Gregg, Cecil Freeman - Exit Harlequin (1946)

There are authors -- and some very good ones among them -- whose books make you feel that they could just as easily written something other than detective fiction; who took it up just because it happened to be there. Then there are authors who, it seems, can't really do anything else. Their talents are specialised; within the genre they are masterly, but outside it, mediocre.

It's a big judgement to make on the basis of a single book, but Exit Harlequin has the signs of being written by a single-minded mystery fanatic. The detective, Inspector Higgins, is thinking all the time: the smallest stimulus is enough to set him off on a long chain of deductive reasoning. Footsteps on the roof? A hole in the wall? The results are not always accurate, and Higgins is the first to admit his own fallibility, but nothing daunts him: a bloodstain or an uncompleted crossword sets him off again in a flash. One might wish that Higgins would sit back once in a while and let events take their course, but the principle is sound: this is what a detective ought to do.

The plot is only mildly exotic by, say, Carrian standards. The Stupendic Picture Corporation is filming a B-picture on their older, smaller studio premises on the Thames outside London. The male lead, Patrick O'Malley, spends most of the picture masked and in a Harlequin costume, so when a man dressed as Harlequin is found stabbed he is assumed to be the victim. But O'Malley turns up alive and well. Higgins' first task is to establish the identity of the victim; but while this is being done the gate-keeper from the studios, Day, is also killed.

Slender threads of suspicion lead Higgins to conclude that all is not as it seems at Stupendic. Before the case is over three men are in hospital and counterfeiting, theft and drug-running have all been exposed. Higgins is saved at the last minute from a dreadful mistake and manages to account for himself physically as well as mentally, with several chases and fights. Some fun is made of Higgins's scornful attitude to the film people and their nightclub hangers-on, and from Higgins's relations with his rule-bound but devoted off-sider, Sergeant Brownlow.

It's not a first-rate book, but the author's heart and head are clearly in the right place. I will be looking for more by this neglected writer.

Jon.