The False Inspector Dew (1982) by Peter Lovesey

Peter Lovesey is, as far as I know, known for two things outside of his Peter Diamond series: His Sergeant Cribb series, which was a major milestone in popularizing historical mysteries, and today’s stand-alone book, The False Inspector Dew.

The False Inspector Dew pulls from the real life Crippen murder. Most readers of classic mystery fiction will have at least heard the name before, but for those who don’t know about him, a quick explanation: Hawley Harvey Crippen was an English doctor who killed his wife, and buried her under the cellar before trying to escape to Canada along with his mistress, disguised as boy. The main reason the case is so famous is that the captain of the ship Montrose was able to inform British authorities of their presence on the ship via the then-new wireless telegraph system. As a result, Chief Inspector Walter Dew was waiting for them in Canada. This case seemed to capture the attention of the British public at the time, and even today you’ll still find writers taking inspiration from the Crippen case. The False Inspector Dew is Lovesey’s take on this famous case, although his focus is on Inspector Dew…sort of.

Alma Webster is a fantasist. When the book opens, she’s fresh off the “death” of her “fiance” who “died” in the influenza epidemic. She latches on to her dentist, Walter Baranov, and although she’s briefly put off when she learns his real last name is Brown, it doesn’t take long for her to begin pursuing him in earnest. Walter himself is struggling with his wife, Lydia. An out-of-work actress, Lydia has a habit of taking out her frustrations verbally on Walter. Walter accepts this, as the only reason he’s able to practice dentistry is his wife’s generosity, and he figures that offering her emotional support is only fair. But when she decides that the way to revive her career is to find a role in American films, an act that will force Walter to start all over again with his practice, Walter is pushed over the edge.

Together, he and Alma form a plan. Walter will openly refuse to go with Lydia to America, but will secretly be on the ship under a fake name. Alma will stowaway in his room while Walter murders Lydia. After that, Alma will emerge and impersonate Lydia for the rest of the voyage, while Walter shoves the body out of a porthole in the night. A simple plan that would put Crippen to shame.

And the fake name Walter intends to use? Well…

But there’s more than just these three involved. There’s Poppy, the pickpocket hired for an unknown scheme. There’s the Cordells, a family of three. There’s Paul Westerfield, the millionaire’s son who’s very interested in daughter Barbara Cordell.

All of these and more will gather on the Mauretania, unaware of the brutal murder that will be committed on board, a murder whose investigation will be placed in the hands of the best investigator on either side of the Atlantic: the retired, shy, and really very uneasy Inspector Walter Dew

It takes a bit for The False Inspector Dew to take off as a murder mystery. However, I found the first half of the book quite engaging; Lovesey is a smooth writer and weaves his threads well, building up the suspense of Walter and Alma getting closer and closer to their murder plan and the mystery of what certain characters are planning on doing on the Mauretania. Walter was a decently-sympathetic protagonist. I was worried I would be stuck in the head of a complete misogynist for the entire book, but I thought that Lovesey wrote him well. Admittedly, Lydia is a pretty stereotypical bad and shrewish wife. As I pointed out though, Walter is honestly grateful to Lydia for what she’s done for her career, and honestly seems more or less content with where he is. His affair with Alma and subsequent murder plan comes as a result of Lydia’s decision to go to America; less his true character being shown and more of a breaking point. I was honestly rooting for him.

I found the murder and the investigation to be simpler than the one in Keystone, even though that book was far less focused on detection. Some of that is because Lovesey has to spend so much time getting everyone onto the boat, some of it is because Walter is an awful detective. Which is part of the point, but it means that the investigation isn’t always engrossing. (Thankfully the book never reaches the level of pure cringe comedy at Walter’s expense.) The book is fair-play. The key clue is, in my opinion, delivered bluntly, but I was already suspecting parts of it before that. The big final twist is well-set up too; Lovesey expertly waves the key facts in front of your face, confident that you won’t realize their significance until the end. The book could have had more clues, but I’m satisfied with what I got. 

