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.

Stranded in Paradise

"All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attended them."

- Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 1719)

Robin Forsythe was a solicitor's clerk at Somerset House, where he masterminded "a fraudulent enterprise" resembling "something out of the imaginative crime fiction of Arthur Conan Doyle," which earned him a spell in prison, but during his incarceration he began to labor on his childhood dream – i.e. trying to earn an honest living as a fiction writer. Forsythe completed his first novel, Missing or Murdered? (1929), while serving his sentence and writing proved to be a more profitable outlet for his criminal schemes.

During the brief period between 1929 and 1936, Forsythe wrote, altogether, eight mystery novels: five of them formed the Anthony "Algernon" Vereker series and the remaining three were standalones. Earlier this year, Dean Street Press reissued all of the Vereker mysteries, but nearly all of the non-series books remain out-of-print. The key word here is nearly, because one of them, Murder on Paradise Island (1937), is available from a small publishing outfit as shady as Forsythe's own criminal past.

Regardless, I was somewhat curious and wanted to know if the originality, cleverness and overall quality, found in the Anthony Vereker series, extended to the standalones – which is why I decided to take a gamble. I was not entirely disappointed. 

Murder on Paradise Island was the conclusion of Forsythe's literary career, as he passed away in the same year as the book's publication, but it was a career that ended on a captivating note. It's an imaginative and unconventional mystery novel with a beautifully conceived background. One that falls in the same category as Anthony Berkeley's Mr. Pidgeon's Island (1934), Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939) and William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954), but also reminded me, to some extent, of Arthur W. Upfield's Man of Two Tribes (1956) and Ellery Queen's And on the Eighth Day (1964). So no run-of-the-mill mystery for this review!

Geoffrey Mayne is a young barrister and the story’s protagonist, who recently passed his Bar exam, but was physically rundown and caught influenza – accompanied by a serious complication (i.e. pneumonia) and "he very nearly lost his life." His Aunt Emily suggested a sea voyage to put him back on his feet, but Mayne, who describes himself as "a born spectator," would have been happier to spend several weeks in the country near a good golf course. However, his aunt was "not to be denied" and his mind was strangely longing to see a desert island. One that would fathom his early, boyish delight in Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), R.M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island (1858) and R.L. Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883).

Well, the young barrister got his wish when he boarded the Statesman liner, Charles James Fox, for a cruise to the Isles of the Pacific, but not in the way he imagined.

One night, Mayne is awakened by the ship's fire alarm and found himself in "a faint haze of smoke" that "hung in the air of his cabin." An oil tank of the ship has caught fire and the ship is about to sink, but the next thing he remembers, after falling into the sea, is waking up on the white, pearly beach of a Pacific island – which very much seems like paradise. There was "the azure and amethyst waters of a lagoon," clumps of tall coconut palms and "masses of light and dark emerald foliage" leaping "into the sapphire sky," but the island seemed bare of any of the comforts of modern, early twentieth century civilization. No tea, cigarettes, books, music or a simple, home-cooked meal.

However, during his initial exploration of the island, Mayne finds the remains of previous habitants: an abandoned, dilapidated hut, in which he finds tools, an axe and even a German book on nudism, but also traces of the former occupants attempt at farming. Whoever where there before him, they cultivated edible roots, sweet potatoes and brought pigs to the island, which have now reverted to a wild state. But to his surprise, he also discovers other shipwrecked survivors!

The first person he meets is Miss Freda Shannon. She is, personality-wise, the complete opposite of Mayne, which is why these two clashing personalities began to orbit one another on the cruise ship. It's from her that he learns about the other survivors: Mr. Oscar Lingwood is a big, fat-faced man who loves whiskey and started pursuing Freda on the cruise ship. Major Dansie is a retired army officer, who lived in New Caledonia, and knows all about edible plants, fruit and animals, which makes his presence a blessing for the others. He also knows how to tell a good yarn. Victor Hanchett is the "strong, silent type," while Tom Haylock was "the silly ass of the ship" and "a great favorite with everyone." Finally, there are Violet Lovick, Freda’s maid, and Lingwood's manservant, Walter Wink. A very diverse group of characters.

