Shroud Of Darkness

A review of Shroud of Darkness by E C R Lorac – 240318

The fortieth in Lorac’s long-running Robert Macdonald series, originally published in 1954, is as much a thriller as a murder mystery with a tale that involves the settling of scores that have lingered on from the Second World War. Sarah Dillon is travelling by train from Exeter to Paddington and is enjoying the company of a young man, Richard, who seems to become more distracted and agitated, especially when the train, whose progress is impeded by a thick pea-souper makes an unscheduled stop at Reading and two men, one a seemingly respectable middle-aged businessman and the other a bit of a thug, join them in the carriage.

To her surprise, Richard leaves the train abruptly as soon as it reaches its destination but is seriously injured in an attack. Who was Richard, why was he attacked, and by whom? At the same time there is an old case running, reopened for the third time, the discovery of what happened to an American, Darcourt, who disappeared in 1941. Inevitably, the two cases are intertwined.

Lorac has chosen her title well. The Shroud of Darkness not only describes the thick fogs that enveloped the country, especially London, in the early 1950s, making conditions ideal for miscreants to go about their work and especially difficult for those tasked with apprehending them, but also the fog that has descended over Richard’s mind, struggling to piece together what really happened on a traumatic night in 1941 when his life was transformed dramatically.

Shrouds, of course, lift and the book focuses on unravelling and explaining what happened that forced him to flee the Plymouth blitz with his clothes on fire and be taken up and adopted by a kindly but austere farming family in the wilds of Dartmoor. With her fine descriptive ability and her enhanced sense of place, Lorac brings the Plymouth blitz and the remote way of life on the Devon moors to life.

There are a couple of murders along the way but these are incidental to the plot, more red herrings and collateral damage than germane to the unmasking of Richard’s attacker and the unravelling of his backstory. Potential suspects come and go, a jealous brother-in-law, a gang who operate around the Reading area, Richard’s best friend, some unsavoury characters who hang out at the Whistling Pig, but it is pretty clear that there are only two realistic contenders and, frankly, while Lorac tries to cloud the reader’s assessment of one, the other was always the favourite.

That said, the whodunit is not really the focus of a book that shines a light on some of the murkier aspects of clandestine warfare and the role of sleepers and intelligence gatherers on the ground. We tend to think that this was the specialty of the Allies but the roundups of Germans and other nationals at the outset of the war shows that the concerns that German spies were operating in England undercover leading seemingly innocuous lives was very real. It is interesting to think that even in the mid-50s Lorac saw that as a subject upon which to build a story.

One fascinating feature of the book, at least to fans of Golden Age Detective Fiction, is the name checks that Lorac gives to her contemporary writers. On the train Sarah and Richard exchange books, she receiving a Josephine Tey for a Ngaio Marsh, getting the better end of the bargain. A homophone of the Tey title, The Franchise Affair, provides Macdonald with the final piece of the jigsaw.

Macdonald is an empathetic investigator with an approach that quickly wins the confidence of those he speaks to, but is not averse to overhearing conversations and a bit of action. The denouement played out on a ferry to Dunkirk makes for a dramatic ending to what is an impressive story and a welcome variation to the tried and tested murder mystery.

Fire In The Thatch

A review of Fire in the Thatch by ECR Lorac – 230411

Edith Caroline Rivett, who wrote under the nom de plume of E C R Lorac, is one of my favourite Golden Age detective writers. More of her works are being rescued from obscurity, although some of the versions that are available on Kindle are often full of annoying typos. Fortunately, the inestimable British Library Crime Classics series is doing its bit to revive her fortunes and their editions can be relied upon to provide the reader with an almost error-free experience. Fire in the Thatch, set in 1944, the dog days of the Second World War, and originally published in 1946, the twenty-seventh in her Robert Macdonald series, is an excellent example of her style and craftsmanship.

One of the features of Lorac’s writing that appeals to me is her wonderful sense of place and her ability to communicate her deep knowledge of and love of the countryside to her readers. This story is set in Devon, where she was evacuated during the war. Country ways, the deep distrust amongst the locals of outsiders, the attitude to evacuees bringing their London ways to the countryside all form part of the warp and weft of this intriguing and oddly affecting tale of murder.

There are two slightly unusual features to this story. Firstly, the principal murder victim, Nicholas Vaughan, is portrayed sympathetically by Lorac. He has been invalided out of the services and wants to settle in the countryside by taking on a smallholding and working the land. He rents a run-down thatched cottage with potential, as the estate agents say, from Colonel St Cyres in the village of Mallory Fitzjohn and sets about making it habitable and working the land so that it can become productive.

Although he can be prickly at times, he is single-minded in his determination to make good the property and fulfil his dreams. He is an unlikely murder victim. The Colonel’s daughter-in-law, June, whose husband is held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war, has moved down to the village, but misses her London life. Her presence lures several of the London society set to the area, including Tommy Gressingham, whom Vaughan beat to the lease on the cottage.

