British Library Crime Classics: E.C.R. Lorac

I’ve been slowly collecting books published by the British Library Crime Classics. I judged these books by their covers when I came across my first one and haven’t been disappointed in those that I’ve read so far. John Bude and E.C.R. Lorac are the authors I’ve mostly read.

Murder in the Mill-Race by E.C.R. Lorac (1952) – like other books I’ve read by this author, it has an intriguing plot and is written in a literary style. When a murder occurs in a village in Devon, the residents are determined not to allow strangers to know their secrets and Chief Inspector Macdonald is hampered in his investigations. Macdonald is a very likeable cop with a great sense of humour and an ability to show compassion at the right time. Lorac was an important and influential Golden Age author and was particularly skilled in her descriptions of place and atmosphere. Some of her books, including this one, have a rural setting while others like the one below are set in London.

These Names Make Clues by E.C.R. Lorac – this story was first published in 1937 but languished in obscurity for more than eighty years until it was published by the British Library Crime Classics in 2021. It has the feel of the more traditional Golden Age crime novel with a locked room scenario.

Macdonald was invited to a Treasure Hunt party hosted by Graham Coombe and his sister, Susan. The attendees included detectives – in literary, psychological and practical fields of work who had never met each other. They were each given a pseudonym (Jane Austen, Laurence Sterne, Fanny Burney, Samuel Pepys…) and clues of a literary, historical and practical nature and instructions on where to find their next clue. And so the guests began their hunt, wandering through the house. About an hour into the party, the electricity suddenly went out. When it was eventually restored it was noticed that one of the guests was missing. The missing person was found dead of a suspected heart attack.

''The evening began as a farce and has ended in a tragedy.

It was an essential of detection to regard every contact in a case as dispassionately as the symbol of an equation; the likes and dislikes of a detective had to be kept apart from the reasoning mental processes whereby he assessed probabilities. With one side of his mind, Macdonald liked Graham Coombe and his sister. They were a friendly and amusing pair, whose qualities, imaginative and whimsical in the former, practical and sensible in the latter, made a good foil to one another.
With the other side of his mind, Macdonald had to consider how either – or both – would fit as culprits in this evening’s work.''

I’ve been reading Anne Perry’s William Monk series over the past few months. In a few of the books I’ve read the murderers actions seemed to be almost justified because of the dreadful situation they were in. In These Names Make Clues a similar situation occurs but Macdonald’s response was,

''From some acts there is no escape…If you take another person’s life, for no matter what reason of private anger or vengeance, your own is surely forfeit. You may escape punishment by the law, but your own awareness you never escape…murder never can be judged as a good method of righting other wrongs. I believe that,'' he added very simply and earnestly, ''otherwise my job would be an intolerable one.''

Death in Berlin (1955) by M. M. Kaye

 

M.M. Kaye is well-known for her historical novels but I was unaware that she also had written six crime novels which are set in various locations. Kaye’s marriage to a British Army soldier meant that she travelled extensively and was able to use her experience of living in different locations in her writing. 

Death in Berlin (first published as Death Walks in Berlin) is set in the Berlin of 1953, eight years after WWII. Kaye and her husband were stationed in the city in the post war years and witnessed the erection of the Berlin Wall. They returned in later years and barely recognised the city as most of the ruins had disappeared from the British sector. 

Kaye describes Berlin as she saw it in 1953. As she took long walks through the leafy suburbs between Herr Strasse and the Grunewald and saw the ruined roofless houses where the Nazi elite used to live, she thought up the plot for her book. She made notes and wrote detailed descriptions of the ruined city, and made rough sketches of the stadium that Hitler had built in the 1930’s. This was used for the Olympic Games in 1936 and afterwards for a multitude of Nazi rallies. 

Post-war Berlin was a splendid setting for a murder mystery and the author’s familiarity with the city in the years after the war prior to the erection of the Berlin Wall creates an authentic atmosphere. 

