I’ll level with you: I’d been kind of dreading having to reread Case without a Corpse (1937), Leo Bruce’s second novel to feature the blunt-but-far-from-dense Sergeant William Beef. Memory told me that the novel was over-long, with a large proportion of it spent on an almost entirely pointless amount of investigation that any sensible reader would know is wasted effort because (rot13 for spoilers, if you’ve never read a book before) boivbhfyl Orrs unf gb or gur bar gb cebivqr gur pbeerpg fbyhgvba ng gur raq. And in rereading it for the first time in about 15 years I’ve discovered that, once again, my memory has been a little unkind, and the book holds up far better than anticipated.

Bruce was, in general, as much about challenging the conventions of the genre as he was about playing them with a straight bat, and he sets up his stall well here:

“I always supposed a murder case started with a corpse, and then you had to find out ’oo done it. This time we know oo’s done it, but we can’t find the corpse. Wot d’you say to that?”

Beef is quick to call in Scotland Yard in the person of Detective-Inspector Stute (I can’t have been the only one hoping to discover his Christian name was Adam or Aloysius or similar, can I?), and while I remembered our series Boswell Townsend throwing his lot in with the professional man, the truth is that the three work together for a majority of the book before the policemen begin to differ. It’s on page 217 of 283 that Beef begins “to ’ave a h’inkling,”, and prior to that we get treated to a pretty straight novel of sensible police work in the Humdrum manner that would have been so popular at the time.

“Give me an honest murder with a body to it, and I’ll find your man. A couple of bloodstained carpets and a telegram from Bournemouth, and we’ll have a hanging. But damn it — where are you in a thing like this? It doesn’t need a detective but a fortune-teller, or a water-diviner, or a medium.”

Bruce succeeded in parodying the Genius Amateur Detective in his debut, but the professional policeman in the Inspector French vein is a harder prospect to mock, and so most of the fun here is had at the expense of the genre more generally: Townsend mostly pointing out that it’s his rôle to attend without understanding and “ask ludicrous questions at the right moment” or to become engaged to the one attractive woman who crops up in every case. Most of these observations have not been improved upon in the intervening 90 years, though the running gag about a constable called Galsworthy gets, well, rather galling.

The investigation Stute undertakes is impressive in its scope and rigour, and the man himself has a few moments to shine professionally and as a human being (“I’ll try.”). Some good ideas litter this beyond merely the hook — the acquisition of the passport, for one thing — showing, I like to think, that Bruce had a genuine love for this genre and the various clevernesses that could be used to develop plots within it. Stute is, of course, appalled at Beef’s approach and attitude, and Beef is suitably impressed with Stute’s industry and imagination, and it’s lovely to see these two sides of the genre rubbing along so well, even though each views the other with absolute horror.

The solution is good but, as would become typical with Bruce, a few vaults need to be made which no amount of slightly verbose plotting has prepared us for. And, as a plot which is trying to challenge some of the deeply-ingrained habits and expectations of this now-established genre, you can’t fault Bruce’s intentions, but when Beef assures us that we have all the information he has and so can come to the same conclusions, and when his summation then involves a bunch of knowledge that he established without Townsend (and so the reader) knowing it…well, I dunno. I dislike that sort of thing.

But, in all honesty, it was a relief to revisit this and find it so zestful a read. The characters who play small parts are clearly drawn and jump to the mind very easily, and Bruce weights and drops his revelations with clockwork timing throughout, drawing a laugh or two from me as Stute reaches an inescapable conclusion from under which the narrative then slips neatly away. How I came to remember it as leaden-footed and prolix I don’t know, but doubtless an extra appreciation of what sort of book he was trying to take off has helped. Now all I need is for my recall of the final Beef novel I have to reread, Case with No Conclusion (1939), to be accurate and this project will end happily. But, oh no, I’ve just realised that history is against me…

Also, I was sure Townsend’s name was Lionel, but he calls himself Stuart towards the end of this. Surely I didn’t get that wrong as well, did I?

~

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)