Detective Novel Series: Start of a List

The author is the daughter of a Scottish doctor who lives in Kent. Her imaginary county (Calleshire) more resembles Sussex, but in any case her mysteries are all provincial, and Sloan, from a very small CID, is no supersleuth and is not particularly cultured or eccentric. Yet perfectly adequate. Aird's plots are ingeneous and well-researched in their particular topic (poisonous plants, medical archeology, etc.). The books are better not read as a series, rather, singly as a very nice dessert after a P.D. James blockbuster or the like -- there is basically no 'history' in them in that the main characters do not age or otherwise develop (it took three books, published over four years, just for Sloan's wife's baby to be born). Aird takes the Erle Stanley Gardner approach of reintroducing every stock character with the "Della Street, etc., Paul Drake, etc." blurb that author used when dictating his books to his secretary to avoid having to write anything new apart from the plot: "C. D. Sloan (known as Seedy to his colleagues), Happy Harry the Inspector of Traffic (known as Happy because he never smiled)" -- you know the sort of thing. And Constable Crosby remains young, brash, and incompetent throughout. There are a lot of quotations, mostly clichés, along the lines of The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck -- hardly Innes or Crispin. And the detection, while fair, consists of Sloan being reminded of something and wracking his brains to remember what it was -- a signal to you, the reader, to wrack your brains to connect this instance with something mentioned en passant 40 pages ago. As I say, good reads, but at the Pass level for the most part. Give this author credit for making her murderers really nasty; it is usually a mistake for a mystery writer to encourage any sympathy for the villain.

Best examples: The Religious Body, Slight Mourning, and Parting Breath

A prolific author but there are only a few Pibbles in the works (which are mostly children's books and science fiction); his later mysteries are semi-historicals, such as the superb Death of a Unicorn, set back in "Golden Age" times, and they capture the atmosphere of the era very well, but not the detection milieu -- Coward not Christie. Pibble was not a very effective policeman but he got the weirdest cases, such as the New Guinea aborigine killed in a London bed-sit, a Disney-ized country house murder, a caper at a lunatic monastery in the Hebrides complete with mad scientist and two whores, death in a weird hostel for cathypnic children (that is some sort of genetic sleeping-sickness disorder I never heard of before this), a Greek Island adventure involving St Sporophore, and his final case solved in a nursing home where he is (barely and bumblingly) recuperating from a near-deadly stroke [some people might have found that uplifting, but it was inutterably depressing to me]. Dickinson is a good writer, and very imaginative, but extremely irregular in bringing his subject off. One tends to say 'this is enough', and chuck the book away, especially when the matter is kind of stomach-turning or just unpleasant. Pibble is basically a loser and a sad-sack.

Best example: The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest

That business about cathypnic children in Sleep and His Brother was just too eerie and upsetting -- one would rather read about Hannibal Lector doing his thing or sub for Norman Bates at the desk in his motel. And the last Pibble (One Foot in the Grave) really bothered me because my father was dying of Alzheimers at the time. Puh-leeze! OK for 'serious' novels, but I don't think mystery stories are the proper vehicle to play on real fears and phobias, because they are meant to divert, not cater to obsession. That is why I don't really count gore-bath sex-killer mass-murderer frenzy studies as true detective stories. A touch of that always helps a mystery, but it shouldn't be the SUBJECT of it.

John Greenwood was a pseudonym of John Buxton Hilton (who did the Inspector Kenworthy series over many years, which are not reviewed on this site -- yet, anyway). A journeyman detective novel writer who often came up with some very nice stories. He wrote six Mosley books in the later part of his life (mid-1980's), based on his moorland detective. They are not all 'murder' mysteries, or even well-clued in the classic sense, but depend mainly on Mosley's role as neighborhood cop amongst some of the most dour, independent, and close-mouthed people on earth. Justice is home-grown and Mosley supports that very well organizing his own schemes with the locals, to the chagrin and aggravation of his bureaucratic superior officers. Of course this is a region where very little crime occurs apart from sheep-rustling, wife-beating, and clothes-line-thefts, so the CID leave it to him -- but occasionally weird things happen. Very nice and amusing series.

The Books: Murder, Mr Mosley?, Mists over Mosley, Mosley by Moonlight, The Missing Mr Mosley, The Mind of Mr Mosley, and What, Me, Mr Mosley?