The story opens at Dunkirk in 1940 with a group of refugees making their way to a fishing boat in a bid to escape to England. A young girl clinging to her doll is one of the refugees who makes it onto the boat, but one woman gets left behind in the scramble to get to the boat. Once the refugees reached England it was discovered that the young girl’s parents had been killed when the Germans attacked Belgium and that she was not French, as everyone imagined, but English. 

Years later, twenty-one-year-old Miranda Brand accepted an invitation from her cousin, Robert and his wife, Stella, to travel by train with them to Berlin and have a month’s holiday with them there. One of their travelling companions, Brigadier Brindley, told a story at dinner of a fortune in cut diamonds that was supposedly smuggled out of Germany in 1940. This proved to be the Brigadier's undoing...

That night, as the train rumbled on its way, Miranda could not sleep. She got up to get herself a cup of water and as she returned, the train rocked on a curve which made her stumble through her cabin door in the dark. Reaching out her hand & not finding her berth, she quickly realised she was in the wrong room. She had stumbled into the Brigadier’s compartment. Fortunately, he was sound asleep, and she left immediately and found her own compartment.  Sitting on her berth she thought how stupid she’d been and then she noticed that she had blood on her dressing gown and on the floor where she had walked. The Brigadier had been murdered and the prime suspect was Miranda who literally had blood on her hands. 

It was not only the sight of a murdered man that has brought those days back, dragging them out of that dark attic in her mind into which her conscious and subconscious mind had thrust them. She should never come here, to this shattered city where the very language in the streets tugged at shadowy memories that were better forgotten. 

I enjoyed this book although I didn’t think some of the characters were sufficiently developed - Miranda’s love interest, for example, but I’m keen to read more of Kaye's work. The ending was very unexpected and surprised me and as she reminded me a little of Mary Stewart, I'd be happy to explore her more thoroughly. I'm annoyed I can't find any of her books in the library and was stunned to randomly pick up Death in Berlin for a dollar!

Kaye was born to British parents in India and lived there until she was ten when she was sent to boarding school in England. She never expected to return but she met and married a British Indian Army officer who was transferred to the British Army when the Indian regiment was disbanded.

A few months before we left, The Wall went up. And with its rise many fond hopes for the future of humanity came tumbling down. I watched it being built: which is possibly why, when I look back, I think that I prefer the battered but more hopeful Berlin of 1953.

My Brother Michael (1959) by Mary Stewart

 

‘The result of my own visit to Greece and the impact of that wonderful country on a mind steeped in the classics. ‘My Brother Michael’ was my love affair with Greece.’ - Mary Stewart

Camilla Haven had broken with Philip her fiancée of six years, and now at twenty-five years of age, she had come to Greece for a holiday. Elizabeth, the young woman who was to have been her companion had broken her leg and had to remain in England. The story opens in a cafe in Athens with Camilla writing to Elizabeth about her time in Greece up until then.

‘I’m told that Delphi really is something. So I’ve left it till last. The only trouble is, I’m getting a bit worried about the cash. I suppose I’m a bit of a fool where money is concerned. Philip ran all that, and how right he was…’

As Camilla reflected back on her time with Philip, she was sure now, that although it was fun while it lasted, it wouldn’t have worked out. But after six years of being swept up in Philip’s magnificent wake,’ she did feel life was a trifle dull at times.

‘This is the first time for years I’ve been away on my own - I was almost going to say ‘off the lead’ - and I’m really enjoying myself in a way I hadn’t thought possible before. You know, I don’t suppose he’d ever have come here all; I just can’t see Philip prowling around Mycaenae or Cnossos or Delos, can you? Or letting me prowl either… There’s no regret, only relief that perhaps, now, I’ll have time to be myself…Even if I am quite shatteringly incompetent when I am being myself…’

To miss Delphi was unthinkable but it seemed that her only option was a one-day bus tour. It was all she could afford but a case of mistaken identity and her limited knowledge of the Greek language changed her plans. A stranger had come up to her table in the cafe with the keys to a hire car saying that the car was wanted urgently by Monsieur Simon in Delphi - it was a matter of life and death. He was told to give the keys to a young girl sitting alone in the cafe and she would drive it to Simon in Delphi.
After an unfruitful conversation with the cafe owner and various customers and a wait to see if another young woman arrived to pick up the car, she decided she might as well turn the situation to her advantage and drive it to Delphi herself.

