The Three Couriers by Compton Mackenzie

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

I was lucky enough to have fall into my lap the 1929 spy mystery The Three Couriers by Compton Mackenzie. A prolific writer before and after his work in the secret world during the Great War, Mackenzie portrayed spying not so much as a noble clandestine fight against the Germans and Turks but as a running contest against His Majesty’s army and navy authorities and embassy and consulate employees that put the “dip” in “diplomat.”

Stationed against his will in Greece, our hero, the unfortunate Waterlow, has to put up with endless French machinations and the never-ending nincompooperies of his own agents, both British and Greek. When he finally succeeds in counter-espionage, his masters and betters utterly ignore the vital intercepted message. “This is a Charlie Chaplin war” he mutters as he bravely moves on to the next fiasco.

In The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), Chesterton makes a case for the futility of espionage, an ironic theme Somerset Maugham was to exploit in the Ashenden stories. But it could be that Mackenzie was the first to write a spy story as a black comedy of errors. The Three Couriers does not have much plot. However, the incidents and set pieces are hilarious as the hapless spies move in on the couriers. The characters are Gogolian grotesques. One wonders if he involuntarily stored these outrageous impressions in his head and wrote to get shut of them.

The Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Rendell is known for her readable and engrossing why-dunnits. On first glance, this stand-alone novel looks like a tale of mother’s love gone misguided, but turns into a nightmare of kidnap, fraud, domestic violence and death. Once started, it is hard to put down this story involving three unrelated characters that slowly, inexorably come together. The atrocious mother, Mopsa, is an unforgettable character. This 1984 outing would be the perfect gateway drug to an incurable Rendell addiction.

Cargo of Eagles by Margery Allingham

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Last novels by a writer often show a falling off of powers. But I can’t say this is true of this last Albert Campion mystery by Allingham. It was in fact finished by her husband after she passed in 1966.

Allingham observed changing times, but she loved the old England of out-of-the-way places with insular cultures as portrayed in her 1948 mystery More Work for the Undertaker. In this one she includes two youth gangs, the Mods and the Rockers. They were past their 15 minutes of fame by 1965, but their being out of place is balanced by the excellent portraits of the secretive inhabitants of Saltey and its long history of smuggling.

PI Campion has been asked by the Yard to look into a killing that may or may not be linked to the release of a prisoner. The ex-inmate may know the whereabouts of stuff of great interest to the government. The murder victim left her house to a woman doctor who was an outsider to Saltey. The old whodunit stand-by of poison pen letters adds to familiarity.

The wrap-up is based on notes that Alingham had made until she could not write anymore. I thought the ending worked quite well and could not identify where another author had to take the reins.

Recommended especially to readers who put Allingham in their Top 5 of Fave Mystery Writers.

Lord Mullion’s Secret by Michael Innes

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Charles Honeybath, a painter with a detective’s talents, heads to Mullion Castle to paint the portrait of Lady Mullion, wife of his old schoolmate. After arriving at the large country house – which is open to (pick one) tourists, travelers, gawkers on Wednesdays and Saturdays – Honeybath encounters an entrancingly eccentric community in which, oddly enough, eccentric things happen. On top of the title echoing another sensational Gothic novel, Aunt Camilla (after Lefanu’s vampire story) wanders about the place at night. In a transgressive romance even for the late 1970s, Mullion’s daughter and a smart young gardener fall for each other.

Why, for example, has a valuable miniature been exchanged for a less than deft reproduction, and who has taken such a risky action since an artist like Honeybath would surely notice such a substitution? And what of this self-confident gardener’s assistant, in whose apartment the Italian watercolors of Lord Mullion’s old and somewhat quirky Aunt Camilla are rediscovered completely unexpectedly? What of the vicar, Dr. Atlay, a close confidant of Miss Camilla in their halcyon days? The whole family seems enveloped in mystery and unanswered questions such as what happened to Aunt Camilla in Italy in the 1920s.

The inevitable murder is missing in this mystery, making it a lighter than air entertainment perfect for a post-pandemic summer read. The characters are highly entertaining in the Dickensey style, with funny dialogue, intelligent turns of phrase, and learned references and allusions. Innes likes the twist that throws both characters and readers for a loop. Besides this one, Innes wrote only five mysteries – all of them light – starring the artist detective, The Mysterious Commission, Honeybath’s Haven and Appleby and Honeybath.

An Awkward Lie by Michael Innes

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Sir John Appleby, Innes’ detective series hero, plays a only cameo role in this 1971 thriller. Playing the hero is his son, Bobby, a college kid.

Getting in a round of golf before breakfast, Bobby discovers a dead guy who’s missing his right index finger. The missing digit stirs something in Bobby’s memory but he is distracted by the sudden appearance of The Girl. As one of Innes’ typical capable, brainy and comely lasses, she sends Bobby to call for the police while she minds the crime scene.

But when Bobby returns with the cops, both corpse and The Girl have gone missing. The unfolding of the relatively short story and the abrupt ending are as enjoyably far-fetched as other Appleby mysteries.

Bobby is an interesting character, a Robbe-Grillet type novelist and ex-star athlete. The Girl, however, is not as keenly drawn as other game Innesian heroines and the usual comic characters that make Innes so much fun are nowhere to be found. Fans of Innes will tolerate a lesser effort while Innes-newbies should read the more entertaining Seven Suspects (wacky dons), Hamlet, Revenge! (wacky actors) or Appleby’s End (wacky aristocrats).

Red Threads by Rex Stout

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

The Barnes & Noble website touts its e-book version as “An Inspector Cramer Mystery” as if Stout made the hard-boiled head of NYPD homicide a series hero. Cramer was never a series hero. Cramer usually played the flatfoot foil in Stout’s classic mysteries starring the PI duo of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. And in this 1939 novel, he merely assists the heroine trap the perp.

This mystery contains the prototypical elements of a story from the so-called golden age of detective fiction. The reader catches a whiff of the spiritualism and mysticism that was common in the 20 years after World War I. The color prejudice – involving American Indians – is about what we would expect for the late Thirties. The whodunit snobbery is on display. The glamorous characters are well-off and famous in the arts, design and technology. The victim is a millionaire, killed in the ostentatious tomb of his wife, which is located on the grounds of his swanky country estate. As for the last check-box, what can we say about the prose:

He stopped, gazing at her, and put out a hand and took it back again. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to plead with you. I did that, and what good did it do? But all the same, I won’t tolerate it – what you’re doing with Guy Carew. Now that the fortune is his – the wings for your ambition. I know you can do it – he’s a half-primitive infant – may be you’ve already done it – but I won’t tolerate it and I won’t allow it. I won’t, Portia! You’re mine! By God, you are!”

Pee-yew, is what I’d say, but not unamusing in small doses. To be charitable, he wrote this in 1939, just after the excellent outing with Wolfe and Archie, Some Buried Ceasar. Too much to expect two home runs in a row.

On the credit side, Stout is an old-school feminist whose female characters work hard and enjoy success on their own terms. A textile artist and fashion designer upstages Inspector Cramer by using a peach pit, a red thread from an antique weave, and the call of a whippoorwill to solve the mystery. Stout’s wife was in the cloth business so there’s always smart references to fabric.

In the tradition of Golden Age mysteries, the reveal tests patience and credulity in terms of to what degree will we accept silly and over the top. I can recommend this one only to hard-core fans who have already read a fistful of Nero Wolfe mysteries and, bless us reading gluttons one and all, even reading an Alphabet Hicks or a Doll Bonner or a Tecumseh Fox.