It’s interesting to note in the introduction that this was written around the time that E.C.R. Lorac herself joined the famous Detection Club, where authors of mystery fiction gathered to socialize and discuss mystery writing. It seems like her new place within the mystery-literati has found its way into These Names Make Clues; it’s very self-reflexive. Of course, almost any mystery featuring a mystery writer is bound to end up that way. I also wonder if Lorac’s newfound success (as well as joining the Detection Club, her books were now published by the prestigious Collins Crime Club) was leading her to experiment a bit, seeing that she was now committed to crime fiction for the the long haul.

Out of all the Loracs I’ve read so far, this one is definitely the most uneven. The beginning is lighter than usual, with an (at first) crime-free party. After the body is found we move into more traditional police procedure with Inspector Macdonald, though we do spend much more time hopping around between suspects. The really jarring section is a sequence two thirds of the way through the book where Lorac decides to follow the young journalist Peter Vernon, who is not one of the suspects. Where Macdonald is thoughtful and responsible, Vernon is impulsive and unscrupulous, ignoring privacy, probability, and common sense in his quest for a scoop. Between the car chase and the coincidences, things almost start to get a bit Moving Toyshop.
After this section, we drop straight back in to the arc of the story, with Macdonald having figured out the truth, and a more serious conclusion. Note that we don’t get to see Macdonald figuring it out, which is a departure from the usual routine. It’s almost like the Peter Vernon chapters are a release for Lorac from the seriousness and rule-following of Macdonald – maybe even an attempt to try a more thrillerish style of mystery fiction. I enjoyed reading them, but they felt very out of place.

The plot also felt like it wasn’t quite under control for Lorac here. The death-at-the-party setup is an excellent one, and a surprising second corpse had me very excited about the potential for how everything would play out. Lorac builds the mystery really well; I had some wild theories about how the two deaths fit together, but she kept adding more and more elements to explain. At just after the half-way point, I was thrilled to be totally baffled, and had to discard my theory and admit that I couldn’t explain everything. I love this particular feeling, and not every mystery has it. I happily stepped off the precipice and waited for Lorac to catch me –
– and she failed the catch. It’s not that the solution is bad – in fact it’s hidden nicely in a way that makes for an entertaining re-read – it just doesn’t explain all of the mystery that Lorac has been building for the first half of the book. My own discarded theories covered as much of the problem as the real solution did. The real solution also required several chapters of explanation at the end, with different bits explained to different people – and also, new information brought in that the reader couldn’t have known. Ironically for a book that opens with a puzzle contest, it doesn’t play fair.

But enough about the shaky plot. What I read Lorac for is the characters and the world they inhabit. Though this is nowhere near as strong as some later books of hers I’ve read, it’s still a very enjoyable part of the book.
As with Crossed Skis, written under her Carol Carnac pseudonym, Lorac presents a long cast of characters and names to remember, but discards most of them after one appearance. The members of the party are all first introduced by their pseudonym – Jane Austen, Samuel Pepys, and so on – before having their identities revealed after the body is discovered. This does make things a bit overwhelming at first, as we have to learn two sets of names for most of the characters. However, they are well-drawn enough to be memorable – no struggles with telling personalities apart. Again Lorac simply drops a few members of the party and has them play no further role in the plot, leaving us with a more manageable range of suspects.

It was interesting to see how Lorac may have worked in aspects of real life detective writers into these characters; for example, the victim is well-known for his “deathtrap” murder methods, which the introduction compares to John Rhode. Ronile Rees “is accepted by the critics as a man you know. They always review her as Mr. R. Rees.” – which would have been a familiar experience for Lorac, whose books were reviewed by both Dorothy L. Sayers and Torquemada as by “Mr. Lorac”.
The two main non-author characters in the book are the publisher Graham Coombe and his sister Susan Coombe – both of whom I loved reading about. The two contrast each other; Graham is enthusiastic, playful, and impractical; Susan, a former Suffragist, is practical and bluntly honest. I particularly liked their interactions with each other – both of them are very amusing, though Susan has the edge in dry wit.

Setting-wise this is light compared to other Loracs. It roves around from place to place with only initial descriptions given, rather than settling in. It’s not totally lacking, though – Lorac seems very into apartments this time, with interesting pictures painted of both the victim’s apartment, and “Belinda”, the luxury apartments exclusively for women. “Belinda” gets a lot of detail, and leads into discussions of women living without marriage. None of the main female characters are married, and indeed Lorac never married either. The subject may have been close to her heart, and perhaps she also no longer wanted to be reviewed as “Mr. Lorac” – I doubt a male writer of the time would have introduced similar content!

While the book was great fun to read – especially before I knew the ending wouldn’t land – it’s a bit too much of a mess to really admire. The unfair clueing and unexplained coincidences mean the plot is not as satisfying as it needs to be. The characters are, as usual with Lorac, interesting and entertaining, though the setting is a bit weak. It does contain a lot more snappy banter than I’ve seen in any Lorac I’ve read so far, and 100% more car chases. I’d be interested to know if those same features appear in a better book of Lorac’s than this one.

Other opinions:

Beneath the Stains of Time
crossexaminingcrime
Fiction Fan Blog
From First Page to Last
In Search of the Classic Mystery
JacquiWine’s Journal