‘The thing was simple, obvious and a direct intervention of providence.’

Camilla differed from the other heroines I’ve come across in Mary Stewart’s novels. She was unsure of herself and described herself as incompetent and cowardly. As the story progressed, she encountered situations where her mettle was tested, and she proved to be stronger than she imagined.
There was the usual romantic interest, which also differed from that in other books. Simon, a young Englishman, was reserved and gentle - a counterpoise to the overbearing Philip. Compassionate and tolerant, he saw beneath Camilla’s lack of confidence and gave her credit for having a personality of her own. I liked this shift from the feisty, competent heroine to one who was unsure of herself and couldn’t reverse a car to save herself.

My Brother Michael is set about fourteen years after WWII. Simon’s older brother, Michael, had been with the Special Air Service when the Germans occupied Greece and had been doing undercover work as a British Liaison Officer attached to a guerrilla organisation. Michael had died on Mt Parnassus in 1944 and Simon had come to Greece to find out more about the circumstances surrounding his death.

There’s a bit of history in this story - ELAS, the Communist Resistance; EDES, the anti-Communist Resistance, and the failed Communist coup in 1944.

‘And when you think harshly of ELAS, remember two things. One is that the Greek is born a fighting animal. Doesn’t their magnificent and pathetic history show you that? If a Greek can’t find anyone else to fight, he’ll fight his neighbour. The other is the poverty of Greece, and to the very poor any creed that brings promise has a quick way to the heart.’

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you...?
- King Lear, Act 3; Scene 4

I was reminded of Helen MacInnes book, Decision in Delphi (1960), as it touches on the Greek Civil War and has its climax in Delphi. I linked to a few articles on the aftereffects of the civil war when I wrote it.

My Brother Michael has more violence than any of Stewart’s other books and there is one particularly nasty account of a s*xual nature and betrayal in Chapter 17 which was unexpected and jolting but not very explicit.

‘And that was how (…) was murdered with twenty yards of me, and I never lifted a finger to help…’

Some interesting links related to the content of this book:

The Charioteer of Delphi in the Clutches of WWII

Excavations at Delphi

Nine Coaches Waiting (1958) by Mary Stewart

 

Linda Martin was back in Paris after an absence of nine years. With an English father and a French mother, she had grown up in France during the Second World War. When she was fourteen both of her parents were killed in a plane crash and she was sent to an orphanage in England where she remained for seven years. When she was offered a position in France as governess to nine-year-old Philippe, Comte de Valmy, she jumped at the opportunity to go back to the country she loved.

'Those sweet, those stinging memories…things I had never before noticed, never missed, until now I saw them unchanged, part and parcel of that life that stopped nine years ago…I was back in France; that much of the dream of the past nine years had come true. However prosaic or dreary my new job might be, at least I had come back to the country I had persisted in regarding as my home.'

Arriving at the Château Valmy in Savoy, Linda found that her young charge was a reserved, lonely child, heir to a large estate kept in trust by his uncle after the boy's parents died. It didn’t take Linda long to warm to the young boy and to discern that he was afraid of his uncle. His uncle had no time for his nephew and was cold and harsh towards him.
A shooting which narrowly missed Philippe, another near fatal ‘accident,’ and an unlikely romance, sets the scene for adventure, danger and uncertainty as Linda commits herself to take care of Philippe while trying to work out who the potential murderer might be.

This is the second book that I’ve read by Mary Stewart (the other being, Madam, Will You Talk?) and it was every bit as good as the first. It took a little longer for the story in Nine Coaches Waiting to develop, but it was also longer than the first.
There were some similarities between the two - a vulnerable but strong young woman, a lonely child who needed protection, the French setting, and a romance.

