Reading the Detectives discussion

July/August 2019 sees us continuing our reading of Nicholas Blake's Nigel Strangeways series. Published in 1953, this is the tenth book.

Someone is sending poison pen letters in the small village of Prior's Umborne, and they have already driven one of the inhabitants to suicide.

Private detective Nigel Strangeways is commissioned to find the source of the letters by arrogant financier Sir Archibald Blick, whose two sons live in the village.

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

I thought there were some great characters in this - Blake is very good at creating individual characters where you don't constantly have to flip back to a cast list to check who is who!

All the same, I could have done without Nigel's constant psychological analysis and I found it a bit annoying that this seems to be an element in working out who did it.

The whole explanation of the deadly binoculars seemed extremely far-fetched to me, I must say.

While I agree the characters are well drawn and memorable, the only one I liked was Stanford, the older brother.

I thought that Celadine's legs strengthened remarkably quickly and easily, but have no knowledge if it is possible. Glad she was able to take down Durdle however!

Durdle was really creepy, wasn't he? Odd the way that you, at first, thought he was Standford and Charles brother, then discovered he was actually Celadine and Bay's.

Sandy wrote: "I thought that Celadine's legs strengthened remarkably quickly and easily, but have no knowledge if it is possible...."

This was my big problem with the plot too, Sandy - I could not believe that Celandine would be in a wheelchair one minute and charging around the countryside the next. I'm definitely no medical expert, but surely she would have needed much longer to rebuild her legs' s strength?!

I couldn't really picture Durdle, with his long neck etc. Very grotesque, with some great pompous speeches!

He was a bit Uriah Heep in my mind :)

Hello all!

Sandy and Judy, I completely understand the doubts about the physiology of a chairbound woman suddenly able to walk around, esp. if those muscles hadn’t been in use for years. My thought is that there was far less general knowledge of rehabilitative therapy in 1953, and although doctors who read it back then would have seen the problem, the general public might not have had a difficult time believing the quick reversal, particularly as the ailment was psychological for the character. I *thought* I couldn’t walk, and now I believe I can, so a little exercise will get me on my feet again…

A couple observations: other blogs have noted that the climax is one of the best parts of The Dreadful Hollow, and I agree. I very much enjoyed that Blake shapes a literary counterpart to what a filmmaker would call parallel editing. As Nigel explains the solution, we cut to glimpse the characters in their real-time actions, and this leads us to Durdle’s stalking of Celandine through the woods as she grimly makes her way to the postbox. That’s a wonderful sequence.

Judy, you’re not alone in questioning the psychology of a sister employing eye-gouging binoculars as a way to shock an invalid out of her imagined paralysis. Hmmm. It is certainly a memorably ghoulish pseudo-weapon, though, and as a red herring to muddy the waters (mixing aquatic metaphors here), it’s a pretty good one.

At the story’s start, I thought the business with the photograph of the nude woman and the details of Sir Archibald’s obsession with eugenics was a fantastic introduction to the unlikable character, for two reasons: eugenic goals right on the heels of Nazi atrocities is especially distasteful, but even better, it stirs up questions about heredity and inherited disease in our cast of characters. Durdle’s antagonism with the world and religious fervor is tied to his bastard status, while the roundelay of a Blick brother wanting to marry a woman with weak genes provides a memorable motive for family conflict.

I thought this was a very good Strangeways entry, with an intriguing mix of elements and some smart characterization. And I’m always a fan of poison pen stories. Other good tales that spotlight malicious letter-writing (Christie’s The Moving Finger is the obvious go-to) are Double-Barrel (1964) by Nicolas Freeling and Shirley Jackson’s deliciously sharp 1965 short story “The Possibility of Evil”.

Jason wrote: "At the story’s start, I thought the business with the photograph of the nude woman and the details of Sir Archibald’s obsession with eugenics was a fantastic introduction to the unlikable character, for two reasons: eugenic goals right on the heels of Nazi atrocities is especially distasteful, but even better, it stirs up questions about heredity and inherited disease in our cast of characters. ..."

Oh yes, I meant to mention this! The whole idea of the blonde woman in the photo winning a "Potential Mother Contest 1950" is extremely reminiscent of the Nazis, as you say, and makes it clear just how unpleasant Sir Archibald is.

I was wondering if there were really such contests in the UK, and missed the link with the questions about heredity later in the book.

https://www.newstatesman.com/society/...

Here's an article on the rather unsavoury interest in eugenics in the UK...

Many thanks for that link about eugenics, Susan - quite an eye-opener. I had previously read about Sir Francis Galton, who features in The Biographer's Tale by A.S. Byatt, but I wasn't aware that the British interest in eugenics went on for so long and reached its peak in the 40s.

Jason, I too loved the ending sequence with the tension building as Celidine makes her way to the mailbox. It is done masterfully.

Eugenics aside, I dread the offspring of these two families.

Sandy wrote: "Eugenics aside, I dread the offspring of these two families."

Yes, Sandy, rather a twisted group of relations collected here! And this runs (perversely) parallel with one of the attractions for me to poison pen mystery storylines: they tend to focus on a small community that seems to be superficially pleasant and benign, but then anonymous accusations hint at ugliness and dysfunction underneath. It gets right to the heart of public versus private faces, and it rarely gives humanity the benefit of the doubt.

Susan, thank you for that link on UK eugenics -- really fascinating!

I think eugenics went out of fashion fairly swiftly here, as war came closer and it would have been difficult to support anything lauded by the Nazis.

I think poison pen mysteries are fascinating for exactly the reason you suggest, Jason. Of course, so many GA mysteries are set in picture perfect villages, so the public/private personas and the secrets that lie just beneath the surface are more obvious. Durdle was a great example of this.

I really enjoyed this one, much better than the previous two. Strangeways seems less bitter, although Blake did have a small rant about women and truth near the end.

I loved the creepy characters Durdle, his mother, and Blick senior, although I felt Celandine was a bit creepy too and that probably led me to suspect her as the killer when I had not really worked it out. I thought the way Blake worked the poison pen angle and the murder together was great, and the final chapter was brilliant (much better than those mysteries where the killer sends the detective a letter to explain everything)

I didn't mind the trend towards the psychological, because it was generally backed up by a logical explanation. I can see the danger of it becoming too fanciful, but I thought it worked in this book.

There was a glorious cast of creepy characters, weren't there, Pamela? I think this is a very under-rated series.

Susan wrote: "I think this is a very under-rated series."

I agree, I don't think I'd heard of Strangeways before I joined this group but the plots and characters are generally very strong, and quite varied too.

I suppose we should be glad they are in print, but I think the Strangeways books definitely deserve to be reissued in great new covers, rather than the boring plain pink ones which I have moaned about before!

You do wonder why publishers do that? Perhaps they just think it isn't important for kindle books, but anyone browsing on Amazon would have no idea what type of books they were, if they weren't specifically looking for them.

I agree, Susan, and also the paperbacks have the same plain pink covers. I'm not a fan of plain covers in general, I'll admit - even the grey covers of the wonderful Persephone books. It seems like a lost opportunity for artwork!

Very glad you enjoyed the book, Pamela. I agree that the characters and ending were both memorable. This one also incorporates character psychology fairly well, and the abundance of physical clues keeps the story in puzzle territory rather than devolving into a brooding mood piece. I'll be very interested to hear what readers make of The Whisper in the Gloom, the next book in the series...

We have The Whisper in the Gloom coming up in mid-October, so not too long to wait. Looking forward to it!