Happy Birthday John Bingham

Note: John Bingham, 1908 – 1988, British spy and novelist, 7th Baron Clanmorris, worked with John le Carré in British intelligence. Le Carre says that Bingham objected to Le Carre’s telling tales out of MI-5 but Bingham is said to be one of the inspirations for George Smiley. Bingham, who died in 1988 at the age of 80, wrote his own espionage and police procedural novels. His highly developed characters and plots are believable and stand up well 50 years after their creation.

The Paton Street Case - John Bingham

In this 1955 thriller, also known as Inspector Morgan’s Dilemma, John Bingham crafts a taut, melancholic tale of murder and moral compromise, set against the backdrop of post-war Britain’s frayed civility.

Inspector Morgan, a Welshman with a poet’s soul and a policeman’s burden, finds himself partnered with Shaw - a man of clipped tones and colder instincts. Together, they probe the death of a gambler whose life was a litany of petty deceit and grubby transactions.

Morgan’s instincts, steeped in Celtic intuition, lead him down shadowed paths. Sometimes they illuminate; sometimes they betray. One such path leads to Otto Steiner, a refugee from Nazi brutality, whose trauma simmers beneath a veneer of graciousness. Steiner’s unpredictability in moments of crisis makes him both a suspect and a tragic cipher.

Another thread unravels through a quiet interview, where adultery is revealed not with scandal but with weary resignation. The betrayed spouse, driven by wounded pride and long-nurtured bitterness, takes actions that defy logic but not emotion long bottled-up.

The case becomes less about justice and more about understanding the fragile grammar of motive. Morgan, caught between duty and empathy, must decide whether truth is always the noblest pursuit - or merely the most convenient.

James Sandoe of the New York Herald Tribune Book Review called the novel “an uncommonly compelling narrative, artfully wrought and compassionately conceived.” It is that rare crime story where the murder is only the beginning, and the real mystery lies in the hearts of those left behind.