Having spent the opening chapters setting up the story, Lorac plunges us straight in to the start of Macdonald’s investigation. The tragic fire has happened starting in the thatch, and a body, presumed to be Vaughan’s, has been found in the charred remains of the house. The coroner’s verdict is accidental death but Vaughan’s old naval friend, Commander Wilton, demands that the case be reopened. As the excellent introduction points out it is rare for a fire to be the cause of the first death in crime fiction, more usually being deployed to destroy evidence and, occasionally, witnesses afterwards.

Macdonald’s approach is diligent, empathetic, and after immersing himself into the village and its ways, he begins to see that there are a number of features in Vaughan’s death that do not sit easy with the verdict of accidental death. The ducks were not put away, an experienced seaman who had seen war service would not sleep through a fire, an evacuee, a young boy from Shoreditch, who could recognise the sound of individual cars, heard Gressingham’s car moving around. And why was Vaughan receiving strange telephone messages, and where did he go to on the fateful night?

Macdonald’s patient digging reveals that there is a more complex story involving Vaughan and his relationship with Gressingham’s cronies. While I was fairly certain of the identity of the murderer, although as the story went on I began to consider seriously another suspect, the whydunit was more opaque.

The denouement was a tad melodramatic and while not the most complicated of plots, there was much to be enjoyed in a good story told in an engaging style. My take away is never drive a swanky London car down narrow Devon lanes.              

Murder In Vienna

A review of Murder in Vienna by E C R Lorac – 230313

The last time I was in Vienna, the city centre was knee deep in snow which made an enchanting backdrop to the stunning architecture that graces the Austrian capital. One of Lorac’s strengths as a writer is her sense of place, her ability to convey an impression of the grandeur of the buildings, the delightful expanses of the parks in a few short sentences. I felt I had been transported back, minus the snow.

This is one of the later books in Lorac’s Robert Macdonald series, the forty-second, originally published in 1956. It is set in contemporary Vienna, which had just emerged out of occupied control. However, the vestiges of foreign occupation and the slightly surreal impression of a defeated and once proud country feeling its way towards freedom linger on. There is not the menace that lurks on every page of Graham Greene’s Third Man but, nonetheless, this is not a city that is at ease with itself.

This is another piece of crime fiction involving a busman’s holiday. Macdonald is taking a well-earned holiday to Vienna – not the most obvious holiday destination at the time, I would have thought – but, as is the way with these stories, is soon dragged in to help out in an investigation that results in three murders and two serious assaults.

That Macdonald chooses to fly to Vienna on a Vickers Viscount seems to be a novelty, a fascinating insight into the advances in air passenger travel in the 1950s. The Viscount, the turboprop powered airliner, went into service in 1953. Even so, it had to make a scheduled stop at Zurich. It was there that the chain of events that led to mayhem on the streets of Vienna began.

As is the way with these stories, the central characters in the story are fellow passengers on the Viscount flight, who all seem to bump into each other when they are staying in Vienna. A young woman, Elizabeth le Vendre, who had befriended Macdonald on the flight, is found unconscious, having been attacked in a Viennese park during a thunderstorm. It emerges that a girl wearing Elizabeth’s coat had been menaced earlier. Then a celebrated writer, Walsingham, is killed, ostensibly having been knocked down in a road accident, but later it transpires that he was murdered earlier, and his body dumped so that it would be run over. A chauffeur by the name of Pretzel is also murdered, his death collateral damage.

The murder of a British subject leads Scotland Yard to cancel Macdonald’s leave and detail him to help the Viennese authorities with their authorities. A ubiquitous press photographer, Webster, also a passenger on the flight, seems to be helpful and offers valuable information, although is he really what he appears to be and is his aunt as innocently naïve as she seems?

The plot is engaging enough and the mystery, although not one of Lorac’s best, boils down to a competition to secure the rights to what were considered to be valuable memoirs from the Nazi era. The key takeaway is how valuable the ability to recognise faces is, although it can lead you into trouble. The finale is tense, and it has its moments of humour, particularly in the way that one of the characters protects themselves from the fatal consequences of a savage attack. What I missed, though, was any sense of character development. Only Webster really seemed to come alive on the page.

The Kindle edition does her no favours as it is littered with typos. One for the completist, I would say.

Death Of An Author

A review of Death of an Author by E C R Lorac – 230209

A new reissue of one of ECR Lorac’s rarest books is a moment to celebrate, especially as it comes with the imprimatur of quality in production as part of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series. Originally published in 1935, it has been out of print for decades but given the renaissance in the author’s popularity, it is a timely reissue and one sure to delight her fans and add to her growing band of aficionados.

One of the oddities of the book is that it does not feature her usual go-to detective, Robert Macdonald, and perhaps this is a reason why it dropped off the radar screen. Stand-alone books often seem outliers in the canon of a writer who has steadfastly built up a series character. The other major point of difference from Lorac’s normal output is that it is very much of an urban tale. One of the highlights of her usual narrative style is her profound sense of place and her love and appreciation of the countryside and nature in the raw. Whilst there is a foray into the countryside, I missed this side of her writing. A third aspect to the book that is unusual is a sense of humour that pervades her writing, even to the extent of a limerick.

