J.J. Connington would, from time to time, fancy a bit of a break from his usual sleuth, Sir Clinton Driffield, and the outcome of these meanderings leave something to be desired. The bland Supt. Ross got a brace of novels to himself — the awful The Eye in the Museum (1929) and The Two Tickets Puzzle (1930), which is better because anything would be — and radio host Mark Brand similarly got two books of his own: the execrable The Four Defences (1940) and today’s read, his debut appearance, The Counsellor (1939) which is better than his sophomore case, but, well, no wonder Brand has a short career; Driffield would have solved this in a third of the time.

As my grandfather used to say, “When you fall off the horse, get back on the horse”. And that’s why he lost his job and the Health and Safety Officer at that horse riding school. But the fact remains that lately I’ve had some disheartening reading experiences with favoured authors — John Dickson Carr, J.J. Connington, Freeman Wills Crofts, A.A. Fair, Craig Rice, Cornell Woolrich — and so the tempting thing is to leave them alone for a while, wait for that memory to fade, and then return. But, no, I’m not doing that, I’m reading Connington again now, because why not? That’s what the horse is here. It was a metaphorical horse all along.

The Castleford Conundrum (1932) represented a change of pace for the detective fiction that Alfred Walter Stewart had been writing under the name J.J. Connington, being decidedly longer on character than his earlier works.  Gold Brick Island, a.k.a. Tom Tiddler’s Island (1933) from the following year shows that Stewart was clearly in for some experimentation in this era, seeing as it’s a separation from detective fiction altogether, rendering itself rather more like an adventure for a grown up Famous Five. Some mysterious types and a honeymooning couple converge on a tiny Scottish island, and the result is…somewhat mixed.

When Derek Fordingbridge, long-supposed-dead heir to the family fortune, apparently resurfaces, his face mutilated in the war and all other identifying characteristics similarly compromised, his uncle Paul is naturally sceptical. When this re-emergence is followed hard upon by the murder of the old family retainer who cared deeply for Derek and the theft of Derek’s diaries from family pile Foxhills…well, it’s almost like we’re in a classically-styled piece of detective fiction, eh? Thankfully Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield is in the area and ready to help out Inspector Armadale with his investigations into which of two possible interpretations this should be taken as.