by the mid-1950s. The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) and The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956) present a "more modestly decorous but still intriguing and enticing mystery fare," which becomes all the more impressive when you realize the author had turned 70 when he wrote The Case of the Russian Cross. 

The Case of the Russian Cross is a good example how time completely changed the world Travers had come up in as that "virgin innocent of those far-off days" when he "first begun working with George Wharton." And how he, and Bush, had to adapt to those changes.

So the opening chapter begins with Travers telling of an unfortunate incident at the Old Bailey, where he had to give evidence in a murder trial and expected that his statement "would be taken, as it usually was, as sheer hard fact," but the defending counsel turned inside out about his status as "an unofficial expert" – calling him "a queer expert, surely, who was unaware of his own speciality." Not at all like the good old days. Even worse, there's a new Commander Crime at the Yard, Forlin, who's "a stickler in the matter of the proper and conventional." Travers not unjustly had a kind of foreboding Forlin would make things difficult, if Wharton or Chief Inspector Jewle would request his cooperation. That's what happened when the Harper Street Case broke and Wharton told him he would not be called in ("I wished the Harper Street Case would be one of the Yard's greatest flops"). So now he only has the small, often mundane and routine cases of his detective agency to occupy his mind.

The first-half of the The Case of the Russian Cross covers three such routine cases, apparently unconnected, but frustratingly full of dead ends and cold trails. Firstly, Travers is approached by the wife of a client, Lady Rose Penford, who's credited by her husband as the power behind the throne. She's hardly a public figure ("a nonentity by a good many standards"). So how did a blackmailer manage to get hold of an obscure, closely-guarded secret between her and a mutual friend? The friend is a now well-known painter and during a period when they were both struggling, Lady Penford posed in the nude while he made sketches. And there was a male model (not while she was there). But he had to turn the sketches into "beastly, horrible things" to decorate the yacht of a rich Greek. Now the sketches were stolen and used as blackmail material. Travers turns down the case after speaking with the artist and concluded "the one thing he didn't want was for the blackmailer to be found."

During the second case, Travers acts on behalf of United Assurance to investigate an insurance claim with "several queer points about it." Mrs. Alysia Rimmell is an elderly, but spry, widow who kept her jewelry at the bottom of a trunk in her bedroom and now they were gone. One item is particularly valuable, "a cross of some five inches by three given to a great-great-grandparent by the then Czar of Russia" of "solid gold and set with five very large diamonds in the main stem and one each side on the cross stem" – making seven in all. Mrs. Rimmell hadn't look in the trunk for a good many years and can't tell, exactly, when they were taken. So the trail could be stone cold, but there's an additional, quasi-impossible mystery attached to the Russian Cross. There's a 1893 photograph of a young Mrs. Rimmell wearing the cross at a fancy dress-ball, showing the diamonds were missing, but Mrs. Rimmell swears with "the frankest innocence" the stones were there when the photograph was taken. A 30-year-old valuation report from United Assurance proving the stones were back and "no mention is made of their having been removed and re-set." If this plot-thread had been played up a little more, it would have qualified as full-fledged impossible problem. 

So why and how were stones removed sixty years ago and when, exactly, was the cross stolen, but too much time has passed to cost effectively close the case. Travers move on the third and apparently most simply case of the three. Travers is asked to find out where a convicted swindler upon his release is going to lodge, because the Danish widow of his victim wants him to return the money. Travers knows there's something fishy about her accent, but, this time, accepts the assignment. Through all these three cases, minuscule details emerge establishing very slight links between them and turns deadly serious when the charred body of a man is pulled out of a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day.