They realize a ship may be years removed from the shores of the island and they might be stuck together for a decade or more, which makes Freda reflect she and Violet might have "to resort to polyandry to prevent bloodshed or even to meet ordinary human necessities." However, that's a future worry as they first have to figure out how to carve out a "normal" life on the island. Not one of the easiest tasks, but one that becomes even more difficult when they start fearing the presence of a hostile person on the island.

One of the interesting aspect of the island is the presence of a megalithic sculpture, a "childish monstrosity carved on the central crag" of the island, which adds some wonder to the backdrop of the story, but someone shoots at them every time they come near the plateau of the statue. Of course, this "armed unknown" is soon held responsible for the shooting death of one of them. The explanation for the shooter's uncanny ability to remain unobserved makes this aspect of the story a border-line impossible crime, but not enough to entirely qualify it as such and the answer is really simple – which makes a bit disappointing that one facet of the shooting was not clued or hinted at. Nevertheless, you can probably guess how it was done, because it's a fairly old trick.

Overall, the plot is relatively simple and lacks the complexity found in the Vereker series. Even the last-minute turn of events, concerning the last death on the island, was more of a twitch than a twist in the plot. Regardless, I did not view the plot’s simplicity as a drawback, since the book was obviously written as Robinsonade with detective interruptions, which was kind of charming and a novel approach to isolating a group of people from the outside world – normally done by a rather sinister individual. But in this novel, they were actually shipwrecked and the murders arose from their situations as castaways stuck together on a desert island. I thought this was very well done.

If there's anything to complain about, it's the abandonment of the potential plot-thread of the unburied bones and their missing skulls, which was briefly mention, but never explained. Who were they? How did they die? And who took their heads? We'll never know! I was also very prescient while reading the second chapter, because, after discovering the abandoned hut, I knew they would find what was uncovered a couple of chapters later. However, I guess it was a necessary to push forward the narrative by eliminating certain of the immediate obstacles one encounters when being stranded on a desert island. One of the characters even lampshades this by remarking the discovery must have been brought on their paths "by fictional Providence."

Anyhow, time to cut this overlong review short by saying that I enjoyed reading Murder on Paradise Island. It was not as tricky or clever as the author's series novels, but the setting and circumstances, in which the characters found themselves, made more than up for this. So if you like mysteries about a group people cut-off from the outside world, or even classic shipwreck fiction, you might want to add this one to your wishlist.

Anthony "Algernon" Vereker series:

Missing or Murdered (1929)

The Polo Ground Mystery (1932)

The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933)

The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935)

The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936)

The standalones:

The Hounds of Justice (1930)

The Poison Duel (1934)

Murder on Paradise Island (1937)

Battleground

"A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power..."

- Robert H. Jackson

During the first two weeks of this year, I reviewed three of the five mystery novels in the Anthony "Algernon" Vereker series, The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933), The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935) and The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936), which were recently reissued by the Dean Street Press – prefaced with a new introduction by genre historian and professional detective-fiction enthusiast, Curt Evans.

Robin Forsythe was the man who put his name to these forgotten gems and began to work on this short-lived series, clipped short by his death in 1937, while serving a prison term for his initial poke at contriving a criminal scheme. In the end, it proved far more profitable for Forsythe to confine his cleverly contrived schemes and tricky plots to the printed page. You can find some details about the Somerset House stamp case in my review of The Pleasure Cruise Mystery and Evans' introductory piece to his work, but that's ground I have trodden before. So lets move on the subject at hand.

The subject of this blog-post is the second novel in the "Algernon" series, The Polo Ground Mystery (1932), which opens with a newspaper report on the mysteries enshrouding Mr. Sutton Armadale's death – a rather well-known and wealthy financier. 

