Why Keep the Brakes On? Let’s Misbehave!*

What do you think of when you think of the 1920’s? Do you think of ‘flappers?’ Of Babe Ruth? Prohibition?  The growth of Hollywood? It was an action-packed decade, and so many things happened at that time that it’s no wonder it’s got such an appeal. There’s a certain mystique about art-deco and 1920’s style extravagance among other things. So it’s no wonder that the 1920’s is also a big part of crime fiction.

For one thing, many people argue that the Golden Age of crime fiction began to hit its stride in the 1920’s. And I’m sure that those of you who are Golden Age fans could list a large number of authors and books from that time – many more than I could. Let me just mention a few. Dorothy Sayers’ series featuring Lord Peter Wimsey debuted in 1923 with Whose Body?, in which Wimsey investigates the murder of an unknown man whose body is found in a bathtub. This plot thread ties in with embezzlement and another man who seems to have disappeared. In this novel, we see one of the hallmarks of the 1920’s – the class differences that still remained quite strong. Wimsey and his family are wealthy and privileged. They have access to all sorts of means that ‘ordinary’ people do not. And the theme of class differences is woven into more than one of Sayers’ novels.

We also see those stark class differences in historical series. For instance, Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series features Fisher, who was born to the working class but inherited a title and fortune. So she mixes and mingles in the highest social circles. And yet, we also see that not everyone has that sort of prosperity. In Cocaine Blues for instance, Fisher gets involved in cracking an illegal (and dangerous) abortion clinic for working-class girls and young women whose families don’t have the means to make it all quietly ‘go away’ safely.

The 1920’s were also a time of great waves of immigration, and not just to the United States. Travel was becoming easier and the Great War had uprooted millions of people. The resulting diversity was one of the major social changes of the era. But that immigration also resulted in quite a lot of ethnic and racial prejudice. We see that reflected in crime fiction of the era too. In Margery Allingham’s The Crime at Black Dudley for instance, a group of friends is gathered at Black Dudley, the home of academician Wyatt Petrie. During the course of this house party, Petrie’s uncle Gordon Crombie dies, and it looks very much as though his death is suspicious. One of the guests Albert Campion takes a hand in finding out the truth about the death and about a mysterious ritual that’s supposedly associated with the family living there. In the course of the novel, there are several ‘isms’ and offensive references to members of different groups. You’ll find those in lots of other crime fiction of that decade too.

For several reasons, the roles of women changed fundamentally during the 1920’s. Just as one example, between 1920 and 1929, voting rights were extended to include women in the Czech Republic, Sweden, the U.K., the U.S. and Belgium among other countries (Australia granted federal voting rights to women in 1902, but some states granted it earlier for state elections. Canadian women had full federal voting rights in 1918. Women had had full suffrage in New Zealand since 1893).  We see the changing status of women in a lot of crime fiction from and about that era. Certainly we see it in Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher series. Fisher is single and in no hurry to marry. She’s independent, liberated and although she certainly depends on her circle of friends, I’d say the word ‘demure’ hardly describes her.

We see that also in the work of Agatha Christie. Several of her female characters are independent, strong women. There’s Anne Beddingfield from The Man in the Brown Suit; there’s Katherine Grey from The Mystery of the Blue Train; and there’s ‘Cinderella’ (giving away her real name would be giving away too much of the plot) from The Murder on the Links, just to name three. All of these women think for themselves. They’re not averse to falling in love, and they’re not ‘man haters.’ But all of them reflect the reality of that time that women were coming into their own, so to speak.

A lot of people associate the 1920’s with extravagant parties and hedonism and it was certainly there. We see a hint of that in Agatha Christie’s Dumb Witness (AKA Poirot Loses a Client). Hercule Poiriot and Captain Hastings investigate the death of Miss Emily Arundell, who supposedly died of liver failure, but has a group of relations desperate for her fortune. One of them is Theresa Arundell, a young ‘jet-setter’ who goes with a ‘party crowd,’ drinks heavily and so on. She’s not painted unsympathetically, but she is reckless.