‘An owl called below me, down in the woods; called again. Its muted melancholy found too ready an echo in me. I felt tired and depressed. Too much had happened today; and the pleasant things…had somehow faded back out of mind and left me with this queerly flattened feeling.
I know what it was, of course. I’d lived with loneliness a long time. That was something which was always there…one learns to keep it at bay…’

Again, Mary Stewart’s writing is just lovely and each chapter is introduced by a literary quotation, e.g.

‘I am two fools, I know,
For loving, and for saying so.
John Donne: The Triple Fool.'

And this on the ability of poetry to educate the mind:

'The cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land…yes, that was it. That was it. Not for the first time I was sharply grateful to Daddy for making poetry a habit with me. The best words in the best order…one always got the same shock of recognition and delight when someone's words swam up to meet a thought or name a picture. Daddy had been right. Poetry was awfully good material to think with.'

There are some allusions to Cinderella and Jane Eyre intermingled in the story which were nicely done, as were the revelations of what underpinned the actions or thoughts of various characters.

‘Wrapped up in my loneliness and danger I hadn’t even seen that his need was the same as my own. He and I had hoed the same row, and he for a more bitter harvest.’

A great book to curl up with a cup of tea and no interruptions, if possible, because Mary Stewart’s books are hard to put down - at least the two I’ve read so far have been.

 

Madam, Will You Talk? (1955) by Mary Stewart

 

Mary Stewart was a new author to me in 2022 when a friend recommended her books and what a delightful author she is! Madam, Will You Talk? was her first book and it is a cracker.

Set in Southern France, it is a suspenseful story that doesn’t waste any time in plunging the reader into murder and mystery.

When I wrote that summer, and asked my friend Louise if she would come with me on a car trip to Provence, I had no idea that I might be issuing an invitation to danger…though the part I was to play in the tragedy was to break and re-form the pattern of my whole life, yet it was a very minor part, little more than a walk-on in the last act…How was I to know, that lovely quiet afternoon, that most of the actors in the tragedy were at that moment assembled in this neat, unpretentious little Provençal hotel?

Charity Selbourne, a twenty-eight year old woman, and the book’s heroine, narrates the story. I warmed to her character immediately when she befriended a lonely and deeply unhappy twelve-year-old boy. It’s not the usual stuff of romantic suspense but in one of Mary Stewart’s other books (Nine Coaches Waiting) she sympathetically portrays another young boy. I read in her obituary that:

At the age of 30, she suffered an ectopic pregnancy, undiagnosed for several weeks. Peritonitis set in and she nearly died. It was a long time before she accepted childlessness.

Mary Stewart’s writing is beautiful and descriptive, and reflects not only her own personal experience but also her interests and educational background. There is an abundance of literary allusions, nods to the classics, and knowledge of theatre and art scattered throughout this book. Her rendering of place/setting, in this case the south of France, in particular Avignon and Marseille, play their role as characters in the story - as does a dog!

Then fate, in the shape of Nidhug, took a hand.
My cue had come. I had to enter the stage.

Avignon is a walled city, as I have said, a compact and lovely little town skirted to the north and west by the Rhone and circled completely by medieval ramparts, none the less lovely, to my inexpert eye, for having been heavily restored in the nineteenth century. The city us dominated from the north by the Rocher des Doms, a steep mass of white rock crowned by the cathedral of Notre Dame, and green with singing pines.

le Rocher des Doms à Avignon | Avignon et Provence (avignon-et-provence.com)

The deserted town of Les Baux, in medieval times a strong and terrible fortress, stands high over the southern plains. The streets of eyeless houses - little more than broken shells - the crumbling lines of the once mighty bastions, the occasional jewel of a carved Renaissance window, clothed with ferns, have an uncanny beauty of their own, while something of the fierce and terrible history of the ‘wolves of Les Baux,’ the lords of Orange and Kings of Arles, still seems to inhere in these broken fortifications.

