Something a little different today: knowing that I’m a fan of the Australian dramatist and novelist Malcolm ‘Max’ Afford, Tony Medawar — the closest thing the GAD firmament has to Indiana Jones — sent me a selection of Afford’s thus-far-uncollected short fiction, as found in a variety of Australian publications from the Golden Age, and I’ve read them and am going to write a little about each one.

I’m not sure how appealing this is going to be — you won’t be able to buy the book featuring these (yet…?) since the stories are, as I say, uncollected, and you might have no interest in Afford if you’ve encountered none of his work — but when has consideration of a lack of success held me back? I had originally thought of doing one per week on Tuesdays, but given that these are little pieces akin to the sort of newspaper stories Edmund Crispin had collected in Fen Country [ss] (1979), let’s do some capsule reviews, eh?

And so…

A carnival barker is our introduction to ‘Illusion’ (1932) [from the Adelaide News], with the strained relationships within the circus/freakshow all too neatly communicated (“She stood there, pale as death, save where the twin daubs of rouge gave mockery of life to her face”). Afford’s good, too, at the relationships here, even if there’s not space to make them much more than Types; and the atmosphere is suitably palpable and gaudy throughout:

[A] lean murmur ran through the crowd, the hungry undertone of the pack that smells blood. Eyes were wide with excitement. Breathing became audible.

Not the story of magical misdirection you may have hoped from the laconic title — I can’t believe I’m alone in that — but a good one nonetheless.

‘The Scarecrow’ (1933) [from Smith’s Weekly] sees a journalist being taken around to inspect the achievement of a charity which finds unemployed people in the city and gives them a farm to run out in the countryside. With something more akin to the realism of Henry Lawson than the lyricism of Banjo Patterson, we’re left in no doubt that farming is hard work, the romanticism with which it may be viewed out of place given the harshness of the setting (“The farmhouse appeared to have been dropped, rather than built, on the dry, brown side of the hill…Over the white-painted roof, the air was swimming with the heat”). The criminous element of this comes in suddenly and is wrapped up just as quickly, but the atmosphere is hard not to enjoy.

Sharing its title, but nothing else, with Afford’s debut novel, ‘Blood on His Hands’ (1934) [from Smith’s Weekly] concerns the Rev. Paul Augustine Bellamy who, having closed up his house for the night, is interrupted by a knock at the front door. Informed that there is a man dying in the street outside, Bellamy invites the bearer of this news inside…and a game of back-and-forth begins.

The perhaps anticipated climax occurs at the halfway stage, and Afford goes on to have some small fun from there, with little hesitations telling much and interpretations offered freely. I was a little disappointed that some of the clewing wasn’t declared, but then a final fillip turns this on its head in a lovely way. Minor, but hard not to enjoy.

We get something more akin to suspense with ‘Danger Light’ (1935) [from Smith’s Weekly], with a lighthouse-keeper’s new wife listening to the radio for news of an escapee from the nearby prison. Afford mixes in a couple of good developments here, and the moody writing shows a side to him that I’ve not seen in such concentrated form before. Sure, it overplays its melodrama slightly, but it maintains its mood well, and really isn’t at all a bad example of the sort of thing you used to get in newspapers all the time. Imagine that!

“The horrible business of Joan Gibson’s indoor telephone-booth” is told in ‘The Telephone Bureau’ (1935) [from Smith’s Weekly], which benefits from some excellent phrasing (c.f. a shop with “a low, jutting verandah that gave the place a skulking look, like a cap pulled down over the eyes.”) and adds to its growing unease by recognising that in the familiar which might be otherwise sinister (“He sidled forward like a crab, and they had the impression that he was trying to move round to cut off their retreat”).

Far be it from me to reveal which way this jumps, but if there’s a third volume in the Ghosts from the Library series, this would make an excellent inclusion — not least for the way it is divided up into mini chapters with wonderfully pulpish titles (‘The Bargain’, ‘Not Quite a Sound’, ‘It Moved!’). Fabulous work, a lovely discovery.

The apparently impossible shooting of a spinster in her locked and sealed flat confronts us in ‘The Man in the Train’ (1935) [from the Adelaide Mail]. The eponymous gentleman tells our nameless narrator the story of Rose Reynolds — found shot after locking herself in in front of witnesses — and offering up a highly unlikely solution that’s nevertheless very enjoyable for being an updating of an old classic in the subgenre. This is far from classic, but as an example of that ‘I Met Someone Who Told Me a Story’-style of framing — reminiscent of ‘Unreasonable Doubt’ (1958) by Stanley Ellin — it’s an enjoyable time that’s difficult not to get swept up in.

Last, and longest, of all is ‘The Happy Couple’ (1948) [from the Australian Women’s Weekly], serialised in two parts and concerning the suicide of the happy-go-lucky George Wingate in the middle of a game of bridge with friends: rising when he was the dummy, he headed into another room and, about a minute later, shot himself. Of course, George’s staunch friend Steve Harper doesn’t believe this series of events, and so begins to investigate.

Coming so much later than the other stories here — this is the only one written after his novels — there’s an added confidence in the pacing and measuring out of developments herein. The eventual scheme is actually pretty good, too, and the ending feels a little revolutionary in light of what else Afford has done in the genre. Best of all, you can read this one for yourself because it’s online here.

Far be it from me to suggest that Afford is owed any meed for his work in the shorter form, but experiencing this other arm of his writing has been a real joy. All of these are tightly plotted, set in cleanly-limned environments, and contain characters who are easy to identify and follow through their various adventures. They’re not all detection, either, and so there’s fun in waiting to see which way things are going to pan out — helped, of course, but Afford’s clear, focussed prose and strong ability with setting mood so deftly.

So, yeah, while this might not make the most successful of posts from your perspective, dear reader, I’ve very much enjoyed feeling like an explorer in a forgotten realm, delightedly pulling back layers of cobwebs to find a handful of minor treasure beneath. I won’t be able to do too much of this, of course, but your patience while I’ve had fun doing this is greatly appreciated.

Also worth pointing out is that, despite its fabulous title, Afford’s ‘Dancing to the Graveyard’ (1932) [from the Adelaide News] is a genuine piece of reportage, concerning an endurance event in which a man called Bert Nickolos dances for eight days straight. Afford’s short piece communicates how ridiculous he thinks these “stunts” are, and it finishes on a savage sort of joke the like of which you’d never be allowed to make today, but crime fiction it is not, so go in with lowered expectations should you find it.

Particular thanks to Tony, too, for kindly allowing me a glimpse behind the curtain. I wonder what else he’s got back there…

~

The novels of Max Afford, published by Ramble House:

1. Blood on His Hands (1937)
2. The Dead Are Blind (1937)
3. Death’s Mannikins, a.k.a. The Dolls of Death (1937)
4. Owl of Darkness, a.k.a. Fly by Night (1942)
5. Sinners in Paradise (1946)
6. The Sheep and the Wolves (1947)