Invitation to Kill (1937), by Gardner Low

The Hara-Kiri Murder would have been a less subtle title for this first-rate genre novel, Invitation to Kill, written under the pseudonym Gardner Low by Australian journalist Charles Rodda (1891-1976). This appears to have been a one-shot pseudonym, and Rodda was much better known for the long series of thirty-seven Edgar Wallace style thrillers he published between 1927 and 1969 under the pseudonym Gavin Holt (in the 1950s he also co-wrote three novels with the great espionage writer Eric Ambler, under yet another pseudonym).  However, Gardner Low's Invitation to Kill is not a thriller but a true detective novel--and a rather fascinating one.

Not the least of the tale's interests is a rounded Japanese artist character, Yashushi Ishimoto, who introduces the subject of hara-kiri at a New York City cocktail party at the apartment of his old friend and fellow artist, Ross Farrier--with fatal results!

The wealthy Farrier is found dead in his apartment the next day, seemingly from a self-inflicted stabbing, performed in the ceremonial Japanese manner discussed the previous night.  But is it really suicide--or murder?!

Certainly there are a number of people who had motives to kill Farrier.  The middle-aged Farrier had taken pronounced interest in a beautiful--and much younger--distant "country cousin" of his, Linda Morell.  Linda is an object of interest as well to Farrier's sculptor friend Langley--and an object of scorn for Farrier's fiancee and Langley's wife.

There also is a certain amount of mystery around Linda.  She's under the care of a psychiatrist, for what seems a psychosomatic malady of the throat.  And her relationship with her rural farmer parents seems a bit odd.  And then there's Linda's jealous former boyfriend.  And what about Ishimoto?  He does know all this stuff about hara-kiri!

Charles Rodda wrote over three dozen
books as Gavin Holt, but only one
as Gardner Low

Invitation to Kill is quite well-written and fast-paced (one might say zippy), in the best 1930s American style.  One would never guess, given the author's complete grasp of American idiom, that he was an Australian, but then it seems he migrated to New York after World War One, when he was twenty-eight years old, and had been residing in the United States for nearly two decades when the novel appeared.

Additionally, here is more depth to the characters than is often the case in this period, and the clever plot nobly adheres to the principles of fair play.

So there is much here to recommend the novel.  As a bonus, the author uses a clever narrative device.  The novel, we learn right off, is actually the manuscript of one of the "characters" portrayed in the book.  The manuscript concerns a real life crime (in slightly fictionalized form).  The author is the amateur detective who was brought in by his psychiatrist friend to solve the crime.  He is reading the manuscript to the psychiatrist for his opinion on it.

Taking full advantage of this device, Rodda interlards the narrative with witty commentary on the detective fiction genre from these two characters.

"You'd better keep an eye on that detective of yours," the psychiatrist tells the author.  "He slips into some pretty terrible Broadway British.  I can see that he's going to be a good stiff pain in the neck.  So damned superior.  Why must he be such a stuffed shirt?  Can't you make him a little human?"

And later:

"This lad [the amateur detective] has a load of culture a foot thick.  What does he do for a living?
"Do for a living?"  I laughed.  "Don't be silly!  An amateur detective working for a living!  It's like an international beauty shining her own shoes.  It simply isn't done."

Early on the psychiatrist notes that "the material is all there for a psychological novel of characterization, and not a detective story."  Sounding for all the world like modern critics of traditional detective fiction, he laments that the author has turned it all into a mere puzzle.

Well, I for one, say thank goodness!  Invitation to Kill is a very good detective story indeed, with fair play plotting, wit aplenty and a felicitous style.  This is definitely a Golden Age mystery that deserves revival.  It should not have fallen through the cracks.

Consider this an invitation to republish.

"The Artistic Superstructure of the Epoch of Labor Unionism and Socialization": Ludwig von Mises on the Detective Story

My blogger friend Patrick Ohl recently posted a piece on his At the Scene of the Crime blog on critic Edmund Wilson's famous anti detective fiction diatribe
"Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" 

To be sure, Edmund Wilson was of a leftist political orientation, but to demonstrate that ill-informed criticism of detective fiction knows no ideological bounds, I direct you to famous libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises' contribution to the subject, "Remarks about the Detective Stories," from "Literature under Capitalism," a chapter in his book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (1956) (the whole piece can be found here on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website). It certainly offers a different take on the subject, but it also illustrates the pitfalls inherent in heavily theory-driven, insufficiently researched approaches to the study of detective fiction.

