Walling, RAJ - A Corpse Without a Clue aka The Corpse Without a Clue (1945)

Walling's The Corpse Without a Clue (1944) is set in 1942 England; the war time atmosphere in the book is strong. There is a constant feel of things disappearing into the darkness, an awareness that the war was inflicting tragic damage on England. Most of the Bentley influence found in his earlier books has completely disappeared. The book is mainly notable for the extreme maze like aspect of the plot. It resembles, to a degree, such John Dickson Carr books as The Arabian Nights Mystery (1936), in the complexities of what is going on, and the strange twists and turns. Unfortunately, unlike Carr's work, Walling's book is not sustained. He runs out of inspiration after the first half of the book (Chapters 1 - 5). Nor is the book's ultimate solution distinguished. It does not really explain some of the odder features of the characters' behavior. Still, there are impressive moments in the first half. Anybody who builds a maze deserves some credit!

The events in Clue are often contradictory, and hard to explain. Walling calls the attempt to build a coherent, logical explanation for them an attempt to "rationalize" them. This is a good word, and a good concept. He also uses this word in Foot, but not as frequently. Reasoning in Walling often proceeds by discussion between Tolefree and one of his friends, who can be a policeman, the narrator, or an amateur friend who is joining in the detection. These characters often discuss logic itself, and the nature of reasoning. Such concepts as "rationalizing" help describe the kinds of reasoning going on in the discussions far more precisely. They form a meta-level to the discussion, one that points out and makes explicit its formal character as reasoning. "Rationalizing" would be a good term to introduce in discussions of mystery fiction in general. For example Baroness Orczy's stories often proceed by rationalization. They focus on contradictory situations that it seems very difficult to unite into a self-consistent explanation. At the end of the tale, The Old Man in the Corner succeeds in doing just that.

As well as being a Tolefree novel, this book also brings back Walling's long absent series character Garstang, star of two previous books, Stroke of One (1931) and Behind the Yellow Blind (1932). This novel will be Garstang's third and final appearance.

Mike Grost