A mortally wounded Sutton Armadale was found on the private polo grounds of his palatial home, Vesey Manor, during the early hours of the morning: bleeding from a gaping gunshot wound in his abdomen region and a second bullet had gone clean through the head. Armadale was tightly clasping an automatic pistol, but suicide seems an unlikely explanation for the shooting. The gamekeeper who came across the body, Stephen Collyer, heard his employer murmur one last word, "murder," before drawing his last breath of air.

It was "subsequently discovered that the secret safe in the library," which was not as secret as it should have been, had been rifled and a "famous rope of pearls" had been taken – a rope that had been valued at a cool 20,000 pounds. A mask was found on the floor of the library. So it's entirely possible Armadale could have been gunned down while pursuing a burglar, but the strew of people who surrounded the victim could all be fitted in the role of murderer in half a dozen possible scenarios.

The stolen pearls belonged to Armadale's second wife, Angela, who treated him more as "a rich fur coat than a husband," which is why everyone considered them to be "an ill-matched pair." Evidently, Armadale agreed with the general opinion about their marriage, because he left everything he owed to his nephew, Basil Ralli, who was rather surprised since his uncle disapproved of his fiancé – wanting him "to marry some one of good birth." The fiancé is the daughter of the gamekeeper, Miss Trixie Collyer, who has a disgruntled admirer, Frank Peach, in the former underkeeper of the estate. But he was released from his duties by Armadale. There was also a "small party of guests" present at the manor, which included a Belgian cabaret singer, Miss Edmée Cazas, a well-known polo player, named Captain Fanshaugh, Mr. Ralph Degerdon, Mr. Aubrey Winter, who's a cousin of Mrs. Armadale, and one of her friends, Stanley Houseley.

Shooting happened against the backdrop of a financial crisis, known "The Great Brady Crash," which left "a hideous trail of suicides by poison, coal-gas, disinfectants, fire-arms" and "cold water," but, sadly, had little bearing on the overall plot – otherwise I could have padded this review with references to E.C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913) and Cyril Hare's Tenant for Death (1937).

A Classy Mugshot of R. Forsythe

Well, that’s how the situation stood when Anthony "Algernon" Vereker, gentleman artist, appeared on the scene as a special representative of the Daily Report and "as a sort of unofficial helper" of Detective-Inspector Heather of Scotland Yard. But they generally go about as friendly rivals with different approaches. Vereker prefers to find out "why the crime was committed and thence by whom," while Heather tries "to discover how the crime was committed and thence by whom," but, as is common in Forsythe's work, the beating heart of the plot were the mystifying circumstances in which the body was found.

Who and why are as important as in any other traditionally plotted detective story, but the answers to these questions are always provided by clearing the confusing surrounding, what I call, the "crime-scene conundrums," of which Forsythe was an absolute master. In The Pleasure Cruise Mystery, it was the sudden death of a woman whose gloved-covered hands were inexplicably cut and bruised, while The Spirit Murder Mystery confronted the reader with two bodies in a barren field – one of them with a crashed skull and the other with non-fatal gunshot wound. Forsythe spun some clever, twisted and original plots from these premises, which is no different here.

Vereker and Heather realize the murder of Armadale was not an ordinary shooting, because they're not even sure how many shots were fired or even how many firearms were involved. And then there’s the original motive for the shooting. A motive that sprang from a tense situation on the polo ground. So the combo of the murderer, motive and opportunity was very well done, which is something I have come to expect from Forsythe. Same can be said about the characterization and the witty dialogue. But I still had a problem with the overall story: it seemed too long. Like an overextended short story.

