





I very nearly paid a king’s ransom for a secondhand copy of Walter S. Masterman’s debut The Wrong Letter (1926) a couple of years ago, since it was rare as rocking-horse teeth (wait, those are not rare…) and featured on Roland Lacourbe’s “100 Books for a Locked Room Library” list (or, well, the supplemental list of fourteen supposedly excellent impossible crime novels for which there were no French translations, at least). Then, in 2018, Ramble House made it easily available for much more sensible money, and here we are. More power to their elbow, frankly, as this is the strongest Masterman I’ve read, and has encouraged me to not write him off just yet.
Clocking in at a brisk 111 pages — discounting a weirdly muted praise-filled preface from G.K. Chesterton which doesn’t quite stoop to contractual obligation but also feels a bit like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t’ve and is writing this to make amends — this manages to cram a lot in while also indulging in Masterman’s too-frequent habit of loquacity and narrative-impeding scenes of Not Much Really. We’re out of the blocks so fast — a murder announced separately to Superintendent Arthur Sinclair and his pet Amateur Detective Sylvester Collins, incredulity expressed at the cheek of the criminal, the scene achieved, the room discovered locked on the inside, and the Home Secretary discovered within having been shot in the head at close range in the last thirty minutes — that it put me in mind of James Ronald. On his first go at fiction, Masterman has an evocative staccato delivery that gets the job done and keeps things pressing with laudable urgency:
The walls were covered with books to a height of seven feet.
Above that, one or two choice pictures were hung.
The fireplace was a fine piece of carved oak.
As far as they could see, the room was empty.
The windows were hasped, and there was no other entrance.
Into this, Masterman drops some vinegar-sharp character notes — the image-conscious sawbones who is summoned to the scene aware that the “great drama…would bring him notoriety and clients” later having “wormed his way into assist [and being] full of importance”, or Scotland Yard’s big egg Commissioner Boyce who has achieved his position through contacts alone and “subsisted on the brains of his subordinates” — and some casual asides about the sudden emergence of laudatory obituaries for the unpopular deceased (“old stock-in-trade, kept ready for any assassination of a notable person which might occur, and adapted to circumstances”) and the politicking that inevitably goes on behind the scenes as the killer continues to elude the police:
“You are being worried by all kinds of people to solve the problem. You see that your professional reputation is at stake and that much hangs on it. And you see here a good chance of finding a [scapegoat] who will not suffer any hardship in any case, as he obviously ought to be under lock and key.”
The relationship between Sinclair and Collins is an odd one, too. They apparently know each other well enough to have worked together several times, yet each discovers elements of the crime that he keeps to himself — even to the extent of impressing upon witnesses the importance of lying about something if pressed by anyone else. The Holmes comparison Masterman shoves on you on page two is further enhanced by little moments like Sinclair getting “irritated when his colleague assumed this superior manner” and Collins being “disappointed if a problem proved quite easy of solution” and hoping for the sort of complications — a rifle bullet in the wound when a revolver is the weapon, say — that John Dickson Carr would spin for a pastime in a few short years.
It’s difficult to shake the late-Edwardian dust off Masterman’s writing, because he’s so fond of a style of expression that belongs in an earlier era. Odd inconsequential details — like how long background activities take — impose because he needs something done and can’t be bothered to fill time appropriately before it happens (for instance, a letter is delivered across London faster than most emails could travel the same distance…). A surprisingly large amount of space is given over to Collins’ pursuit of Mabel Watson, the dead man’s adult daughter, and while this may be argued as a sort of plot-camouflage it also feels like he’s putting it in to fill up a bit of space at times, and this began to grate a little with me given the brevity of the text. And yet, this also allows for some of his best writing at times, such as when Mabel is told of her father’s death:
The shock of such an announcement does not, as a rule, have the instant effect that is supposed to take place. The mind cannot at once grasp the facts. It is like a shell wound. For a moment the wounded man gazes in surprise at a stump where his arm was a moment before. It takes some seconds before realization or pain is felt.
I’ll have to add this one to the wishlist. I’ll admit that I’m always a bit gun-shy when it comes to a 1920s novel, as if the writing is going to be extra crusty. So far I’ve been delightfully wrong when it comes to Christie and Berkeley.
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My feeling has always been that the 1920s must be seen as the start of the genre for some reason beyond Styles and The Cask. Yes, there’s a tendency to allow Edwardian/Victorian tropes to overhang, and for it to be blindingly obvious who the criminal is at times,but there’s also a wild creativity about a lot of what came from then No, it’s not all good — what genre in what decade has ever produced only brilliance? — but the joy these authors seem to be having with this callow “detection” idea that’s still so rich in potential is very infectious. If anything, I think I feel a little more forgiving towards the flaws of 1920s works than I do to those of the 1930s and 40s (and certainly the 50s, where, frankly, everyone should’ve known better).
But that’s just me. I also understand that the infelicities in writing can be a turn off for some readers (I’m the same about the 1980s), and that anyone seeking the genre at its best should certainly look for greater density elsewhere. But, man, how many times do you get to watch a new genre come into being? That’s gotta be worth a bit of turgid prose, surely?
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Always glad to hear of good titles from the Ramble House catalogue – but this sounds like 4 stars for the genre fan, and 3 stars for the general mystery reader?
I believe Fender Tucker has retired? I used to be able to purchase ebooks from them, but not sure whether that will still happen now that Fender has retired.
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“4 stars for the genre fan, and 3 stars for the general mystery reader” is probably a fair assessment. I don’t know how many casual mystery readers will end up with Walter S. Masterman on their shelves, however 😆 — this would be like a casual SF reader tracking down the original, unedited version of Spacehounds of IPC by E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith…
Couldn’t tell you about Fender, sorry; the contact email on the Ramble House homepage has changed, but I buy their stuff from Lulu these days and so have no insight to offer.
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Incidentally, you might be excited to discover…
https://www.pushkinpress.com/product/the-honjin-murders/
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Yum! Yum! Yum! Just added Honjin Murders to my Amazon!
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Wow! I’m definitely excited and your comment wasn’t even intended for me. I loved the other Yokomizo mystery novel I read –The Inugami Clan (a true classic of the genre, IMO) which will also be published by Pushkin Vertigo under the title The Inugami Curse in February 2020. For years I’ve been longing for other books by Yokomizo to appear in English translation. Just pre-ordered a copy. I live in the US and am too impatient to wait for it to be released over here which won’t be until the summer of 2020.
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I didn’t even notice that, John! Are you ordering straight from Pushkin or The Book Depository or what?
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“The Inugami Clan…will also be published by Pushkin Vertigo under the title The Inugami Curse in February 2020”
Good heavens, this is also very exciting news! Been looking for an Inguami Clan for sensible money for ages. Truly we are in a Golden Age of reprints.
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Yes, Louise Heal Kawai — the translator of this and Shimada’s Murder in the Crooked House — left a comment earlier this year telling me that Honjin was on the way. Very exciting, and already on my Christmas list!
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