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Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Hardcastle’s Actress by Graham Ison

Graham Ison spent 30 years in the Special Branch at Scotland Yard and then four years at 10 Downing Street as Protection Officer to two Prime Ministers. Thus equipped with a uniquely specialized background, he began writing crime fiction. His Brock and Poole, Tommy Fox, and Gaffney and Tipper series are all contemporary. His Hardcastle series is set during World War I. One article about Ison says he turned to historical crime fiction when his contemporary police procedurals could not keep up with the changes in real-life policing, thus rendering his books inaccurate before they were published. See the article in Shots, http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/feature_view.aspx?FEATURE_ID=232

Hardcastle’s Actress (Severn House, 2007) is the fifth book featuring Ernest Hardcastle, Division Detective Inspector in charge of the Criminal Investigation Unit of Whitehall Division of the London Metropolitan Police. The Hardcastle family is happily preparing to sit down to its 1914 Christmas Day goose when a messenger from Scotland Yard arrives with an urgent summons from the detective chief inspector of the CID. Mrs. Hardcastle is considerably put out but Hardcastle leaves promptly to learn he’s to go to Windsor to investigate the murder of a young woman whose body was found in the Great Park that morning. Hardcastle ruins Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott’s Christmas by requesting his assistance.

The dead woman was an actress who had been part of a troupe appearing at a local theatre. She was the star performer and supported the war effort by encouraging members of the audience to step up and enlist after the show. In addition to the military men hanging around the stage door, hoping to take her to dinner, she’d also been getting anonymous letters, some proposing marriage. Hardcastle felt he would not have far to look for her killer.

The story is rich with period detail. Set in the early days of the war, the English people were just starting to realize what they were in for. Casualties were pouring in and the impact of loss was beginning to be felt. Ison does a great job in portraying how little ordinary folk cared about international politics. The police procedures of the time are well documented as well. Automobiles were still a rarity then, and the police had to conduct a stakeout with a horse-drawn carriage.

Hardcastle is an admirable series lead. He is a curmudgeon while thoroughly professional. Marriott is a good foil, knowing when to argue with Hardcastle and when to be silent. The frequent use of Cockney rhyming slang, while no doubt an accurate reflection of the usage of the time, sent me to an online dictionary repeatedly.

A fine piece of historical crime fiction. Recommended especially for fans of World War I mysteries.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Severn House (August 1, 2007)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Hardcover: ‎216 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎0727865153

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-0727865151

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Lesa's Book Critiques: SANDIE’S CORNER – A FEARSOME DOUBT BY CHARLES TODD

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Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Clockmaker by Jane A. Adams

Jane A. Adams is an active British mystery author with some 30 or 35 novels to her credit. She has created five series characters since 1995, all set in England: Mike Croft, a detective inspector; Ray Flowers, a former police sergeant turned private investigator; Naomi Blake, a blind ex-policewoman; Rina Martin, an actress who played a private investigator in a television series; and Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone of Scotland Yard, beginning in the late 1920s.

The Clockmaker (Severn House, 2019) is the fourth title in the Johnstone series. Chief Inspector Johnstone met clockmaker Abraham Levy on an earlier case, and now Levy has come to him for help in locating his nephew. Joseph Levy was last seen on 3 February 1929 boarding a train in Lincoln to return to his home in London. On 20 February Levy approaches Scotland Yard, believing his family’s concerns have been dismissed by the local police and that his nephew is dead. Johnstone points out that he only works on homicide cases and a missing person does not qualify but he and his sergeant Mickey Hitchens agree to review the file. About a week after Johnstone asked the various police forces along the train line to look again for any trace of the nephew, the clockmaker’s prediction turns out to be right and Joseph Levy’s body is found near where he was last seen.

The subsequent investigation is hampered by Joseph’s family, who are evasive about their business affairs, and the inexplicable interest of the leader of the gang who runs the area where the clockmaker lives and works. Then Johnstone discovers Abraham Levy has something of a reputation as a rabble-rouser, consorting with known Communists and union organizers, which makes Johnstone wonder about his associates. An interesting subplot involves Johnstone’s sister who tries to disentangle her husband’s investments to protect them from the coming economic crisis.

A well-written, methodical police procedural that speaks to the time and the place. I was particularly impressed with how subtly Adams sets the stage. Less experienced authors reference newspaper headlines or songs on the radio to evoke an historical period. Adams is far more indirect, with a secondary character mentioning the names of Germany’s governing officials in passing and another making a glancing allusion to how recent World War I was. The train ride from Lincoln to London is described as long by more than one character; however, the distance between the two is about 150 miles, some three hours by automobile in 2020. The blatant anti-Semitism, the gangs presiding over neighborhoods and demanding protection payments with the compliance of the police, the anti-unionism, all are woven into the background of the investigation, describing the timeframe with a minimum of detail. For readers of historical mysteries and police procedurals.