Travers never mention in the story he handled a body-in-a-bonfire before, The Case of the Bonfire Body (1936), but he should have as the novels perfectly contrast early-and late period Bush. The Case of the Bonfire Body is an intricately-plotted, golden delicious with two closely-linked murders, faked identities and cast-iron alibis. An unmistakable, 1930s Golden Age detective novel. While having a busy, multi-threaded plot, The Case of the Russian Cross is ultimately simple, straightforward and grounded in the reality of post-Empire Britain – concentrating mostly on reconstructing the past and tracking down people. So more a case of establishing facts than the elaborate theorizing from the 1930s and even '40s novels. In my reviews of The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel (1952) and The Case of the Flowery Corpse, I noted how Bush appeared to have turned to the type of detective fiction he likely enjoyed reading during the 1910s and '20s. Namely the Realist School, of R. Austin Freeman, which dominated the British detective story during those decades. But it turned out to be the perfect vehicle for the direction Bush decided to go into in the fifties. 

The Case of the Russian Cross stands as a good example of how Bush applied realism to carry his series into the second-half of the 20th century. For example, I thought it added a lot to the story how Travers had to maneuver as he tried to both assist Jewle and keep one step ahead of him to secure his own, independent position in the case. A very small, seemingly insignificant details, but fascinating considering when and how Travers got his start as a detective in the twenties (e.g. The Perfect Murder Case, 1929). And shows how much things have changed since the war.

So this one is perhaps not to everyone's personal taste (plot purists have been warned), but, if you're a fan of the Bush and Travers, The Case of the Russian Cross has a lot to recommend.

The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954) by Christopher Bush

I enjoyed Christopher Bush's The Case of the Green Felt Hat (1939) so much, I decided to take down another title in the series, The Case of the Three Lost Letters (1954), which Bush wrote during a time when "fashions in mystery fiction were decidedly afoot" as "authors increasingly turned to sensationalistic tales" – like international espionage, psychological suspense and hardboiled action. Bush adapted to the changing winds by transforming his series-character, Ludovic Travers, from an unofficial associate of Scotland Yard in the 1930s to a genteel private inquiry agent in the 1940s. And, by the time the fifties rolled around, Travers owned a controlling interest in the Broad Street Agency. 

Travers began to resemble "an American private investigator rather than the gentleman amateur detective," but elements of the conventional British mystery remained. Although the baroque-style, elaborate plots and tricky, minutely-timed alibis had either been toned down considerably or scrapped altogether. Travers had become a working class, licensed detective who now had to contend with the "implied superiority and the faint suggestion" from polite society his daytime job "is just a bit beyond the pale." But, even with the plots becoming less complicated, the series produced soundly-structured detective novels like The Case of the Counterfeit Colonel (1952) and The Case of the Flowery Corpse (1956). 

The Case of the Three Lost Letters was recommended to me at one point or another as a perfect fusion of the old-fashioned, 1930s British whodunit and the post-war private eye novel. I have to agree as it turned out to be one of the better Bush novels from this period in the series.

Ludovic Travers is summoned to the house of Henry Baldlow, The Croft in Seahurst, who wrote to the Broad Street Detective Agency to send down a responsible member of the firm. Travers went down himself and finds a man suffering from emphysema, which is why he's ready to move to South Africa in about a fortnight's time, but needs a live-in bodyguard until then. Baldlow had found God through the Oxford Movement, or Moral Re-armament, which made him regard money as the root of all evil and the disposal of his personal fortune "a sacred trust" – certain possible heirs had already been subjected to "guarded enquiries." But he expects to do certain unpleasant things that might provoke an equally unpleasant reaction. So asks Travers to provide him with a bodyguard to act as a companion during those two weeks. Travers had "rarely been so distrustful of a client," disliking Baldlow's "almost nauseating smugness" and "parade of religion," but drew up a pretty stiff contract that put no onus, whatsoever, on the agency. This is how Patrick Nordon came to The Croft as a companion/bodyguard and his written reports fills half of the second chapter. But trouble was already brewing.