And reckless is I think a good way to describe some aspects of that era. I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know for sure why the 1920’s was such a time of reckless abandon for a lot of people but here’s my guess. World War I changed everything for everyone. The real threat of mortality (especially with the influenza pandemic that followed that war) made a lot of people decide to enjoy life while they could You see that in writing from the era (e.g. F. Scott Fitzgerald) and you see that theme of deep wounds from the Great War in some terrific historical mystery series too. May I suggest Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series, ‘Charles Todd’s’ Inspector Ian Rutledge series, and Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple series. You can also see it in Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In all of those novels and series, we get a sense of the privations of the war and the ‘flu pandemic. People wanted to forget it, to plunge into life and have fun while they could.

Of course there was plenty of violence during the 1920’s too. There was a lot of union unrest and the backlash from that. There was plenty of ugly, ugly racism, anti-Semitism, anti-immigration and political corruption and that too led to a lot of violence. And there was organized crime. There’s a trace of that rise in organized crime in Patricia Wentworth’s Grey Mask, in which Charles Moray returns to England after some time away only to find that his home has been taken over by a criminal gang and that the woman who broke his heart may be mixed up with it. And then there’s Jeffrey Stone’s Play Him Again. In that historical mystery, Matt ‘Hud’ Hudson is a ‘rum-runner’ – a smuggler of then-illegal alcohol who supplies Hollywood’s luminaries with ‘liquid fuel’ for their parties. When a friend of his is murdered, Hud goes after those responsible, including a very nasty crime gang that’s moved into the area. That novel also explores what Prohibition was like in the U.S. (and makes it clear why the law enforcing Prohibition was never going to be really successful).

I could go on and on about the 1920’s (Jazz, anyone? The Harlem Renaissance? The fashions!) Moira at Clothes in Books has done some great posts on the clothes and fashions of the era. Here’s just one example. But this one post doesn’t give me nearly enough space to talk about it all. The 1920’s was too influential a decade for that. So now it’s your turn. Does that era appeal to you? Which books and series from and about that era do you like? Help me please to fill the gaps I left.

 

ps. The pearls on the left in the top ‘photo are part of a long double strand of pearls that belonged to my grandmother. On the right is a double-strand necklace that belonged to my grandmother-in-law. Both are genuine vintage…   The other ‘photo is of the terrific Essie Davis, who portrayed Phryne Fisher in the very well-done (in my opinion, anyway) Australian series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. These episodes are adaptations of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher novels and if you get the chance, I can recommend them. They aren’t of course 100% true to the novels, but very nicely done I think.

 

 

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Cole Porter’s Let’s Misbehave.

In The Spotlight: Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs

Hello, All,

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. World War I changed society in some fundamental and far-reaching ways. From the class system and the role of women to modern technology and medicine, everything changed as a result of that war. To get a real portrait of some of those changes, let’s take a closer look today at Jacqueline Winspear’s historical mystery Maisie Dobbs, the first in her Maisie Dobbs series.

As the novel begins, it’s 1929, and Maisie Dobbs has just set up shop as a private investigator. Dobbs served as a nurse during World War I and completed her university education after the war ended. Then she apprenticed with her mentor Maurice Blanche until she was ready to go off on her own. She’s only been in business for a month when she gets a visit from Christopher Davenham. He is concerned that his wife Celia may be having an affair and he wants Dobbs to follow her and find out whether she is faithful. Dobbs agrees and becomes familiar with Celia Davenham’s patterns of life. One day, she follows her quarry to a cemetery where she notices which grave Celia visits. She then strikes up an acquaintance with Celia by pretending to be the cousin of a fallen soldier who’s buried in the same cemetery. She finds out that the grave Celia is visiting is also that of a veteran and that gives her a piece of the puzzle. So does what she learns from Celia. Slowly she gathers the information she needs to find out the truth and report back to her client. She’s able to solve that case, but it leads her to another quite different one.