One suspects that Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) and Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) had little in common, but they did have this: they didn't think much of detective fiction.  Oh and this: neither man seems well-informed about detective fiction--a failing which nevertheless did not prevent them from making sweeping pronouncements about it (famous intellectuals often don't seem to have qualms about such things).

Forget revolvers and daggers,
watch out for hammers and sickles!

Typically, Golden Age detective fiction has been condemned by leftist-oriented critics like Julian Symons and Colin Watson--not to mention a number of Marxian 1970s academics--as a conservative literary genre promoting "bourgeois hegemony" (not being academics, Symons and Watson don't use that term, but it's what they mean too).

Now, Ludwig von Mises is having none of this!  None at all.

Much, much to the contrary of the Symons-Watson view, Mises sees detective fiction as an essentially  leftist literary genre crafted to undermine capitalism. "The artistic superstructure of the epoch of labor unionism and socialization," he calls it (whew!).

Ludwig unloads: detective fiction
appeals to those afflicted with a
"latent anti-bourgeois tendency"

Mises starts his discussion of detective fiction with what seems to me to be a mistaken notion: that because the Golden Age of detective fiction coincided with the rise to power of Communism and Socialism (not to mention Fascism), there must be some sort of causal relationship between detective fiction and anticapitalism.  He writes:

The age in which the radical anticapitalistic movement acquired seemingly irresistible power brought about a new literary genre, the detective story.  The same generation of Englishmen whose votes swept the Labour Party into office were enraptured by such authors as Edgar Wallace.  One of the outstanding British socialist authors, G. D. H. Cole, is no less remarkable as an author of detective stories.

I'm not sure when this piece on detective fiction was actually written by Mises (the references to Edgar Wallace, who died in 1932, and Douglas Cole, who hadn't published a detective novel since 1942, were dated in 1956, or even 1945, when Labour came to power), but there are some notable errors here:

• Detective fiction was not a "new literary genre" in the 1920s (although it did achieve new popularity).
• Edgar Wallace for the most part did not really write true detective fiction, but thrillers, which true detective novelists of the period believed appealed to a less intellectually sophisticated audience.
• Many Golden Age British detective novelists (and even more so thriller writers) were politically conservative and averse to leftist ideology in their books. Moreover, they often were hostile to the Labour party when it came into power in the 1945-1951 period. The prominent Socialist G. D. H. Cole (apparently Mises did not deem it necessary to mention Douglas Cole's accomplished wife Margaret Cole) was exceptional in this regard.

Mises notes that "many historians, sociologists and psychologists have tried to explain the popularity of this strange genre [yes, Mises means detective fiction!--TPT]. For his part, Mises breezily explains that the reader of "this strange genre"

is the frustrated man who did not attain the position which his ambition impelled him to aim at....he is prepared to console himself by blaming the injustice of the capitalist system.  He failed because he is honest and law abiding.  His luckier competitors succeeded on account of their improbity; they resorted to foul tricks which he, conscientious and stainless as he is, would never have thought of.  If people only knew how crooked these arrogant upstarts are!  Unfortunately their crimes remained hidden....

Did this man inspire the
Golden Age of detective fiction?

Mises then goes on to explain what he terms the "typical course of events in a detective story."  It seems that generally the guilty party in mysteries is a successful businessman type--"an impeccable citizen"--who is revealed as a scheming, fiendish hypocrite.  Thus, the detective's motive in hunting down the criminal, according to Mises, is "a subconscious hatred of successful 'bourgeois.'"

Having established to his satisfaction this "latent anti-bourgeois tendency" in detective fiction, Mises goes on to explains that this "is why the detective story is popular with people who suffer from frustrated ambition."

