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The Noose

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 1 month ago

MacDonald, Philip - The Noose (1930)

 

Review by Nick Fuller

3/5

Early good book; depiction of English village not as good as Christie’s, though. Chapter 6 (“Sunday”) is amazing in its depiction of grief and hopelessness, exemplified by the pouring rain and the strokes on Mrs. Bronson’s paper. Is ending fair-play? (We’re not told that the murderer, Blackatter and Bronson were all in the war together).


Philip MacDonald's Colonel Anthony Gethryn is one of HRF Keating's 'Disappearing Detectives'; and despite Keating's bold attempt to defend him in the Introduction to this book, it doesn't take long for the reader to see why. Gethryn is hardly a detective at all, but rather a celebrity super-sleuth in the fashion of Lecoq or Joseph Rouletabille. His doe-eyed wife Lucia adores him; policemen fawn and tug their forelocks as he saunters by; pretty young witnesses queue up to spill the beans to him in darkened conservatories. Most of his detection, meanwhile, consists of wild inferential leaps, unsupported by fact but invariably correct. He is also a thumping snob.

 

The Noose begins with a man in prison. Dan Bronson is sentenced to death and due to be executed in five days for the murder of the unsavoury Blackatter. Bronson's wife Selma summons Gethryn to his aid. Gethryn is, of course, the Only Man Who Can Help Her Now, but why did she leave it so late? (Perhaps Poirot couldn't make it?). Selma knows nothing whatever about the evidence, but her voice throbs with sincerity when she avers that Dan is Not That Sort of Man, so Gethryn's course is clear: gather a plucky band of aides and spend large sums of his own money disproving an air-tight frame-up in five days. What could be easier?

 

One of his aides is an off-duty policemen, Inspector Pike. Two others are reporters from Gethryn's own newspaper, The Owl. One of them has ideas of his own; but Gethryn, in his gentle yet manly way, soon makes it clear who's in charge. They interview the local riff-raff while Gethryn goes off to a party with the local gentry. Some of these appear to enjoy life a little more than they should, and Gethryn has scathing things to say about The Wrong Sort of People. Luckily these cads decide to meet and plot directly underneath the open window where Lucia is sitting, providing a valuable clue.

 

Having identified an important witness, Gethryn's gang fail to protect him, and he winds up dead. Gethryn himself is shot at and nearly killed. But despite these setbacks he manages to capture a Least Likely Suspect. Said suspect conveniently suicides, leaving a detailed report on why he planned the whole thing -- very handy for the reader, who at this point has no idea what's going on. It was all to do with the War, you see, and most of the actual detection took place off-stage, by going through dusty files at the War Office. The execution is stayed; and the inscrutable Garbo-esque Selma is reunited with her man.

 

How much more sensible it would have been for the killer to shoot Bronson at the same time as Blackatter! And why did Bronson take his gun into the wood anyway? But one can't expect an investigator as celebrated as Colonel Gethryn to be concerned with mere details. Snobbery with Violence indeed!

 

Jon.

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