Part of the plot also felt similar to Keystone to me. (ROT13: Obgu obbxf vaibyir fbzrbar jub jnf ybjre-pynff ohg unf znqr gurve jnl gb gur ryvgr xvyyvat fbzrbar jub xabjf nobhg gurve cnfg.) This idea is emphasized more in Keystone, but it stood out to me here. The False Inspector Dew was written first, and I wonder if Lovesey had the idea in his head and refined it for Keystone.

I mistakenly thought this book won an Edgar Award, but it actually won the Crime Writer's of America (CWA) Gold Dagger Award. That assumption led me to think that the book would be deeper than it actually was. It was mostly a light murder mystery. If there is a major theme, I’d say it’s about how we project our ideals and fears onto others. The plot kicks off because Alma projects her romantic fantasies onto Walter. Walter only gets as far as he does in his investigation because everyone thinks he’s the famous Chief Inspector Dew and interpret his awkward pauses and non-sequiturs as brilliant subterfuges, when they aren’t just saying what they think and assuming that those ideas are his. (ROT13: Nyzn’f hygvzngr sngr vf gb vzzrefr urefrys gbgnyyl va fbzrbar ryfr’f snagnfl. Gur zheqre vf fcnexrq jura gur xvyyre nffhzrf gung uvf ivpgvz vf cynaavat ba ercbegvat uvz.) It’s not super in-depth, but I thought Lovesey weaved the theme in throughout the book.

Ultimately, I enjoyed The False Inspector Dew. While it wasn’t quite as in-depth as I thought it would be, and while I enjoyed Keystone more as a mystery, this was still a solid mystery comedy that is worth your time. Recommended.

Other Reviews: The Passing Tramp, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Kevin's Corner (by Patrick Ohl).

Keystone (1983) by Peter Lovesey

One of the authors I’ve been meaning to get to is Peter Lovesey. A former educator, Lovesey is, by my understanding, one of the pioneers of the historical mystery with his Sergeant Cribb novels. I’d heard of him as a post-Golden Age writer who still kept up the traditions of the classic mystery. It took me a while to finally sample his work, but when I saw that my library had a couple of his books for sale, I picked them up. One of them was Keystone.

According to Curt Evans, Keystone came at an interesting time in Lovesey’s career. Between the ending of his Sergeant Cribb series in 1978 and the beginning of his Peter Diamond series in 1991, Lovesey produced six books, four of which were non-series. Keystone was one of them. I knew nothing at all about this book going in. Was it a worthy read?

Keystone stars Warwick Easton, a British vaudeville performer who’s reached the end of his tour and is desperate to get back home. World War I is raging and he’s eager to get to the homefront. As such, he throws himself at the mercy of Mack Sennett, the “King of Comedy,” for a job. Sadly for the ambitious Easton, Sennett sees the humor in his name, “Would you believe this guy goes by the name of Keystone?” and offers him a role in a Keystone Cops production. Easton’s dignity causes him to refuse, but his position as a nameless extra to be called upon when needed isn’t making him any money, so when one of the Cops is hit by a roller coaster during a stunt gone wrong, he agrees to replace him.

In the course of his new career, our hero meets Amber Honeybee, a young woman with dreams of being an actress…but she has no skill. So how did she get a starring role with “Fatty” Arbuckle? There are rumors that she’s sleeping with Sennett, but Easton doubts them. His increasing attraction to her might be clouding his judgement on that though. Then her mother is killed in her and Amber’s bungalow, and Easton gets pulled into a mystery that all seems to revolve around a certain film…

On the whole, I really enjoyed this book. It’s fair to note that, as the subtitle makes clear, this is mainly a novel of suspense, not mystery. It’s not until halfway through the book that Easton really pursues an investigation. Even then, he’s not whipping out elaborate deductions, but just following leads and evidence. It works for the kind of book this is. Is it fair to the reader? I’d say yes. While the vital piece of evidence that connects everything only comes near the end of the book, a reader who’s paying attention can grasp the bigger picture of what’s going on, although the details about the why only come near the end. One thing I didn’t like is that the format means that the initial murder--no, not an accident--is never investigated. Easton realizes how it was done near the end, and it’s honestly a very clever and simple way of killing a man. But because it’s treated like an accident throughout the book, we never get any real investigation, and the impact of the idea isn’t as strong. Lovesey’s use of real historical figures also means that a reader knowledgeable of the era might be able to pick up on certain ideas before the reveal.