Some of the soldiers in the graveyard, including the one whose grave Celia was visiting, had been living at The Retreat, a refuge especially designed for World War I veterans who had suffered injuries that made it hard for them to function among ‘regular’ people. At first The Refuge was intended mostly for soldiers who’d suffered facial injuries. But gradually it has expanded to include soldiers with other injuries as well as soldiers with what used to be known as ‘shell shock’ and is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dobbs discovers that James Compton, son of her former employer Lady Rowan Compton, is considering moving to The Retreat. Lady Rowan is concerned about this decision, and Dobbs agrees to investigate this soldiers’ home; she has some concerns of her own about it anyway. With help from her friend Billy Beale, whom she nursed at the front, Dobbs looks into what’s going on at The Retreat and finds out the truth about the home. Her investigation also gives her the impetus she needs to face a sad truth about her own life.

One very strong element in this novel is the way in which everything about society changed as a result of World War I. Before the war, there were very clear and strong differences among the classes and between the sexes. Maisie, for instance, is the daughter of costermonger Frankie Dobbs, so she is not a member of the ‘better’ class. She serves as a maid in Lady Rowan’s home until Lady Rowan sponsors her to go to university. When the war breaks out, everything changes. People from even the ‘best’ families, including Lady Rowan’s own family, go to war, endure wartime shortages, and so on. And women join the workforce in large numbers. Ten years after the war, Maisie Dobbs is an independent, educated woman starting out in what was primarily a man’s world, something that might very well not have happened but for the changes the war brought. You could argue that this war blurs the lines among classes and between the sexes, and Winspear shows that in many ways.

Another element in this novel is the terrible destruction the war brought with it. War is dirty, ugly and dangerous and leaves permanent scars. As we learn about The Retreat and the lives of the men who live there, we see two important things. One is how badly the war damaged those men. The other is how ill-prepared the country was, at least at first, to meet their needs. These former soldiers whose scars and wounds are not obvious are hailed as heroes. Those who have more significant wounds or whose scars are emotional have little waiting for them at home. They can’t ‘fit in’ in society and some of them can’t get beyond what happened during the war. There’s little treatment for these unfortunate veterans and many of them are left to get along as best they can.

Another crucial element in the story is the character of Maisie Dobbs herself. She’s bright, curious and reflective, and her intelligence and intuition are what bring her to the attention of the Lady Rowan in the first place. But she’s hardly perfect. For instance, there’s a piece of her past that she has a great deal of difficulty facing. That and the guilt she feels for not facing her past do hold her back. But she’s well-grounded, practical and humble without being falsely modest. It’s not hard to be on her side as she tries to negotiate the sometimes harsh new world the war left in its wake.

She isn’t the only interesting character either. There’s also her mentor Maurice Blanche, who has a medical background but is also interested in philosophy, psychology and many other fields. He’s somewhat enigmatic, but we learn enough about him to make him seem real. We find out gradually that he also does private investigation and it’s from him that Maisie learns the trade. Through him she also learns about meditation, psychology and human nature, among other things. As the novels in this series continue, Blanche serves as an advisor and guide, while at the same time acknowledging that his protégée will have to take her own decisions.

And then there’s Lady Rowan Compton, who from the beginning chooses not to fit into the limited set of roles set aside for women in her class at that time. She’s an educated suffragette, well-versed in politics and interested in just about everything. She takes an interest in Maisie when she finds out that Maisie is also intelligent and as well-read as a girl with her background could be, and much better-read than most. As the series goes on Lady Rowan remains a friend and benefactor.

The mystery in this novel – what’s going on at The Retreat – is interesting and believable. Its solution is very, very sad, but it’s also credible. So is the means by which Maisie finds out the truth. But honestly, the mystery is almost secondary to the history and atmosphere woven through the story. Winspear places the reader very effectively in the World War I and post-war eras, and that’s the real appeal of this book. So readers who prefer their crime fiction to focus only on the mystery at hand will be disappointed. But that sense of time and place are essential to the story and handled quite deftly.