Les Baux-de-Provence Travel Guide - France - Eupedia

I saw the first light, fore-running the sun, gather in a cup of the eastern cloud, gather and grow and brim, till at last it spilled like milk over the golden lip, to smear the dark face of heaven from end to end.

In addition to her quality writing is an exciting, convoluted plot with many twists, including a thrilling car chase through the Rhône-Alpes. I enjoyed the (highly improbable) romance and the old-fashioned feel which reminded me of Agatha Christies’ The Man in the Brown Suit and (just a little) of Helen MacInnes’ writing style.

A wonderful read on a rainy day for me, and best of all, I have two more of her books waiting for me.

Mary Stewart's legacy as an author is vast. She is considered by many to be the mother of the modern romantic suspense novel. She was among the first to integrate mystery and love story, seamlessly blending the two elements in such a way that each strengthens the other.

 

 

They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie (1951)

 

‘Outside in Bank Street it was sunny and full of swirling dust and the noises were terrific and varied. There was the persistent honking of motor horns, the cries of vendors of various wares. There were hot disputes between small groups of people who seemed ready to murder each other but were really fast friends; boys and children were selling every type of tree, sweetmeats, oranges and bananas, bath towels, combs, razor blades and other assorted merchandise carried rapidly through the streets on trays. There was also a perpetual and ever renewed sound of throat clearing and spitting, and above it the thin melancholy wail of men conducting donkeys and horses amongst the stream of motors and pedestrians shouting, “Balek — Balek!”

It was eleven o’clock in the morning in the city of Baghdad.’

It is 1950 and everyone is coming to Baghdad.
Mr. Dakin, the undercover head of British Intelligence in Baghdad, is awaiting Henry Carmichael who is returning to Iraq with evidence to back up his fantastic story of an international plot involving a deadly weapon.

‘In substance, it is exactly like the Fifth Column activities at the beginning of the last war, only this time it is on a world-wide scale.’

Dakin’s best and most reliable man has either gone mad or his story is true. Four men with similar features to Carmichael have already been murdered in Persia and Iraq. He didn’t get away unsuspected and the enemy are on his trail. When he enters Baghdad the danger will be even greater.
World leaders hoping to promote peace are coming to Baghdad for a secret summit and Dakin is desperate to have Carmichael’s evidence to present to them.

Meanwhile in London, Victoria Jones, a young Cockney typist just fired from her job, is sitting in a park eating her lunch when Edward, a handsome young man, strikes up a conversation. Victoria, who considers herself an excellent judge of character, is immediately smitten, so much so that when she hears that he is heading to Baghdad the next day to work for a Dr. Rathbone, she decides that somehow, she would get herself to Baghdad.

They Came to Baghdad is one of the few Christie novels that is a spy/political thriller rather than her typical detective novel.
I think her detective novels are better than her spy thrillers but this book was a fun read with a complicated plot full of people who are not what they seem.
It took me a while to figure out that Victoria Jones was the main character. She didn’t seem very promising at first with her tendency to tell elaborate creative lies to make her life more interesting. Her sudden decision that she was in love with a man she’d barely talked to gave all the appearance of an airhead; but she was also generous, courageous and thoroughly optimistic, and she grew on me.

‘She, Victoria Jones, a little London typist, had arrived in Baghdad, had seen a man murdered almost before her eyes, had become a secret agent or something equally melodramatic, and had finally met the man she loved in a tropical garden with palms waving overhead, and in all probability not far from the spot where the original garden of Eden was said to be situated.’

Victoria’s quick wits and inventive qualities are given plenty of scope in Baghdad where she is caught up in a kidnapping and a murder and manages to talk her way into working at an archaeological dig by posing as an anthropologist. Through it all she matures and learns some truths about human nature while keeping her inherent optimism and revealing her true mettle.

