2/9/17

The Mills of God Grind Slowly...

"Mills of the devil, more likely!"
 - Superintendent Sugden (Agatha Christie's A Holiday for Murder, 1938)
William Underhill was the man behind the nom de guerre of "Francis Duncan," a pen name he used for twenty-some, long-forgotten detective novels, published between the late 1930s and early 50s, but his work garnered renewed interest when a major publisher reissued Murder for Christmas (1949) in 2015 – followed a year later by four additional titles. I reviewed two of them, So Pretty a Problem (1950) and In at the Death (1952), which showed how undeserved his decades-long spell in obscurity was. A talented novelist who knew how to construct intricate and clever plots!

So, I decided to snatch up the remaining two titles that were released last year. Both of them star Duncan's warmhearted series-detective, Mordecai Tremaine.

The titles in question, Murder Has a Motive (1947) and Behold a Fair Woman (1954), were commented on by John Norris, from Pretty Sinister Books, in the comments of my review of So Pretty a Problem – which proved to be very helpful in picking between the two. According to Norris, the former "leans heavily on shock factor with a high body count" and "a truly bizarre motivation for all the deaths," while the latter was described as "the best of the lot" with complex plot and "a somewhat tragic climax." Obviously, I went for the reportedly best one of the lot.

Behold a Fair Woman brings the retired tobacconist and hobby detective, Mordecai Tremaine, to the picturesque, sun-drenched island of Moulin d'Or to spend a fortnight with friends, Mark and Janet Belmore. The idea, or hope, is to escape from his detective's curse that always brings a body or two on his path and the island seems to be an ideal place for such a purpose.

Moulin d'Or appears to be a harbor of tranquility with a modest tourism industry and most of the money is made by growing tomatoes in green houses, which form "a sea of glass" on the landscape, where the only serious crime took place a hundred years ago – when a wealthy, gold hoarding miller had his throat cut. The sole reminder of this unsolved murder is an old, dilapidated mill reputedly haunted by the murdered miller. Unfortunately, this brief back-story about the ruined windmill only dabbed some local color on the canvas of the overall plot.

Anyhow, upon his arrival, Tremaine encounters a host of characters who are either living on the island or spending their holiday there.

As a passionate reader of Romantic Stories, Tremaine approves of "a cheerful, pleasant little crowd" consisting of four young people having fun on the beach, but soon notices undercurrents between Geoffrey Bendall, Nicola Paston, Ivan Holt and Ruth Latinam. Tremaine is also introduced to a married couple, Alan and Valerie Creed, who have become semi-permanent residents of the island, but why did he feel like having met Valerie before? He also makes acquaintance with Major Ayres and Mrs. Burres, resident guests at the Rohane Hotel, which is run by Ruth's brother, Hedley Latinam, but he seems to have given his most loyal customers a notice – as they'll be out of the place by the end of the month. Finally, Tremaine struck up a friendship with a local tomato grower, Ralph Exenley, who shares his interest in amateur criminology ("Tomatoes and crime! They make an odd pair").

Well, these character-introductions, conversations and basic setup of the plot gobbles up the first half of the book. A portion that also consists of Tremaine exploring the island and finding crumbs of food in the deserted windmill, seeing lights out at sea and accidentally overhearing a conversation. He was on holiday "to forget that such a thing as crime existed," but, when a body turns up inside a water-tank of one of the green houses, he realized he had been "attempting the impossible."

The first half of the book is well-written and does a fine job in conveying a holiday atmosphere with something dark and evil lurking beneath the surface, but, as said, it takes a while to get there and this may frustrate readers who prefer a neat corpse in the first quarter of a mystery novel – or even in the first chapters or pages. However, my main objection to this is that the first half only showed the treacherous surface of the case and, as a consequence, Duncan had to cram all of the meat of the plot into the second half of the story. And the problem with that is the plot is not exactly waver-thin. On the contrary!

Behold a Fair Woman is made up of an intricate, maze-like web of hidden relationships, double identities and numerous potential motives, which makes the plot a tight-rope affair when it comes to fair play. Granted, all of the information is fairly shared with the reader, but some of that information came very, very late into the game. Because most of the important plot-points had to be crammed in this second half. It often came just in the nick of time, but late enough to seriously hamper the armchair detective in arriving at the correct solution. However, Tremaine himself does not arrive there until the very last moment, during the tragic finale, when the sudden rush of events allows him to connect all of the puzzle pieces inside his head. So, I'm probably needlessly nitpicking here again. Let's just say some of the information arrived a bit late.

