This week I have been sharing with you my top crime fiction reads which were published in the 1940s and even though I restricted myself to books which I rated 4.5/5 or higher, I still ended up with a long list of 50 titles. Moreover, as I have been sharing these posts and hearing other people’s thoughts, it has made me realise that there could be even more books! Well, two more, Agatha Christie’s Sad Cypress (1940) and John Dickson Carr’s The Emperor’s Snuffbox (1942). But they are ones I read pre-blog, so I am not sure what my precise rating would be for them now.
So far in parts 1 and 2 I have shared 20 of my favourite 40’s mysteries. Unsurprisingly, today’s post will share another 10. Hopefully tomorrow, I will post the final entries from the long list, before revealing on Sunday, which titles made my Top 10 shortlist (a list which I need for my forthcoming book group discussion– so they’re to blame really, for all this tortuous decision making!). Anyways, on with the list…
Mystery No. 21: The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944) by Edmund Crispin
If I could tag along on a fictional sleuth’s investigation, then Gervase Fen would definitely be one of my choices, as the chaos and hilarity he causes is something I would love to witness first hand. Last year I ranked Crispin’s novels and he is an author I see myself returning to for re-reads as his writing style makes even the most banal object or scene interesting and it is a shame that he did not publish more stories. The Case of the Gilded Fly is a theatre troupe centred mystery and Crispin has a lot of fun with the trope of murder bringing lovers together. In many a detective story young love equals innocence, and you can cross them off your suspect list. However, so many couples are brought together via the murder in Crispin’s story that you know one duo are not going to live happily ever after, after all at least one person’s beloved is in fact a murderer.
Mystery No. 22: Towards Zero (1944) by Agatha Christie
A somewhat topical choice, given the recent adaptation, but it has always been a Christie that I have loved. The “Zero Hour” premise is one that intrigued me from my first reading of the book, and I feel it is an idea that Christie executes well in her plotting and atmosphere-setting. Furthermore, my re-reading of this story for my blog in 2016 also made me realise how rich this novel is in terms of its characterisation, giving the piece a real sense of verisimilitude and maturity. Relationships are knotty and complicated in this tale bringing the mystery to life.
Mystery No. 23: Till Death Do Us Part (1944) by John Dickson Carr
I will be surprised if this title does not make it on to at least one Top 10 list within my book group, which houses some serious Carr fans. On the other hand, you might be shocked and appalled that it did not make mine. After all I really enjoyed the book. In a blog post I wrote in 2021 I wrote that in this novel Carr ‘delivers a taut tale of psychological suspense which is beautifully balanced with a tight mystery puzzle plot.’ Yet my problem, when compiling my own top 10 list, was that I loved a lot of 1940s mysteries and I had to go beyond technical accomplishments to whittle them down. I had to consider how well a story had remained in my memory and what emotional engagement I had with it. And it is perhaps this last element which me and Carr don’t do so well on. As I said to someone on Facebook yesterday, about a different Carr story, he doesn’t make my heart sing, a nebulous and probably dubious phrase to intimate a subjective attachment to a set of characters and their story. Carr might make your heart sing, and if he does that for you, I am glad, as it is important we all have books and authors that do that for us.
Till Death Do Us Part is a title which I think would make it into my Top 20 1940s mysteries and it is one of my favourite Carr reads, so I would strongly recommend trying it if you are new to his work. Fortunately, it is easy to get a hold of as it was reprinted by the British Library in their crime classics series.
Mystery No. 24: Deadline at Dawn (1944) by Cornell Woolrich
Woolrich’s novel takes place over five hours and twenty-five minutes and by the end of this time period, his protagonists will have either succeeded in solving a murder they have become embroiled in and can have a fresh start together, or they will have failed, fatalistically accepting that they cannot change their lot in life. There is much at stake in this story. Woolrich flirts a little with modernist tropes, but in the main his story is a blend of noir and the boy/girl next door romance. This is an unusual strength of the book and ordinarily it is the sort of thing I might have had second thoughts about, wondering if it would work or not, but to the author’s credit he pulls it off with aplomb.
Mystery No. 25: Net of Cobwebs (1945) by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
Greg Shepherd who writes the introduction to the Stark House Press reprint of this novel, presents a compelling case for why fans of psychological suspense should give the work of Holding a try:
‘It’s the “why” that is always the most important part of her books. The psychological underpinnings of her novels form the basis of the mystery. Her characters always act from a very determined point of view. Whether from guilt, discontent, deception, misconception, or even pure altruism, they act out their dramas with very little consideration for other points of view. And therein lies the conflict. They have all got blinders on, seeing just what they want to see, each with their own misguided agenda.’
