Punshon, ER - Crossword Mystery (1934)

Review by Nick Fuller

3/5

An extremely disappointing tale, because the first three-quarters are so good, reminiscent of vintage Connington. Bobby Owen is sent undercover to the home of a stockbroker who believes his brother was murdered and fears that he will soon be murdered, and gets involved in a complicated tale of Airedales, crosswords and buried treasure, as well as a real estate plan developed by an organising genius of Ferdie Paul's stature (equated with Nazism: the lust for power, determining others' destinies and believing they are doing what is right, regardless of the cost in human life - usurping the throne of God). The solution, however, is an anti-climax, based, as it is, in greed and professional crime rather than the morbid psychology for which Punshon has a touch of genius.

Note similarities to: "Great Uncle Meleager's Will" (Sayers), The Fashion in Shrouds (Allingham) and The Great Game (Bailey). Note also early outrage against Nazism and the treatment of Jews (concentration camps, persecution and extermination), themes which would be developed in Dictator's Way.

Review by Mike Grost

Scotland Yard Detective-Constable Bobby Owen stars in Crossword Mystery. The first half of the novel features Owen's sleuthing at a country house. It is a comedy of manners in the tradition of Agatha Christie. These sections have plenty of charm. While Owen is a policeman, he is undercover here, and essentially operates in the same manner as the amateur sleuths beloved by Golden Age intuitionist writers.

Numerous mysteries pile up; in the second half of the work, these are eventually explained as being the result of various Croftsian Schemes. This second half of the work is much darker in tone. It is much closer to the traditions of the Crofts school. The seaside setting of the book, its detailed landscape topography, its occasional interest in alibis, radios and clocks, and the motorcycle ridden by hero Owen, also seem like Croftsian features.

Also involving Realist School traditions: the book contains a complete crossword puzzle, one in which clues to the mystery are concealed. It seems directly in the tradition of Dorothy L. Sayers' "The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will" (1925). Even the sort of definitions used in the crosswords in Sayers' and Punshon's works seem similar. The 1948 British paperback edition of Crossword Mystery contains a brief rave review by Sayers praising Punshon's novels, by the way. This is probably an excerpt from one of Sayers' 1930's newspaper columns.

Crossword Mystery continues some of the social and political points of view found in Punshon's Genius in Murder. Once again, Punshon knows a lot about business practices of the time. The activities of the two brothers who are retired stockbrokers are at the center of the book's plot, as is a financial speculator who wants to build a large resort hotel. Also in Punshon traditions: concern about lost business opportunities for Britain's lower and middle classes.

Punshon extends his satiric scalpel here to foreign regimes. The book's characters are horrified by the rise of both Communism and Fascism abroad. A late chapter in the work has a brief but savage satire of the then one-year-old Hitler regime in Germany.

The subplot here about the resort hotel seems directly anticipatory of the cruise ship sections in Crofts' Fatal Venture (1939) (known as Tragedy in the Hollow in the United States). It is hard to believe that Crofts did not read Punshon's story. So the influence between the two men runs both ways.