·         Hardcover: 224 pages

·         Publisher: Severn House Publishers; first edition (September 3, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0727888889

·         ISBN-13: 978-0727888884

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Tipster by Gerald Verner

Gerald Verner (1897-1980) was born John Robert Stuart Pringle. He also wrote under the names Donald Stuart, Nigel Vane, Derwent Steele, and Thane Leslie. His literary output was prodigious: More than 120 books, many of which were adapted for films, radio, and stage plays as well as short stories for mystery fiction magazines.

The Tipster (Wright & Brown, 1949) is book 10 in Verner’s series featuring Superintendent Robert Budd of Scotland Yard, Verner’s longest running series character. Budd finds himself searching for a serial murderer who announced via an anonymous phone call his intent to kill five people, starting with Lord Latimer, the Senior Steward of the Jockey Club. (Like Dick Francis, Verner set many of the Budd books in the world of horse racing.) The recipient of the phone call, the editor of the Daily Clarion, believes the call to be a hoax until Lord Latimer is found dead a short time after the call. Even with the killer’s phone call before each successive attack, Budd is unable to prevent more deaths.

Budd is reunited with journalist Gordon Cross and his wife Vicky, who figured in earlier adventures with Budd. Cross is determined to identify the murderer in order to ingratiate himself with the editor of the Daily Clarion to gain a plum job. His headlong pursuit of someone who has already shown he’s willing to take a human life places both Vicky and himself in jeopardy more than once.

In classic Golden Age style Budd and Cross have a nice assortment of suspects to work with. A likely blackmailer lurks on the edges of the case, providing motivation for suspicious activity by some of the characters. The first victim’s adopted daughter had a brother who emigrated to Canada and then disappeared and now can’t be located. The plot hinges on a turning point that would not hold up under current forensic techniques, one of the reasons these 1940s stories are such entertaining reads. Review based on the Endeavour Media ebook.

·         File Size: 2843 KB

·         Print Length: 189 pages

·         Publisher: Endeavour Media (November 1, 2018)

·         Publication Date: November 1, 2018

·         ASIN: B07K49N61K

Aubrey Hamilton ©2018

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Music Tells All by E. R. Punshon

One of my great finds this year has been the prolific Golden Age author Ernest Robertson Punshon (1872-1956). Writing as E. R. Punshon, he released 35 books featuring Bobby Owen, an Oxford-educated policeman who worked his way up through the Scotland Yard ranks. He wrote another five featuring Sergeant Bell, a plodding, lugubrious London detective who nevertheless always reached a satisfactory conclusion in his cases. Still another 20 books were stand-alone mysteries.  Dorothy L. Sayers regarded Punshon’s work highly, saying that “all his books have that elusive something which makes them count as literature, so that we do not gulp them furiously down to get to the murderer lurking at the bottom, but roll them slowly and deliciously upon the tongue like old wine.” While I don’t like them quite that much, I enjoy reading Punshon, sometimes more for his portrayal of England during the first half of the 20^th century than for his plots, which are not always as solid as one could hope.  

In Music Tells All, published by Victor Gollancz in 1948, Bobby Owen and Sergeant Bell, promoted now to Inspector, team up on a case that moves back and forth between a village and London. The story starts with Bobby and his wife Olive who need a place to live. She asks to see a home at a comfortable distance from his job at Scotland Yard. Expecting a crowd of competing seekers, they rush out only to find a quiet village with a house that seems perfect. The landlord names a rental fee far less than what he could get in this time of extreme scarcity and they jump at the lease. They soon learn that an odd neighbor is given to playing her piano tempestuously at all hours. Everyone in the village gives her a wide berth, except for their landlord who seems to be simultaneously fascinated and repulsed.

Bobby is distracted by a jewelry heist in London which involves a wild car chase through the city streets. One of the rings from the robbery is found in the village where Bobby just moved and the body of a stranger shows up in a nearly dismantled bomb shelter, bringing in Inspector Bell. The obvious suspect is a chauffeur who disappeared about the same time but several of the neighbors warrant closer inspection. Bobby doesn’t understand how his new village is tied to the robbery but can see that it is. Poor Olive is constantly searching for food for the two of them.

There aren’t enough clues to suggest the actual culprit and the motivation behind the crimes so the ending requires too much explanation, but all in all this is a good story, describing as it does life in post-war England and the citizenry determined to make do and get by.

