Yesterday I began sharing my favourite mysteries which were originally published in the 1940s. If you missed that post, here is a link, so you can catch up on those particular titles and you can also find out why I decided to share this list with you all. My first post was concentrated on mysteries which were published in 1940 and 1941. Today’s ten titles run from 1941 to 1944.
Mystery No. 11: The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) by John Dickson Carr
This was a book that I read in 2015, the first year of writing my blog, and it was important in encouraging me to give Carr another go, as my previous reading by him had been a bit mixed. This was probably influenced by poor choices, as I don’t think starting with In Spite of Thunder (1960) was a wise idea. The Case of the Constant Suicides allowed me to see Carr writing in a different style, leaning into the comedy of manners mode and the characterisation drew me in (which is not always the case with me when it comes to Carr). Set in the Scottish Highlands, a tower with a propensity for killing people, and two young people engaged in a battle of wits – what’s not to like?
Mystery No. 12: The Mystery of the Three Orchids (1942) by Augusto de Angelis
A few years ago, Pushkin Vertigo reprinted three mysteries by this Italian crime writer: The Murdered Banker (1935), The Hotel of the Three Roses (1936) and the one I have mentioned above. Augusto de Angelis published 20 novels, featuring his series’ sleuth Inspector De Vincenzi, between 1935 and 1943. He was a Marxist living in a Fascism ruled Italy and his fiction was often censored by the authorities. He was arrested in 1943 and imprisoned for 3 months for writing anti-Fascist material. Soon after his release though he died from being beat up by a fascist supporter in 1944. The Mystery of the Three Orchids is centred on a murder at a Milan fashion house and the author is great at using tension effectively, maximising the surprise factor and ensuring the reader is intrigued to keep reading to find out what happens next.
Mystery No. 13: Your Neck in a Noose (1942) by Elizabeth Ferrars
This is the fifth and final novel in Ferrars’ Toby Dyke and George series, although it does not read as such. The puzzle in this mystery is certainly very intriguing, as Toby encounters a curious crime scene. The room is in a mess, and there are bullet holes to suggest there has been some shooting. Yet the corpse in the room has not been shot and looks very peaceful. There is no second dead body at the scene, but there is evidence a second person was there. This book demonstrates Ferrars’ strong capabilities in offering the reader clues whilst strewing the path with red herrings and although it is the last in a series, it is one you could easily start with.
Mystery No. 14: Murder’s a Swine (1943) by Nap Lombard
Lombard was the penname for husband and wife writing team, Gordon Neil Stewart and Pamela Hansford Johnson and I wish they had written more than two mysteries, as I really enjoyed Murder’s a Swine, which was reprinted by the British Library in 2021. It is a wartime-set crime story and sees a corpse being discovered in an air raid shelter, behind a wall of sandbags. The case is investigated by an amateur sleuth married couple, as well as the police. The prose style quickly won me over when reading this book, as I loved their way of describing things as well as the authors’ use of understated humour. The denouement is also wonderfully bonkers!
Mystery No. 15: Too Many Bones (1943) by Ruth Sawtell Wallis
Too Many Bones is set in and around a provincial small-town museum in America and the protagonist is a newly qualified female anthropologist who goes to help catalogue a collection of 600 skeletons. This was my first experience of an anthropology themed mystery, and I really valued that this setting is not a gimmick that is briefly mentioned and then forgotten; it is fused to the very core of the plot and is used at times in gruesome ways. There are definitely some spine-chilling moments in this narrative. This is a suspense novel rather than a traditional detective tale and as such as has the expected romance component. However, how Sawtell Wallis uses this trope is far from typical. Never have I ever been so unsure whether a male love interest is a good or bad guy!
Mystery No. 16: The Mouse in the Mountain (1943) by Norbert Davis
This is the first in a trilogy of novels featuring private investigator Doan and his Great Dane sidekick and forlorn work colleague, Carstairs. I would say this story has the best plot of the three full-length mysteries and it shows a successful blending of farce and hardboiled crime. The two central characters are a key strength. Doan’s behaviour is as maverick as Gervase Fen’s, yet there is something tougher and darker running through Doan’s veins. Meanwhile Carstairs is shown to look down upon his owner, due to canine snobbery, and he abhors Doan over drinking, so much so that Doan has to figure out ways of circumventing Carstairs’ restrictions. Due to his size Carstairs is not a dog you can ignore, and you would be ill-advised to annoy him or make him do something he doesn’t want to do. It makes him ideal for working in the private detective sector and as well as allowing for moments of comedy.
Mystery No. 17: She Died a Lady (1943) by Carter Dickson a.k.a. John Dickson Carr
This Sir Henry Merrival mystery begins with a deceptively simple case to solve, which becomes more intricate, the more it is delved into, with some slippery clues and red herrings to sort out. The choice of narrator is a big reason behind my enjoyment of the story. The solution packs a punch and is a Carr that I would definitely go back and read for a third time.
Mystery No. 18: Who Killed the Curate? (1944) by Joan Coggin
This is the first book in the Lady Lupin series, and this is a quartet of mysteries which I thoroughly enjoyed. If you love comic crime then it is definitely a set of books you should try, which is much easier to do now that Galileo Publishing have begun reprinting them. Lady Lupin matures as a character over the four novels, but she never quite loses her ability to get the wrong end of the stick (something which she is incredibly prone to do in this opening story) yet somehow still manage to solve the case she is involved in. These books are so much fun, it is a shame that Coggin only wrote the four.
Mystery No. 19: A Voice Like Velvet (1944) by Donald Henderson
This is an inverted mystery, told from the criminal’s point of view, the criminal in question being Ernest Bisham, who is a BBC radio announcer by day and a cat burglar by night. His daring robberies become ever bolder, and it remains to be seen what will happen when one night he goes too far… The incongruity surrounding Bisham’s two forms of employment, is one of the ways he is such an appealing character. The robberies are fuelled by an addictive need for danger, which is another reason Bisham is an interesting character to follow. This is a story with plenty of humour, yet it is also one filled with tension as it is hard to predict how things will end for Bisham.
Mystery No. 20: Murder After Christmas (1944) by Rupert Latimer
What really impressed me with this novel is how Latimer uses the well-known tropes of the Christmas mystery (including a corpse found in the snow dressed as Father Christmas) in such a creative fashion, taking the crime in new directions, and upsetting (in a good way) the reader’s preconceived ideas about what has been, and is, occurring in the story. You need to keep a careful eye on the dialogue, as more than one clue can be found here, concealed in plain sight. Murder After Christmas is remarkably like a Christmas pudding (or for those who don’t like Christmas puddings, a chocolate pudding). Its prose is something to savour, rich with enjoyable lines and turns of phrase. In the same way that eating a whole pudding by yourself or scoffing all the chocolates in the tin might be considered a bit too indulgent, the plot in places is extravagant, but it’s an extravagance which Latimer pulls off and this reader at least was happy to excuse him.
Stay tuned for Part 3!