One more Philip MacDonald detective fiction review and then on to something else. This one's of The Wraith, the sixth Anthony Gethryn crime novel and the first of three which the author published in 1931. By the way, I now think this is the correct chronological bibliographical information on the Gethryn novels.
The Rasp 1924
The White Crow 1928
The Noose 1930
The Link 1930
The Maze, in US Persons Unknown 1930
The Wraith 1931
The Choice, in US The Polferry Riddle 1931
The Crime Conductor 1931
Rope to Spare 1932
Death on My Left 1933
Warrant for X, in UK The Nursemaid Who Disappeared 1938
The-Wood-for-the-Trees (short story, second place finish in Queen's Awards) 1947
The List of Adrian Messenger 1959
It's all a bit confusing, honestly, because some of the Gethryn novels were published first in the United States, sometimes under altered titles (see above). With his fifth Gethryn mystery The Maze, which was actually published originally in the U.S. under the title Persons Unknown at the end of 1930 and in England over a year-and-a-half later (1932!), MacDonald first attempted to do something new with his Gethryn crime fiction: what he subtitled, in the American edition, "An Exercise in Detection"--in other words, a "pure" detective novel, in which Gethryn analyzes an inquest transcipt to discover the identity of the murderer. The novel anticipates in this way the documentary popular "Crimefile" mysteries of the late Thirties.
With the next installment of the Gethryn crime investigation saga, The Wraith, MacDonald has Gethryn in 1931 talking over with his wife and a mystery writer friend named Toller his first murder case, one over a decade earlier from 1920, several years before the events detailed in the debut Gethrun detective novel, The Rasp. The book mostly narrated by Anthony himself, as he recalls the events from that time, though part of the novel is told as well in third person in 1931. The novel appears never to have been reprinted in paperback (though the Collisn Crime Club reprinted it several times in hardcover) and consequently is one of the more obscure Gethryn titles.
Which is too bad, because it is, in my opinion, one of the better Gethryn titles, along with The Maze and Rope to Spare, the latter of which I recently reviewed here. It's actually rather reminiscent with Rope to Spare with Gethryn sojourning at an inn at a quaint, obscure English village. In The Wraith the village is the East Anglian habitation of High Fen, and the inn is The Good Intent. Like in Rope to Spare, not to mention the non-series detective novel Mystery at Friar's Pardon, also published in 1931, events come to center on a country house, Fridays (in Rope it was Corners). This is the home of John Manx, one of the amateur gentleman scientists beloved of between-the-ears detective ficion and mystery thrillers. Manx, 53, whom Gethryn skeptically calls "a man with a few degrees and a lot of money," is said to be philanthropically "engaged in cancer research."
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| terrifi Italian giallo edition of The Wraith (Il Fantasma) see Death Can Read |
Manx's blue-eyed, Titian-haired, "admirably-shaped" wife Joan, 31, has two "semi-permanent" neer-do-well male relations, her second cousin blond-haired Arthur and her dark-haired brother William. On the scene as well are Manx's dependent sister Penelope Marsh and niece Mary Manx. There's also Paul Grimdale, Manx's secretary, who is smitten with Joan.
Also featuring in the tale are the Reverend Battersby-Pickersgill and his wife and, rather more significantly, a certain Alfred Georgius Host, a disfigured Great War veteran and "cripple" who leases the West Lodge of Friday. A confirmed eccentric, he lives alone with a brood of beloved cats (not Manx cats as far as I know).
Someone, as the tale transpires, is cruelly and gruesomely killing off Host's cats, driving the poor man to distraction. Animal cruelty abominators be warned!
Host accuses Manx, the cancer researcher, of vivisecting his poor creatures. When Manx is found shot dead right between the eyes in his detached study known as the Hut, Host is the prime suspect, especially after the gun turns out to be his, but the case turns out to be rather more complicated than that....
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| Alfred Host on the Collins reprint cover. I don't do the whole cover because its a spoiler, for shame Collins! |
Inspector Ruddock of the local police was lent to Gethryn for intelligence work during the late war, so of course he invites Gethryn, as coppers will, to help him on the case. Unfortunately Ruddock soon has everything ass-backwards and Anthony has to save the day, by means of some extremely high-handed methods, the sort of which Sapper's at time rather fascistic Bulldog Drummond doubtlessly would heartily have approved.
The Wraith is a highly classical case, employing classic mystery devices of deception in a fun, bravura way. It's shorter than most if not all of the other Gethryns, some 70 or 75,000 words I estimate, and it would have been even shorter had the author not chosen to shift constantly between past and present, a device which gives the novel more of a modern feel and adds probably 10,000 words that could have been omitted had the events been told more directly.
Suggesting the comparative paucity of story, Gethryn actually solves the case about two-thirds of the way through and spends the rest of his time trying to extract a confession. This happens as well in Rope to Spare and, to a less time-consuming extent, Friar's Pardon. You might say the thriller element simply will make its presence felt in a MacDonald detective tale somewhere.
JRR Tolkien colleague Charles Williams, a keen critic of detective fiction who preferred the outre sort of writer like MacDonald and John Dickon Carr, declared of The Wraith: "It is a creepy, ghoulish, facinating case, and suits Gethryn, who is an intellectual public-school sadist if ever there was one."
Definitely this case brought out not only the sadist in the cruel cat killer but in Gethryn himelf, who seemingly will stop at almost nothing in the name of justice. This is a novel which should film well, if one could get over certain logistical hurdles....
What does the title of the book mean, you may be asking yourselves? Well, you'll have to read this one for yourself and see, when it's reprinted. It hasn't been in English, as far as I know, for nearly ninety years.
I do have one quibble with the book, however, besides the one that everyone who reads it will inevitably have. It has to do with
SPOILER DON'T READ IF YOU HAVENT READ THE BOOK
the matter of Host's background war record. Police get that information, we are told, from diaries at the West Lodge. Oh, come now, they would not have checked for his war record from the war office? How slipshod can you get?! It is interesting in light of MacDonald's own possibly embroidered war record, however.
END SPOILER ALL SAFE NOW
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