Recently I did a blog piece on a mystery publisher promotional work called "Successful Men Read." Mises turns this round: it's unsuccessful, embittered men doing the reading!

Now, I won't say Mises' analysis is absolutely worthless.  Indeed, in my book Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery (2012) I note, for example, how after the Wall Street Crash prominent Golden Age British mystery writer Freeman Wills Crofts began portraying aggressive businessmen remarkably unsympathetically, though he was no Marxist--far from it! (indeed, Crofts' famous series detective, Inspector French, is a highly bourgeois police inspector).  And Anthony Wynne, who I last blogged about, was very dubious about modern finance capitalism, though he was a successful surgeon and no Marxist but, rather, a Christian monarchical feudalist.

Can you really imagine Miss Marple knitting
with this group of revolutionary ladies?

On the other hand, Mises' formulation seems to me an implausibly (to say the least) oversweeping generalization about a literary genre.

It's certainly interesting, even amusing, to think of such privileged fictional Golden Age 'tecs as Lord Peter Wimsey, Roderick Alleyn, Albert Campion, Hercule Poirot, Jane Marple, Philo Vance, Ellery Queen, Nero Wolfe, etc., as an envious gang of anti-capitalist agents!

Typically the view of the Golden Age detective novel is that it's all about the restoration of the traditional (capitalist) order at the conclusion of the tale, after a disruptive murderer has been cast out of Eden, so to speak. Is it possible that Miss Marple was really a Madame Defarge at heart, or that Hercule Poirot was inspired by little red cells?  Mon dieu!

Elimination at Sea: Cartwright is Dead, Sir! (1934), by Hugh Baker (Forgotten Books by Forgotten Authors 3)

"[A]board this ship is a murderer who has the power to kill almost instantaneously without leaving  a mark, without inflicting a wound, without leaving a trace of his presence except the body of his victim."

Quite a handy set of abilities in the hands of a mass murderer!  Will he (or she?) be stopped?...

Houghton, Mifflin, publisher of Cartwright is Dead, Sir!, assured prospective readers of the novel that so tension-filled were its pages they would never regain "peace of mind" until they had reached the very end.

I wouldn't go quite that far, but Cartwright is Dead, Sir! is a fast-paced, fairly clued (well, for the most part) tale that should keep a mystery fan entertained for several hours.

The novel deals with a fateful voyage of the fruit steamer Napoc from New Orleans to the Latin American Republic of Costa Blanca. Wireless messages have been received, from one M. O. D.,  demanding that the ship change course, or dire consequences will result.  These messages are ignored...and the deaths commence.  No traces are apparent of how the victims have come by their deaths. Could they have been slain by a "death ray," as M. O. D. claims?

And what is the motive behind this madness?  Could it have something to do with the machinations of rival American fruit companies in Costa Blancan politics?  And what does the vanished good luck piece have to do with it all?  And the man who can't abide the smell of oranges?

1934's other shipboard mystery,
rather better known than Cartwright!

Aspects of this novel certainly remind me of John Dickson Carr (there's an obvious general resemblance to Carr's shipboard mystery, The Blind Barber, coincidentally also published in 1934; and the death ray business was like "teleforce" from The Reader Is Warned).  To be sure, Cartwright is not as good as John Dickson Carr's 1930s mysteries, but that is setting quite a high bar!  I enjoyed this one for the fast pace, the suspense, the solid plot and the look at American-Latin American commercial and political relations in the 1930s.

"Hugh Baker" is the pseudonym of Hermann B. Deutsch (1889-1970) and Donald Hugh Higgins.  About the latter man I know nothing, but Deutsch was a prominent Louisiana journalist in his day and authored additional works, both fiction and non-fiction.

Hugh Baker also published a mystery short story or novelette with a title redolent of Edgar Wallace thrillers: "The Whispering Terror" (Mystery Magazine, 1935).  Judging by Cartwright is Dead, Sir! this work would be worth a read.

20,000 Views and Six Dead Men, by Stanislas-André Steeman

First, let me mention that as I type this I've just passed 20,000 views, having entered into my fifth month of blogging.  It's nice to know some people are finding this a place worth stopping by for a time.  I will try to keep it interesting!