In any case, I still very much enjoyed Behold a Fair Woman. The backdrop of the plot was as beautiful and tranquil as the illustration on the front-cover suggests, which proved to be an excellent stage for the intricate detective story Duncan imagined. Some readers might be annoyed at the leisure pace of the first half, but the reward comes after the murder is committed and Duncan reveals the webwork of a plot he craftily spun around the seemingly innocent events from the first hundred pages.

However, I recommend readers who are new to Duncan and Tremaine to start with the excellent So Pretty a Problem, which has a fascinating premise and is a locked room mystery to boot! A locked room novel that never seemed to have been acknowledged as one. Even the late Robert Adey overlooked when he compiled Locked Room Murders (1991)!

So, let me close this review by saying that I might pry Duncan's Murder Has a Motive from my TBR-pile sooner rather than later. Stay tuned!

12 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review. This one also sounds pretty good. The covers are also good.

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    1. Yes, the covers are as splendid as the stories within them!

      Hopefully, we'll be seeing more of Duncan's work reappearing back in the print in the not so distant future and I really hope there are more entries in his Tremaine series. It's impossible to tell if there are more of them based on the information floating around the internet.

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  2. It would be nice to see more Duncan reprints, but I doubt it will happen.

    Hubin's bibliography tells me that the Mordecai Tremaine series totals nine books. I went looking for some of the others in the used book market and found only two titles for sale. I'm debating whether it's worth shelling out $60 for one of them. His other series character is Peter Justice and I think those books tend to be more in the espionage/thriller vein. Oddly, though the Justice books were published in the 1930s they are much easier to find than Duncan's books published in the 1940s and 1950s.

    BEHOLD A FAIR WOMAN has been my favorite of the Tremaine books I've read. Still have to read SO PRETTY A PROBLEM. My post on Duncan is still in the works because I wanted to read that one. Hope to get to it in March.

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    1. I'm sure you'll love So Pretty a Problem. It's my favorite thus far and not just for the locked room angle, but, admittedly, that always helps.

      There are nine Mordecai Tremaine mysteries in total? So, going by his bibliography, I deduce that Duncan's last nine book are all part of this series, which began with Murder Has a Motive in 1947 and ended in the late 50s with A Question of Time. This would make Murderer's Bluff, Ministers Too Are Mortal, Murder But Gently and A Question of Time the Tremaine titles that have yet to be republished.

      I really hope Vintage decides to reissue the remaining titles in this series. They sound interesting and one of them appears to be a shipboard mystery.

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  3. I enjoyed 'Murder Has Motive' - it was definitely fairly, even if slightly obscurely, clued. And the novel had a gentle pace throughout.

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    1. It's the only Francis Duncan novel I've read so far, so thanks for recommending 'So Pretty a Problem'. :)

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    2. I hope you'll enjoy So Pretty a Problem as much as I've and Murder Has a Motive might get reviewed before the end of the month.

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  4. It's amazing to think that these treasures are still so hidden away from view! How can things be so hard to get hold of! I have been reading through the post series from JJ which lead to you both creating the 'Ye Old Locked Rooms' book, and seeing the mine-field of getting rights to books is unbelievable.

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    1. Once you understand the sheer size and scope of the genre, it becomes understandable how some writers or books slipped away in total obscurity. Just take a look at the GAD Wiki, which I refer to as a “Who's Who of Who the Hell Are These Guys.” And even I have, very regularly, came across writers who were too obscure to have a page on there.

      Recently, Curt Evans mentioned several obscure detective novels that are about to be reprinted and one of them was penned by T.S. Eliot's brother! Yet, barely anyone had been aware of its existence.

      I'm currently reading a collection of short stories from the early 1910s and the introduction mentioned that even the author's family had been unaware of the existence of these stories. So, you can see, how that might have prevented securing the rights in the pre-internet era when it was a lot harder to track people down.

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  5. Haha wow! Amazing all round. Do you think then it's possible that more really really good books, up to the level of Carr, say could go missing easily as the genre is so vast, or is it more likely the quality makes the writer have more longevity? (If that isn't too much of a rambling question).

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    1. Oh, sure. There are a ton of great, high-quality writers and books that have been brought back into print since the early 2000s. A good portion of them are certainly on the level of Carr (e.g. The Frightened Stiff by my beloved Kelley Roos).

      I've actually been thinking of doing a run-down blog-post that lists the biggest benificiaries of the current Renaissance Era of the detective story.

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    2. I would love to see that post! As I consider myself still a newbie (only been reading GAD stuff for about 3-4 years) and now just starting on the blog as well I am coming across so much for the first time.

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