It’s clear that Lovesey, er, loves the comedy of this era, and his enthusiasm and knowledge bleeds through and makes the early, crime-less part of the book a smooth read. He makes the Keystone Cops movies sound funny and made me interested in watching them. However, while this book is in theory a comedy mystery, I didn’t find it all that funny. Much of the humor comes from the very-British Easton’s interactions with American Hollywood, and while it’s amusing, there’s never really any laugh-out-loud humor in the book. Not that there needs to be, I just didn’t find what was there all that hilarious.

For all my nitpicking, I really did enjoy Keystone. While it’s not a hyper-logical deduction chain kind of book, it’s a well-written, low-key thriller that shows a love of the era and still gives the mystery-minded reader some clues and interesting ideas to dig into. It sold me on Lovesey, and you can expect to see more of his books on here. Recommended.

"The Scoop" & "Behind the Screen" (1983) by The Detection Club

The “round robin” is a type of book written by a group of people who each write their own part. For example, one person will write one chapter, another person will write another, and so on. Sometimes there’s a broad outline that the authors follow, other times each just goes from what the previous ones have written. It’s a recipe for some entertaining works. “But,” I hear you say, “surely that won’t work with the mystery novel, since they hinge on logic and careful plotting, and just riffing off each other’s work without a plan will just make a mess?” Probably, but man that hasn’t stopped people from trying!

The mystery genre has its own beloved round robins, usually associated with the Detection Club. There’s the most famous example in the genre, The Floating Admiral. Ask a Policeman combines the round robin format and shuffles the authors and their detectives. There were other collaborative works of mystery fiction assembled by the Club, and we’ll be looking at two of them today: “The Scoop” and “Behind the Screen. Both were originally radio broadcasts, but were assembled in book form.

“The Scoop” opens at the offices of the Morning Star, a newspaper reporting on the murder of a woman in an isolated bungalow. (A murder which Martin Edwards argues in The Golden Age of Murder was inspired by the murder of Emily Kaye.) Then, a phone call. A Star reporter has found the murder weapon! He is ordered to report to the office at once. But as the minutes tick by, he never shows…and then, another call. There’s a body lying in a telephone booth, and it’s the reporter.

“The Scoop” changes authors every chapter, although some authors, like E. C. Bentley and Dorothy L. Sayers, appear more than once. I haven’t read every author featured, but it was interesting to see how they differed from one another. The story mostly flows well from one chapter to another, barring one instance (which in retrospect may have been accurate characterization) where a chapter ends with two characters consider a shocking possibility…and then the next chapter has one of them go, “Nah, couldn’t be that,” and go on his merry way. I found it hilarious, even if it was intentional.

“The Scoop” was planned in advance, although the authors had some control over what they wrote. As a result, you can make a pretty good stab at solving this one. There are a few small aspects that you can miss, (ROT13: hayrff lbh xabj gur jbexvatf bs arjfcncre bssvprf pvepn 1931), but the mystery was solid on the whole.

“Behind the Screen” is a shorter but more intense story. The story opens with Wilfred Hope walking to the home of his fiancée Amy and her family, the Ellises. Hope is dreading the visit, as the family has changed since they took in Paul Dudden as a guest. In the following year, he “acquired over them all a most curious dominance.” Hope arrives in the drawing-room, and sits for a while in an uncomfortable, oppressing silence, feeling a terrible unease in the air, the sense that something is in there that should not be. He moves his chair back far enough to see behind the Japanese screen, and sees Dudden lying there, stabbed to death.