Yes, I said the plot was clever and original, which it is, but not on the grand scale as the previously mentioned Forsythe mysteries and even with a questioning half a dozen suspects, burglary sub-plot and a friendly rivalry there was still time for Vereker to loiter around the grounds – even having time to make charcoal studies of the woods. It's even mentioned in one of the chapters that, as a landscape painter, Vereker was having a wonderful day. Even the busman's holiday-type of mystery novel usually don't allow the detective that much leisurely time. So the opening and ending chapters were really good, but the middle-section had patched that looked suspiciously like padding. Very well written pieces of padding, but padding nonetheless.

To make a long story shot, Forsythe is an early contender to be my best discovery for 2016, but that’s mainly on account on the three previously reviewed titles, which were really excellent examples of classic, Golden Age mysteries. Again, not that The Polo Ground Mystery was bad, but not as good as the other.

Well, that only leaves Missing or Murdered (1929). I sure hope the Dean Street Press will not wait too long with reissuing Forsythe's three standalone mysteries. I'm particularly interested in Murder on Paradise Island (1937). Sounds like a blast. 

Anyhow, I'm not sure when the next review will be posted, but I can tell you it will be tangibly related to my favorite mystery writer.

Cat's Paw

"The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence... thrilled every fiber of my frame."

- Edgar Allan Poe ("The Black Cat," first published The Saturday Evening Post, 1843) 

In recent weeks, I've been exploring the works of Robin Forsythe, an ex-convict-turned-writer, who completed his first mystery novel, Missing or Murdered (1929), while serving a term of imprisonment for defrauding the British government. Seven additional novels would follow before he passed away in 1937.

Forsythe was born in 1879 and you can catch an occasional glimpse of the ghosts of the sort of crime-fiction he probably read during his formative years in the waning days of the nineteenth century, but they're compelled to obey the rules and conventions of the Golden Age – as well as sharing that era's deep appreciation for clever and ingenious schemes. The large-scale plots encircling the inexplicable death of Mrs. Mesado in The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933) and the extraordinary pair of corpses in The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936) can attest to that claim.

The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935) was the fourth entry in the Anthony "Algernon" Vereker series and published in the United States as Murder at Marston Manor, which turned out to be far more accurate book-title. Granted, the second title is a bit dull and unimaginative, but spot-on as Forsythe strayed down a winding path that lead straight to a manor house mystery in the grand old English tradition.

A small village, Marston-le-Willows, in West Suffolk is the backdrop of The Ginger Cat Mystery and the home-county of Mr. John Cornell, who moved to London as a teenager and accrued a considerable fortune as a merchant, which allowed him to retire at sixty and buy Marston Manor – where he planned to settle for "the remainder of his days" in "peace and seclusion." However, the peace-part is not to be taken as a synonym for a sedentary life.

John Cornell became a widower in the years preceding his retirement and "his frozen sedateness" began to thaw "in the autumn sunshine of his years," which simply translated to having "a high old time." He began to wear brighter clothes, attended opera and theatre performances, frequented nightclubs and acquired a sumptuous houseboat – which he renamed from "Mayfly" to "Mayfly But Can't." Naturally, this rejuvenation cumulated in a marriage with a much, much younger woman.

Josephine Rivron is a friend of Cornell's son, Frank, who, according to local gossip, was "in an unseemly hurry" to get her hands "on the loaded Cornell coffers," because she gave the son a pass and married the old man instead. Regardless, the marriage appeared as a happy one, but tragedy pried them apart: Cornell fell ill and passed away due to pneumonia. There are, however, whispered rumors implying Cornell's unexpected passing was due to poisoning and this lead to an "exhumation by lamplight," but the results were profoundly disenchanting to the village rumor-mill. But then a bone-fide murder occurs!

One early morning, the body of Frank Cornell was found on the half-landing of a staircase leading to the first floor of Marston Manor: he had been shot through the right eye.

