Ask a Policeman is, when all is said and done, a period piece. Kennedy’s solution does not really “play fair” with the reader, but the book is laden with charm as well as humour, and its reappearance is as welcome as it is overdue. Howard Haycraft, a noted American historian of the genre, hailed this book as “a matchless tour de force”, and its success prompted plenty of other writers to parody the classic detective story. But few of them achieved such enjoyable results as the six members of the Detection Club who combined to create this lively entertainment.
PREFACE
DETECTIVE WRITERS IN ENGLAND
BY AGATHA CHRISTIE
WHAT kind of people read detective stories and why? Invariably, I think, the busy people, the workers of the world. Highly placed men in the scientific world, even if they read nothing else, seem to have time for a detective story; perhaps because a detective story is complete relaxation, an escape from the realism of everyday life. It has, too, the tonic value of a puzzle—a challenge to the ingenuity. It sharpens your wits—makes you mentally alert. To follow a detective story closely you need concentration. To spot the criminal needs acumen and good reasoning powers. It has also a sporting interest and is much less expensive than betting on horses or gambling at cards! Its ethical background is usually sound. Very very rarely is the criminal the hero of the book! Society unites to hunt him down, and the reader can have all the fun of the chase without moving from a comfortable armchair.
Before speaking of present day English writers, I must first pay tribute to Conan Doyle, the pioneer of detective writing, with his two great creations Sherlock Holmes and Watson—Watson perhaps the greater creation of the two. Holmes after all has his properties, his violin, his dressing gown, his cocaine etc., whereas Watson has just himself—lovable, obtuse, faithful, maddening, guaranteed to be always wrong, and perpetually in a state of admiration! How badly we all need a Watson in our lives!
Most detective writing since then has been modelled roughly on the same structure. The detective is the “central character”. But there has come to be something too artificial about a “private investigator”. The essence of a detective story is that it shall be “natural” in its setting and characters. My own Hercule Poirot is often somewhat of an embarrassment to me—not in himself, but in the calling of his life. Would anyone go and “consult” him? One feels not. So, more and more, his entry into a murder drama has to be fortuitous. My Miss Marple is more happily placed—an elderly gossipy lady in a small village, who pokes her nose into all that does or does not concern her, and draws deductions based on years of experience of human nature.
At the present day, I should call Margery Allingham one of the foremost writers of detective fiction. Not only does she write excellent English, but her drawing of character is masterly and she has wonderful power in creating atmosphere. You can feel the sinister influences behind the scenes, and her characters live on in your memory long after you have put the book away: the grim autocrat Mrs. Faraday of Police at the Funeral; the kindly and lovable “belle” in Death of a Ghost; Jimmy Sutane, the sad faced dancer with the twinkling feet. They are unusual but real personalities, vividly interesting. And through the books moves “Mr. Campion”, apparently vacuous, actually keenly acute, and with him the faithful Lugg (in whom, alas, I never can quite believe!) The pleasant negative inconsequence of Campion makes a dramatic contrast with the undercurrent of suspicion and fear that grows to a climax—particularly is this so in Flowers for the Judge. Sometimes, one feels, Margery Allingham is inclined to subordinate plot to characters. She is so interested in them that the denouement of the crime sometimes comes rather flatly as inevitable, rather than as a surprising bombshell.
Dorothy Sayers, alas, has wearied of the detective story and has turned her attention elsewhere. We all regret it for she was such an exceptionally good detective story writer and a delightfully witty one. Her earlier books Whose Body?, Unnatural Death and The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club are decidedly her best, having greater simplicity and more “punch” to them. Also her detective “Lord Peter Wimsey”, whose face was originally piquantly described as “emerging from his top hat like a maggot emerging from a gorgonzola cheese”, became through the course of years merely a “handsome hero”, and admirers of his early prowess can hardly forgive his attachment to, and lengthy courtship of, a tiresome young woman called Harriet. One had hoped that, once married to her, he would resume his old form, but Lord Peter remains an example of a good man spoilt.
Not so Mr. Fortune, H.C. Bailey’s great creation. Reggie Fortune is always the same, and marriage to a discreet and charming wife has left his incisive character untouched. The stories stand or fall by Mr. Fortune. It is not the cases themselves but Mr. Fortune’s handling of them wherein lies the fascination. For Mr. Fortune is, undeniably, a great man. Now to label a man a great man and then write about him and show him to be a great man is a supreme literary feat! A noted surgeon and consultant to the Home Office, Reggie Fortune’s handling of his problems is like a surgical operation. Where all is apparently straightforward, he feels, probes, notes some tiny fact that a complacent police official has swept aside, and then he cuts down to the heart of the trouble. His method is the method of the knife, ruthless and incisive. His rudeness to the wretched Lomas (Assistant Commissioner of Police) is unbelievable—and leads one to speculate whether one day worm Lomas will turn and murder Mr. Fortune!
H.C. Bailey’s longer books are not so satisfactory as his shorter stories. All the characters are inclined to speak a special Baileyesque language of their own—a clear clipped jargon. This is effective in short doses as the atmosphere of the operating theatre. But the atmosphere of an operating theatre is essentially artificial—created deliberately for specific purposes. It cannot be prolonged into a picture of daily life. Some of the best of the Fortune stories show the deduction of a whole malignant growth from one small isolated incident. For instance, the discovery of a couple of withered leaves in a woman’s handbag, recognized by Mr. Fortune as Arctic Willow, cause him to inquire into an apparently satisfactory case of suicide.
Fat, lazy, incredibly greedy (his delight in cream and jam for tea make tantalizing reading in war days!), underneath Fortune’s smiling exterior there is cold steel. Reggie Fortune is for Justice—merciless and inexorable justice. His pity and indignation are aroused by the victims—in execution he is as ruthless as his own knife.
John Dickson Carr (or Carter Dickson, for they are one and the same) is a master magician. I believe that only those who write detective stories themselves can really appreciate his marvellous sleight of hand. For that is what it is—he is the supreme conjurer, the King of the Art of Misdirection. Each of his books is a brilliant, fantastic, quite impossible conjuring trick.
“You watch my hands, ladies and gentlemen, you watch my sleeves, the hat is empty, nothing anywhere—Hey presto! A Rabbit!” He has, too, the gift of story telling, once you begin a book of his, you simply cannot put it down. As each chapter draws to a close, you see ahead a reasonable explanation, then, like Alice through the Looking Glass’s path, it seems to shake itself, and off it goes in a twist of fresh bewilderment. His characterization is not particularly good, his people talk in a way quite unlike life, his events are fantastic. It is all stagey—set behind footlights—but what a performance!
Carr’s penchant is for the impossible situation. He starts with that—either with the familiar “closed room”, or “closed circle” or with, as in the “Arabian Nights Mystery”, a setting of pure fantasy, with a set of people behaving apparently like lunatics. Then with a shake of the kaleidoscope you get the reason of it, all is quite normal—and then fresh impossibilities, fresh rationalisations. For some people, the twists of the plot may be too complicated. He can certainly be accused of occasionally loading the dice, but that can be forgiven for the brilliance with which it is done. The clues to the truth are so slight as to be almost unfair: one little sentence slipped into the middle of a tense situation; a mention of a