Nevertheless, there was much to enjoy, not least the portrayal of her feisty and somewhat mysterious character, Eleanor Clarke, who is the secretary to the successful and reclusive author, Vivian Lestrange. At his insistence she impersonates him on a visit to his publisher, Andrew Marriott, and at a dinner party he hosts at the insistence of another of the publisher’s successful authors, Michael Ashe.

When the two authors meet, Ashe is astonished that Lestrange is a woman, especially given the style and subject matter of the book, leading to a long and defiant defence of the woman’s role as a writer from the doughty Clarke that sex is neither a determinant of an author’s style or content. It is a finely argued section of the book and looks back at the long legacy of female writers who deemed it necessary to hide under the persona of a man in order to get published.

Clarke’s troubles begin when she finds that she cannot get into Lestrange’s house nor can she rouse his formidable housekeeper, Mrs Fife. After much deliberation she decides to go to the police to report Lestrange’s possible disappearance, something which the local police treat with scepticism. When they finally enter the building, which entails scaling a high wall, they find everything spic and span, no trace of either Lestrange or Fife, the only thing slightly awry being a small round hole in a window.

Investigative duties are undertaken by Inspector Bond of the local police and Chief Inspector Warner of the Yard. Much depends upon how reliable Clarke is, Lorac maintaining the tension by portraying Bond as deeply sceptical while Warner, a more enlightened character, is inclined to believe that she is an innocent victim enmeshed in something she does not really understand but even he, occasionally, waivers in this view. A charred body is found in a deserted country hut, but who is it?

Warner’s investigations reveal that there is a closer link between Ashe and Lestrange than being just two successful authors. There is a back story, rather similar to Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, where the two have reinvented themselves, one to avoid their comeuppance and the other to wreak revenge, but who is really who?

Lorac has spun such a complex web that it takes the fortuitous discovery of a partially charred notebook identifying the victim for Warner eventually to discover the truth. Although it is not her best, even a fair to middling Lorac is worth reading. Let’s hope sales encourage the British Library Publications team to reissue some more.

Death Came Softly

A review of Death Came Softly by E C R Lorac

One of the many things to admire about a Lorac murder mystery is her deep sense and love of the countryside. Death Came Softly, the twenty-third in her Robert Macdonald series, originally published in 1943, is set in the depths of Devon. Eve Merrion, after the death of her husband, has decided to rent a large Italianate house, Valehead House, replete with 41 rooms if you include the bathrooms. She has fallen in love with the gardens and the planting and has ambitions to tame it and bring it back to its former glory. Lorac is at her best in describing the beauty of the property and its place in the countryside, lingering over descriptions of the various flora to be found there, almost allowing the reader to smell their aroma and wonder at their forms and shape.

Eve has invited her father, Professor Crewdon, to live there, and the complement of the household is completed by his private secretary, the nervy and nosey Roland Keston, the Carters, and Eve’s live-in servants, the Carters. When the action begins Eve’s sister, Emmeline (Emma), has joined her, as well as two house guests, the traveller and writer, Bruce Rodrian, and the poet, David Lockersely. Emma is envious of Eve’s wealth, having to make do on the salary of an officer in the Indian army, but loathes the countryside and the atmosphere of the place.

One of the Professor’s eccentricities is that he likes to sleep in a cave that is within the house’s grounds. After returning unexpectedly early from a trip to London, as is his wont, he spends his first evening asleep in the cave. Two of the occupants of the house were out on the misty moor that night, Lockersley who was late returning and Keston, who went out to find him. Rodrian was away in London talking to a director about film rights on his book. Eve is worried about Lockersley, but her relief that he has returned safe and sound pales to insignificance when she learns that her father has been found dead in the cave, apparently overcome by carbon monoxide fumes from a charcoal burner.

Was it suicide or was it murder and, if the latter, as the Professor had returned unexpectedly earlier, the murderer could only have been one of the house occupants. The plot is complicated when it is discovered that the Professor had liquidated some of his assets to purchase uncut diamonds, thinking that have something highly valuable and portable in a time of war would be sensible. The diamonds are missing. Does this suggest that he was murdered so that someone could get their hands on the jewels?

Even though this is a murder, there is something calming, tranquil about the case and the way that Lorac chooses to write about it. Poisoning by carbon monoxide is a gentle death, the victim slipping silently into the arms of Thanatos, perfectly in tune with the idyllic surroundings of Devon and with the gentle, empathetic investigative style of Macdonald. A violent death would just simply jar with the atmosphere Lorac has lovingly created.               

With so few potential suspects Lorac does well to keep the suspense and mystery going as long as she does. There is much methodical, painstaking enquiry, much of it off stage, a significant red herring, and a recreation of the murder method which seems ingenious if a little implausible. The vital clues as to the identity of the killer are to be found in an offhand remark early in the book and a discarded cigarette. The motivation is a little harder to detect, although there are clues in the text which pays the reader to take their time over.

It is not a classic, but there is still much to admire in a writer much underrated and so in tune with the pastoral side of the English countryside.