Punshon, ER - The Dark Garden (1941)

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One of the earliest Wychshire mysteries, taking place in June 1940.  The plot concerns a solicitor’s office staffed by tormented people, with revenge and passion in plenty.  Bobby Owen, in contrast, is the voice of the Higher Common Sense: he applies everyday standards and a sense of humour (which Mrs. Bradley argues is a sense of proportion, therefore sanity) to a gallery of obsessives and neurotics.  The most interesting is Anne Earle, one of Punshon’s intense, almost melodramatic young women, driven by destiny to some dreadful doom.  There are strong elements of Greek tragic irony in her pursuit of the man she believes is the murderer, ***and who is really her father; and in her death in the arms of the mother whom she cursed and who never revealed her identity***.  The fantastic, almost Chestertonian pursuit through the dark garden, culminating in a scene over an open grave, with a bonfire and ***Anne’s resurrection from the dead*** to  accuse her murderer, is one of Punshon’s best set-pieces.  The murderer is, however, an anti-climax.

·        Anderson’s disappearance: Diabolic Candelabra, Secrets Can’t Be Kept—but body found soon after.

Nick Fuller.