Catch Up Post on Crime Reviews

Anthony Berkeley - Jumping Jenny and Not to be Taken

It's a little while since I read these books now, but my main take away from both was how we are introduced to intelligent characters – not just in their own estimation but by the estimation of those around them, and also borne out in other areas of their lives - and they then proceed to do incredibly stupid things. Monumentally stupid things. Things you can’t imagine anyone doing.

For example, in Jumping Jenny (having decided the victim was thoroughly unlikeable and whoever killed her has done a public service), our sleuth (and he is a sleuth so absolutely should know better) then proceeds to run around covering things up and moving chairs and generally giving the impression either he is guilty or someone else in the household is. 

Actually, the constant dinging in the reader’s ear about how unlikeable the victim was is also an issue. It’s true she is irritating, and I certainly wouldn’t care to be married to her either, but there is really something quite pathetic in her need to be the centre of attention, and drink as much as she does. It all seemed to me more likely due to low self esteem than any of the more judgemental pseudo-psychological reasons given here (incidentally, this reminded me of the modern habit of people who know little about mental health ‘diagnosing’ ADHD or autistic traits in strangers. You can just imagine this scenario in a modern setting, with everyone blaming ADHD or a personality disorder, and not giving a thought to why this woman is so unhappy and attention seeking).  

There is also something very unpleasant about the detective’s eagerness to meet her and then reaction against her, as if it’s her fault she doesn’t live up to the picture he apparently had in his head, and the people at the party who keep on telling him how awful she is, which she surely must be aware is happening, and which must be making it all so much worse. 

Of course, even if she was a monster it would be no excuse for a conspiracy to cover up murder – but I’m letting Berkeley off that one as I think I can detect a kind of macabre humour that just didn’t quite land for me, and became increasingly convoluted and therefore boring. It may work much better for someone else.

Pluses are that the set up is strong – a Halloween party with everyone dressed as famous murderers and a gallows set up on the roof with two male and one female cadaver, and the kind of amicably divorced ex-couple that I assume would be rare at the time (1933) but clearly not non-existent.

 

With Not to be Taken (1938) the book felt a lot tighter, and I found I could forgive a lot because I liked the narrator.

It starts, more or less, with one of those discussions about eugenics that seem to have been in the zeitgeist in the 30s and 40s – there’s one in Curtain, and it comes up in Gladys Mitchell too. I suspect there was a reaction against this sort of thing after WW2 (the TV production of Curtain, while excellent, is set after the war, and this discussion struck a false note for me as it would no longer be a purely speculative discussion and you'd expect some reference to the fact).

I also enjoyed the sibling relationship between the doctor and his sister - although I was a bit boggled that the dispensing was generally done by the sister, who however talented, is not qualified and presumably has taken no oath (and all the neighbours are apparently fine with this and after there is a poisoning, and it's explained in court, the court are all fine with it too).

Impossible to tell, nearly 90 years later, whether that would be realistic. 

I've also been reading a lot of Catherine Aird. She's someone who has been on my radar since I read about her in, I think, one of Martin Edwards' books, but who I didn't get to until after her death in December last year. The series starts with The Religious Body in 1966, which is a really strong start - the murder of a nun in a convent, our police detective out of his comfort zone, the nuns irritatingly determined to neither help nor hinder. I've been dipping in and out of the series after that, and haven't yet found one I didn't like, although I did eventually gorge myself to the point the humour became repetitive. That's a me problem - these books were not meant to be read in quick succession. 

Cat and Mouse by Christianna Brand was another early summer read. The only note I've made on this book is that murderers are by nature horrible, but the murderer in this book is particularly nasty. I can't really say much more without spoiling it. A great start, with the agony aunt in a women's magazine going off to visit one of her correspondents essentially on a whim, and then finding, when she gets there, that there's no such person.

Or at least, that's what she's told...

 

Death Under Sail, by C P Snow was apparently his first ever book and only ever murder mystery. Of course he was a very popular writer of both fiction and non fiction (I seem to remember him being one of the authors mentioned in Howards End is on the Landing as not being much read anymore). 

This is a tidy little story, although at first my brain kept defaulting to thinking it was written in the 70s not the 30s, I think partly because of the 'cover' (it's an ebook) and partly because of the set up with two young men and their girlfriends or fiancees and two older chaps all on holiday sharing a boat, and the casual way even the oldest member of the party takes it.

Of course the cabins are segregated – but when the police arrive one young woman is in a cabin on her boyfriend's lap and people are surprised the police officer is a little shocked.

Later, when they all have to move off the boat and into a friend's house, the heavy disapproval of the only servant (and the fact there is a servant) rooted it much more firmly in it's time. 

Other crime reading has included some George Bellairs (Death of a Tin God got a tiny bit involved, lots of moving from France to Ireland and back out to the Isle of Man). Margery Allingham, Georgette Heyer and Richard Hull.  I seem to remember all being enjoyable, but none have really stuck.