Beneath the Stains of Time: Tragedy at the Unicorn (1928) by John Rhode

Beneath the Stains of Time: Tragedy at the Unicorn (1928) by John Rhode: Tragedy at the Unicorn (1928) is only the fifth novel, of more than seventy, in the Dr. Lancelot Priestley series by " John Rhode ,...

Beneath the Stains of Time: Murder, M.D. (1943) by Miles Burton

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Happiness Is A Book: FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE VENNER CRIME BY JOHN RHODE

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Happiness Is A Book: FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOK: DEATH IN HARLEY STREET BY JOHN RHODE

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Happiness Is A Book: FRIDAY’S FORGOTTEN BOOK: DR. PRIESTLEY LAYS A TRAP BY JOHN RHODE

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Beneath the Stains of Time: Murder at Monk's Barn (1931) by Cecil Waye

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FFB Review: "The Corpse in the Car" by John Rhode (Reviewed by Patrick Ohl)

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books with Patti Abbott hosted here later today. Patrick Ohl is back and his obsession with the Golden Age continues….

Lady Misterton was a general pain in the derrière to everyone she came into contact with. But on this occasion, she really crossed the limit. While driving through Windsor Great Park, she commanded her chauffeur, William Fitchley, to pull over. She had forgotten her handbag back at her residence, Clandown Towers. However, she orders the chauffeur to walk the three-and-a-half miles back to fetch the bag. Fitchley walks off obediently as Lady Misterton sat down and began to knit, while a portable wireless radio played Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre. When Fitchley arrived at Clandown Towers, he found out that Lady Misterton had taken her bag with her after all…

Furious, Fitchley decides to dally on the way back and stops at a pub for a “quick one”. Unfortunately, when he exits, he fails to notice an oncoming vehicle. He is hit and hospitalized… But what about Lady Misterton?

Unfortunately, the old broa—er, lady, failed to recognize the signs that she was trapped in a mystery. She was, perhaps, at a slight disadvantage, since Jonathan Creek was not around yet to use Danse Macabre as its theme song. However, that doesn’t change the fact that a few hours later, Lady Misterton was found dead in her car, and the cause of death cannot be determined. This forms the plot of John Rhode’s The Corpse in the Car…

Why yes, the book is an impossible crime of sorts, as Dr. Lancelot Priestley is called in to determine how an assassin can strike someone down at will without leaving any traces behind. And what a job Priestley does! The method employed has a diabolical ingenuity underlying it, and the doctor does a bang-up job deducing whodunit, how, and constructing a solid case for the prosecution. Unfortunately, as is often the case with John Rhode, the murderer’s identity is extremely easy to spot. However, that doesn’t change the cleverness demonstrated by the rest of the plot, which had me completely fooled. It also doesn’t hurt that I really like tricks in this general vein.

However, this book contains more than a good plot. I venture to say that it is invaluable for exposing the lie inherent in the idea that Golden Age authors were always romanticizing the upper class. John Rhode is absolutely relentless towards Lady Misterton. She is a genuinely disturbing person at times— she professes herself to be a lover of cats. There’s no harm in that, right? Well… this adoration goes to such lengths that whenever one of her cats dies, she has it stuffed and added to a macabre collection of stuffed cats, of which there are 42 (!!!). While alive, she did her best to distance herself from fellow human beings as much as possible, showing an incredible snobbery that Rhode certainly does not approve of!

Other upper class characters are similarly skewered, particularly Lady Misterton’s brother, Mr. Ormskirk. Nastiness seems to run in the family, as he is only concerned with how he can profit by his sister’s death… now that she’s dead, that is. While she was alive, he was only concerned with what a fool she was being, paying attention to a charming young fellow who professed himself to be a fellow lover of cats. Lady Misterton’s niece, Emily Higson, is portrayed with sympathy— she married a clerk in a legal office who isn’t particularly rich, but they have a decent life together. But Lady Misterton couldn’t stand him, for the simple reason that he didn’t have money. Lady Misterton was able to marry into money, why couldn’t her niece do the same thing?

Then there’s the chauffeur Fitchley, who was hired specifically because his father was a taxidermist and thus, Lady Misterton could continue having her cats stuffed for a meagre 30 shillings a week. Fitchley is ruthlessly exploited by Lady Misterton and he is far more sympathetic— he’s a clever, resourceful fellow who knows how to use his brains. The only reason he’s stuck in her service is because he was desperate for money and there isn’t much of a market for taxidermy any more. The character reminds me of a clever child in Rhode’s Death on Sunday, who is ignored by his mother and disliked by fellow guests at a residential hotel…. But Rhode’s sympathies seem to lie with the child, who is the only person there doing anything really worthwhile!