“Screen” is a much tighter setting than “Scoop,” focusing on a single household and its inhabitants as opposed to the broader urban setting of “Scoop.” There’s a lot more focus on the turmoil the investigation brings on the household, contrasting with the (mostly) “Murder, what fun!” attitude shown in “Scoop.” However, the mystery plot is weaker. As I mentioned, “Scoop” was more thoroughly plotted out. “Screen,” on the other hand, was closer to the structure of The Floating Admiral. As Dorothy L. Sayers explains, the first three authors (Hugh Walpole, Agatha Christie, and Sayers) laid the groundwork “according to their own fancies,” and the last three (Anthony Berkeley, E. C. Bentley, and Ronald A. Knox) “used their wits, in consultation, to unravel the clues presented to them by the first three.” I don’t know what Sayers meant by “in consultation,” but I do know that Knox’s solution, while not a cheat, is definitely cheap. I don't want to give details, but I imagine that many readers will be at least mildly flummoxed by Knox’s solution. His summation is also very clunky and slightly hard to follow. There is one very interesting idea brought up (ROT13: gur vqrn gung obgu pbasrffvbaf gb zheqre ner hagehr, naq gung gur pbasrffbef unir syvccrq juvpu vawhevrf gurl vasyvpgrq) but it’s quickly dismissed.

“Screen” was also the subject of a contest where listeners could answer questions about who- and howdunit. Some (although “only very few”)  got the who correct, although quite a few got tripped up by the other questions. I don’t blame them, since the ones under C. are quite baffling. I also found Milward Kennedy’s breakdown of the winners to be hard to follow.

Both “The Scoop” and “Behind the Screen” are interesting--and successful--experiments. I’d say that “The Scoop” is the better work, while “Behind the Screen” is more entertaining. The paperback edition from Charter that I have comes with the questionnaire for “Screen” and Kennedy’s breakdown of the winners, as well as an explanation from Sayers about how the projects were planned (although I included most of what she said in this review), and I recommend it. Both works are worthy showcases of their authors, (well, I didn’t like Hugh Walpole’s entry in “Screen,” but he’s doing something specific with it, so I’ll concede that it’s a matter of taste) and are more than just a pair of oddities that only concern the dedicated fan; they are good mysteries in their own right. Recommended. 

Other Reviews: Beneath the Stains of Time, The Invisible Event ("The Scoop" and "Behind the Screen")

You Can Die Laughing (1957) by A. A. Fair

Of all the books I expected to find in my uncle’s basement, a random book from the middle of the Cool & Lam series was not one of them.

A.A. Fair was the pseudonym of Erle Stanley Gardner, better known as “the Perry Mason guy.” Under this name, he wrote the Cool & Lam series, starring Donald Lam and Bertha Cool. Bertha  is “as unyielding as a roll of barbed wire” and her temper doesn’t match her name at all. Donald “doesn’t weigh over a hundred and thirty-five pounds soaking wet,” and has never won a fight in his life. Physical fights, anyway. Intellectual fights are a whole different matter, and he finds himself in the middle of one from chapter 2 onward.

Lawton C. Corning is a Texas oilman who wants Cool & Lam to find a woman, one Yvonne Wells.* He won’t say why, but he implied to Bertha on their first meeting that it has something to do with oil. Donald wasn’t there for that first meeting though, and now he’s denying he ever said anything about oil, or even mining rights. He just wants Mrs. Wells found. And he signs a check for one hundred and fifty when told the fee is one thousand. It’s just the beginning of a frustrating case. Drury Wells is semi-cooperative, but his next door neighbor thinks “that Mrs. Wells is buried in the sand dunes.” Not that that stops his wife from greeting Donald and the police when they go investigate…

From here, the book gets too complex to summarize. It takes a while for a central problem to materialize, and I flailed around a bit while reading, trying to grasp onto something solid. This wasn’t because the book was badly written mind you; I blazed through about 130 pages in one sitting. Gardner has a knack for making dialogue blocks that should be incredibly pointless and tiring feel engaging. You’ll quickly grasp the thrust of the conversation. I admit, however, that the book at times felt more like an extended short story than a full novel. Like The Case of the Counterfeit Eye, it’s less about the mystery and more about watching Lam run circles around the rest of the cast. He’s the one who says the title phrase to Corning, and ultimately has the last laugh over him.

