Today’s review is for the fourth book in the Radford’s Dr Manson series and through no planning of my own, it is also my fourth read by them. The other three reads have been: Who Killed Dick Whittington? (1947); my favourite to date, Death of a Frightened Editor (1959) and From Information Received (1962). Dr Harry Manson is a Scotland Yard detective inspector and he is also head of their Crime Research Laboratory (imagine getting all of that on a name tag!). Dr Manson features in 35 of the 38 mysteries this husband-and-wife team penned between 1944 and 1972.
I found Nigel Moss’s introduction to the Dean Stret Press reprint edition very interesting. One of the key points he raises is how the Radfords wanted to create a ‘scientific police detective […] in the same mould as R. Austin Freeman’s Dr Thorndyke’, an author Edwin Radford really admired. Moreover, Moss shares T. J. Binyon’s idea that ‘the Radfords were protesting against the idea that in Golden Age crime fiction science is always the preserve of the amateur detective, and they wanted to be different.’ Moss reinforces this point by quoting from the preface to Inspector Manson’s Success (1944):
‘We have had the audacity – for which we make no apology – to present here the Almost Incredible: a detective story in which the scientific deduction by a police officer uncovers the crime and the criminal entirely without the aid, ladies and gentlemen, of any outside assistance!’
Synopsis
‘Why should a holidaymaker, sitting to enjoy a game of village cricket, suddenly meet with death in the shape of a flying bullet? That most English of sporting pastimes: a cricket match between two rivalrous village teams. The game has just ended in a closely fought draw, and the village green is emptied of all spectators, bar one. A dead man is found sitting in a deck chair on the boundary line, clearly shot during the match. The man is a stranger, with no obvious clue to his identity or that of his killer. Nobody has seen or heard the shot fired. The local police are baffled, and call in Scotland Yard. Enter Dr. Manson, investigative detective par excellence, to solve a seemingly impossible crime.’
Overall Thoughts
The authors begin on a strong note, with the corpse making its appearance on page one and not only that but the victim has the effrontery to die on the cricket pitch no less:
‘Not even the boys of the village were allowed on that pitch; the dogs were chased off; cows from their experience had taught their calves to skirt round it in their goings and comings from the meadows; and now a dead man had planted himself there.’
The victim has had all identifiable information removed from him, but from page 2 the reader is made aware of their name, Eliseus Leland. He was murdered in a public space, in front of a 1000 or so witnesses. This might seem like a formidable case to solve, but not so for Dr Manson!
It was interesting to see this novel, albeit briefly, engage with the theme of chief constables and how they were selected:
‘The chief constable, like most of his calling, had had nothing whatever to do with the police force previous to his appointment. It is passing strange that in the police circles of this country the last qualifications deemed to be essential for appointment to the position of chief constable is that the applicant should know anything about constables or crime detection. On the other hand, it is of the utmost importance that any applicant should be, or have been, a senior officer of the Army, or the Navy: which accounts for a great deal of the not inconsiderable resentment in certain sections of the nation’s constabulary […] It is not particularly encouraging to a man who, starting as a constable, has risen to the position of superintendent of police, to know that he has about one chance in a thousand of rising to the rank of chief constable, or of competing with Major Thing-a-me-Jig, who, having served in India for the last twenty years, has rarely even seen a British constable. The system is altogether wrong.’
Several factors influenced this course of action, social bias, government funding, and perceptions concerning the military. Chief Constables are not necessarily main characters in classic crime novels, and their depictions can be mixed, with perhaps a leaning towards the comical i.e. someone to be laughed at than laughed with. For example, in Dilwyn Rees’ The Cambridge Murders (1945), the chief constable, when he first arrives at the crime scene, is more concerned about not missing a fox hunt. He is pleased when he sees he will still make the lunch. His social bias towards the well-to-do adds to the sense of ridiculousness which clings to him. Nevertheless, due to his social connections and his wife’s, he is actually able to dig up the relevant gossip and scandals about the dons at the college. Returning to the Radford mystery, I don’t think they adopt a similar approach. They acknowledge the frustrations directed towards military men as chief constables, but they then follow this up by pointing out that Colonel Mainforce (the CC) had worked in military intelligence and that he took ‘an intensive course of study in jurisprudence and had accompanied his executive officers on their investigations, in order that he might see, at close quarters, how crime detection was carried out.’
If you are a fan of Ellery Queens’ challenges to the reader, then you will enjoy their use in Murder Isn’t Cricket. The challenges are not contained to a page near the end, as instead they are spread out across the story. Even by the end of chapter three, the reader is presented with several questions by the authors. Some of the answers are revealed shortly afterwards, whilst others are not shown for a while. At the end there is a summary of the key clues which solved the case.
Whilst I would not categorise this mystery as a comic crime novel, the Radford do make good use of humour from time to time. For instance, I felt the inquest scene was made more engaging due to a suitable build-up of anticipation prior to one man’s testimony, and the Radford’s anti-climax to this, is well-executed and amusing.
It has been a while since I have read a Radford mystery, nearly five years, so in some ways it felt like I was meeting Dr Manson fresh. My first impression of him was that he was a bit aloof and something of a know-it-all and I was curious to see if any warmth would be added to his character. The police investigation (for Leland’s murder and other cases that Dr Manson is working on) is largely focused on forensics and data collecting, rather than face to face interactions with suspects and witnesses. I think as the book progressed this dampened my enthusiasm for the story, as with science as the priority, people and character recede into the background, which I felt slowed the pace. For example, when some fingerprints are identified, rather than taking a people focused approach, in which the police interact with suspects, the reader is subjected to a page or so of a description of Dr Manson and his colleague rechecking the measurements of some fingerprints lifted. I am sure this kind of accuracy is crucial in police work, but it does not make for interesting reading. I don’t feel we get close to the suspects in this story, and there is limit to the personal side exuded by the police characters.
In terms of solving the case, Dr Manson had me licked, although I was chuffed that Dr Manson does get one thing wrong, which I spotted. He muddles the plot of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murder in the Rue Morgue’ with a G. K. Chesterton story.
Rating: 4/5