Like Georges Simenon, Stanislas-André Steeman (1908-1972) is another Franco-Belgian writer of mysteries; yet Simenon is much better known, certainly in the English-speaking world.  The most detailed information I could find on the subject of Steeman comes from this fascinating entry in Xavier Lechard's blog, At the Villa Rose, Lost in Translation: Stanislas Andre-Steeeman.

Lechard calls Steeman "arguably one of the greatest mystery writers of all time."  He notes that, in contrast with Simenon, Steeman was fascinated with the detective fiction genre and its conventions, or rules, treating them respectfully in many orthodox works.

Despite the fact that one can find more orthodox Simenon mysteries in some of the Inspector Maigret series, there is no getting away from the fact that on the whole Simenon was one of the major influences in shifting the mystery genre away from formal puzzle plotting toward an emphasis on such things as milieu, character, psychology, etc., that one associates, traditionally at least, with the mainstream novel.  And for many readers Simenon's name is synonymous with French crime genre writing in the twentieth century.

So when presented with the prospect of French language mystery author who emphasized classical detection I had to go a-digging for this gold! Unfortunately merely two of his books were ever translated into English and only one of those two seems at all locatable: Six Dead Men/Six Hommes Morts (1930/31--I have seen both years given for its original publication date).  So I had to make do with this one title, a pleasure and a frustration, because while it's a very good book, it makes one wish for more, which simply isn't there, at least not currently.

So, what is the nitty and the gritty, as an instructor of mine used to say, of Six Dead Men?

First of all, the novel bears a striking resemblance in conception to The Sweepstake Murders, by J. J. Connnington, which was published in 1931.  In Connington's mystery--one of his best--nine individuals form a sweepstakes syndicate, so that if any one of their tickets wins they all will share the winnings equally among themselves.  One of their tickets does win, but there is a legal delay in the awarding of the money.  When one of the syndicate members accidentally dies, the survivors formally agree that only living members of the syndicate will share in the winnings, when they eventually are awarded.  Bad idea! Suddenly other members of the syndicate start to expire--this time from someone's deliberate design.

quite similar in conception to Six Dead Men

Well, now, what mystery fancier wouldn't fancy such a plot as this?  Steeman's plot in Six Dead Men is quite similar  to that in The Sweepstake Murders (before writing his own did Connington, who was fluent in French and regularly read French novels, read Steeman's book, assuming it originally appeared in 1930?).

This time the tale concerns not nine, but, yes, six men, who agree to set out in the world for five years, make their fortunes, return and share those fortunes among themselves.  Well, when the novel opens they have started returning, five with fortunes (an impressive bunch!). And, perhaps not coincidentally, they also have started dying.  One man falls overboard from an ocean liner (or was he pushed?), another is shot, another stabbed.  The police seem helpless is stopping this campaign of slaughter.  Can anyone stop it?

rather like an Edgar Wallace....

One is immediately struck by Steeman's adherence to the classical form in Six Dead Men.  Many Simenon tales from the period, such as, say, The Strange Case of Peter the Lett (Pieter-le-Letton) and The Crossroad Murders (La Nuit du carrefour), feel more like Edgar Wallace thrillers then true detective novels.

In the early 1930s both Simenon and Steeman were dubbed "the French Edgar Wallace," an appellation that seems more suited, both in terms of output and subject matter, to the Simenon novels of this period (the early 1930s) than to the Steemans, judging from what Xavier Lechard has written about Steeman.  Six Dead Men indisputably is a true detective novel.

The ploys of deception in Six Dead Men are truly classical. While they may not fool the experienced reader of Golden Age detective fiction, who likely will have seen variations of the ploys in Sayers or Christie or Crofts, for example, they are delightfully and ingeniously handled by Steeman.  I particularly liked the deductions made about one of the murders, which takes place in an apartment lift (Ngaio Marsh later used this locus with great effect in one of her novels, Surfeit of Lampreys).  And, yes, there's even a floor plan!

there's something eerie
about those old lifts....

