MacDonald, Philip - Murder Gone Mad (1931)

MacDonald's Murder Gone Mad (1931) is a pioneer novel dealing with an unknown serial killer. It is preceded by John Rhode's The Murders in Praed Street (1928). Belloc Lowndes' The Lodger was much earlier, but that looks at a known suspect in a series of Jack the Ripper type slayings; so does Francis Beeding's Death Walks in Eastrepps (1931). MacDonald's book is strongly influenced by H. C. Bailey. The crimes are crimes against young people, as in Bailey. And the killer's motive, a perverted desire to see people suffer, is also straight out of Bailey's works: see "The Unknown Murder" (1923), for example. Rhode's and MacDonald's novels are the archetypes of an immense series of other works dealing with serial killers, such as Ellery Queen's Cat of Many Tails (1949).

Murder Gone Mad is not a favorite of mine. The early scenes are well written, but the book tapers off in diffuseness and mediocrity as it progresses. (This is a good description of MacDonald's Warrant For X (1938), as well.) The puzzle plot aspects of the work are nil. The killer is eventually caught through some good police work, but any "fair play" clues to the killer's identity are non-existent. Much of the material, as in much of the Bailey school, is "sick".

John Dickson Carr once picked MacDonald's book as one of the ten best mystery novels of all time. The scenes late in the book where the police stake out the village, setting traps for the killer, pop up in the final scenes of several of Carr's works. Carr admired this book (in 1946), not so much for its mystery plot elements, but as the ultimate in horror. Today, serial killer books are so common that they are recognized as a subgenre of crime fiction. Most people today would regard MacDonald's books as pretty weak tea. They have been superseded by a host of much sicker works.

Mike Grost