Hull, Richard -- Keep it Quiet (1935)

B

Unusual plot: a weak-willed secretary is blackmailed into doing his duty and improving the club.  Hence semi-inverted + mystery (how did Morrison die and who killed him?  Who is the letter-writer?)—and what will happen?  Will the worm turn on the blackmailer / prospective murderer, or obey?

It becomes fully Ilesian (different from inverted) halfway through, when the murderer is revealed to the reader.  (Ch. 11, which states that X and his “correspondent” are, despite Hull’s attempts at justification in Ch. 19, different people, is unfair.)  The modern day “Dr. Palmer” is suitably convincing, especially his curious mixture of sado-masochism and megalomania, but the book succeeds most as a character study of a weak and vacillating man who tries to satisfy everyone by ‘keeping it quiet’.  If he had been strong-willed (like the hero Cardonnel) and less of an amiable fool, he would have avoided trouble.  Much more sympathetic than Edward in The Murder of My Aunt.

Ironically, it ends with Cardonnel pressuring Ford into hushing up the crimes of two dead men ***(the murderous Anstruther and a respected judge who has taken to stealing books in his dotage)***, and controlling Ford and getting him to improve the club—bringing the story full circle: or almost, since Cardonnel is, in his acerbic way, a kindly and good-hearted man.

Amusing and crisp throughout.

·        Hull thinks that Sayers—‘that admirable authoress’—‘appeals on the whole more to women’ (p. 100, 1954 Penguin).

Nick Fuller.

See also http://elizabethfoxwell.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/fridays-forgotten-books-keep-it-quiet.html