Good heavens, I wish Gerald Verner had written 20 books about Simon Gale.

The larger-than-life Gale — “He paints and he writes, but mostly he just does anything that appeals to him…” — featured in a mere three of Verner’s books: Noose for a Lady (1952), Sorcerer’s House (1956), and The Snark was a Boojum (1957/2015), that final title being completed by his son, Chris, and getting to the second of these last has made me feel a little sad about the character’s literary brevity. Because Sorcerer’s House is, for most of its duration, wonderfully written, superbly atmospheric, and generally exactly the sort of thing that most British pulp writers of Verner’s era would have given their left arm to have written. No mean feat when you consider just how damned much Verner wrote in his lifetime.

The time around we’re in the village Ferncross where the now-deserted Threshold House was once the dwelling place of the eighteenth century mystic Cagliostro, where it is rumoured he might have tried to reenact his famous Banquet of the Dead in which “he is supposed to have summoned the ghosts of six great men to dine with six living people”. Now the house, owned landowner Paul Meriton, stands empty, perhaps down to local rumours that a blue light infrequently seen in the windows is a harbinger of ill:

“It’s supposed to come from the lamps of the Magic Circle used by Cagliostro to invoke the spirits of the dead…”

“And when this light is seen, it’s taken to be a sign that somebody is going to die?” said Alan.

“Only that somebody is going to die…violently,” she answered.

Drawn into these superstitions is visiting American Alan Boyce, who is staying with the Onslow-White family who own Bryony Cottage, neighbour to this one-time sorcerer’s house. And, of course, someone has recently seen the dim bluish glow in the windows of Threshold House, and, sure enough, a death follows, with Alan and the Onslow-White’s attractive daughter Flake discovering a recent house guest having been defenestrated and with some of his insides on the outside.

With Chief Constable Major Chippingham and Inspector Hatchard of the local C.I.D. not making much progress, the irreverent, irrepressible Gale swans onto the scene (“Good heavens, does he fancy himself as a detective now?”) and, amidst positively gallons of beer swallowed down in a single draft, begins to unpick the “appalling, hideously cold-blooded design” that has been corrupting someone in Ferncross for many a year now. With Alan and Flake drafted in as Watsons of a sort, can they find out the answer to these mysteries? And how many guilty secrets are going to creep out in the process?

There is so much in this book to celebrate, from its tight, eerie scene-setting that veers so comfortably from the sinister…

Such a tale seemed to fit, somehow, in this land of legend and tradition where the real and the unreal walk hand in hand and the earth is still old and enchanted. He had got the same impression in London during the two days he had spent there — that the famous figures of history and literature might step at any moment from the dark courts and alleys.

…to the beautifully observed…

On either side of the narrow rutted lane were thick woods and the great trees met overhead, their leaves vivid and translucent in the sunlight. On the dusty path splashes of bright yellow, like the spilled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, flickered and danced as the breeze stirred the branches overhead.

…and back again with a mastery that few within the genre would ever truly manage this effortlessly. And Verner’s characters are good, too, from the less subtle Mrs. Flappit, who, as the case develops and revelations become more and more salacious…

…in a seventh heaven of excitement, shot all over the village, like a noisy and virulent wasp, buzzing and stinging wherever she alighted, until, at the heralding clatter of her ancient bicycle, the inhabitants fled to the sanctuary of their houses, and even that long-suffering man, the vicar, locked himself in his study and refused to emerge.

…all the way down to the various houseguests of the Onslow-Whites who, while seeming perhaps a little great in number in the opening chapter, soon compel themselves to the reader effortlessly. And Gale is there at the centre of the maelstrom, a sort of Henry-Merrivale-by-way-of-Gideon-Fell (at one point leaning into a conversation with “an expression that was…fiendishly malignant”, and fond of expressions like “By the cloven hooves of Pan!” and “By the six horns of Satan!”), swilling beer and constantly grabbing Alan to whisk him away on one side quest or another…he’s really a magnificent presence herein. Those around him may not be so convinced — he’s dismissed at one point as “[one of] these fellers who think eccentricity is the hallmark of genius” — but, as I said up top, I wish we had so many more books in which to enjoy his presence.

This is, honestly, so well-structured a book, and such a clear homage to the great work of John Dickson Carr — right up to the halfway twist that changes everything — that I was, for most of its duration, waiting for the other shoe to drop and the reason for its relative obscurity to come crashing through to spoil everything. And, look, the final chapter does hand-wave a little bit, but the explanations are interesting and keep within the limits of what we’ll accept in this genre (nothing ghostly, don’t worry) even if that final rush to fill in the gaps does highlight how much we’re taking on trust from Gale rather than investigating through Alan Boyce’s eyes.

All told, I would love to read more of Verner on this form, and am very happy to take any recommendations anyone can offer in the comments below. Like all writers, he’s rather variable — an experience no doubt enhanced by the aforementioned sheer quantity of material he produced in his lifetime — but the excellent tone-setting and clever deployment of plotting herein really does show how the experience of churning out so much can have a salutary effect on one’s writing. Sure, it would be nice to agonise over every sentence and produce only three dense works that scholars will call masterpieces for the rest of time, but if you can have fun and write a lot…well, I know what I’d choose. So, well, TomCat was right about this one; and I’ll never hear the end of that, I’m sure…

~

Whoever chose the quote ‘A classic impossible crime novel’ for the front cover of this edition needs to be publically flogged, however. We’re having enough trouble with the term “locked room mystery” at present without blatant lies like that souring the mix. Crikey.