Detective Novel Series

Mrs. Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, later Dame Beatrice (in 12 Horses and the Hangman's Noose, 1956), psychiatric consultant to the Home Office, is surely one of the most startlingly original and amusing detectives ever invented. Described with reptilian metaphors (her nickname - given to her by her secretary, Laura Menzies - is Mrs. Croc, she has a "reptilian grin" and "saurian smile", and reminds people she meets of a "pterodactyl" or a "boa constrictor"), her appearance is rendered even more unprepossessing by the fact that she often gives vent to nerve-racking cackles, has a "mirthless grin", and prods her unfortunate companions in the rib with a "fleshless finger" of her "yellow and claw-like hand". Not exactly the sort of old woman detective (she is in her fifties on her first appearance, in Speedy Death, 1929, so must be at least 100 on her last appearance, The Crozier Pharaohs, 1984) one expects to find, she is much stronger than Miss Marple or Miss Silver - she commits several murders in her long career, is an excellent shot with a knife, pistol or darts, and often performs improbable feats such as dropping out of first-floor windows to the ground below, or grappling with murderers. Yet this never seems improbable, and she herself convinces, because of her colossal intelligence, her strength of character, and the excellence of Miss Mitchell's characterisation and writing - Mrs. Bradley is worldly, incredibly wise (one of the pleasures of Mitchell's stories is to hear Mrs. Bradley's progressive comments on birth-control, lunatic asylums, capital punishment, morality, etc.), powerful, and has an odd touch of the supernatural about her - an ancestress, Mary Toadflax, was burnt as a witch. The cases with which her creator presents her are often as bizarre as the detective. In one book, The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935), the murderer is the Devil incarnate; in another, Here Comes a Chopper (1946), the murder is prophesied by second sight; and, on her first appearance, in Speedy Death, the murder victim, a virile explorer named Everard Mountjoy, found drowned in the bath is discovered to be a woman (much to "his" fiancée's horror). The supernatural is nearly always to be found: ghosts, witchcraft, stone circles, water nymphs, even the Loch Ness Monster. The books are often set in the outdoors (one of Mitchell's gifts is her ability to evoke landscape - rural settings abound, as well as coasts, cliffs, and islands), or in schools or convents - she did not like London, so none of the stories ever take place anywhere larger than the cathedral town of Winchester (in Death and the Maiden, 1947).

Of course, Mitchell is an acquired taste, and appeals more to those readers with a taste for the humorous, the bizarre, and the unexpected, but, once the taste is acquired, each new book read becomes increasingly satisfying.

Best books: Speedy Death (1929), The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop (1929), The Longer Bodies (1930), The Saltmarsh Murders (1932), Death at the Opera (1934), The Devil at Saxon Wall (1935), Come Away Death (1937), St. Peter's Finger (1938), When Last I Died (1941), Laurels are Poison (1942), Sunset Over Soho (?; 1943), Death and the Maiden (1947), The Dancing Druids (1948), Tom Brown's Body (1949), Merlin's Furlong (1953), The Twenty-third Man (1957), Fault in the Structure (1977), Here Lies Gloria Mundy (1982), The Greenstone Griffins (1983).

Submitted by Nicholas Fuller (stoke_moran@yahoo.com)
Web Site: The Ministry of Miracles

Mr. Reginald Fortune, medical adviser to Scotland Yard, is, superficially, one of the Wimseyish "silly ass" brigade - g-droppin', epicurean, upper-class, with a monocle-spouting Scotland Yard chief, the Hon. Stanley Lomas, as Watson. However, there's much more to Reggie than this: Reggie Fortune is, like Father Brown or Mrs. Bradley, a sort of divine justice, willing to murder those whom the law cannot touch, or to manipulate the law so that the murderer remains beyond the reach of the law - he refers to himself several times as "an instrument of Providence". The stories are often very bizarre, featuring original yet credible motives and murderers - e.g., in "The Long Dinner", the murderer is a doctor in charge of a hospital for children, who is paid to kill unwanted children of rich parents, and who then uses the money from these murders to heal children from families too poor to afford treatment; in Bailey's masterpiece, "The Broken Toad", the murderess is a loving mother who kills father-in-law, husband, daughter-in-law, and herself, in order to frame her daughter for murder, and give the family fortune to her beloved son; in "The Unknown Murderer", the truly splendid murderer is a philanthropist who kills in order to enjoy others' grief. Like Chesterton, the stories often have a moral point, usually established in a general statement at the beginning of the story, and showing that the accepted way of looking at things is not always the right way to look at things - moral misdirection, as opposed to Chesterton's plot-based misdirection.

Best stories: "The Archduke's Tea", "The Business Minister" (in Call Mr. Fortune, 1920); "The Young Doctor", "The Magic Stone", "The Unknown Murderer" (in Mr. Fortune's Practice, 1923); "The Furnished Cottage", "The Only Son", "The Hermit Crab", "The Long Barrow", "The Profiteers" (in Mr. Fortune's Trials, 1925); "The Little House" (in Mr. Fortune, Please, 1928); "The Long Dinner" (in Mr. Fortune Objects, 1935); "The Dead Leaves" (in Clue for Mr. Fortune, 1936); "The Greek Play", "The Broken Toad", "The Yellow Slugs", "The Holy Well" (in Meet Mr. Fortune, 1942). Best novels: Shadow on the Wall (1934), Black Land, White Land (1937), The Bishop's Crime (1940).

Submitted by Nicholas Fuller (stoke_moran@yahoo.com)
Web Site: The Ministry of Miracles