The story’s timeline is handled in an interesting way. The story begins in 1929, and then flashes back to the years between 1910 and 1917 as we learn Maisie’s backstory. Then the novel returns to 1929. Readers who are uncomfortable with a timeline that’s not strictly chronological will be disappointed. That said though, it’s very easy to tell what happens when, and the reader (well, at least this reader) is not left confused about the storyline.

Maisie Dobbs tells the story of a fascinating, frightening and critical time in history. It raises some important issues without preaching about them, and it’s a believable mystery that features a likeable protagonist and some well-developed characters. But what’s your view? Have you read Maisie Dobbs? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

 

 
 

Coming Up On In The Spotlight

 

Monday 17 December/Tuesday 18 December – Project Nirvana – Stefan Tegenfalk

Monday 24 December/Tuesday 25 December – Betrayal – Karin Alvtegen

Monday 31 December/Tuesday 1 January – The Innocence of Father Brown – G.K. Chesterton

I’m In the Mood to Help You, Dude, You Ain’t Never Had a Friend Like Me*

It’s not always easy, especially for private investigators, to get started in ‘the business.’ They need to build a reputation and they need a solid financial footing. And that’s where having a benefactor or sponsor can be very handy. Benefactors provide financial support and very often they help spread the word about the sleuth, too and that can build a sleuth’s reputation and client base. There are a lot of examples of benefactors and sponsors in crime fiction, and it’s interesting to see that although they may remain in the background during an investigation, their influence can have a real impact.

Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot for instance is a highly successful private investigator and through the years, he’s made quite a lot of money. But it wasn’t always that way. In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, we learn that he came to England as a refugee from Belgium. He and some other Belgians were sponsored by Emily Inglethorp, a wealthy benefactor to whom Poirot feels a debt. So when she is poisoned, he is only too happy to undertake the task of finding out who killed her.

There’s another benefactor in Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead. That’s the story of the murder of a seemingly inoffensive charwoman. Her lodger James Bentley has been convicted of the crime, but Superintendent Spence doesn’t think Bentley is guilty. So he asks Poirot to look into the matter. Poirot agrees and travels to the village of Broadhinny where the murder occurred. It turns out that Mrs. McGinty found out more than was safe for her to know about one of Broadhinny’s residents and was killed to guarantee her silence. Several of the locals are keeping secrets and have a good motive for murder, so Poirot has his work cut out for him as the saying goes. In the meantime, Poirot’s friend detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is also in Broadhinny. She’s staying with up-and-coming playwright Robin Upward, who is adapting one of her novels for the stage. Upward is the adopted son of Laura Upward, and we soon learn that she is as much his sponsor and benefactor as she is anything else. It’s an interesting dynamic that runs through the story.

Sometimes a sleuth is also a benefactor. That’s the case with Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. Wimsey is both wealthy and titled, and he has access to the highest of social circles. He uses that privilege to sponsor a number of people including Miss Katherine Climpson, who owns and runs a temporary agency. Miss Climpson’s employees certainly do their share of typing, filing and other clerical jobs. But unbeknownst to a lot of people, they also assist when Wimsey needs some extra help on one of his cases. For instance, in Strong Poison, Wimsey needs an important clue that can be found in the office of attorney Norman Urquhart. Rather than going to the office himself and asking openly for that clue, Wimsey arranges for Joan Murchison, one of Miss Climpson’s employees, to take a clerking job at the law office. She finds the clue that Wimsey needs and is therefore an important part of solving the case Wimsey’s working on, the poisoning murder of author Phillip Boyes. In this case, there’s a mutually-beneficial relationship between the benefactor and the person he sponsors.

Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma. Precious Ramotswe’s benefactor was her beloved father Obed Ramotswe. The two were devoted to each other and it was the sale of her father’s cattle after his death that gave Mma. Ramotswe the ‘seed money’ she needed to start her own detective agency. While her father didn’t play the classic ‘sponsor’ role of referring clients and supporting her business during its early days, he did support his daughter’s education. He also looked after her in the sense of wanting to make sure she could live independently. In this case there’s an admitted fine line between being a caring parent and being a benefactor but I still think Obed Ramotswe’s worth mentioning.

