Punshon, ER - Genius in Murder (1932)

Genius in Murder builds up a pleasantly complex, labyrinthine plot, then spoils it by having a perfunctory solution lacking all ingenuity. The book cannot be recommended, although parts of it make pleasant reading.

Punshon's book has some of the earmarks of the Crofts school. Its detectives are Scotland Yard policemen; they are not eccentric and use plenty of leg work and investigative persistence. The admirably complex plot, made up of a combined, interlocking series of crimes, resembles somewhat the jigsaw construction of Crofts. There is some impersonation in the story, and some concerns over a character's dubious identity - this latter material involving Mr. Codrington is among the book's best. Mild attention is paid throughout to alibis and to alibi busting. A villainous fence in the tale reminds one a little bit of such characters in Crofts, although we never get an elaborate Croftsian criminal Scheme. There is a Background of sorts - many of the characters are involved in a stock transaction involving the Crude Metals Corporation, and we get an inside view of some of the financial and business practices of the era. While the characters have their foibles, and are often engaged in fairly shady transactions, no one is especially eccentric in the often surrealist intuitionist tradition. This sort of detailed look at British business is a Crofts specialty.

We also get a satiric inside look at life in Scotland Yard in the 1930's, which Punshon depicts as involving endless jockeying for position among mediocrities, while lower downs do all the hard work. This satiric skepticism is very different from the idealizing of the police we get in Crofts. Indeed, Punshon's bubbling comic tone and sustained comedy of manners resemble such intuitionist writers as Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh more that it does Crofts and his school. Both the lower downs at the Yard, and the lower and lower middle class characters among the suspects, are seen as engaging in all sorts of sneaky survival strategies to help them cope with an intransigently hostile British society and its upper crust rulers. Punshon shows a lot of sneaking sympathy for such characters. As in Crofts, the viewpoint is closer to the middle class and tradesman than it is to the aristocracy. There is a strong sense of dissatisfaction in Punshon's work, a sense that Britain could be a much better place for the small businessman.

The early scenes in the book involving a family crypt near a country house mansion recall R. Austin Freeman, and such works as When Rogues Fall Out (1932). These scenes have one of Freeman's common plot motivations: the disposal of the body. A later setting in an isolated woods near the house also recalls Freeman and his fondness for country paths. A printer character recalls Freeman's many craftsman, and there is also a landscape painter - another Freeman favorite. There is also a secret code in the story - Punshon manages to throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Some of his plot twists are surrealistic. There is a pleasant sense that genuinely odd, unexpected things are coming out of nowhere. The connections that keep getting established between different sections of the plot, and remote characters in the book, are also fun reading. There is a rich history of surrealism in detective fiction, one that that cuts across all schools of mystery literature.

A limiting feature in Punshon's work, and oddly enough, in Crofts' too: the amount of actual detective work done seems limited to the personal efforts of one policeman. In Van Dine school writers, there are whole teams of highly effective police, who vacuum up huge quantities of information about the suspects. They can also call upon police in other regions to carry out investigations. By contrast, here Sergeant Bell's own shoe leather is used to find anything out. His police superiors are so busy playing politics and jockeying for position that they never have time for any real detective work. So Bell is something of a one man band. The same often seem to be true of Crofts' Inspector French. Although the police are much better human beings in Crofts' world, Inspector French too is good at politics, and knowing how to get along with his colleagues.

Mike Grost

B 

The best of the Carter and Bell stories so far—a proper detective story, free from the influence of Edgar Wallace.  The complex plot involves three murders (one delivered by car to Scotland Yard), theft, and financial swindle.  Every chapter throws suspicion on a different character—a genuine ‘maze’, like Death Comes to Cambers or Diabolic Candelabra.  In many ways, this feels like a Bobby Owen, with the labyrinthine plot and intense characterisation (Codrington).  Even though I suspected the murderer from the start (physical resemblance), most of the solution was a revelation to me—I certainly didn’t suspect the murderer’s accomplice.  Everything is neatly tied together at the end, without any undue coincidence, and an intriguing resolution.

Note two of Punshon’s favourite devices: the criminal who masquerades as a respectable professional man; and the murderer killed by someone seeking vengeance.

·        Carter manipulates newspapers—police force seen as politicking

·        Sympathy for lowly policeman—recurs in Bobby Owen stories

·        Ryder going to complain to Home Office about police, before murdered and body delivered to the Yard

Nick Fuller.