Net of Cobwebs was my second read by Holding (my first I must admit being a dud). But I am so glad that I was persuaded by Greg to give her another try, as this story is brilliant. Malcolm, a war veteran struggling with trauma, finds himself a prime suspect in the murder of his aunt. As the title suggests he is caught by what others claim he did, and it soon becomes apparent that the most dangerous people for Malcolm are those being nicest to him. Yet Malcolm’s memory is not the best, so he cannot give himself or us an immediate and convincing repudiation of the accusations made against him. I raced through the story to find out what would happen next and to figure out what is really going on. When the truth finally emerges, with pages to spare, I found it genuinely surprising, yet it completely fitted what had come before it and I thought it appropriate that Holding concluded the text on an unsettling note, leaving you to wonder what happened to the characters next and how they moved on.
Mystery No. 26: Don’t Open the Door (1945) by Anthony Gilbert
Seven years before Christianna Brand published London Particular (a.k.a. Fog of Doubt), Gilbert offered her own mystery in which the smog laden streets provide a perfect cover for murder. In keeping with other books Gilbert has written, she uses tropes familiar to the reader, but in such a way that the normal consequences or narrative trajectories are avoided, and a new direction is forged. The presence of a nurse and a suspiciously ill wife often make up the whole plot of some mysteries, with much atmosphere and emotional drama evoked, as well as night-time frights. This is the bread and butter of the HIBK subgenre. Nevertheless, in Gilbert’s hands something different is created and this story manages to combine inverted mystery elements within an unconventionally structured detective story.
Mystery No. 27: The Corpse is Indignant (1946) by Douglas Stapleton & Helen A. Carey
I have only read two books by this husband and wife writing team, but each one has been excellent. The other story I read by them is called Late for the Funeral (1953), which I read earlier this year. This story certainly starts with a bang, metaphorically speaking, as Sylvia Jensen abruptly tells Judge James Massie that she has shot her husband, due to the psychological torment he is inflicting on her. Massie of course pretends to not be interested, when he really is and soon they all return to her house to view the body, which not only isn’t there, but is very much alive and well… The police who have also been summoned are not impressed. The only thing dead at the property is the family dog, but even that disappears. At this point in time the reader is left wondering what will happen next. Did Sylvia hallucinate the killing she thought she had committed? What are her husband’s full intentions towards her? And to be honest this is such a wonderful plot that I don’t want to say too much more about it but suffice to say there are further corpses to follow: ones that disappear, ones that aren’t corpses after all and ones you really don’t expect. This is a well-clued mystery, in which character psychology matters as much as alibis and physical evidence.
Mystery No. 28: Blood on the Cat (1946) by Nancy Rutledge
I am so pleased that in July American Mystery Classics are reprinting this novel, as it is not the world’s easiest book to get a hold of, but it deserves to be more widely read. The Saturday Review of Literature wrote that this mystery had: ‘likeable characters, entertaining chatter, unflagging actions, and expert sleuthing’ and this is a sentiment I would agree with. I very much enjoyed the central amateur sleuth, the printer of a small-town American newspaper, who also writes for the publication. A cat and a dog play an interesting role in bringing about the discovery of a crime and I hope to read more by this author at some point.
Mystery No. 29: The Spinster’s Secret (1946) by Anthony Gilbert
This is the second mystery by Gilbert to make my long list and whilst she is not a truly forgotten author, I do think she is an underrated one. The Spinster’s Secret shines a light on the life of a socially isolated older woman, who is invisible to much of society, and I love how she is instrumental in justice being achieved in this story. But this tale also sticks in my mind due to one narrative choice it makes, a choice that completely took me by surprise. I read this back in 2017, when I was still fairly new to classic crime fiction, still trying to get a sense of what the genre could do, so this mystery by Gilbert was important in demonstrating its strengths and variety. I would say this is a key example of crime fiction exploring attitudes towards the elderly and their care. The book, at points, makes you wonder whether much has changed since.
Mystery No. 30: The Deadly Percheron (1947) by John Franklin Bardin
Bardin was an author who was recommend to me in 2018 when I published a post asking for books to help fill out my skeletal TBR pile. Yes, back in those days my TBR pile could drop to as little as 8 books! Suffice to say this is not a problem I have at the moment. The Deadly Percheron was the first of three books which the author wrote in 18 months. The questionable mental stability of his protagonists is a common theme across all three, and in this first story what is even more unnerving is when what we presume is a symptom of madness is actually grounded in the reality of the book. After all, Jacob Blunt, the protagonist thinks he is suffering from hallucinations because men of short stature are paying him to fulfil odd requests for money. One of these requests is to deliver a draft horse to an actress, an actress who is soon found dead. Yet, this story does not have an easy to predict narrative trajectory and the novel is in many ways more about the psychiatrist who tries to help Jacob and soon finds himself in a ‘nightmarish urban jungle of mistaken identities, secrets and insanity’. This last quote comes from the blurb for the Penguin reprint. This is a hard book to do justice to without spoilers, but hopefully this has whetted your appetite for giving it a try.
Stay tuned for part 4!