There is also a bit of love interest, in the form of the novel's only significant female character, the lovely Spanish woman Carmen, fiancee to one of the six men. Two of the other men fall in love with her over the course of the tale, adding complication.  But is Carmen really what she seems?...

As befits a classical detective novel, the writing and characterization is sparely, but effectively, done. Carmen, the rivals for her love, an investigating magistrate and Steeman's series detective, Wenceslas Vorobeitchik (understandably he goes by "Wens"), all are efficiently and economically characterized.  Suspense is artfully maintained (I was quite on edge during the novel's penultimate climax).  This would be a great novel to read alone in a 1930s apartment building at midnight on a stormy night.  Creaky lift an extra!

Six Dead Men was reprinted in the United States in 1932 as part of the French crime wave that hit Anglo-American shores at that time.  Simenon was at the crest of this wave and today is by far its best-known component.  But on the strength of my reading Six Dead Men, I would conclude that Stansislas-André Steeman deserves to be much better known today than he is.

Note: The American edition of Six Dead Men was published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1932, in an attractive edition with what seems to be a good translation by Rosemary Carr Benet (1898-1962). She was the wife of Stephen Vincent Benet, renowned author of the Pulitzer prize winning narrative poem John Brown's Body (1928) and the much-anthologized short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1937).  On the couple, see Patricia McAndrew, "Stephen and Rosemary: A Love Story," in David Garrett Izzo and Lincoln Konkle, eds., Stephen Vincent Benet: Essays  on His Life and Work (McFarland, 2002). Stephen's brother, William Rose Benet, wrote an early Agatha Christie review raving The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.  The Benets, it seems, had good taste in detective fiction!

Next stop: the Rhineland, with your pleasant guide, John Dickson Carr.  He wants to show us a castle where certain unpleasant events have occurred of late.  Come along now, don't hesitate....

Ronald Knox, his Detective Fiction Decalogue and "The Four Tragedies of Memworth" (1928), by Lord Ernest Hamilton

Father Ronald Knox: Best known in mystery genre history
for the ten rules (the "decalogue") that he laid down
for the writing of detective fiction

In Father Ronald Knox's celebrated Golden Age detective fiction "decalogue" the Catholic priest and author of mystery tales propounded ten rules for writing in the genre.  One of the more famous (or infamous) of his rules is number five:

"No Chinaman must figure in the story.  Why this should be so I do not know, unless we can find a reason for it in our western habit of assuming  that the Celestial is over-equipped in the matter of brains, and under-equipped in the matter of morals.  I only offer it as a fact of observation that, if you are turning over the pages of a book and come across some mention of 'the slit-like eyes of Chin Loo', you had best put it down at once; it is bad.  The only exception which occurs to my mind--there are probably others--is Lord Ernest Hamilton's 'Four Tragedies of Memworth.' "

Ronald Knox's droll humor is not always appreciated by his critics

Father Knox has been rapped over the knuckles, figuratively speaking, for formulating this rule, by critics who have failed to understand that Knox in his droll fashion was attempting to make a serious point: that the mystery thriller or shocker tale and the detective novel were two very different things. Knox himself distinguished between the two mystery forms earlier in his decalogue:

"A detective story must have as its main interest the unraveling of a mystery; a mystery whose elements are clearly presented to the reader at an early stage in the proceedings, and whose nature is such as to arouse curiosity, a curiosity which is gratified at the end.

And here, for my own part, I would draw a very clear line of demarcation between detective stories and 'shockers.'  Shockers are not in the true sense mystery stories at all; they do not arouse a human instinct of curiosity....

We know at once that the woman is an adventuress, probably a quite innocent adventuress who is being compelled by a threat of blackmail to subserve the purposes of villains; that there is a gang of international crooks at work, determined to put an end to the peace of Europe by giving away English state secrets to an unknown foreign power.  We are certain beforehand that the motives of the villains will be entirely inhuman, the actions of the hero and heroine rash to the verge of idiocy; that the complications to which we are introduced at the beginning will not be explained at the end, because by that time the reader will have forgotten all about them, and probably the author as well.  All this is not a detective story."

