The Intelligent Man's Guide to the Post War World - G D H Cole

When I first decided to read this - on the same basis as the Henry Wade book, because G D H Cole was a founder member of the Detection Club, in which I've recently become interested - I have to admit I didn't realize it was 1092 pages long.

I'm still glad I did. Those 1092 pages take in a sweeping but detailed view of the situation in Europe, the distrust between the Soviet Union and the US, economics, health, the plans for schools in the UK and the raising of the age at which children could leave, population growth, why the US believed capitalism was not only right but in the long run a fairer system, Palestine, the colonies and their right to independence, the atom bomb, how the UNO and IMF came into being and the motivations behind them and infinitely much more.

Whatever you think of Cole's politics (which I actually broadly agree with, except I think he's a tad harsh on the US, who he seems to view as having reneged on some sort of promise to provide infinite amounts of cash without charging a cent of interest) or what he thought should happen next, it’s an incredibly solid piece of work. Cole acknowledges the help of his secretary, his son, and his wife Margaret (who also co-wrote murder mysteries with him as well as other political books and pamphlets) – but presumably the bulk of the writing and research was his own, revised as the situation changed, and it's an extraordinary achievement in what must have been quite a short space of time.

Just as astonishing is that although it would be probably be a better book to keep and dip into for reference (and I will be keeping it for that) it is actually still possible to read the thing through from cover to cover, as I did, and not be utterly overwhelmed and bored.

Part of this is due to Cole's flashes of humour, not always flattering to the nations he's talking about, part is the fact that I don't think I'd really understood how different many things were in 1947 quite apart from the needs of war, or that many of my own 'liberal' ideas were so specific to a Western European way of thinking, but most of all because it's interesting to see what has become worse and what has been improved in the last 70 years.

Despite the naysayers (of which I'm one because things could always be better) it's still incredible to read about where Germany or Poland or Japan or India (or Britain) was 70 years ago, and to compare then to now. It really brings home what can actually be achieved in times of peace if we try.

New Graves at Great Norne - Henry Wade

According to my copy of The Golden Age of Murder Henry Wade was one of the founder members of the Detection Club which in 1930 also included Chesterton, Sayers, Christie, A A Milne, and  24 other writers now less well known (I think Milne wrote exactly one crime novel, but he was a member all the same. Conan Doyle was invited to be president but he was already unwell). The 1947 club has been the perfect excuse for me to track down books by some of those other writers.

According to the e-book I purchased – New Graves at Great Norne doesn’t seem to have had many reprints and the cheapest one on ebay is £13 plus £20 postage from the US - Wade was actually the pseudonym of baronet Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire. 

This has no relevance to New Graves though. The story is set somewhat prosaically in a not particularly picturesque and sometimes foggy harbour town, big enough to have a church and railway and farmers market, and to sustain at least three pubs, a high street and a man with a barrow who acts as a kind of unofficial porter to the populace, but also small enough to have a limited cast of characters.  

 A reference to the Munich ‘settlement’ places the story firmly before the war, and there may be an element of nostalgia in the four or five paragraphs where the town is described and the scene set. It's very much of the ‘tell’ and not ‘show’ style of writing; which is odd, because Wade is clearly able to build a word portrait much more subtly, and the place has a much clearer and more interesting character by the end of the book than provided by this odd AA guide style description at the beginning.

So we have our setting and our cast - a fluttery spinster, a vicar, the churchwarden (the uptight, upright and austere Colonel Cherrington) a young blade living off his wife’s father, the doctor and his wife, and a ghoulish and cryptic sexton. There are others – in fact there are too many and I lost track of some of the patrons of the public houses who didn’t seem to be there except to egg each other on to gossip – but those are the ones that stood out.

Then the murders start and the yard is called in and the book becomes something in the nature of a police procedural, with no real detective in the sense I expected. Detective Inspector Joss is a local lad perhaps destined for higher things, but he’s no maverick genius. Myrtle of the yard turns up to help and is met at the station, causing yet more gossip in the pubs. 

In fact there are six or seven police officers all told (again too many, I lost track of the less important ones) and they all go about stolidly collecting information, drinking cups of tea and eating their dinners. We meet none of their wives, but we do find out that they are good cooks.  

Myrtle eats his way through the dinners as well, pops back to London occasionally and tries not be too critical of the locals while having absolutely no flash of brilliance himself. Instead he investigates slowly and methodically, talking to person after person until he finally manages to stumble across someone who actually knows something.

It could all be very dull, and undoubtedly would be if it weren't for the absurdly high body count. Unfortunately that only makes the police look more plodding. Myrtle is clearly pretty unimpressed with himself at the end of the book and frankly so am I. 

Also rather irritating is a whole subplot about a rocky marriage which is just left hanging. He may be going mad and she may be going to leave him and we just never find out. It's bizarre.  

So all in all I found New Graves at Great Norne quite entertaining, but ultimately forgettable.