A more traditional example of a benefactor is Jacqueline Winspear’s Lady Rowan Compton. She and her husband Sir Julian are one of London’s wealthy ‘better’ families during the time just before and during World War I. In Maisie Dobbs, when we meet these characters, they take into their home thirteen-year-old Maisie Dobbs as a young maid. With help from Maurice Blanche, a friend of the Comptons, Lady Rowan learns that Maisie is extremely intelligent and has a great deal of potential. So Lady Rowan decides to sponsor Maisie. She arranges for the girl’s education, including university. She also helps Maisie get started as a private investigator after World War I. Blanche serves as Maisie’s mentor and teaches her ‘the business.’ But it’s Lady Rowan who serves as Maisie’s benefactor and as the series continues, Lady Rowan refers clients, spreads the word about Maisie’s business and in other ways supports her business.

Rebecca Cantrell’s Hannah Vogel is a journalist just before and during World War II. Although she earns a small amount of money for her work, it’s certainly not enough to conduct investigations. But in A Trace of Smoke she meets wealthy banker Boris Krause. Vogel had done an article on a serial rapist who attacked Krause’s daughter Trudi and that’s their first connection. But they soon develop a relationship. Among other things, Krause becomes Vogel’s benefactor when she begins to investigate the murder of her brother Ernst. That search for the truth leads Vogel into some very dangerous places, including the upper echelons of the swiftly-growing Nazi party, so Vogel has to take some serious risks. But Krause has the connections to help to help keep her safe, and he provides financial backing too. In Krause we see an interesting blend of benefactor/sponsor who also develops an intimate relationship with the sleuth.

And then there’s successful men’s clothier Anthony Gatt, who sponsors Anthony Bidulka’s Russell Quant. Gatt also serves as Quant’s personal mentor in a lot of ways, but in a very practical way, he supports Quant’s PI business. Gatt is extremely well connected; he knows everyone who is anyone in Saskatchewan and a lot of other places too. So he refers clients, he makes social connections for Quant, and a few times he provides a place for Quant to stay when he’s ‘on the road.’ Gatt doesn’t directly give money to Quant; his financial support is more subtle. But it’s definitely there.

Benefactors and sponsors don’t always broadcast the support they give. But it’s essential to those who have talent but not a lot of money. I’ve only mentioned a few fictional sponsors, so I’m sure I’ve left out some you like. Who are they?

 

 
 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s Friend Like Me.

And the Country Found Them Ready*

Some events have such profound effects on us that they quite literally change the world. World War I was such an event. That war propelled us in many ways from the Victorian/Edwardian eras into the modern age. From the use of airplanes to warfare techniques to political realities to social structure to the roles of women, World War I changed the human landscape.

It was also a truly devastating war. More than eight million soldiers were killed; millions more were wounded. It’s hard to get one’s mind round a number like that in the abstract. Want something even more difficult to comprehend? It is said that at least thirteen and a half million civilians died as a result of The Great War. Many of those people were victims of the ‘flu pandemic that started in the trenches of the war. Those deaths, too, changed the human landscape.

To get a true sense of this war, though, it doesn’t just do to look at numbers. As I said, it can be hard to comprehend numbers like that. But crime fiction is full of stories of those who suffered through the war and what its effects were on them. That more personal look at the war can bring it home even more powerfully than any list of numbers could.

Agatha Christie’s fans will know for instance that she worked as a nurse during World War I, and that experience found its way into her writing. Hercule Poirot is a Belgian by birth and as we learn in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, he had to flee his own country because of World War I. In the same novel, we learn that his friend and colleague Arthur Hastings was wounded in that war. Hastings goes to Styles Court, the home of an old friend John Cavendish, to recuperate and is drawn into the investigation when Cavendish’s stepmother Emily Inglethorp is poisoned. Although the family is one of the ‘better’ families, that doesn’t mean they’re immune to wartime realities. Everything – even every scrap of paper – is conserved. Dinner is moved to a then-unfashionably early time to save on the need for electricity. Cavendish’s wife Mary works as what was later called a Land Girl. The main reason the family has access to fuel for the car is that Emily Inglethorp is involved in several civic activities. The war affected even the ‘best’ families.