In advocating banishing the "Chinaman" from the true detective novel, Ronald Knox had in mind the silly and offensive racist caricatures most prominently associated with the novels of Sax Rohmer (creator of the "fiendish Oriental mastermind," Dr. Fu Manchu), but also figuring in numerous other English and American mystery thrillers throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including some by thriller king Edgar Wallace, the bestselling novelist in England in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Fright film star Boris Karloff as Dr. Fu Manchu,
in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932),
one of the most notorious thriller genre films of the 1930s

Though most associated with the Fu Manchu novels
of Sax Rohmer, the sinister "Chinaman" figured in
numerous other Golden Age thrillers as well

Father Knox's Chinaman rule has been much discussed over the decades, but, interestingly, little or perhaps even no mention has been made of Knox's clearly stated exception to the Chinaman rule: Lord Ernest Hamilton's 1928 mystery novel, The Four Tragedies of Memworth.  What is this novel and why is its prominent Asian character an acceptable violation of Knox's rule?  All will be revealed by the Passing Tramp in Parts Two and Three of this review essay! (for more on Ronald Knox, see ronaldknoxsociety.com/index.html )

Special note from the Passing Tramp: It's been a month now with this blog and it has had nearly 4000 visits, from around the world.  Thanks very much for those visits.  I hope my posts have been of interest and I will try to keep it that way.

Another Pass by Jefferson Farjeon (1883-1955)

J. Jefferson Farjeon (the "J" stands for Joseph--Farjeon was named for his maternal grandfather, the famous American stage actor Joseph Jefferson, and was known as "Joe" to friends and family, even though readers knew him as Jefferson Farjeon) is one of those prolific Golden Age mystery writers who has fallen into almost total obscurity today--quite unjustly, I think.

(pictured below: Farjeon's grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, in his signature stage role, "Rip Van Winkle," and  Jefferson's country home in southern Louisiana, today a stunning house museum, where Farjeon's mother grew up)

 And a link to an informative page on Joseph Jefferson (1829-1905):

http://www.monroehistorical.org/articles/files/090101_jefferson.html

Between 1924 (The Master Criminal) and 1954 (Castle of Fear), Farjeon published by my count fifty-five adult mystery novels (including a few under the name Anthony Swift; he also published several children's mysteries).  He achieved considerable popularity in both the United States and Great Britain, in the latter country becoming one of the staple authors of the Collins Crime Club from 1929 until his death; and he had the distinction, along with such authors as Josephine Tey, Ethel Lina White, Selwyn Jepson and Francis Beeding, of having one of his works, in his case the play (later novel) No. 17, made into an Alfred Hitchcock film.

(pictured below: still from the Alfred Hitchcock film Number 17.  See http://dcairns.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/candlelight-and-shadowplay/

Farjeon is barely remembered today, except for the Hitchcock connection and for his being the brother of beloved children's writer Eleanor Farjeon (he was also the son of the accomplished Victorian novelist Benjamin Farjeon, but the father himself is pretty neglected these days as well).

Eleanor Farjeon

Why Farjeon should be so forgotten escapes me.  He was a popular writer in his day and received many good notices on both sides of the Atlantic.  Granted, a number of his novels fall into a pattern, as one would expect from a prolific genre writer.  And to be sure, Farjeon primarily wrote thrillers, but he was no slavish imitator of such bigger name thriller writers as Edgar Wallace, Sax Rohmer, Sapper and Sydney Horler (for one thing, Farjeon, whose father was a Jew, eschewed the antisemitism commonly found in English "shockers" at this time).  Joe Farjeon on the whole was a gentle and whimsical writer, giving his works their own distinct tone and style, closer, arguably, to the thrillers of Agatha Christie than those of the men.

At heart, Farjeon's thrillers are tales of the empowerment of the weak and the meek, who confront fantastic adventures and dark menaces, but triumph in the end.  Not counting his series character, the downtrodden but resilient "passing tramp" Ben, Farjeon's protagonists often are male clerks or female secretaries, "little people" leading drab, harassed lives, and longing for adventure--something they definitely find in the course of the narratives!  Farjeon is one Golden Age author disinclined to admire people simply because they have titles.

