"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.

The Hollow (1946) by Agatha Christie

Reading Agatha Christie’s The Hollow right after The Murder on the Links was an experience. With over twenty years separating the two books, you’d expect The Hollow to not only be better, but different. After all, twenty years is plenty of time to not only refine one’s craft, but to try out different ideas that would have been difficult for a young writer. I am glad to report that The Hollow shows how far Christie had come.

Even though this is a Poirot novel, he takes a while to make an appearance. Instead, we focus on the people preparing to meet at the Hollow, a vacation home for the Angkatell family. Lucy Angkatell gathers family and friends for a weekend party. Three of the guests are Dr. John Christow, his wife Gerda, and Lucy’s distant relation (and John’s lover) the sculptor Henrietta. All seems well until the stable triangle is disrupted by the surprise appearance of Veronica Cray, an actress and a former flame of John’s who is vacationing nearby, who reminds him of a path he could have taken, who pushes him into maybe taking it again…

Poirot (who is also vacationing nearby) arrives at The Hollow to find “a joke, a set piece [...] a highly artificial murder scene”: John dying of a gunshot wound by the side of the pool. Gerda standing over him with a gun. Others stumbling on the scene. And his last word, “Henrietta--”

What makes this book special is the characters and their interplay. The central John-Gerda-Henrietta relationship is well-done. John is a jerk with little empathy, but we see his determination to cure Ridgeway’s Disease. Gerda is foolish, but we see how she uses her stupidity as a shield. Henrietta, meanwhile, is the most complex character in the book. She is deeply passionate about her art. She has an astonishing amount of compassion and is the only character in the book to treat Gerda with any respect. Yet she doesn’t blink about using Gerda as the model for an unflattering piece of art. The unusual relationship she has with John plays a key role in the book, and I thought Christie mostly did a good job with it. (There were some aspects that I didn’t quite buy.)

The other characters are good as well. The highlight for me was Lucy, a silly, scatterbrained but also deeply intelligent woman who also plays a key role in the plot. Like most of the other characters in the story, there’s more to her than meets the eye, and there’s a very chilling portion of the book where we see that her utter disregard for social niceties extends to more than just awkward arranging of party guests. The only one who doesn’t quite work is David Angkatell, who’s mostly there to be an Angry Young Person.

“But what about the mystery plot?” I hear you ask. Well…if A. this wasn’t a Christie novel and B. I hadn’t known the solution going in, there’s a chance I would have been disappointed. Christie was a master at taking simple scenarios and spinning complexity out of them, but the murder plan here might feel a little too simple for some. I liked it; it fits thematically with the rest of the book and is the solution this book needed. It’s not all great however. I may have been misled by spoilers, but it felt like some of the minor background details of the crime weren’t explained. There’s also one clue (the drawing of the tree by the pool and Poirot’s conclusions from it) that felt misused. I can buy the logic of “Once we know the solution, this clue has to mean this,” but I don’t always like that type of backwards reasoning. But that's secondary to the characters in this book. I still really enjoyed what Christie did here.

The only real rough spot in the novel is the portrayal of a Jewish shopkeeper, which is very distasteful.

On the whole, this is a real gem of a book. Newcomers and fans alike will really enjoy the strong characters and solid plotting that this book offers. Highly Recommended!

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Pretty Sinister Books, The Green Capsule, Dead Yesterday, A Crime is Afoot, Countdown John's Christie Journal, ahsweetmysteryblog (contains spoilers), Composed Almost Entirely of Books (contains spoilers)

The Murder on the Links (1923) by Agatha Christie

I’ve found that it’s easy to forget about an author’s early works. Often, they are seen as inferior 

compared to later, more polished works. In the case of authors like Agatha Christie, who shuffled genres and produced what is to my understanding some subpar works in her early career, it’s even easier to overlook their early stuff, especially if there isn’t an obvious hook for the reader. The Murder on the Links went under my radar for years, but after really enjoying The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I decided to give this a shot. Does it actually deserve to be forgotten?

