Philip MacDonald first came to my attention for having written a handful of impossible crime novels but this is not one of them, and nor does it feature his series sleuth Anthony Gethryn. I stumbled across my copy of X v. Rex in a second-hand bookshop a good while ago and, as he was out of print at the time (one Gethryn novel, The Rasp, has since been republished by Collins) I picked it up for future perusal. And so, with the Crimes of the Century at Past Offences dipping into 1933, here we are – with policemen in and around London being targeted by a killer, and a government sliding into disarray as the previously unimpeachable bastion of order is attacked seemingly at will.
This is decidedly more of a thriller than a crime novel – no small cast of suspects, no scattered clues, no sudden moment of retrospective reanalysis, no clever misdirection – you just sit and wait for the suspect to be apprehended three pages from the end and then that’s over and done with. There is one piece of sort-of misdirection, but it’s revealed fairly quickly and by that point I wasn’t really all that bothered. It certainly wasn’t clever enough to warrant a closer reading. Honestly, where’s the appeal?
In fact, this has caused me to reflect on why I don’t really do thrillers: there’s nothing to work out, and in 1933 they’re hardly likely to let the miscreant go uncaptured or unpunished, so it’s not really my kind of thing. It’s not even really a serial killer novel in the purest sense because, apart from a baseless conviction on the behalf of the authorities that these murders must all be carried out by the same person, there’s nothing to really link them except that the victims are all policemen. Even the methods themselves aren’t especially rich or interesting – okay, perhaps they were back then – and one of the murders relies on something that is lost to history as a cultural reference (thank-you Google!), though it would be exceptionally churlish to hold this against MacDonald or his book.
It starts charmingly with a thoroughly hilarious narrative of the expanding population of a London satellite town as City Folk move out into what would now be the commuter belt, and MacDonald displays a very light touch with broad strokes – it’s a tonally superb beginning, and a clever ruse sets up the first murder. Unfortunately, as the murders continue and the peril is accordingly raised, he doesn’t deviate from this lightness – cabinet meetings are relaying briefly and lightly, panic in the streets is relayed briefly and lightly, confusion over how to respond to the threat is displayed briefly and lightly…never do you feel that MacDonald ever really gives you something approaching genuine fear, bewilderment, anger, or any of the other sensations that this conceit should be used to mine.
What we do get is a very long chapter detailing how difficult it is to find out anything about our nominal hero Nicholas Revel – who it’s fairly obvious is a charming yet shady bounder with a finger or two outside of the law from his first appearance – by way of reinforcing what a charming yet shady bounder with a finger or two outside of the law he is. And chapter 12 – tellingly entitled ‘Kaleidoscope’ – is simply a lazy stirring of some ingredients that have been hastily thrown in, with MacDonald apparently trying to muster some sort of Everything Is Not What It Seems vibe and in fact adding nothing at all to the paper-thin plot.
There is a lot of Nicholas Revel saying he’s not really bothered about being involved, and then repeatedly ingratiating himself into things for reasons that I certainly missed. I think he’s supposed to show a healthy disregard for the shackled nature of the police, but instead he’s just a bit of an arse and a curiously marmoreal presence we’re simply expected to get behind because we’re told he’s the hero. It simply adds to the bloodlessness of this already callow approach to a thriller and, unfortunately, left me glad to simply be at the end so I could move on. The occasional well-turned phrase is not enough to recommend this, alas, and I’ll have to put it down as Really Not My Kind of Thing.
The Invisible Event 
I had a whack at this book too, and I think I liked it better than you have; I think some of your flaws are virtues. (My review is here at http://noah-stewart.com/2014/01/01/mystery-of-the-dead-police-by-philip-macdonald-1933/.) But we are on common ground with how Nicholas Revel is presented in this book. I have to say, though, it made a great movie — twice.
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Yes, this is more a thriller than a mystery. In my opinion, a better choice for you would have been Mystery At Friar’s Pardon. It is a clever and well-clued locked room mystery.
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Unfortunately, on checking I find that only a limited number of used copies are available of Mystery At Friar’s Pardon and that too at exorbitant cost.
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Still, thanks for the heads-up and for checking. I shall put it on my list of “Maybe, One Day…” books – which, hey, has already lead to me snagging all the Segreant Beef books by Leo Bruce, Death of Jezebel by Christianna Brand, What a Body by Alan Green, and a few others…so you never know!
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Thanks for the shoutout JJ – sorry we don’t see eye to eye on this but hey, with a little bit of counselling I’m sure we’ll get over it 🙂
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Bah, I’m in such a reading funk at the moment that I barely trust my own opinions; I’ll probably flick through it in a couple of months and find that it’s witty, delightful, surprising, and wonderful!
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Dude, no funk required – just read Ross Macdonald’s THE CHILL or Carter Dickson’s SHE DIED A LADY or Ellery Queen’s THE GREEK COFFIN MYSTERY or PRISONER’S BASE by Rex Stout and every thing will be right again! 🙂
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You’re clearly in a funk – Baby Bear is the middle ground! You’re Mummy Bear, matey!
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Well, it’s a savage indictment of Mrs. Bear that she can’t even tolerate food at the temperature a toddler is fine with. Feminists, where are you on this one, eh?