One can dip into any of the Farjeon books from the 1930s and 1940s almost at random and get a sense of his style.  The Windmill Mystery (1934), for instance, is a typical enough example (Farjeon sweetly dedicated this book "To My Dear Mother, who can no longer enjoy my books, but who still seems close to me when I write").  Let's let the Collins Crime Club tell us about the plot of this tale:

The windmill stood out dark and sinister against a background of angry cloud-castles that foretold the coming storm.  Lionel Savage, pack on back, and all set for a week-end hike, glimpsed it from the little wayside railway station and decided it might prove a suitable objective.  Crossing the heath, he met a charming girl, and when the storm broke they raced to the mill for shelter.  It was the start of an amazing adventure which rapidly developed in a crescendo of excitement, until as one hair-rising incident succeeded another the two hikers found themselves involved in a sort of non-stop Grand Guignol of thrills.

Now who can resist little wayside train stations and dark and sinister windmills?  Admittedly, this is a pretty typical sort of plot for Farjeon (with a windmill rather than a house, inn or even castle).  But Farjeon also wrote some unique books that emerged rather ahead of the rest of the pack.

Farjeon novels that in my view particularly stand out include (besides such "Ben the Tramp" books as Ben on the Job, 1952)

 the following titles:

1. Holiday Express (1935)

In this train mystery thriller the protagonist is a wonderfully-characterized child, an ingenuous young boy, and the book is written as if he himself had written it.

2. 13 Guests (1936)


Farjeon's take on a full dress, traditional country house detective novel, impeccably done.  The dust jacket of the American edition, pictured below, below carries Dorothy L. Sayers assertion that "Jefferson Farjeon is quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures."

 3. Mystery in White (1937)

A classic situation: Christmas travelers exiting a snowbound train come upon an empty country house where something quite unpleasant may have happened....

4. End of an Author (1938)

A remarkable and original work: the perilous adventures of a burned-out, extremely prolific thriller writer (Farjeon himself had published thirty thrillers in fifteen years at this time) and his lady secretary in a remote part of East Anglia; wonderfully self-referential about the genre and the setting is superb.  Reprinted as Death in the Inkwell (1942) in the United States, with a last page that can be read only with the use of a mirror!  This tantalizing feature does not appear in the earlier British edition, evidently.  Willliam Lyon Phelps, former Lampson Professor of English Literature at Yale and a prominent public intellectual in the United States who was a great admirer of Farjeon, called this tale "a brilliant, original and very exciting murder story."

5. Aunt Sunday Sees It Through/Aunt Sunday Takes Command (1940)

In this one the protagonist is an elderly woman who, thrown into a nest of crooks, proves to have amazing resources of character to draw on and a positive genius for extemporizing.

6. The Judge Sums Up (1942)

Farjeon's most successful attempt at a true detective novel and a forgotten courtroom classic.

7. The Double Crime (1953)

A final country house detective novel in the traditional style, except here one of the key narrative focal points is a down-at-his-heels, ex-lag, Cockney traveling salesman, sympathetically presented.  An interesting look is provided at mansion life on both sides of the baize door.

Also worth noting is Farjeon's apocalyptic sci-fi novel, Death of a World (1948).  Appalled by the carnage of World War Two and the Cold War atomic arms race that followed, a dismayed Farjeon produced what was by far his bleakest book.  Some of Farjeon's post-war crime novels are darker as well, but none of them are remotely as grim as Death of a World, a genuine social protest novel by a Golden Age crime writer.

 In the May 1939 Penguin paperback edition of No. 17 (which was reprinted four times by August 1941), Jefferson Farjeon's author's bio (pictured above) gives some idea of his unique personality as a crime thriller writer:

He walks up and down when talking and thinking, always types his work himself, is ultra-tidy, vegetarian, but doesn't like vegetables (hence difficulties), takes a cold tub every morning, is pacifist, likes photography, tomato soup and drawing funny animals (Animals are funny because I can't draw them, he says).

Crime thriller writers tend to cultivate tough guy (and these days tough gal) images.  Not Mr. J. Jefferson Farjeon, who dared to be different.  Read him yourself for something different (if you can find him!).