Ronald Shoulter has been found shot in the appropriately-named Deadman’s Wood, and his sister refuses to believe the police’s easy assumption of suicide.  While “[t]he fashion was for detectives of high social standing and large private incomes”, she “won’t have one of these pansified snobs who are supposed to be brilliant investigators hanging around” and seeks out ex-Sergeant William Beef to get to the bottom of things. And so Lionel Townsend, Beef’s Boswell for four previous cases, finds himself once again, though more unwillingly this time, drawn in to the matter of a devious murder that the earthy Sergeant must untangle.

Following Beef’s hiring in the first chapter, we are then treated to several pages from the journal of Mr. Wellington Chickle, retired watchmaker, who wishes to commit a murder and get away with it by the simple expedient that he will have no connection with the victim and so no motive for killing them. He is leaving his journal for future study, to be read only after his death when he will be known as “the man who beat detection, the coolest and most brilliant murderer of the century”. And so we’re treated to his thoughts and actions as he moves into Labour’s End, a cottage near Deadman’s Wood, and begins to put in place the various things he requires to commit a murder and get away completely unsuspected.

I was leant three of the last four of Leo Bruce’s Sergeant Beef books earlier this year, and had intended to read them before revisiting the rest of the Beef oeuvre when I realised that chronology was the best way to go and so a return to Case for Sergeant Beef (1947) was in order. And Bruce is on typically engaging, meta-baiting form, with Chickle’s own library containing “everything that is worthwhile in modern detective fiction, from Poe and Gaboriau down to Bentley and Agatha Christie” — and even a few books by a certain Leo Bruce, our murderer-to-be reflecting that “I should like to see Sergeant Beef at work on my crime!”. Well, be careful what you wish for…

For the most part, Case for Sergeant Beef is fast-moving, lively, and full of fun. Never one to pass a convention without prodding it to see how it responds, Bruce does well to throw out commentary on everything from coroner’s courts (“You spin it out and describe all the witnesses and introduce the coroner, and all the time kid your readers they’re learning something more about the crime.”) to the very heart of the investigative subgenre itself:

[I]n reading other detective novels with the eye of an experienced chronicler I have come to the reluctant conclusion that lists of suspects, time-tables, elaborate catalogues of clues and so on are the resort of those who feel the need to fill another chapter when nothing in the way of true detection presents itself.

It helps, too, that his people are so neatly captured, from Constable Watts-Dunton “a thin and very solemn man who attended a chapel called Mount Sion and disapproved of most human activities” to the magnificently-named Prebendary Boxe who “was not going to provide me with a touch of minor characterization, comic or otherwise”. Plus, amidst all the fun, Bruce has a keen eye on a few serious moments, like one suspect who would be likely to clam up if approached by the police instead being roundly ignored to the point that “he would become so steamed up…he would come and volunteer a statement”, and Chickle reflecting that trying to make his murder look like suicide shouldn’t be too difficult:

Whoever [the victim] turns out to be is sure to have something about him which will provide reason enough for him to take his own life. Who hasn’t?

It stumbles only in that the final summary by Beef leaves a few actions, to my reading, unsatisfactorily explained, as if the characters know they’re in a book which must provide a surprising denouement. Still, in fairness, there’s another good overturning of a Golden Age convention herein, and if you can’t enjoy the Beef-Townsend axis then I do rather pity you.

“Couldn’t we just for once keep out of pubs?” I suggested coldly. “I really get rather tired of this perpetual beer-swilling.”

“You can have cider then,” said Beef.

As a swift time that plays well within the conventions of the classic mystery and inverted mystery both, Case for Sergeant Beef comes with much to recommend it. The seven-year gap between this and the preceding title in the series seems to have been well spent, and it’s to be hoped that the caustic invention on display here carries over into Neck and Neck (1951) and Cold Blood (1952). We shall find out in a few months!

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See also

Nick @ The Grandest Game in the World: While the murderer’s diary is not new…it is well-handled, and the way in which Chickle’s plot (which he fondly believes is ingenious) is seen through by every character in sight is most amusing. The characters are all eccentric, and the plot very neat; Bruce manages to put some new ideas in the inverted tale.

Aidan @ Mysteries Ahoy: I would describe Case for Sergeant Beef as a strong choice for a tentative toe-dip into the inverted mystery form for those who really don’t think they’d like hearing the killer’s thoughts. Chickle is a striking character in the Alexander Bonaparte Cust-mold and so those chapters read more as quirky than dark. While elements of the story’s resolution were not unexpected, I felt Bruce delivered those small moments well. This is helped by the novel’s snappy pacing that keeps the action moving throughout.

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The Sergeant Beef novels by Leo Bruce:

1. Case for Three Detectives (1936)
2. Case without a Corpse (1937)
3. Case with No Conclusion (1939)
4. Case with Four Clowns (1939)
5. Case with Ropes and Rings (1940)
6. Case for Sergeant Beef (1947)
7. Neck and Neck (1951)
8. Cold Blood (1952)