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In all seriousness, I know what you mean by being a run of books that are perfectly fine but just aren’t that inspiring. My solution is a change of genre – but as my blog covers almost the whole range of crime fiction, I can get away with switching to a modern thriller or an historical. I’d recommend an unreviewed old favourite – that works for me.
Oh, apart from A Reader Is Warned that really tailed off on the second reading. The exception that proves the rule…
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Ha, that’s my fear: what if I go for a Rupert Penny and (fearful pause) don’t enjoy it? Holy cow, man, WHAT WOULD THAT MEAN??!!?!?!
It’s good advice, and I thank you for it, but I’ve dabbled in some SF, some YA, some modern thrillers and they were…fine; read a more modern locked room and found it…kinda fine. I’m thinking I’m in some real doldrums here!
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Sorry to hear you’re in a reading slump. I’ve had quite a number of good reads this month and you’ll be glad to know that I enjoyed Lorac’s Black Beadle. But I can see where you are coming from in regards to thrillers, as it is not my preferred genre. I think it does take a lot of work to write a really good thriller which doesn’t descend into the kinds of problems you outline here.
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You’re funny when you’re bring a Grumpy Gus, JJ. You know, it IS okay to dislike something that gets positive reviews elsewhere! (Erm, Three Coffins review coming up first of March, mumble, mumble . . .) And slumps come and go – Puzzle Doctor’s advice may be just the thing you need. Besides, thrillers are icky, and you can be proud of that opinion. You know how I loves me my Christie, but my latest attempt to re-crack The Secret Adversary was a dismal failure. This time, it’s charms eluded me. Maybe I’m in a slump, to . . .
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This isn’t even me being outraged, I just find the whole thing singularly difficult to engage with – and merely the latest in a long line of books where I’ve finished it and gone (at best) “Well, that was…kinda fine, if you ignore all the bits that were terrible and dragged it down. But I can see what they were trying to do…”. I had to have bit of a blog embargo, because all I could put on anyone’s posts was stuff about how terrible my own reading is, and you guys get enough of that on here!
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Your absence was noted, and you were missed! 🙂
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I really disliked this one too. Not because it is a thriller or a serial-killer novel, but it is just not a very convincing one. The plot is simply ludicrous, and you as a reader are supposed to go along with it, but since the characters ae barely fleshed out and there is very little genuine emotion or convincing human drama it just didn’t work for me. Plus, I really did not understand why the police put up with Revel at all, the man was so annoying that after a while I just wanted to punch him in the face.
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Heeeeeeey! It’s not just me, ladies and gents! Maybe there’s hope for me yet…
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The Invisible Man trick is just rubbish, as absurd as that of the G.K. Chesterton story.
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I just read this for the first time and actually really liked it! The overly fast and light tone for a book that has probably one of the highest body counts I’ve ever read could be a mixed bag- it lent real shock to some of the murders as you see policemen go about their lives and then suddenly become murder victims, but also could just make things a bit too light and rapid that felt tonally iffy- but I actually thought Nicholas Revel was interesting, though I’m not sorry that he’s apparently not in other Macdonald books as he definitely felt like a one-trick pony. I think that his actions make total sense in light of a character’s remark about him- ROT13: svefg ur trgf vaibyirq orpnhfr ur jnagf gur qnhtugre bs gur cbyvpr urnq ubapub gb bjr uvz n snibe, gura ur fgnlf vaibyirq orpnhfr uvf pevzvany ragrecevfrf ner fhssrevat jvgu fb zhpu cbyvpr birefvtug va gur nern nf gurl’er gelvat gb svaq gur xvyyre.
In terms of the actual serial killer, I thought that it was interestingly done- definitely some points docked for how ephemeral the actual killer seemed to the plot and how there were basically zero clues even by thriller standards, but some of the murders, particularly the one ROT13: jurer gur zheqrere qerffrq hc nf n pbc naq cbfrq nf n ivpgvz va beqre gb trg nabgure pbc gb ubire bire uvz gb purpx ba uvz, were pretty creative. If the ROT13: fnaqjvpu obneq thl theory hadn’t been explicitly framed in a Chesterton’s Invisible Man setup I think it would have been more satisfying as it’s pretty clever except for the fact that ROT13: cerfhznoyl vg jbhyq or qvssvphyg vs abg vzcbffvoyr gb nvz.
But I was still very entertained, and I found the character of Sir Christopher Vayle to be surprisingly interesting, so while I haven’t officially rated it yet on my Storygraph I think it’s gonna be highish.
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I have gone on to have a very happy relationship with MacDonald’s writing, and I’m inclined to believe that if I read this again I’d have a much more positive response to it. I was a bit of an opinionated prick in some of these early reviews.
I remember very few of the details of this, so it would stand up to rereading pretty well, as it happens. Might start keeping an eye out for a copy…
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Oh, if you do happen to reread and re-evaluate I’d be fascinated to read! Any suggestions on the best Macdonalds to try? This was my first I believe!
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From favourite to least favourite, I’d rank the ones I’ve read as:
Rynox
The Maze
The Polferry Riddle
Murder Gone Mad
The Crime Conductor
The first two were reprinted by Harper Collins a little while ago, but might still be available secondhand. I also have The Noose, and have never read it for some reason, so I’ll bump it up the TBR in the coming weeks and we’ll see how it stands up.
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Oh nice, I actually already have Rynox cued up so I’ll make sure to give that a try! Thank you!
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