There’s another glimpse of the Great War in Christie’s The Murder on the Links. At the beginning of that novel, Hastings is on board a train heading back from Paris to London. Along the way he meets a fellow passenger and the two get involved in conversation:

 

‘We passed through Amiens. The name awakened many memories. My companion seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of what was in my mind.
‘Thinking of the War?’
I nodded.
‘You were through it, I suppose?’
‘Pretty well. I was wounded once, and after the Somme they invalided me out altogether.’

 

Hastings doesn’t get much time to mull over the war, as shortly after his return, he and Poirot are drawn into the case of the murder of wealthy Canadian émigré Paul Renauld.

Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs has seen more than her share of World War I. She’s a former nurse who sets up her own detective agency after the Great War. But she hasn’t really been able to leave the war behind. For one thing, there’s her former love Simon Lynch, who was a doctor until a wartime tragedy changed that forever. As the series goes on Maisie has to face the truth of what happened to Simon and go on. Winspear’s series addresses the psychological fallout from that catastrophe. Here, for instance, is what Dobbs’ assistant Billy Beale says about it in Maisie Dobbs, the first novel in the series:

 

‘I tell you, sometimes I think we’re like the waking dead. Livin’ our lives during the day, normal like, then trying to forget something what ‘appened years ago. It’s like going to the picture ‘ouse, only the picture’s all in me ‘ead.’

 

Today we’d call that post-traumatic stress disorder, but at the time it was called shell shock, and we see that reflected throughout this series.

Mother-and-son writing team ‘Charles Todd’ has created two World War I-themed series. One features Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, who took time away from his police duties during the Great War. What he doesn’t tell anyone is that he is not the same person psychologically when he returns from the war as the one who left. He has been severely scarred by his wartime experience, especially by an incident in which he was forced to kill Corporal Hamish MacLeod. He also feels a strong sense of survivor’s guilt. So he’s quite psychologically fragile when he takes up his work at Scotland Yard again. Rutledge’s efforts to keep what’s left of his sanity form an important thread through this series.

The Charles Todd team has also created a series featuring amateur sleuth Bess Crawford, a World War I nurse. While she doesn’t face the same deep psychological scars as Rutledge does, she sees her share of trauma and it affects her as it would anyone.

There are also several novels that explore the after-effects of World War I for civilians. For instance, Chris Womersley’s Bereft takes place in the small town of Flint, New South Wales, where Quinn returns, scarred in more ways than one, after having served in the Somme. He comes back to town to find it in the grip of the post-war ‘flu pandemic. The misery and death, and the panic that comes with them, add a layer of sadness to the already bleak story of the Walker family. Ten years before the events in this novel, Walker’s younger sister was brutally murdered and everyone, including Walker’s own father, believes that he is guilty. So he knows that if he makes himself known in town he’ll likely be killed. Walker hides out in the fields around the town where he meets a twelve-year-old orphan Sadie Fox, who’s hiding out herself in an old abandoned shack. With Sadie’s support, Walker finds the courage he needs to let his mother know he’s alive and to piece together what really happened on the day his sister was murdered.

Bereft isn’t a happy novel and perhaps that’s as it should be. World War I brought much suffering and death, and not just to those who were actually in combat.  It was supposed to be the War to End All Wars. Sadly, it wasn’t…   As we stop this Remembrance Day to reflect on those who’ve served bravely and lost their lives in war, I invite you to give back to them. Find a veterns’ charity you feel comfortable with and support it. It’s the very least we can do. Need ideas? Feel free to email me (margotkinberg(at)gmail(dot)com).

 

*NOTE: The title of this post is a line from Lena Ford and Ivor Novello’s Keep the Home Fires Burning.