Today’s read was gifted to me by a kind blog reader, who thought it might interest me. It certainly did, as Mackinnon is not an author I have tried before, and he is not one I would have been likely to stumble across either.
Mackinnon is not mentioned much within the online mystery reading community. Back in 2018, John at Pretty Sinister blog reviewed another of his books, Money on the Black (1946), whilst in 2017 Martin Edwards at Do You Write Under Your Own Name wrote a post about Mackinnon’s screenplay Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948).
Mackinnon wrote ten mysteries and Nine Days’ Murder was the first. His last mystery No Wreath for Manuela came out in 1965. He was also a screenwriter; a career he began in 1938, with This Man is News. His film output seems to be mostly thrillers and detective mysteries, but he did also write some comedies, and a Robin Hood adventure film called The Men of Sherwood Forest (1954).
Synopsis
‘Here is a story you will enjoy. You will like it because it is, above all, highly entertaining, superbly exciting and narrates a mystery that- well, if you can solve it you can give yourself full marks! Moreover, there are some grand characters. You will like in particular David Stanners, who tells the story. David, formerly a detective sergeant in the C. I. D., now a wartime captain in the Artillery, while on leave in London is asked by his old chief at Scotland Yard to help tidy up some black market business which has culiminated in murder. So David visits a pub or two and a club or two, has a look at the beer and the blondes, and does he get cracking! In Nine Days’ Murder, incidentally his first novel, Allan Mackinnon takes a big stride towards a first-class reputation.’
This is the original blurb by the Collins Crime Club, which is high on superlatives and low on actual details. I know some readers prefer minimal details, but this blurb does not sell the book for me, and I wouldn’t have picked it up based on that. This would have been a shame as it is actually an entertaining read. I just don’t think the blurb brings out its selling points.
Overall Thoughts
The opening is brisk and matter of fact, particularly in its discussion of violent death: ‘The first murder was unobtrusive, and indeed, compared with its successors, squalid.’ The novel has a WW2 setting, which becomes more noticeable as the plot unfolds. Mackinnon does not try to evoke a Blitz spirit in his description of the home front:
‘It was a cold bleak day that Friday. The first snow of the winter seemed to be a hand, and a epidemic of forty-eight hour ‘flu was sweeping the country. Food was scarce and fuel scarcer. Beer was weak and costly, spirits prohibitive and dubious. Christmas toys were on sale at ten and twenty times their value. It was the fifth winter of the war.’
In some ways I think Mackinnon is trying to show how a black-market system might come into play in such a situation.
The first chapter provides a succinct description of a robbery at warehouse, which ends in murder. Glyn Williams, the night watchman is said to have a ‘[…] comfortable job […] Little to do, three pounds ten a week for doing it – what more could an invalided ex-solder ask for? Glyn Williams often felt that the head wound he had received at Calais was a blessing in very thing disguise.’ This is an ironic final phrase as in the next four sentences he is dead; his thin skull not holding out against the cosh he receives. Just as we have been introduced to someone they are wiped out, which I think is indicative of the more brutal undertone of the crimes going on in this tale.
I like how the author brings together the introduction of some characters with their alibis, which he does through shifting from person to person to say what they were doing at 2am that night. These moments are fleeting to give us varying degrees of information and we can’t be fully sure of everyone’s role in the plot to follow. I thought it was a nice touch that these introductions started with the type of watch or clock near the person, as these timepieces are a helpful pointer towards the lifestyle of the character. Mackinnon sums up: ‘Watches large and small, their owners were all, at two o’clock that morning on the brink of a very sticky time.’
It is only once we reach chapter two that we discover the story is being narrated by David Stanners, and his situation as a military man on leave, reminded me of Kathleen Hewitt’s Plenty Under the Counter (1943), whose protagonist Flight Lieutenant David Heron uses his leave to solve a murder. Stanners begins by fleshing out our picture of Detective Inspector Duncan MacCallum, one of Mackinnon’s series sleuths. David says that he is:
‘[…] the biggest unsolved mystery at Scotland Yard. There are as many opinions of hm as there are men who know him. To me […] he has always seemed a keen intelligence wedded to a generous heart, fighting crime as his ancestors fought cattle-thieves, but without the same personal feeling. I never knew him dislike a criminal. Not that he pitied them – he merely accepted them. “These characters,” he always called them, and his tone was that of a far-seeing father with a wayward child. To the men he tracked down and gaoled, however, he appeared far from kindly […] His combination of professional relentlessness and personal difference, genuine thought I am sure it was, was beyond the grasp of the underworld […] In the Yard itself he was regarded variously; by some, as a clever officer with a deceptive appearance; by others, as a useful man marred by over-kindliness; and by many, as an amazingly lucky fool.’
It does not take long for Stanners’ simple mission to find out more about the people who fence and sell the black-marketed stolen goods at pubs and clubs, to escalate into a much stickier situation. A mislaid coat leads to him taking a taxi with a woman and having a drink in her flat. This seemingly prosaic action plunges Stanners straight into murder, as his companion is killed in her bedroom, whilst he is still in the flat. Life feels very fragile in this narrative. Now, if you were David Stanners, an ex-policeman, who is currently involved in police work, what would you do:
- Call the police, informing them of your identity and make sure Mackinnon is told to corroborate.
- Call the police anonymously, disguising your voice. Escape from the scene before the police arrive, even though this action will make the police think he is the killer. Then tell MacCallum what he has done. The aim of this option is to hold on to his cover as an ordinary military man, so he can continue working on the black-market case.
David goes for option B, a decision he regrets very quickly. Firstly, he has to try and do all of this during an air raid, his obvious exit is blocked by firewatchers and when he takes the back exit he runs into a policeman in the fog, meaning his description is immediately already known. By the time he reaches MacCallum, he is lucky not to be arrested. Fortunately, MacCallum believes his story and allows him to work on the case, although the reader does wonder if this is a way of keeping an eye on a possible suspect. After all his gloves are found at the crime scene with blood on them.
The description of the air raid siren grabbed my attention as it reminded me of a true account mentioned in Helen Bell’s Under Cover of Darkness: Murders in Blackout London (2024). Both this account and Mackinnon’s description below stress the detrimental psychological effect of the sirens:
‘In common, I suppose, with millions of other people, I had never been able to conquer that primitive grue that the sirens gave me. it was not the thought of the raid that made me shudder – the solid, honest banging of the bombs and guns was almost welcome after the eldritch wail of the warning. I have often wondered if the siren was not, in fact, designed as an offensive weapon, and diverted to its other use through some simple clerical error at the Ministry of Supply.’
The effect of the bombing on London is also touched upon during Stanners’ trips around the city. He has not been in London for three years, so the changes are perhaps starker for him: ‘So much of the City had just disappeared – so much of history and beauty and use – and the buildings that were left seemed to accentuate the fact. The great space, some of them still framed by burnt-out walls, were like gaps in a row of teeth.’ Furthermore, he sees the way people have tried to tidy up the bombed areas or tried to work around them, as ‘scars’, which are ‘even more terrible than the wounds had been.’ The wounds being ‘the raw wounds of fire and explosion’.
Naturally, we know David is foolish, but not a murderer and inevitably those truly responsible for the crimes attempt to eliminate him, one go being thwarted by a group of American soldiers. The police investigation progresses little by little and I enjoyed how Stanners and MacCallum rib one another. I thought I had the mystery sussed at one stage, but Mackinnon deployed a very good red herring which led me astray.
I don’t think this is the sort of mystery book I could read a lot of in one go, but I did feel Mackinnon delivered an engaging tale, which is told at a quick pace and there is plenty of action to maintain reader attention.
Rating: 4/5