If the year 2020 will be remembered for anything, it will be that I bought a set of 18 J.J. Connington novels on eBay and started my way through them. Of those 18, only A Minor Operation (1937) — Connington’s sixteenth novel and the eleventh to feature Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield — showed any signs of being read, implying that this one book alone was bad enough for the seller to completely eradicate Connington from their shelves. Well, having finally reached this accurséd title, I really enjoyed it — finding it one of the strongest of Alfred Stewart’s books yet, only lacking in the final stretch with a too-casual reveal of our killer and a motive that’s perhaps a little too complex to really hit home.

After a couple of chapters of scene-setting, the essential plot here sees young Hazel Deerhurst disappear from her home the night after her ne’er-do-well husband is released from prison, a blood stain on the parquet flooring the one sign that something might be amiss. Delightfully, as in The Eight of Swords (1934) by John Dickson Carr, the scene presents too many contradictions to make a clear picture possible: if Hazel was kidnapped, what became of the three library books she received by post? And if she left of her own accord, why has she taken no clothes with her? Why is the clock on the mantelpiece three hours and forty-four minutes slow? And how does Mrs. Deerhurst’s cousin, recently released from prison himself as part of the same financial skulduggery that put Mr. Deerhurst away, know of the blood on the floor of the drawing room if he’s not been into that room since it was shed?

There’s a wonderfully humdrum progression to this, mixing throwaway nuggets of scientific detection — bleeding into bruised tissue implying that the heart was still pumping when the bruise was caused, say — with simple, intelligent, dogged policing that knows how far a car can travel on four and a half gallons of missing fuel, and little historical notes like the increasing presence of home telephones making the use of telegrams less common. Initially falling to Inspector Dornfell, it’s not long before the case comes under the purview of Driffield…and, of course, Driffield drags that smug arse Squire Wendover along for the ride.

I really do dislike Wendover, but it’s now mellowed into the sort of dislike that makes these books more enjoyable. His “satisfaction” in “putting a spoke in [that] cocky fellow’s wheel” every time Dornfell tried to progress the investigation is infuriating — a woman is missing, after all, and possibly her life is in danger — and yet Driffield seems to enjoy having Wendover there purely to goad him with all the things he continues to overlook:

“Well, all the facts are there; you’ve only got to put two and two together, Squire, and the answer should come out as something between three and five. There’s a margin of error, I admit, but it’s not enormous.”

Not only is Driffield enjoying himself, this seems to be the most fun Connington has had since The Boathouse Riddle (1931) — another wonderfully Humdrum investigation, by the way — with charming character beats (c.f. housekeeper Mrs. Butterwick’s initial disdain for Dornfell’s methods), a couple of beautifully English insults (“He had self-confidence without capacity on the same scale.”), and, perhaps best of all, a magnificently low-key set piece in chapter VIII in which tracing how a body appeared in a stretch of observed road is beset with complications that had me grinning from ear to ear. And I love how Connington also writes some sentences with a precision that feels beyond so many of his peers:

“This insistence of irrefragable proof may be the palladium of an accused man, but there’s no denying that it’s an accursed nuisance to a hard-working constabulary.”

As I said up top, I can fault this only in that the reveal of the killer is so astoundingly off-handed that I assumed it was a bluff for about five pages, and the motive, while no doubt clever, relies on a lot of slightly sententious explanation that ties a lot of knots in the closing stages. It’s made up for in many other factors — I found the reason for the novel’s title, for instance, actually more than a little moving — but those of you wanting a big smash at the end will come away a little deflated.

Overall, though, this shows so much of what Connington does so well, and it’s to be wondered if he’ll find himself in the vaunted company of the British Library Crime Classics where, at his best, he surely belongs. Affordable, high-quality reprints of someone who played the game so openly is the very least he deserves, and the further I get into those 18 titles — yes, some of which are very much not to my taste, of course — the more I feel Connington deserves wider recognition. For now, though, if you can get this, it comes very recommended indeed; that unknown seller may well have hated it, but I had a wonderful time.

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I’d ordinarily link in a review or two here to convince you to get this, but every review I’ve found online mentions, often very casually, some of several different points which I would consider to be spoilers, or which at least will provide clarity to the reader on certain aspects well ahead of time within the narrative. Resist the urge to wander elsewhere for opinions — positive opinions, it must be said — and ideally go into this as uninformed as you are right now. It’ll make for a better read, I promise.

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