He 'lessons' his assistant, Sergeant Beamish (who is into high-tech coppery):

"...There's a blue-print built up in the bottom of your mind. You apply it to everybody that you talk to. Obviously the more you've got in the bottom of your mind, the more reliance you can put on it."
"They set store by lie-detectors in the States."
"That's when you've got someone else to convince, besides yourself...."

S. T. Haymon is not a prolific mystery novelist but she deserves more exposure. There is a certain cynicism about religion, especially organized ones, although she is obviously a deist of a very unregulated sort; a nice touch of the macabre; wonderful capsule sketches that bring characters to life (like those amazing people you find every now and then who do charcoal portraits of customers on the boardwalk and bring a true likeness to life in a minute or so, for very little money); an excellent prose stylist; and a writer with a true sense of humor too. What more can you ask for? But she has only a few mystery novels, and they are not in print anywhere now, even the new ones (although you can find them on Amazon). Her plots are really bizarre especially when they are placed in traditional settings such as English villages, cathedral towns, manor houses and the like. That fine underlying cynicism transforms these settings. Her detective (and his Sergeant Ellis and the rest) is a good antidote to the usual bland cop shop -- sarcastic, earthy, compassionate, and witty. And, after all, a ham-sandwich-loving atheist detective brought up as a Baptist, who is trying to convert to Judaism because his girlfriend is Jewish, and who looks like Rudolph Valentino, but talks tough on occasion and really connects with his witnesses, is definitely unusual. Why is a drippy author like Fyfield published in paperback now when this fine author isn't?

Best examples: Death and the Pregnant Virgin and Stately Homicide.

The latter book is an amazing variation of the country house murder: undiscovered love letters from Anne Boleyn to her brother, classic moated grange, tribulations of running a tourist attraction (and the temptations of the staff to indulge in some looting), three variations on the theme of incest, the jealousies and ambitions of academics, a moat full of carnivorous eels, and best of all a very fine rendition of characters who escaped the 1956 Hungarian uprising, one of the NATO allies' most cowardly betrayals (and something that still shames me as an American even though I was in 7th grade at the time -- just as I was shamed many years later by the betrayal by NATO of the Czechs under Dubcek. It was all disgraceful Cold War politics -- USSR won't mess with us in Suez if we give them Hungary, Vietnam if we give them Czechoslovakia. But excuse me for ranting about something that has always bothered me -- wimpish 'weaders' of the west).

Very good police procedural novels with an unusual black-sheep policeman, a combination of Dover and Dalziel. For two books he had been 'decommissioned' (i.e. out of work) by his police department for being behind the times, refusing to use computer technology, and supposedly beating up on suspects to get confessions. Those are fun, when for example he is a screw-up Harrod's security guard then works as a PI for a Japanese Sumo wrestler -- still, he functions better as a cop. The cop-shop politics are delightful, as is his refusal to take any of it seriously.

The Books: The Last Detective, Diamond Solitaire, The Summons, Bloodhounds, Upon a Dark Night, The Vault, The Reaper, Diamond Dust, The House Sitter

Henry Tibbett and his wife Emmy (who accompanies him in his investigations) certainly got to travel around a lot, and seems to have had more vacation time than a typical working policeman. That doesn't matter, because the author also travelled a lot and enjoyed sports like yachting and skiing; she had a real knack for invoking and describing a sense of 'place', and explaining sports for dummies, so these don't read like travelogues or how-to manuals. Tibbett is described as being one of the Yard's top people, although he is nondescript in appearance. He is called "The Nose" for his intuitive sense of deduction. The mysteries vary considerably in complexity of plotting technique, cluing, and puzzle elements; the characterization is always very good, although the stories tend to amble along without much drama (except occasionally). There is also a considerable amount of dry and satiric wit, every now and then verging on the fantastic, and eccentric comedy (Murder Fantastical, for example). Good examples, too, of medical obscurities regarding poisoning (Many Deadly Returns is a really fine and clever one).