The book opens with Hastings meeting a mysterious young woman who charms him instantly. Thankfully for those fearful of a romance plot, the romance is mostly handled well, and “Cinderella” (as she calls herself), is fun to watch in action. The meat of the story begins later, when Poirot receives a letter from millionaire Paul Renauld, claiming that his life is in danger. Intrigued, Poirot goes off to France…only to learn that his client was stabbed to death the night before, his body dumped in a shallow grave on his unfinished golf course. The victim’s wife tells a story straight out of a sensation novel: two masked men barged into her and her husband’s bedroom in the night, threatening him with a knife and demanding he give them “the secret” before escorting him off into the night. A broken watch that’s two hours fast, a piece of lead piping, and (the lack of) footprints in a flower bed are just some of the many clues that Poirot has to interpret.

Links is more focused on the puzzle than later Christie novels. Clues fly thick and fast, and only a very attentive reader will be able to piece together the truth. I'd say it's possible, but you do have to be paying close attention. Also, this time Poirot has competition in the form of Giraud, a French detective who elevates physical evidence above all. Of course, Poirot insists that the physical clues don’t matter nearly as much as the “true psychology of the case.” Frankly, I didn’t find the competition between the two very impressive because Giraud is so off-base from the start. Sure, I know that Poirot will win, but I’d like a little more back-and-forth.

As I said, the mystery is quite complex. This leads to more of a focus on that than on the characters. They’re all very generic. There’s the victim’s wife, his son (who made the murder weapon and quarreled with him the night of the murder), and the secretary. There’s also M. Daubreuil, “the girl with the anxious eyes” who is in love with the victim’s son, and her mother, a strange woman who Poirot cannot place, but he has the distinct impression that she was involved in a murder case…

I admit, I had to read this book twice. I did not read it the first time in the best mindset, and the book mostly didn’t stick well in my head, and what did stick I found disappointing. This is Christie showing her technical complexity. She gives a very well-worked out mystery, but it doesn’t stick well in the reader’s head. My second read-through went much better; the plot gelled together and felt more coherent. That being said, I do have a couple of major issues with it. (ROT13: Svefg, gurer’f ab jnl guvf cyna jbhyq unir sbbyrq jub vg jnf zrnag gb sbby. Lrf, Puevfgvr qbrf frg vg hc ol fnlvat gung “Zna vf na habevtvany navzny,” naq gung ur’yy pbcl jung ur'f nyernql qbar, ohg gurer’f n qvssrerapr orgjrra “Ercrngvat gur fnzr orngf sebz n cerivbhf, fhpprffshy pevzr,” naq “Ercrngvat nyzbfg gur fnzr cyna lbh pbbxrq hc jvgu na nppbzcyvpr naq rkcrpgvat vg gb sbby fnvq nppbzcyvpr.” Frpbaq, gur zheqre uvatrf ba gjb crbcyr qvfphffvat gurve snxr zheqre cynaf va gur bcra, arkg gb gurve arvtuobe’f lneq.)

Hastings is not on good form here. I admit, I like Hastings more than most; him rolling his eyes at Poirot’s latest boast makes the great detective much more tolerable. But this book justifies the complaints that people have against him; he makes mistake after mistake, seems to have forgotten every other case he’s seen Poirot solve (which, okay, aren't many at this point, but it should be clear to him that Poirot knows what he’s doing), and makes such a gaping error near the end that Poirot himself is dumbfounded.

Despite my complaints, I ended up enjoying this book in the end. It’s a breezy, fun, and complex murder mystery that might slip under the radar of Christie fans. I would still label this a B-tier Christie, but definitely upper B-tier. Recommended.

Other Reviews: In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Mysteries Ahoy! The Green Capsule, Countdown John's Christie Journal, AhSweetMysteryBlog (contains spoilers), crossexaminingcrime (contains spoilers)