Which Doctor

Which Doctor – Edward Candy

The story of this 1954 mystery revolves around the kidnapping of a nine-year-old boy who witnessed the grisly murder of a disliked pediatrician. It is set in the early 1950s in the English Midlands at the fictional Bantwich-Bannister Hospital for Children, “The Fairy Land for Sick Children.”

Professor and Doctor Fabian Honeychurch, in keeping with his robust name, is a combination of Falstaff and Santa Claus who is visiting the hospital for a conference. He teams up with explosive London cockney Inspector Burnivel from Scotland Yard to unpack the mystery of which doctor dunnit.

Red herrings abound in this relatively short novel. We meet the tried and true devices such as the seemingly obvious culprit, adultery ending in a seemingly apparent suicide, the seemingly friendly and open American. To balance improbabilities in the plot, the professional rivalries and jealousies feel familiar to any reader who’s been paid to make things happen for brilliant but flawed human beings. Plus, the drug trial involving children will engage readers into the protection of human subjects in research (I know – all two of them and one of them is me).

I recommend this one. Like Edmund Crispin but not as silly, more like a lighter P.D. James (given the medical settings), if that can be imagined. Although it is short on action, Tom the nine-year-old isn’t in it much, and Honeychurch holds forth too much, the red herrings are diverse, and the language is pleasingly Dickensian. For instance, perfectionist Professor Pemberton reports the murder to the cops thusly:

One of my staff has been found dead in the grounds. He has been struck on the back of the head. .... I'd be grateful if you'd make your arrival as inconspicuous as possible. We've an important meeting here today. I shouldn't like any fuss.

Edward Candy was the pseudonym of Barbara Alison Neville (1925-1993). She was born in London and educated in Hampstead and University College, and later earned a medical degree. She practiced medicine and had a family of five children while writing about a dozen books, three of which are medical mysteries, besides this one, Bones of Contention and Words for Murder, Perhaps.

It’s Different Abroad

It’s Different Abroad – Henry Calvin

This delightful suspense novel from 1963 stars Helen McLeish, a Scottish spinster, in Normandy in her snazzy red Mini. She is on a well-deserved vacation after burying her tetchy invalid father whom she tended for ten long years. After she is passed through French customs she gets the feeling that she is being followed. After she meets her sister and brother-in-law at their vacation house, she takes her niece and nephew to beach where she has a nasty encounter with one of the stalkers. Happily, she also meets a local mechanic, the hero and love interest of the story, and they have an adventure together.

The McGuffin is rather so-so, but the draws are the brisk pace, ingenious plot twists, and the realistic interplay between characters. A vein of satire animates the observations of a certain kind of Briton overseas to whom all non-Britons are foreigners whether or not they are in their own country. Helen’s sister and brother-in-law are muggles of the worst sort. Her sister Rosemary is judgmental, self-righteous, and materialistic. The brother-in-law is a fast-talking lech, main chancer, and weakling. Both are kinda sorta parents, with the main damage being done to their 10-year-old son, an acting-out bully, coward and snot. The author’s ridicule is not heavy handed and jabs in the direction of philistines are fun.

Henry Calvin was the pen name of Clifford Hanley (1922 – 1999), a journalist, novelist, playwright and script writer from Glasgow.

The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

Note: As the staying at home jazz continues, I find myself reading stories set in faraway places and times. 

The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet – Michael Pearce

This 1988 historical police procedural thriller was the first in a series that is still going with as many as 19 published as of 2016.

The Mamur Zapt is a title for the head of the secret political police in Cairo, capital of an Egypt indirectly run by the British in the early 20^th century. Gareth Cadwallader Owen, a Welsh army captain, is young to have such an important job but he has two important qualifications. He’s a member of a ethnic group with a romantic past so he’s canny about the ways of thinking of embattled minorities. He’s also smarter than the bureaucrats and military types he works with, both of whom depend much on obfuscation and force respectively.

The author was born in the Sudan so his details about the heat and environment come from real life observation. His line about the smell of wet sand in 120-degree heat brought back Saudi Arabia for me. Pearce skillfully evokes settings such as crowded cafes, interrogation rooms, and busy street life. Pearce wonderfully describes a bath house (hammam) when Owen and his faithful counterpart Mahmoud tail a crook. This scene took me back to hot springs in Japan: the ritual of washing before entering the bath, the talking with other patrons, enjoying snacks and beer.

Indeed, readers may object that the book is long on scene setting and cross-cultural interaction but short on action. I will grant the climax was a lot less rip-roaring than I like in a thriller, but I’m told low-key climaxes and subdued endings are not unusual with this writer.

I think that readers will like this novel who like historical mysteries, terrorist intrigues, and Middle Eastern settings.  Similar authors are Michael Gilbert, Eric Ambler, and John le Carré.

The Ides of Perry Mason 13

The 15th of every month until I don't know when I will post a review of a Perry Mason mystery. For the hell of it.