This brings Inspector Heather and Anthony "Algernon" Vereker to the scene of the crime, which is where the book begins to differ from the other ones I have read. In the previous books, the dialogue between Vereker and Manuel Ricardo resulted in a flippant and quippish narrative, but the latter is largely absent from the story – giving the overall story a different and more serious dynamic. Vereker spends most of his time interviewing suspects and poking around the crime-scene, which squarely places the book in the "mainly conversation" category and somewhat of a disaster to review. However, my poorly written review should not reflect badly on the book. I very much enjoyed it as a pure, if slowly moving, detective story, but one that's hard to sum-up without giving too much away – which is why this blog-post is horribly overwritten (i.e. padding) without as much as a glance at the plot and characters.

However, I'll say this about The Ginger Cat Mystery: one of the strongest and weakest aspects of the plot is its dedication to fair play, which sounds contradictory, but allow me to explain. Halfway through the story, I had one of those moments that convince me that I'm brilliant armchair detective stuck in the wrong universe. All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place: a supposedly haunted music room, a missing set of duplicate keys, a vest pocket automatic pistol and a conspicuous groove on the bullet. I knew who the murderer was, how the murder was carried out and why, but the problem was that I still had half a book to go through.

I don't know if it was because I had figured everything out by the halfway mark, but I spotted the final twist from a mile away and "the clue of the ginger tabby," in combination with the false explanation, cemented my conviction that I was 100% spot-on with my solution. Well, I was right.

So, all in all, a clever constructed and fairly original detective story that plays scrupulously fair with the reader, but the plot was dressed in a plain and conventional suit, which may be the only serious drawback to a mystery novel that has the name of Robin Forsythe emblazoned on its cover.

Hopefully, I have something substantially better written for my next blog-post. So don't touch that dial!

A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts

"There is a distinct difference between having an open mind and having a hole in your head from which your brain leaks out."

- James Randi

Only a few days ago, I reviewed The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933) by Robin Forsythe, which was recently summoned from its perennial slumber in the dark abyss, commonly referred to around these parts as "biblioblivion," by publisher Rupert Heath and genre-historian Curt Evans – who furnished all of the Dean Street Press editions with insightful introductions. I was sufficiently pleased with my introduction to Forsythe's work that I wanted to read another one of his mysteries as soon as possible.

I was torn between The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935) and The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936), but settled in the end on the latter because I found the synopsis to be enticing. Surprisingly, the plot turned out to contain an impossible situation or two that were overlooked by Robert Adey in Locked Room Murders (1991).

These seemingly impossible situations are presented as supernatural phenomenon and occur at Old Hall Farm, situated in the village of Yarham, where John Thurlow lives in the company of his niece, Eileen – an ardent devotee and practitioner of spiritualism.

John is naturally "skeptical and cautious," preferring a scientific approach, but has become a tentative believer after "quite a lot of persuasion and study." He would love to experience the "spirit music," which was heard by Eileen in the old house that was "impregnated with the spirit of the bygone" and "bore the indelible imprint of the activities and designs of people since dead and forgotten" – leading to an experimental séance during which the eerie sounds of organ music are heard. A sensible and natural explanation for the spectral music proved to be as elusive as the ghosts themselves.

Old Hall Farm was not equipped with a wireless or a gramophone, which were both deemed by John as a "damned annoying contraption," and the church is a mile away. So where did the ghostly bars of music emanated from?

However, there a more pressing, Earth-bound questions raised directly after the séance. John Thurlow appears to have stepped out of the window of his study and simply vanished, but a more baffling problem presents itself the following day: the remains of Thurlow and Mr. Clarry Martin were found on a piece of wasteland called "Cobbler's Corner." Thurlow had his skull bashed in and Martin had been shot, but physical evidence precluded the possibility that they had murdered each other.

A gentleman-painter and amateur detective of some repute, named Anthony "Algernon" Vereker, happened to be in the neighborhood to sketch and paint, but a double-murder is as good an excuse as any to take a break from the artistic process.