The Kindle edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

• File Size: 1185 KB
• Print Length: 270 pages
• Publisher: Dean Street Press (July 22, 2016)
• Publication Date: July 22, 2016 
• ASIN: B01IYDCH28

Aubrey Hamilton © 2017
 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal IT projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

FFB Review: "The Rising of the Moon" by Gladys Mitchell--Reviewed by Patrick Ohl

Friday means Friday’s Forgotten Books with Patti Abbott.  The list will be here later today. In the meantime, set the leftovers aside and put your hands together for the return of Patrick Ohl…

Simon and Keith Innes are two young boys who are supremely excited: the circus is coming to town! It’s true that the festivities will be taking place on a Good Friday, but it only comes once a year and it should be taken advantage of. And in honour of Good Friday, the only reasonable thing to do is to sneak into the circus without paying!

The action begins on Holy Thursday, when the boys sneak out of their house to prepare their route for the following night. But suddenly they see a sinister-looking figure clutching a knife—a knife that looks rather like the knife owned by their elder brother, with whom they live… The next day, a grisly discovery is made—one of the circus people, a tight-rope walker, is found murdered, slashed to death by a Jack-the-Ripper-like murderer… and the bad news is, this is only the beginning.

The circus leaves the town without performing, but soon enough, the villagers cower in fear whenever the full moon is up… for it is then that the ripper strikes, killing women and mutilating their bodies. These events are all seen through the eyes of the two young boys—in particular, the narrator is none other than Simon, and the story is not so much a mystery as a coming-of-age-story. The two boys are thrown into the investigation right alongside the local police inspector and the witch-like Mrs. Bradley, who is sent down to investigate the deaths at the express wishes of Scotland Yard. She takes rather a liking to the boys. They deal not only with the murderer, but must also grapple with their mathematics assignments and they must answer a terribly important question: do Catholics only need to go to church once a year, and if so, should they convert?

It’s a good thing that the other elements in this book are so strong, because the mystery is, to be frank, bloody awful. The murderer instantly became obvious to me on page 9—and my edition of the book doesn’t start with page 1—it doesn’t even start with page 5! But it’s not enough that the killer is obvious—oh, no… we must also endeavour to make the ending as confusing and full of loopholes as possible! For instance, there’s a scene where the boys finally get to see the circus. They are told to keep an eye out for this-and-that while there, but of course they have plenty of fun in the meantime. Then they finally spot this-and-that, and they give the prearranged signal. What relevance does this have to the plot? Absolutely none. It’s never referred to again, and in fact, the ending directly contradicts the idea that this scene ever had any point whatsoever.

As for logical loopholes, if you want to see psychology at its most gloriously subjective, look no further than Mrs. Bradley in this book. The police start with a perfectly reasonable notion of what kind of killer they’re looking for, but Mrs. Bradley gives a completely different psychological profile. Who’s right? Why, Mrs. Bradley of course, for the excellent reason that she’s the detective and therefore can never be wrong. What made the police’s initial assumption so unreasonable? Well, Mrs. Bradley said otherwise. What was the significance of the moon? Well… God alone knows. At least I hope so. I wouldn’t be surprised if God was just as puzzled over this moonshine (pun perfectly intended).

All this sounds as though I hate the book… but nothing could be further from the truth. I have brought up all these problems in the book’s plot because I want to get these over with before I reach the end of the review—I’d hate to finish on such a severely negative note! This book is without doubt a masterpiece of writing, but don’t set the bar high on your mystery expectations.

The book’s best success is the writing from the POV of a child. It’s got that perfect mix of childlike innocence and that manner many kids have of wanting to be treated as grown-up. It all rings perfectly genuine. Simon is a wonderful character, and we see him forced to grow up with this murder investigation. We also see the steps he takes to avoid Sunday school and to protect his elder brother when it seems he might be the murderer. All this is most fascinating, and the relationship Simon has with Mrs. Bradley has a curious note of poignancy and tenderness to it. Mrs. Bradley is just as harsh, witch-like, and cackling as ever, but she teaches Simon a thing or two about life and she’s rather like a mother-figure to him.

The atmosphere meanwhile is brilliant. Just… brilliant. The slowly increasing fear and terror of the villagers… the way the tension is ratcheted up notch by notch… that final chase in the moonlight… everything adds up beautifully, and it’s hard to describe the overall effect. I’m at a loss of words.

So overall, I tend to agree that The Rising of the Moon is a masterpiece from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction… but you have to keep an open mind when the conclusion rolls around, because it is among the most ridiculous, plot-hole-ridden endings in detective fiction. It’s up to you to decide how you will take the ending. Maybe you will decide, as I did, that it doesn’t affect the quality of the book enough to lower it. Maybe you will decide to write your local Member of Parliament to protest. (It's not like they're doing anything important.) But if you’re willing to swallow the ending, you will see that the book is a very worthwhile experience!

Patrick Ohl ©2013

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.