All in all, this was a fun book. I can’t say that I’d recommend it to someone as their first Gardner, or even their first Fair, but it was a solid, if light, read. Recommended.

*Hah, a pun.

Charlie Chan Carries On (1930) by Earl Derr Biggers

And now, more Charlie Chan!

Charlie Chan Carries On is the sixth novel in the series. (Keeper of the Keys was the seventh. I read them in reverse without realizing.) This time, the action kicks off in England, when a deaf old man is found strangled to death in his hotel room. Complicating matters is that the man is a member of a round-the-world tour, and most of his fellow travelers barely know him. Chief Inspector Duff of Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate this seemingly motiveless crime.

“But wait!” I hear you cry, “Isn’t this a Charlie Chan novel?”

It is, dear reader, but besides a mention and a letter in the first chapter, it’ll be a while before he shows up.

From the beginning, this book shows more vim than Keeper. I don’t know if I’m reading too much into this (Keeper was written a year before his death and I don’t know how his health was at the time), but I was more engaged with this book than I was with Keeper. The round-the-world tour is a good set-up, and while Biggers doesn’t always make the best use of the constantly shifting local (beyond Italy, where we get a reminder that this is during Mussolini’s rule: “They would bring Il Duce himself into the affair”), it does keep the story moving. This book has quite a large cast. There’s the head of the tour, Doctor (of Philosophy!) Lofton. There’s Patrick Tait, a lawyer with a heart issue. There’s also Walter Honywood, a nervous man who knows more than he’s telling. There’s also Norman Fenwick, a man who will be a bigger thorn in Duff’s side than the murderer, along with his wife. You also have Max Minchin, a former(?) racketeer and his wife, among numerous others. “Some queer characters had certainly crept into Lofton’s Round the World Tour this year,” and Biggers deserves credit for keeping them distinct. Only once did I have to stop and think “Who’s this again?”

Unfortunately, the cluing is sparse. Keeper’s cluing might have been broken, but at least there were multiple clues. Here, there’s one (1) clue. It is, in fairness, a good clue. It’s a clue that requires the reader to pay attention, and it would be a good start to a chain of logic that would inexorably lead to the killer. But it’s only one clue. It’s telling how Charlie’s much more incriminating evidence is something he sees but doesn’t describe. I will give Biggers due credit for making his killer one of the few killers I’ve read in mystery fiction that felt genuinely ruthless. This book has a pretty high body count! I was really sold on the killer being a threat, rather than just someone to be unmasked come the ending.

All in all, I enjoyed this book, but I can’t claim it to be a great mystery. Like its successor, this is a book for when you want something light but engaging. I’d say this is better than Keeper, with more energy and *fun* running through it. Recommended.

The Case of the Counterfeit Eye (1935) by Erle Stanley Gardner

This isn’t my first Perry Mason, but it is my first Perry Mason novel.

The Case of the Counterfeit Eye is a ride. The book opens with a man named Peter Brunold coming to Mason for help. Brunold says that one of his artificial eyes was stolen, and he’s afraid that it could be planted at the scene of “a crime--a burglary, or, perhaps, a murder.” Mason agrees to help…by making a bunch of other fake eyes to presumably plant at crime scenes.

Our hero.

In the next chapter, he agrees to help a spineless whelp pay back money he embezzled. In the next, while trying to help the aforementioned young man, gets consulted on how to end a marriage without letting the husband know. In the next chapter, he gets called the scene of an assault and finds the husband (who’s also the man the guy in the second chapter was embezzling from) shot to death...with a glass eye clutched in his hand.

Phew!