Vereker's private enquiry looks into every person who orbited the lives of Eileen and the John Thurlow, which included a twenty-six-year old widow, Mrs. Button, who was still known locally as Miss Dawn Garford and the dead men were both vying for her affection. Arthur Orton rented the next-door property from Thurlow, called Church Farm, and he showed a great interest in both Eileen and the property, which might have given a double motive. Ephraim Noy is a mysterious individual who lives alone in a new bungalow and "about as communicative as a brick wall," but may have shared a "youthful indiscretion" with Thurlow in British India – which involved an Indian dancing girl and her murdered husband. And then there is the local amateur archaeologist, Rev. William Sturgeon, who's exploring a crypt and underground vault for King John's treasure. 

On an unrelated side-note, King John's treasure was a major plot-thread in a historical mystery novel I read last year: The Song of a Dark Angel (1994) by Paul Doherty. Just so you know.

Anyway, Vereker alternates his role as an amateur detective with that of a ghost-hunter and personally experiences some of the ghostly events at Old Hall Farm, but the most interesting occurrence is the poltergeist activity in the late Thurlow's study: Eileen "heard the sound of footsteps" in the study and discovered upon inspection that "chairs, ornaments, clocks and the little table had all been moved," but all the doors and windows were securely locked and fastened!

Unfortunately, the explanation for all of these apparently supernatural and impossible situations was even in the mid-1930s very dated and "rather moth-eaten," which makes it advisable to not read The Spirit Murder Mystery as an impossible crime novel. You might end up disappointed if you do. However, in spite of that, Forsythe wrings an unusual and still fresh explanation from this extremely dated and moth-eaten plot device, which showed the same streaks of originality that was so prevalent in The Pleasure Cruise Mystery. The explanation for the gunshot wound was perhaps one coincidence too much and more consideration (and time) could've been given to the circumstances in which the bodies were found (i.e. cause of death), but I found them minor drawbacks in what was a wholly enjoyable detective story.

So, in the end, I think I preferred The Pleasure Cruise Mystery to The Spirit Murder Mystery, but, regardless of some flaws in the latter, I begin to become very fond of Forsythe. I don't think I'll allow his other books to linger much longer on my TBR-pile. There are only three of them left and then I still have three non-series to look forward to, which I'm sure will be reprinted sooner or later by the Dean Street Press.

Anthony "Algernon" Vereker series:

Missing or Murdered (1929)

The Polo Ground Mystery (1932)

The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933)

The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935)

The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936)

The standalone series:

The Hounds of Justice (1930)

The Poison Duel (1934)

Murder on Paradise Island (1937)

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

"I'm here on Mars for a specific purpose... there's the job of bringing you to justice."

- Dillon Stover (Manly Wade Wellman's Devil's Planet, 1942) 

"Robin Forsythe" was born Robert Forsythe in 1879 in Sialkot, British India (present-day Pakistan), as the eldest son of a distinguished cavalryman and seemed to be destined for an uneventful, but respectable, existence – while a nurturing his childhood dream of living by his pen as a fiction writer. A normally disastrous, life ruining encounter with the long-arm of the law inadvertently placed Forsythe in a position that turned that dream into reality.

In 1927, Scotland Yard conducted an undercover operation at Somerset House and carried out "intensive police laboratory examination of hundreds of suspect documents," which resulted in the arrest of Forsythe and several co-conspirators. Over a year-and-a-half period, they earned 50,000 pounds from the illicit sales of high value judicature stamps. Stamps that were removed from documents that had their cancellation marks obliterated with acid. 

It was a clever scheme that at the time evoked comparisons with the tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and our very own genre historian, Curt Evans, likened "the fraudulent enterprise" to "something out of the imaginative crime fiction" of the "post Golden Age lawyer-turned-author Michael Gilbert," but the lucrative venture ended with a fifteen-month prison sentence – during which Forsythe began to make serious work of his unfulfilled dream of being a writer. Forsythe's release from prison coincided with the publication of his first mystery novel: Missing or Murdered (1929). 

