Heyer's detective-writing career got off to a reasonable start with Envious Casca, but even there it was easy to see that she was more interested in snappy dialogue than detection. Death in the Stocks continues this trend, using the flimsiest of mystery plots as a device to support a great deal of conversation and very little action.
It starts well: Arnold Vereker, a wealthy and unloved mine-owner, is found dead in the old stocks in the cillage of Ashleigh Green. Why the stocks? To provide a title, apparently, since nothing else in the book has any bearing on this strange circumstance, and Vereker could have been found at home in bed without making an iota of difference to the plot.
Superintendent Hannasyde, who did fairly well in Envious Casca, has by now degenerated into an incompetent dolt, and spends most of his time in pointless badinage with the chief suspects. These are two of the between-wars Bright Young Things who were so attractive in literature and so repulsive in real life. The conversation is well done but it leads nowhere, and Heyer is forced to resort to a second murder, that of a wastrel uncle, before any progress can be made.
Such detection as there is in the book is done at the end by the young male romantic lead, and Hannasyde is reduced to stupefaction as he pulls the murderer out of a hat. So are we, since the motive is unbelievably thin. Death in the Stocks is a fairly entertaining example of its kind but to call it a 'detective story' is a sad perversion of language.
Jon.(1935)
B
The first appearance of Superintendent Hannasyde, although the detection is done by the murder victim’s cousin, barrister Giles Carrington (same name as G. Armitage in Why Shoot a Butler?), and the story is told from the perspective of the family members (not the police), who treat the murder as a game and construct case against themselves—very Christianna Brand. The book shows the influence of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, as Mike Grost has pointed out. Kenneth and Antonia are like Simon and Sorel; the dialogue is unflaggingly bright and witty; and, above all, Heyer has the ability to construct and shape play-like scenes—this would be easily transferable to the stage. The mystery isn’t bad—lots of character movements, as in Christie (very good). I spotted X, largely by applying my knowledge of narrative conventions and who should marry whom. I’m not sure, though, how X inveigled Arnold into the stocks.
Nick Fuller.
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