Death Turns Traitor (1935) is the eleventh book by Walter S. Masterman that I’ve read, and I still don’t know what to make of him. The context of the idea herein — that in 1935 the powers of Europe have agreed a secret treaty to preclude war, yet an influential German secret society called the DUA is doing its best to foment discontent and push the continent over the edge — is fascinating, and Masterman writes some affectingly moody prose, but somehow the two just don’t quite come together. The shortfall is, perhaps, an absence of incident to fill out these 60,000 words, rendering much of what passes somewhat telescoped and thus veering into tediousness.

To broker or approve (or maybe announce…?) this treaty, the British Foreign Minister Lord Fairmont must go to Geneva and open a safe to reveal the once-in-a-lifetime, binding promise to the world, and visits the Prime Minster in Downing Street ahead of his journey. While there, and in circumstances that will provide no small amount of bafflement, Fairmont with be strangled to death and so…the treaty is as risk? Because no-one else knows his code to open the safe it’s in? Even though the rest of Europe have agreed to this treaty already? Look, I don’t know.

Thankfully, a man presumed dead happens to be a) alive, b) a relative and heir of Lord Fairmont’s, and c) a doppelgänger for the deceased noble, and so can be sent in his place. Alas, the DUA also know about this man and are trying to acquire him for…the same purpose? Despite the fact that his being there to ratify this treaty is in frank opposition to their intentions? Yeah, I really don’t quite get the point of all this, if I’m honest, and that played no small part in the difficulty I had taking too much interest in what unfolded.

Fundamentally, I think Masterman wants there to be some tension around the use of a lookalike, but ex-Scotland Yard man Sir Arthur Sinclair works out the code word, the man in question agrees to the mission, and everything goes off as planned. The DUA attempt some shenanigans, but I still don’t see why any of that matters when the deal has already been struck, and anyway there’s so little peril along the way that any attempt to stir in a few hiccups in the latter stages really don’t convince. When the chief difficulties are already overcome with a minimum of fuss by the halfway stage in your book, the second half needs to do more than turn the lights off with the main delegates trapped in an underground room for two pages to inspire thrills.

It is, though, superbly written at times: see the description of the isolated fortress prison at the start of chapter VII, the overwhelmed experience of the man freed therefrom after seven years confinement (“His numbed mind could not take it in, yet by a paradox everything that night focussed itself on his mind, like a child’s first view of the sea…”), three people who do not know whether to trust each other trapped in “a triangular duel of looks”, and the character notes Masterman litters throughout with the casual disregard of a genius at work:

Bright was a steady, hard-working Under-Secretary, and a good party man, but hardly lived up to his name in practice.

Some interesting historical confetti litters proceedings, too, such as contrasting opinions on the League of Nations, the evils of publicity men who talked up a new super-hotel as a way of generating interest among the famous and consequently the hoi polloi, the ruling of a ledger “for accounts…but in the metric system”, or the deep-soaked fear that war seems agonisingly likely despite the proximity of the last, awful international conflict.

And dark clouds were hovering over Europe, and everywhere men whispered about a crisis, and that the grim spectre of war might arise from its grave.

It’s just a shame that the book itself doesn’t live up to this potential. Masterman once again can’t describe physical space in a way that makes any sense — the scene of Fairmont entering 10 Downing Street left me absolutely confounded as to who was standing where and what they were to the narrative — and his reliance on coincidence is something to behold, even though this could be a truly wild and inventive ride if he were to lean into those ridiculous elements more. As it is, the late wrinkle put on Fairmont’s murder, and the subtext that one can be a great man of state without being a great man, is really all we have to console ourselves with…and, well, t’ain’t enough.

I own another five Masterman book — yup, I went all in — and the man’s so unpredictable that I wouldn’t be surprised if they each somehow turned out to be masterpieces in their own way. More than likely they’ll disappoint, though, so I’ll hold back any burgeoning enthusiasm and wait to see what they offer when we get there. Because, see, the essential building blocks — gaudy ideas, canny character touches, atmospheric prose, a willingness to shrug off genre conventions — are always there in his books, I just wish he was a better architect when it came to laying them in place.

Standalone: