Harold Merefield returns to his disreputable digs after a night of frittering away his inheritance drinking at the Naxos Club, only to find a corpse in his bed. The man is a stranger to him, and the inquest brings in a verdict of death from natural causes, but Harold knows that no one really believes that. So he turns to Dr Lancelot Priestley, a mathematician with an interest in criminology. Harold’s behaviour caused an estrangement with Dr Priestley, and more importantly with his young daughter April. But the contrarian Professor is eager to put his mind to work on Harold’s problem, which has more of a connection to Harold’s love life than at first it seems.
The situation in the summary looks like one filled with a lot of dramatic potential, and featuring an interesting viewpoint character. However, John Rhode seems to have gone out of his way to lock all this down – starting with the verdict of natural death. People still suspect Harold, but he’s definitely not getting hanged. His former friends have apparently abandoned him, but we never meet them in the narrative, and once the initial drunken discovery is over, Harold rejects his former dissolute life without a second thought. Rather than these possibilities, Rhode is interested in creating a baffling puzzle to introduce his detective to the world. Unfortunately, the puzzle rapidly ceases to be puzzling. In this first attempt, Rhode hasn’t developed the skill of hiding clues in plain sight, or at all, and he doesn’t bother to lay any red herrings across the tracks. This leads to an extremely straightforward mystery; I spotted every clue as it was delivered, and was able to work out all the twists well in advance of the denouement.
In this way it’s almost like a half-way point between earlier detective fiction, which is about the unravelling of a story, and the Golden Age, which invites the reader to speculate about the answer. I also got this slightly old-fashioned sense at other points during the story, which begins and ends referring to Harold’s relationship with Dr. Priestley’s daughter April. Priestley had matchmade the two in the past, but Harold’s behaviour makes him persona non grata until the discovery of the body. Harold worries throughout the book if his fling with Vere, a more dangerous type of woman, means he isn’t worthy of April’s love. All of this feels like it’s from the previous century. Rhode does something unusual for Golden Age fiction by setting part of the story in the slums at Camberwell, but this too feels like it’s been recycled from earlier fiction. The treatment of Jewish characters has the stereotypes common from earlier fiction too, though that kind of thing lasts throughout the whole Golden Age…
The writing itself has an old fashioned tone but has a few nice descriptions and nice turns of phrase. What saved the book for me was the occasional bits of wry humour, and of self-awareness, such as when Dr. Priestley’s wife is described as having died “probably from a surfeit of logarithms”.
Dr. Priestley is the book’s biggest success. Although at times he starts to sound a bit too much like Sherlock Holmes, he’s a very different kind of character, and quite distinctive – a natural contrarian who, in his retirement, decides to challenge accepted scientific theories because he thinks the scientists are too complacent. That kind of character could be rather annoying on the page, but his caring (though overprotective) relationship with April softens him, as does his self-awareness about his tendency to lecture.
None of the other characters in the book really meet this standard of depth or development. Harold shows little of his pleasure-seeking earlier self, instead obediently following Dr. Priestley’s instructions and being tediously self-flagellating about his misdeeds. April is sadly in the role of the female that the male lead must “win” by the end of the story. Harold’s former fling Vere is badly served by a plainly unsympathetic author, and acts unpredictably as the plot demands it. Golden boy Evan, Harold’s rival for April’s affections, proves to be quite cartoonish. The only other major character is Mr. Boost, Harold’s communist landlord, who is surprisingly drawn quite well, despite the fact that his beliefs are gently mocked throughout. There really are no other major speaking roles, which shows you how uncomplicated the book is.
All in all, I didn’t find the book worth the short time it took me to read. Professor Priestley is a good character who is sadly wasted on this thin plot. Judging by reviews of John Rhode’s future books, the mystery aspect does improve, so I’d be interested to check back in with a later book to see if the tropes and topics feel more Golden Age.
Other opinions:
Countdown John
The Grandest Game in the World
In Search of the Classic Mystery
Mysteries Ahoy
Witness to the Crime