Overall, John Rhode’s The Corpse in the Car is an excellent book that showcases Rhode’s storytelling talents very well. The plot moves along very rapidly and has several intriguing threads chasing each other, involving the theft of one of the stuffed cats and a potential will that may or may not be missing (assuming it exists). It’s finely-crafted and shows Dr. Priestley at his scientific best, not letting a single anomaly get by him without an explanation. If you’ve never read John Rhode and want a good place to start, this is it.

Patrick Ohl ©2014

Patrick Ohl is a 20-year old Canadian crime fiction aficionado who enjoys hobbies such as taxidermy and runs a dilapidated motel in the middle of nowhere alongside his crazed mother. He enjoys relaxing in his subterranean evil lair while watching his favourite hockey team, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and will occasionally make chicken chow mein to die for. His life is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by John Williams, and James Earl Jones provides occasional voice-overs.

FFB Review: "Death in Harley Street" by John Rhode (Reviewed by Patrick Ohl)

Friday means Friday's Forgotten Books. Evan Lewis has the rest of them at his blog here….

“Why in the name of literature must I be fobbed off with long discussions of the detective's personal problems? Am I a couch?"

—Jacques Barzun

Dr. Mawsley, the Harley Street gland specialist, was not universally liked, but everyone agreed that he knew his stuff. He was, in effect, the top man in the country for all things gland-related, which makes his sudden death all the more mysterious. You see, Mawsley was alone in a room while his butler stood outside the door. Suddenly, there comes the sound of a crash, and when the butler enters the room, he sees his master lying on the floor, dead, having given himself a fatal dose of strychnine. It happens in John Rhode’s Death in Harley Street.

Was it suicide? Of course not—Mawsley simply wasn’t that kind of man. Utterly self-centered, his practice was thriving and he had much to look forward to. (In fact, he had just spent that evening discussing an unexpected £5,000 legacy that he had inherited.) Besides, suicide was far out of character. So was it murder? Equally unlikely, for several reasons that John Rhode details thoroughly (but which I can’t afford to go into). So it must have been an accident. But how could such an eminent doctor make such a stupid mistake and willingly give himself a lethal injection?

Dr. Priestley therefore deduces that this murder was the result of neither accident, nor suicide, nor murder—indeed, this is the Fourth Dimension of crime! Death in Harley Street has got one of the most ingenious mystery plots I’ve ever come across. The central mystery—just how did the doctor make his lethal mistake?—has got a pleasantly original and wholly plausible solution. (I really wonder why this plot device hasn’t been ripped off in any of the books I’ve read thus far.) The clueing is also strictly fair-play.

Unfortunately, the book’s pace is non-existent. This is a very, very static book. Almost everything is a conversation. Even the murder takes place off-stage, with Priestley only finding out about the problem after the fact, so the murder is part of a conversation as well! Some of the conversations are interesting, but reading a book where nothing conversations happen gets dull fairly quickly. You have to set your mind to it, but it can still be a difficult read when the going is slow.

I wonder if this was an attempt by John Rhode to tell an ingenious mystery with more complex characters. After all, although the victim was a wholly unpleasant person, we see that some people will miss him, such as an elderly patient of Dr. Oldland’s, whose last hope lay is Dr. Mawsley and who is now for all intents and purposes dying of a condition no one else knows how to treat. The ending also throws new light on some characters, and I couldn’t help but agreeing heartily with Dr. Priestley’s final line. Unfortunately, if this indeed was John Rhode’s intent, it didn’t work. This is mainly because the book’s lack of pacing really ruins it.

I quickly figured out one part of the solution – I dare not say what, but suffice to say most readers will spot this one thing. (In fact, until I read the conclusion for myself I was afraid previous reviews were over-hyping the book’s ingenuity.) But despite the book’s complete lack of pacing, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. The solution is very ingenious, and although the book can be a chore to read at times it’s worth the journey. It might not be the most exciting John Rhode, but in terms of ingenuity, it’s one of the best I’ve come across thus far. (Of course, I’m biased, since I really liked the nature of the solution to begin with.) I tend to agree with Messrs. Barzun and Taylor, although I wouldn’t go so far as to call this one “surely the best of the lot” as they do in A Catalogue of Crime. But purely puzzle-plot-wise, this is a tour de force.

Patrick Ohl ©2013

The nineteen-year-old Patrick Ohl writes reviews of the books he reads on his blog, At the Scene of the Crime. In his spare time he plots a takeover of the world, being careful to factor everything except for Bruce Willis into his equations.