Please welcome Paula Messina back to the blog today.....
Case
for Three Detectives
By Paula Messina
Case for Three Detectives
by Leo Bruce is a delicious send up of the traditional British mystery. Mrs.
Thurston, a lovely but dimwitted woman, retires to her bedroom after a night of
entertaining guests. Mrs. Thurston screams. Her husband, the Thurston’s lawyer Williams, and Townsend, who
narrates the novel, rush to her aid, only the door is locked. After breaking
down the door, the men find Mrs. Thurston dead, her throat slashed.
Williams
immediately takes over and searches every inch of the room. The windows are
bolted. There is no conceivable way for the murderer to escape, but escape he
did. The husband, guests, and staff are stumped. Williams insists the only
explanation is something unworldly.
Rigor
mortis hasn’t set in when three
detectives, Lord Simon Pimsoll, Monsieur Amer Picon, and Monsignor Smith,
arrive like bloodhounds following a scent. These amateur detectives dazzle the
characters and readers with their brilliance. Mystery fans, especially those
who revel in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, will immediately recognize
the lineage of the three detectives, Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot, and
Father Brown.
Pimsoll,
Picon, and Smith are so brilliant they don’t
need to bother with evidence. Mere details would get in the way of their
superior intellects and preternatural ability to know who the killer is and why
poor Mrs. Thurston had to die. The facts they uncover include a will that
favors the staff and a stepson who stands to profit from Mrs. Thurston’s death.
No one knows who or where the stepson is. What would a mystery be without
blackmail? Voilà!
The wealthy Mrs. Thurston’s
account is overdrawn. Someone is blackmailing her because of an affair with the
chauffeur who is more interested in marrying the maid. There’s a surfeit of
reasons to kill Mrs. Thurston.
Case is the first
in a series of Sgt. Beef mysteries. From the get go, Beef says he knows who
done it. The three detectives dismiss Beef as a beer-swilling, dart-throwing
dullard who couldn’t
find his way home after a night at the pub, forget find a murderer. Bruce spins
another send up with Beef, who barely appears in the novel. What kind of series
stars a character who remains in the background for most of the book?
Parts
of Case are laugh-out-loud funny.
Bruce nails the most annoying traits of Wimsey, Poirot, and Brown. Pimsoll is
an arrogant ass. Picon is in love with himself and his brilliant mind. Msgr.
Smith rarely says anything that makes sense. Three detectives mean they provide
three solutions with three different murderers. Which one is correct?
Can
the star of the series, the dipsomaniac, honest-to-goodness, real-life
detective—well real life in terms of the novel—better the three brilliant
detectives and bag the murderer? You’ll
have to read the book to find out.
In
true Golden Age fashion, readers are unlikely to figure out who the murderer
is.
Bruce
pokes fun at Dorthy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and G. K. Chesterton, his
contemporaries and giants of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, but he also
has his tongue firmly pressed against his cheek as he makes himself part of the
joke. After all, he’s
a mystery writer as well. The joke can be extended to all mystery writers who
manipulate the plot to satisfy their endings.
Leo
Bruce, born Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903 – 1979), was a prolific English writer who
published non-fiction, novels, short stories, screenplays and more under his
real name as well as his pseudonym. Bruce wrote a second mystery series
featuring schoolmaster Carolus Deene.
Some
readers will be put off by the lack of action. Case for Three Detectives is quite talky, but the dialogue is
hilarious. Case is great fun and
worth a read.
Associate
Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4idZ8Ev
Paula Messina ©2024
Paula Messina writes essays as well as humorous and historical fiction. “Fish Eyes” (Devil’s Snare: Best New England Crime Stories 2024) marks Donatello Laguardia’s print debut.
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