One of Travers' freelance operatives, Luke Layman, whose car pitched over a cliff about eight miles west of Seahurst and drowned in the submerged car. There was an empty, quarter bottle of Scotch in the car with his prints on it and "he died with some of it in his belly," but was it really open and shut case of accidental death? What happened with Layman's diary book that he used to keep a record of his jobs? Travers soon has something else on his mind as Grainger, the Seahurst Chief Constable, asks Travers what he would do if had the idea a client was about to commit felony. Suspecting the Chief Constable was referring to Baldlow, Travers decided to pay his client a visit and bumps into Nordon who had been sent out by Baldlow to buy a Last Will and Testament form. Nordon suspects it has something to do with three visitors expected to drop by that day, but, when they arrive at The Croft, the housekeeper finds Baldlow's body in the upstairs snuggery. Smothered to death with a pillow! And that's when the visitors begin to arrive.

First one to arrive is Baldlow's niece, Mrs. Jane Howell, followed by her brother, Charles Tinley. The last visitor is the dead man's stepbrother, Francis Lorde. They all received a letter from Baldlow, asking them to come see him "most urgently," but none of the three knew the other two received a similar letter nor can they produce the letters in question, which they threw away or destroyed as unimportant – even when it's quite obvious the letters had disturbed them. And who's Maurice, or Morris, who Baldlow told over the telephone (overheard by Nordon) not to come to the house? Travers has to root around the cupboards of the three visitors and the people around them to find out what skeletons Baldlow had gotten a hold of, which has sidetracks into the jewelry business, the theater world and the previously mentioned Moral Re-armament Movement.

Travers' investigation shows a lot had changed since his days as a bright-eyed, crossword puzzle obsessed amateur detective in the '20s and '30s with his work sometimes getting very seedy. For example, Chapter IX ("Temptation Flat") has Travers reluctantly getting snug and messy ("with lipstick and the stickiness of the Benedictine") with a femme fatale. Travers has something to explain back home (“blonde hairs, probably, that had been on my overcoat”) to his wife, Bernice. Another modern tendency found in these later novels is showing a bit more of the person behind the detective. Travers gives his religious views to Baldlow in the opening chapter (believing in God "to the extent that I can't credit the Universe as being self-made") and reflects later on in the story about the skeleton stuffed away in his own cupboard ("an affair that makes me go hot and cold at a distance of almost thirty years and about which I've never breathed a word to Bernice"). You're unlikely to find these candid snapshots in any of the pre-war Travers novels. And then there's the dark, devastating, but oh so effective ending, that was very much in tune with the changing times.

Regardless of the modern, post-war tune, The Case of the Three Lost Letters is a pure, undiluted whodunit with all the clues and red herrings in place, but, more importantly, the plot is structured around an idea that feels as fresh as it's original – even in 2022! A good enough idea that it didn't need the extra complication of cast-iron alibis or fooling around with identities. There is, however, a small caveat: The Case of the Three Lost Letters could have been superb instead of merely excellent had Bush not made one mistake. Bush should have (ROT13) vagebqhprq gur zheqrere nf abguvat zber guna n anzr/cbfvgvba jvgu uvf onpxtebhaq orvat svyyrq va nsgre gur zheqre vf qvfpbirerq. Vs jbhyq zber yvxryl unir chyyrq gur zheqrere va gur ernqre'f cflpubybtvpny oyvaq fcbg. Abj gur ernqre vf tvira gbb zhpu vasbezngvba sebz gur fgneg naq gung znqr na bgurejvfr irel jryy uvqqra zheqrere ybbx irel fhfcvpvbhf. I learned these dirty tricks from Uncle John and Aunt Agatha. :)

So, if you pay close enough attention, you can put all the pieces together and reach the correct solution long before Travers figures it out. Normally, I can take satisfaction in solving a detective story that played completely fair with the reader, but the ending and how the case was resolved made me wish Bush had succeeded in fooling me. The ending is so much better when it can take you by surprise. Something that would have been possible had it not been for that one mistake. Nevertheless, The Case of the Three Lost Letters has a very real shot of making it to my top 10 favorite Bush novels. It's definitely one of my favorites from this period in the series.