I’ll be honest, this is not a fair play mystery. You can follow Mason’s logic about why he suspects the killer, but there’s no real evidence pointing to them. What this book is is an exercise in watching Mason give shady advice, stay five steps ahead of everyone, and play legal games. In the course of this novel, Mason:

• Tells a woman who planted a gun at a crime scene how to avoid the police and media
• Has a conversation that involves the following (paraphrased) exchange: "Let's assume my client committed embezzlement." "He literally confessed." "My client can say whatever he wants; I don't make confessions."
• Gives a witness to murder his car so she can go to his office and he can get a statement before the police can
• Impersonates a window washer to talk to a witness
• Stumbles on a dead body, plants an eye at the scene, then manipulates the police (who are tailing him, admittedly) into finding it

All of this culminates in a final courtroom gambit that is magnificent. It’s amazing; the instant you realize what (you think he’s) doing, you’ll laugh out loud. Honestly, his end goal wasn’t as impressive as I thought it would be, but the build-up to it is wonderful.

The book isn’t perfect. The plot moves at 100 miles an hour and some of the parts fall off along the way. There are moments that build up suspicion or mystery that end up not meaning anything. For example, there’s one bit at the end of the first chapter (ROT13: Oehabyq tbvat cnyr ng gur fvtug bs Uneel) that never gets explained. But the main framework holds up, and frankly the ride is fun enough that these threads didn’t bother me much. This was a great book that wetted my appetite for more Mason novels. Recommended!

Other reviews: Ah, Sweet Mystery! and Mysteries Ahoy!

Keeper of the Keys (1932) by Earl Derr Biggers

I admit, I didn’t know what to expect with my first Charlie Chan. And that's the only image I could find of my copy!

Keeper of the Keys opens with Charlie Chan on his way to the estate of Dudley Ward, the first husband of opera star Ellen Landini. He has learned that Landini was pregnant when she left him, and wants Chan’s help in tracking down his son. To help with this, he’s also invited Landini’s other three ex-husbands, her current fiancé, and said fiancé's sister. And Landini herself. Three guesses who’s shot to death in their bedroom, and the first two don’t count.

Keeper is a well-written but flawed novel. Biggers isn’t as smooth as Agatha Christie, but he does a good job of differentiating his suspects and keeping the story moving. But the cluing doesn’t work. There’s one major error about a certain trait that the killer has (and is revealed early in the book), but I can accept that, since the book is at least consistent with that error. However, you only get one chance to see the killer’s slip-up, which I’m not fond of. There is another clue, but it’s used badly. It’s a clever, subtle clue that Chan draws your attention to more than once, and I felt really clever about spotting it and its implications…but the deduction Chan actually draws from it is nonsense. There’s also an incident that happens shortly after the murder, an incident that Chan highlights as meaningful, but we don’t get any cluing about it, and the final explanation is weak. I found it very frustrating.

There’s an elephant in the room when it comes to talking about the Chan novels. Namely, race. I knew going into this book that the reputation the Chan series has regarding racism is at least a little exaggerated, and I can confirm this with Chan himself. He is treated with respect by most of the characters he meets, and the one racist character is called out as such. However, it’s harder to ignore Ah Sing, Ward’s servant. He fits the stereotype of the loyal Chinese servant, with that phonetic accent that all writers thought the Chinese sounded like. (In fairness to Biggers, he uses phonetic accents with multiple characters. Unfairly, they are bad.) This isn’t just a minor character either; Sing and his relationships with the other cast members are important parts of the book, and those relationships are often very paternalistic.  It’s very possible that if you just made him an English servant loyal to his boss, I’d find it less uncomfortable, but I feel it’s worth noting.

On the positive side, I thought Biggers’s portrayal of the victim was interesting. (ROT13: Gur ortvaavat bs gur obbx cerfragf ure nf n fgrerbglcvpny qenzn svther--ybhq, zna-rngvat, boabkvbhf--ohg ol gur raq, jr frr gung juvyr fur jnf bire-gur-gbc, ure uhfonaqf jrer nyy jbefr guna fur rire jnf, naq ober zber oynzr sbe gur eryngvbafuvcf snvyvat guna fur qvq.) It’s not a huge part of the book (although it is important), but I liked that aspect of the book.

For all my griping, I did enjoy this book well-enough. Like I said, Biggers is a good writer who knows how to keep his story moving. I can’t exactly recommend this, and definitely not as an introduction to the author, but if you’re looking for a breezy, entertaining mystery, you might well enjoy this.

Other Reviews: Classic Mysteries, MysteryFile.