Jepson, Edgar - The Loudwater Mystery (1926)

When commentators like HRF Keating talk about the Dull School of detective writing we tend to associate it with names we know, like Crofts and Rhode. But it is authors forgotten today who really exemplify the Dull School - authors beside whom Crofts and Rhode are deeply enthralling, edge-of-the-seat storytellers. JS Fletcher is one of these; Eden Phillpotts is another; and to judge by The Loudwater Mystery, Edgar Jepson is a third.

The plot is blindingly simple. Lord Loudwater is a coward, a bully and a boor. His wife Olivia loathes him and has recently begun to take an interest in a convalescing neighbour - and a Victoria Cross winner to boot! - Colonel Gray. His secretary Mr. Manley - by far the most interesting character in the book - is carrying on a liaison with a woman whom Loudwater jilted and paid off with a house and a regular income. His butler is an evil-tempered rogue and his gamekeeper is a jealous tale-bearer. When Loudwater is stabbed to death in the night there is no shortage of suspects. A private detective, Mr Flexen, is summoned and proceeds to take over the police investigation.

And for the next ten chapters absolutely nothing happens. Characters conform to their stereotypes with clockwork precision. Witnesses retell their stories several times over, and Flexen goes over them once or twice in his own mind. He discovers a few things which Jepson gave away to the reader in the first chapter. He agonises over whether a VC-winner would commit murder, reaching the profound conclusion that it all depends on the type of VC-winner. The only activities of any interest at all are his conversations with the unconventional Mr Manley, who asserts that even if he knew who the murderer was, he wouldn't give them away. He does, and he keeps the secret so well that by the end of the book no arrest has been made, Flexen is stymied and the whole investigation turns out to have been utterly pointless.

And the biggest mystery of all remains: what exactly did Jepson imagine he was doing, or trying to do, in The Loudwater Mystery? What sort of readers was he aiming at, and what sort of appeal was he trying to make to them? Why were books like this published at all when so many more entertaining books were available? One thing is clear: to a generation brought up on Jepsons, Agatha Christie must have come as an absolute bombshell.

The Loudwater Mystery is available from Project Gutenberg.