Lorac, ECR - These Names Make Clues (1937)

A bit artificial the situation of this pre-war Lorac. An editor has invited several authors, among them thriller writers, plus Inspector Macdonald to join in a treasure hunt as a society game. They are provided with 'noms-de-guerre' and clues, a cipher, crossword-puzzles etc. to guide them. After a black-out, instead of a treasure, the corpse of one of the participants, Andrew Gardien, is found. It looks like heart failure but Macdonald suspects electrocution by an ingenious device. Later another corpse, that of the agent of the murdered man, is found. And again a mechanical arrangement is involved. Clues point to Gardien as the murderer. On the other hand this seems impossible.

In the first chapters Inspector Macdonald does some real detection work, but in the last it's more inspired guesswork that leads him to the murderer. Macdonald is shown here as a bit of an intellectual himself, fitting in well into the highbrow environment of the story. The chapters in between show him only marginally. They cast suspicion on some persons involved and let us follow a private sideline of detection by the journalist Vernon, a friend of Macdonald's.

Lorac's novel is firmly set in the time leading up to WW2. She names Fascism and Communism and especially discusses the ethical problems of Pacifism. Four of the supects are members of the 'Peace in our Time' campaign.

The copy on hand was published in English by The Albatross in Nazi-Germany in 1939 as one of the last mysteries in English. On the title page is a stamp of censorship. Translated it says: "No Objections - Commission for the Cleaning of Libraries - 1942". Apparently the censor didn't reach page 15, where he should have stumbled on "... Fascism and Communism are basically the same ... those twin diabolical 'isms' which belabour the world of to-day"

Juergen Lull