Best examples (in addition to the two mentioned above): Down Among the Dead Men, Who Is Simon Warwick?, Murder à la Mode, and Johnny Under Ground

An absolutely gross and disgusting and incompetent detective who rose in the department because nobody knew what else to do with him -- which is of course the whole point, because he does solve his cases (or his subordinates do, while he is asleep or eating or belching or doing something else revolting). Very entertaining stories, but not to be read in bulk. No doubt, the best one is The Unkindest Cut, a variation on "The Stepford Wives" -- why are all the men in this classic English village so placid? There are a whole bunch of these dessert novels, which are entertaining not so much for the plots as for the predictable method of resolution, pure formula of its own unique kind, as zany in its own way as Fish's Schlock Homes, sheer Marxist (bros.) dialectic.

Wexford is the middle-aged chief of CID in the imaginary mid-Sussex commuter-belt town of Kingsmarkham. His assistant (oddly enough, since inspectors don't usually 'partner' with other inspectors but rather with detective sergeants) is Inspector Burden, a somewhat puritanical and less imaginative man, although he sometimes becomes the principal detective in a case. Wexford himself is shown as a very compassionate and tolerant, but hard-cased, professional policeman; his personal problems -- his daughters, his weight, etc. -- sometimes obtrude in the story, though usually in an acceptably non-irrelevant way. The background, with its well-described physical setting and cast of repeating characters such as police constables, Chiefs, wives, children, etc. is very appealing, much more so than in the one-off psychological suspense novels the author also specializes in (both under the Rendell name and as Barbara Vine). Although the books have appeared over thirty years, and take into account social developments and changes since the 1970s, one also gets a compressed continuity common in detective fiction, in that the characters only 'age' from book to book (Wexford would have retired years ago if strict historical chronology were being followed). Occasionally, because Rendell tends to be moralistic about some topics, a book will depend too much on some politically correct point, but the mystery plot element is always there regardless of the preaching -- sometimes very ingeniously.

There are so far nearly 20 books in the series, the best tending to be more recent (and much longer than the earlies ones, a trend among modern writers). Prime examples are An Unkindness of Ravens, The Veiled One, and Road Rage.

Peter Robinson is a Yorkshireman now living in Canada; his stories are all set in the Yorkshire Dales area, mostly in the imaginary town of Eastvale (which is a thinly disguised Richmond). They are police procedurals that vary between remote village and urban slum plots, and lately the kidnap/murder of children. Not as complex and gritty as the Reginald Hill mysteries, they are nonetheless in the front rank of modern detective stories, although for those who prefer straight puzzle mysteries without too much dwelling on the personal lives of the series characters they might seem too angst-ridden. Banks's love life is certainly complex, even if he takes it too seriously! His stormy relationships with rival cops are also great fun. Some of the books involve trips by Banks to places like London, Toronto, and Amsterdam as part of the investigation, but for the most part are tied down to Eastvale and environs. Note: In a Dry Season bears close reading in conjuction with Hill's On Beulah Height, both of which involve moorland villages drowned in reservoirs, with much digging into the past; both are excellent in contrasting ways. It is Robinson's best book to date, and a marvellous 'historical' mystery if one can describe as such a story written about the War years of the 1940s by an author not even born then.

Book List: Gallows View (1987), A Dedicated Man*, A Necessary End*, The Hanging Valley*, Past Reason Hated, Wednesday's Child, Final Account [Dry Bones that Dream], Innocent Graves, Blood at the Root [Dead Right], Not Safe after Dark (short stories), In a Dry Season, Cold Is the Grave, Aftermath, and Close to Home [The Summer that Never Was] (2003). Latest is Playing with Fire. [* The 'Swainshead' books, my personal favorites]

Josephine Tey (Elizabeth MacKintosh, also Gordon Daviot the playwright) wrote very few mysteries, but they are beautifully written, with dialogue you can hear in your head, fine descriptive prose, and a nice sense of satire when portraying writers and other artists. The plots, however, are not brilliant puzzles of the Christie or Carr sort; one reads the books for pleasure, not bafflement. Alan Grant is rather nondescript but makes a good reflector of his environment:

"In problems involving a time-place sequence, for instance. In matters where A was at spot X at 5:30 P.M. on the umpteenth inst., Grant's mind worked with the tidiness of a calculating machine. But in an affair where motive was all, he sat back and let his mind loose on the problem. Presently, if he left it alone, it would throw up the pattern that he needed."

