After recently reading my first Ferguson book (see review of The Grouse Moor Mystery) I was looking forward to delving deeper into the output of this largely forgotten golden age author. Unfortunately, any expectation of finding this book of similar interest proved to be largely unfulfilled. What we have here is far closer to the action and adventure genre of the thriller than to crime or detective fiction.
The outline will be familiar to many. Erstwhile young man is approached by foreign office officials to aid them in regaining papers of national importance. Having reluctantly agreed to be of service to his country, as any good subject should be, he is thrown into adventure and danger. Naturally there are exchanged identities, the murder in brutal circumstances of a man who may have been mistaken for our hero – with the hero as chief suspect of course – and all manner of other clichés standard in this type of story. There are however one or two redeeming features. Ferguson is excellent at describing the Scottish topography that is the background to the second half of the book, as he was in The Grouse Moor Mystery. The pace is well sustained and the description of the hero’s flight across the highlands is well handled. However, the antagonists are a stereotypical bunch, including a black African servant whose antics and demeanor may be unpalatable to modern sensitivities.
While probably a fair quality thriller – and this reviewer does not have sufficient experience with the genre to judge – this is not a detective mystery of the classic type and is therefore of negligible interest to readers whose interests lie in that direction. Whilst not completely deterring the reviewer from seeking out other books by the same author, it will certainly result in closer examination of which genre those books inhabit.
From a golden age perspective this is of little interest - and certainly less successful than The Grouse Moor Mystery.
R E Faust
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