Between 1929 and 1937, Forsythe penned and published eight mystery novels: five of were part of the Algernon Vereker series and the remaining three were standalone novels. The books were well received upon publication and drew favorable comments from a number of Golden Age luminaries, but slowly drifted into obscurity after their author passed away in 1937, which is a mistake that's now being rectified by the indispensable Dean Street Press and Curt Evans – who're doing a stellar job at filling the void that the Rue Morgue Press left behind!

I initially wanted to read The Spirit Murder Mystery (1936), but that particular title was not yet available for purchase. So I settled for my second choice, The Pleasure Cruise Mystery (1933), because ocean-bound detective stories have the tendency to be pretty good. I was not wrong in this instance. 

The Pleasure Cruise Mystery begins with Manuel Ricardo, a high-spirited member of "the noble army of artists in prose fiction," convincing his friend, Anthony "Algernon" Vereker, to accompany him on a pleasure cruise aboard the Green Star Company’s luxury liner "Mars." Vereker is a gentleman-artist with a growing reputation as an amateur detective, but critics slated his "last atrocity" and suffered some "bad luck in the Armadale murder," which offers up a picture of an educated, but fallible, character. A picture that also begs to be compared with E.C. Bentley's Philip Trent and Anthony Berkeley's Roger Sheringham. 

Ricardo is convinced that immersion "in the joyous inanities of a charming social life," during a pleasure cruise, is the easiest and quickest way for Vereker to bounce back from his recent spade of bad performances, but the very epithet of pleasure makes him recoil and prefers the company of a good book and a cigar. Vereker ends up retreating to his cabin in the company of a copy of Professor Dorsey's Why We Behave Like Human Beings (1925) when voices begin to emanate from the next-door cabin, which utter such suspicious things as "you'll have to do the job as soon as possible" and "consider the awful risks" – suggesting that something unlawful might be afoot. A suggestion that seems to be confirmed when Ricardo stumbles over the body of Mrs. Mesado on D deck. 

Mrs. Mesado is the wife of an Argentinean meatpacking millionaire, Guillermo Mesado, but they had "a bit of a rumpus some weeks ago" and she "decided to console herself with a cruise." She brought along her sister, Constance, and her brother-in-law, Richard Colvin, who knew she was suffering from heart disease and knew "she might have a fatal seizure at any moment." There are, however, suspicious elements concerning the sudden death of Mrs. Mesado: the hands beneath "a pair of chamois leather gloves" were cut and bruised. A necklace, described as "a rope of alternate cinnamon and white diamonds," went missing and one with flashing blue and white stones turned up in an unexpected place. 

I'm afraid I can't reveal too much about the plot, because the story has a sparsely populated dramatis personae, which gave the book some restrictions, but Forsythe hammered a scintillating and original detective story from those limitations. It's a fresh, original and audacious treatment of a classic plot-device that offered a satisfying explanation for the cut and bruised hands of the victim, the cause of death and the exact time when life went extinct. 

However, the most admirable part of the plot is probably the nature of the crime that makes it truly comparable to Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile (1937): namely a scheme that’s perfect in theory, but fell apart when put into practice by the Merrivalean "blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general" – which is something I always appreciate. In my opinion, it's the best approach to make even most labyrinthine plots believable, because the complexities arise from a perfectly conceived plan going awry. 

I only have one point of criticism, namely the time Forsythe took in unveiling that explanation, which began to reek of padding after a while. Once he lifted a tip of the veil, revealing the true nature of the crime, he should have yanked off the whole sheet, but he continued to try to baffle his audience to the last possible moment. It's something to be appreciated, sure, but also cheapened the overall effect of the revelation. 

Anyhow, I think Forsythe made an excellent decision in exchanging real-life crime for fictional ones and I'll be sure to return to his work before long. I've read positive reactions about The Polo Ground Mystery (1932) and The Ginger Cat Mystery (1935) sounds enticing. So expect more Forsythe and Vereker in the near future, but for my next read I'll be dipping into a SF-mystery. Stay glued to that screen!