Topical Note. With the police in the news so much lately, I feel it relevant to point out that in both the Mason and Cool/Lam novels, ex-lawyer for underdogs Gardner often points out improper police procedures such as witness priming that lead to wrongful convictions. Misconduct on the part of the police happens so often in Gardner's novels that any reader will take to heart the advice, "Say nothing without your lawyer present."

The Case of the Terrified Typist - Erle Stanley Gardner

A sharp mind with the speed of light, a cloud of flim-flim and a hearty "Objection." Perry Mason. "Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial!" With his faithful helping companions Della and Paul, the daring and resourceful attorney for the common guy, leads the fight for justice in the middle part of the twentieth century. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.

If you recognize the allusion, you’re old enough to like Perry Mason novels. If you don’t, read them anyway for the fast-paced narrative and the good guys winning.

Della and Perry hire a temp from an agency to type briefs. An woman with the symptoms of high anxiety appears in the office and types “like a house afire.” But she disappears even before collecting her pay. Perry and Company are nonplussed as they find that another office in their building – a diamond importer - has been ransacked and that in their office stuck on the underside the temp typist’s desk is a wad of chewing gum with two diamonds. Yuck.

Perry is hired by a large diamond company to defend one of its employees in the local office, Duane Jefferson, who has been  accused of killing the smuggler who smuggled the gems into the country but whose corpse has never been found. With a client that’s economical with the truth Mason doesn’t know how to proceed.

Featuring many twists and turns, this 1956 puzzler will satisfy both fans of the Mason stories and readers wondering which Mason novel would be representative of the 80-some book canon. Highly recommended.

Ian Fleming's Older Smarter Brother

Brazilian Adventure –Peter Fleming

The 1933 narrative is among the classics of between the wars travel writing, up there with The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. It is one of the few from that golden era still in print.

The narrator Peter Fleming was Ian”007” Fleming’s older smarter more debonair brother. In April 1932 Peter answered a recruitment listing in the agony column of The Times for an expedition to Brazil to locate a missing explorer.

The expedition traveled to São Paulo, then overland to the rivers Aragauaia and Tapirapé, heading towards the last-known whereabouts of the missing expedition. Arguments broke up the expedition and so Fleming and Roger Pettiward (a university chum) went up the Tapirapé to São Domingo.

This not working out real well makes up most of the book, which was a best-seller when it was first released. Modern readers may be put off the red-blooded English love of the hunt (they shot dead about 100 alligators).

Roger was killed in a commando raid on Dieppe in 1942 and Peter himself died while on a shooting expedition in Scotland in 1971.

Train of Powder

Train of Powder - Rebecca West

For those into long-form journalism made famous by the New Yorker, Train of Powder is a collection of six of Rebecca West’s best post-WWII essays. West is best-known as the author of one of the great books of the 20th century, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

The subjects vary: white South Carolinians on trial for lynching an African-American; a British murder trial in which the defendant was shown to have been an accessory after the fact but not killer as the prosecution had charged; an account of the trial and conviction of a British FSO clerk for handing secrets over to the Soviets; and three reports about the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders and the situation of occupied Germany.

West’s power of observation was keen and her descriptions of places have few equals. She brought imagination and sympathy to psychological studies of people who are so empty and forlorn inside, so unconnected with reality, that they grasp onto whatever or whoever will make them feel whole.

Her wit and common sense add to a style unique in 20th century literature.

Henry James, For Once

Selected Short Stories - Henry James

Besides Daisy Miller, this ancient Penguin I bought in Japan near the end of the 20th century has  three other short stories:

The Last of the Valerii (1874) is about an international marriage. Martha is a stylish American who marries Count Macro Valerio and settles down in his country. During a make-over of his ancestral grounds, an ancient statue of Juno is dug up. The count has been rather an unconscious pagan since his dim-witted youth , without the power to comprehend the challenging belief system of Christianity. He begins worshiping the statue, which adds a heathenish supernatural turn to the story. He ignores his American spouse. James obliquely gets across the delicate fact that he has stopped sleeping with her. Naturally this situation can’t continue but how does Martha end it?

The Real Thing (1892) is story about the visual arts and its parallels with writing fiction, models, and their conflicts with real life. James gets in telling jabs against the deadly conventional British social system of the time. Social class has erected such impenetrable barriers that people from different backgrounds can’t begin to understand each other. A shabby genteel couple are so down at heels that they are begging for work and a tiny income, but the artist is so in awe of them that he can’t ask them to do chores that he has his Italian and Cockney models do. The artist is so discomfited by them that he cuts them loose, though they are desperate.

In The Lesson of the Master (1888) a long-married high literary figure, Henry St. George, advises an aspiring writer, Paul Overt, to give up the idea of marrying red-headed Marian Fancourt and instead to devote all his energy to writing. I mustn’t say any more lest I risk giving away the game, save it is a great story.