Also: "...no human reaction was inexplicable. It was Grant's experience that it was the irrelevant, the unconsidered words in a statement that were important. Quite surprising and gratifying revelations lay in the gap between an assertion and a non-sequitur." (The Singing Sands)

The first novel was published in 1929: The Man in the Queue. A nice debut, but marred by the improbability of a dead man being held up on his feet for ten minutes by the press of bodies in a theatre queue. The 'chase' up in the Scottish Highlands is very well done, though. The last novel was The Singing Sands (1953), published posthumously and not polished in galley by the author (but not suffering much as a consequence). It takes place for the most part in the Highlands again ("The quality of Scotchness was highly concentrated essence, and should always be diluted. As an ingredient it was admirable; neat, it was as abominable as ammonia."), and the investigation is initiated by a haunting scrap of verse found on the apparently 'unmurdered' body: "The beasts that talk, / The streams that stand, / The stones that walk, / The singing sand, / .... / That guard the way / To Paradise." That turns out to be a brilliant piece of misdirection. Grant undertakes this unofficially -- he is on sick leave -- to cure his claustrophobia.

The most famous Tey book is The Daughter of Time, in which Grant, in hospital with a broken leg, relieves his boredom with an ultimate form of 'armchair detection' -- the solution of the mystery of who killed (i.e., had them killed) the Princes in the Tower, Richard III or Henry VII. Not really a mystery story, but very well done and compulsively readable. One appreciates the rehabilitation of the evil Crookback and the debunking of the sainted Thomas More. (The fact that Grant knows all about Richard II, Wat Tyler, etc. and is totally ignorant of Richard III is glossed over.) Another very interesting book, a real 'feel-gooder', is The Franchise Affair, a retelling of the famous 18th-century Elizabeth Canning case; the protagonist is not Grant, though he appears, but a lawyer, and there is an excellent trial setting.

Book list: The Man in the Queue, A Shilling for Candles, Miss Pym Disposes (Grant not in this), The Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar (again no Grant), To Love and Be Wise, The Daughter of Time, and The Singing Sands.

Henry Wade was one of the few peers to write detective stories (Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, Bart.), your Dame Agatha's and Ngaio's not counting in this context. He was a true journeyman of the Golden Age, with a rather dry prose style, decent plotting, and a great talent for describing landscapes, especially the flat, marshy areas of East Anglia where most of his novels are set. One unusual feature of his detective novels is the uncharacteristically active role played by his various Chief Constables (e.g., Col. Netterly), who back then were more or less figureheads, and nowadays tend to be professional police administrators. It is amusing, also, to find county police, as opposed to Scotland Yard, just starting to set up their own Criminal Investigation Departments, with the resulting rivalry with the professional Scotland Yard detective usually called in. His first book, The Duke of York's Steps, is marred by the sort of casual anti-Semitism that existed in the late 1920s and early 1930s before Hitler codified that aberration; the murder method is also very problematical. Later books often make very effective use of the 'inverted' technique developed by Freeman, where you know, or almost know, who the villain is and the interest is in how he is or is not caught.

Best examples: Mist on the Saltings, Heir Presumptive, New Graves at Great Norne, and A Dying Fall

Set in the supposedly poky East Anglian town of Flaxborough, this is a fine series in a category of detection that is rarely successfully brought off: the comic mystery. Watson writes true comic mysteries (like Westlake in the US); he hasn't been published much in America, more's the pity -- and he is now out of print. One particular book, Hopjoy Was Here is a great spoof on James Bond and the like. And in Broomsticks over Flaxborough (Kissing Covens), he has a set-piece taking off promotional ads for laundry detergent, in addition to its main theme about witchcraft being the ruling passion of the local women (cf. Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife). The author deals with small towns and suburbia, and local minor fraudulent people like the medium Lucilla Teatime. Here, I guess, is what would happen when you put a seasoned agent into such a 'safe house' place. The entire series is a satire on the English Cosy mystery, with the stock village characters set askew. The Daily Telegraph sums up: "Flaxborough is Colin Watson's quiet English town whose outward respectability masks a seething pottage of greed, crime and vice. Mr Watson wields a delightfully witty pen dipped in acid."

The Flaxborough Chronicles: Coffin, Scarcely Used, Bump in the Night, Hopjoy Was Here, Lonelyheart 4122, Charity Ends at Home, The Flaxborough Crab, Broomsticks over Flaxborough, The Naked Nuns, One Man's Meat, Blue Murder, Plaster Sinners, Whatever's Been Going on at Mumblesby?

See the following web sites: Overview, Tribute Page.

They are highly recommended.