"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")