Back to the Classics #12

Classic with a Name in the Title. Starting with The Tale of Genji, novel writers have dearly loved naming novels with the name of the hero of the novel. For Trollope, see also Rachel Ray, Miss Mackenzie, Doctor Thorne, and Cousin Henry.

Phineas Finn: The Irish Member – Anthony Trollope

This engaging novel from 1869 tells the story of a young Irishman, the only son of a successful doctor in County Clare, who begins his adult life in London studying law in the odd way they study law in that part of the world. Young Phineas is blessed with luck, being born handsome and pleasant by disposition. Charming as he is, however, he’s no scholar.

So he is lucky again when he builds a useful friendship with Whig politician Barrington Erle who recommends that he run for an Irish seat for parliament. A child of fortune again, he wins in “just one of those flukes that occur once in a dozen elections,” causing his law mentor Mr. Low to warn darkly:

… Even if you are successful, what are you to become? You will be the creature of some minister, not his colleague. You are to make your way up the ladder by pretending to agree whenever agreement is demanded from you, and by voting whether you agree or do not. And what is to be your reward? Some few precarious hundreds a year, lasting just so long as a party may remain in power and you can retain a seat in Parliament! It is at the best slavery and degradation,—even if you are lucky enough to achieve the slavery.

Finn’s first speech in that august body is a fiasco and any reader that has blown an interview or presentation sky-high will connect with his experience. Finn also feels what we now call imposter syndrome, Trollope showing that feeling an outsider and a fraud and full of self-doubt has been around for a long time though we post-moderns love to think our new names name new things.

Trollope presents so many examples of Finn’s luck that such good fortune borders on the improbable. As he attempts to woo young heiresses, another character tells him “Upon my word, Phineas, my boy, you're the luckiest fellow I know. This is your first year, and you're asked to the two most difficult houses in England.”

Finn is also lucky enough to find himself in a position to rescue not one but two men. In the obligatory sporting scene for readers that like fox hunting (a bigger demographic in the Victorian era than in our staying-at-home times), he provides aid and comfort to injured Lord Childtern, the brother of his most earnest supporter, Lady Laura. Later he saves Robert Kennedy, the husband of the same lady, from being garroted by beating off the muggers. Kennedy’s feeling of obligation to Finn works itself out in both fortunate and unfortunate ways.

The Palliser novels are often called the political novels. Lots of us idealistic readers see politics as a set of beliefs about how the wealth of nations ought to be divided up, but a character in this novel sums up an attitude still with us today:

"Convictions! There is nothing on earth that I'm so much afraid of in a young member of Parliament as convictions. There are ever so many rocks against which men get broken. One man can't keep his temper. Another can't hold his tongue. A third can't say a word unless he has been priming himself half a session. A fourth is always thinking of himself, and wanting more than he can get. A fifth is idle, and won't be there when he's wanted. A sixth is always in the way. A seventh lies so that you never can trust him. I've had to do with them all, but a fellow with convictions is the worst of all."

It appears I have written 500 words about this novel without telling anything about the plot. I don’t think that Trollope especially cared about the story. Instead, he puts his energy and creativity into memorable characters.

Two men and three women especially stand out. Lord Chiltern aka Oswald Standish brings to mind the tumult and selfishness of George Vavasor but without the ambition that drove the latter to use people as mere objects. Chiltern is out of the place in the modern world because he is wild, impetuous, surly, brawling in the violent 18^th century manner. Nobody better to share a foxhole with, nobody worse to work or travel with. No wonder heiress Violet Effingham, as fun as Lady Glencora Palliser, is rather afraid that Chiltern will be a drinking, gaming, out of control husband.

Robert Kennedy is a control freak because, like most control freaks, he is weak and fears uncertainty. He thinks that religious zeal, inflexible schedules and rigid adherence to social duty will stave off change that he dreads he won’t be able to handle. His controlling ways drive his wife Lady Laura to distraction, as if she does not feel guilty enough marrying him out of ambition to make a difference in the world (see Alice Vavasor) after throwing over our hero Finn.

Another vibrant character is the widow of a Viennese banker, Madame Max Goesler. She’s another outsider who works hard to find a place in London society, so beautiful and charming that she becomes sought-after by the Duke of Omnium. This, naturally enough, alarms Lady Glencora who fears for the future of her son, the future duke if all goes as it should.

Like the characters in the Barchester novels, the characters in this novel struggle to reconcile their own preferences with the expectations of the world. The world hectors Chiltern to settle down. It chides Finn that entering Parliament is a misstep. All the women are told love is most important and that they should live only for others. Reading Trollope reminds us that we readers still struggle to resolve our own heart’s desire for freedom with what a silly fickle world tells us to want - money, a soul mate, property, reputation, position, awards, making a difference, good health – all desires that enslave us because they are out of our control, not up to us.