‘Surely those were the things that mattered — the little every day things, the family to be cooked for, the four walls that enclosed the home, the one or two cherished possessions…
Humility is what keeps you sane and a human being…’

They Came to Baghdad was a good Christie book to follow on from her autobiographical, Come, Tell Me How You Live, where she recounts her time working and travelling with her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan, in Syria and other parts of the Middle East.
It also captures a very different Baghdad to that of today, just over 70 years later.

Interesting links:

Mysteries and the Middle East

Agatha Christie in Egypt & the Near East

The Brother Cadfael Series by Ellis Peters

 Ellis Peters was the nom de plume of Edith Mary Pargeter (1913-1995). I started reading her Brother Cadfael series of Mediaeval whodunnits set in England in the 12th Century about fifteen years ago. They are best read in order, although I haven't done so as the books are not always easy to find here.

Cadfael, originally from Wales, had turned Benedictine monk after life as a soldier and sailor and was well versed in the ways of the world. The earlier books elaborate on this and introduce some characters such as Hugh Beringar - the deputy sheriff and Cadfael’s close friend; Abbot Radulfus and others who re-appear in subsequent books.

The Leper of Saint Giles was written in 1981 and is the Fifth Chronicle of the series. The story is set in the year 1139 when King Stephen was on the throne.

‘He had seen battles, too, in his time in the world, as far afield as Acre and Ascalon and Jerusalem in the first Crusade, and witnessed deaths crueller than disease, and heathen kinder than Christians, and he knew leprosies of the heart and ulcers of the soul worse than any of these he poulticed and lanced with his herbal medicines.’

When visiting the leprosy hospital at Saint Giles to restock their medical supplies, Cadfael arrives just as preparations for a noble wedding are in progress. He witnesses the bridegroom, Huon de Domville, arrive with his entourage. Domville is a shrewd, malevolent man, and quite a bit older than his intended young bride. 

The young woman rides in later, accompanied by her uncle and his wife, her guardians after her father died. Cadfael recognised her as the granddaughter of a famous knight who had fought in the Crusades. It was also obvious to Cadfael that the young girl had had no say in the matter of her marriage and discovers that the girl is secretly in love with one of Domville's squires.

Before the marriage could take place, two deaths occur and Cadfael uses his position and his past to help discover a murderer, absolve an innocent man, uncover a mystery, and unite two lovers.

The Leper of Saint Giles is a satisfying mystery and a tale of treachery with the unique twists and turns that are the hallmark of Ellis Peters.

The Virgin in the Ice is the sixth chronicle in the Cadfael series and was written in 1982. This book reveals a piece of Cadfael's past that should be read before going on to subsequent books. I won't say too much about this book but it could almost be called a thriller.

In the year 1139 King Stephen is on the throne but his cousin, Empress Maude, daughter of Henry I, has an equal claim to the throne. A civil war (the Anarchy) results and refugees have fled from Worcester, the scene of the latest conflict.

Among the refugees are a boy of thirteen, his seventeen year old sister, and a young Benedictine nun. They were known to have been  seeking refuge at Shrewsbury Abbey where Brother Cadfael resides but they fail to arrive. A monk of Cadfael's order is found near death from wounds inflicted by persons unknown and Brother Cadfael is drawn into both mysteries.

This is a gripping book with many false trails and intertwining plots. I thought there was just a wee bit of contrivance and overdone coincidence towards the end but Ellis Peters can get away with it. Her descriptive writing is a pleasure to read and her ability to draw the reader into the wintery, bleak atmosphere of the England of Mediaeval times adds to the appeal of these books.

As Cadfael reflects on his younger days and his time as a soldier in the Holy Land twenty-six years earlier he observes,

'In a land at war with itself...you may take it as certain that order breaks down, and savagery breaks out.'

The Virgin in the Ice covers a brutal period of English history and portrays the hardships that fall upon the common people when leadership forgets them. '...where royal kinsfolk are tearing each other for a crown, lesser men will ride the time for their own gain, without scruple or mercy.'