Crimes !
Club. 7s. 6d.) The Dope Ring. By John Hill. (Methuen. 3s. 6d.)
FAR from being on the wane, the craze for detective stories seems to be attracting writers from other fields at the same time as it maintains the old favourites. Both Mr. Fowler and
Mr. Trevor, of the list which heads this notice, are recruits from other fields, both writing under assumed names and bringing to this new field some of the graces in which it has hitherto often been lacking, preferring to rely on a mechanical ingenuity of plot.
Mr. Trevor's publishers offer a prize of MO to the first member of the public to discover Mr. Trevor's real name, and although it is difficult to give a hearty welcome to a new device for debauching the reading public, it must be confessed that the style of his writing is sufficiently marked to make the specula- tion interesting, and the solution a matter of skill rather than of luck. The morbidness of the atmosphere which succeeds the murders at the rising public school of Oakington is very well suggested, and the author is original in making his amateur detective, though intelligent, commit appalling blunders through weakness of character and end as a miserably inferior fiddle to the Scotland Yard detectives. His character and that of the headmaster, Dr. Rosweare, are well drawn and the plot, though ingenious, is distinctly a minor interest of the book.
Mr. Fowler is by now established in the new field. By Saturday moves quickly from an original opening to a familiar end. Basil Thornford, the hero, starts badly on a career of crime ; he makes an unwillingly honest profit on normal trade and finds crime difficult to begin, but when he is brought into contact with real criminals his qualities begin to show to more advantage. They lead him and his sweetheart Freda into some very unpleasant situations, including complicity in the "bumping off" of one of an American gang by the leader; but his wit and her wits, together with the influence of a satisfactorily sinister solicitor with a large criminal clientele, bring them clear, by Saturday, with £4,500 and licence to live happily ever after. They also rid these shores, with the connivance of the police, of a gang whose American methods are not so successful on this side. The book leaves them, having been cleaned out by Basil and the lawyer, pawning their jewellery in order to pay their passage back. This is the most rollicking mystery I have ever read.
Mystery at Friar's Pardon, though a first novel, is of the old school. Charles Fox-Browne, man of few but effective words and prompt action, makes a most successful amateur detective and the criminal, or criminals, make most successful criminals. Their idea of taking advantage of the ghost story about their victim's house is a good one, neatly stage- managed. The characters are rather better differentiated than in the ordinary detective story, and altogether Mr. Porlock's first effort is a remarkably good one. The only serious criticism which must be made is that the idea of using a false seance to induce a confession is by no means new. However, it is well used.
The remaining three novels on the list are more purely mechanical. Mr. E. It. Punshon's Sergeant Bell shows some vestige of character, it is true, but so do not any of his other characters, which are stock types. His plot is so ingenious that it would, I think, be insoluble by the reader did the author not make him a present of it in the middle, or at least leave him with only one moderately intelligent guess between him and the solution. It is a pity he should do this by making the criminal, otherwise intelligent, commit one foolish and purposeless blunder, and another minor mistake in spite of the fact that he knows it to be one.
The inappropriately named Dutch Shoe Mystery concerns the murder, in the hospital which she has endowed, of a wealthy Dutch diabetic patient, and later of the doctor who appears to have murdered her. The detective, Green, solves the puzzle by the evidence deduced from a pair of hospital shoes, but he does so, as in previous cases, only after boring the reader by reciting all the evidence and most of his reasonings several times over. This is a pity, since both are worth hearing once.
After the others on this list, The Dope Ring seems dull, probably because its author was uncertain whether to write a mystery story or a thriller. It need hardly be said that the types are quite distinct, and may even be opposed. It would probably, however, be true to say, so much has the art progressed, that a few years ago this would have been considered a good specimen of the latter type, if not of the
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