It's hard to know how to react to this odd book. An American woman is shot in a London hotel and a police manhunt goes out for her husband, James Houghton, who has fled the scene. The young Inspector Cauldron is placed in charge of the case when a more experienced officer is stricken with appendicitis. Cauldron begins by interrogating the wife's sister and the hotel servants, and as a result initiates a search of the local area. A man is found in a nearby restaurant, and identified as the wanted man by the sister-in-law. He claims he is not the man but won't give his name, and is taken into custody. When the sister-in-law positively identifies him, he is remanded for trial.
So begins the case proper. The man in custody is eventually identified as Eustace Limbrook, an impoverished engineer who is being pressured into drug dealing by the notorious Mildew Gang -- notorious to the police, that is, since everyone else regards Mr. Mildew as a respectable plutocrat. Limbrook has seized on the chance of imprisonment under another name as the safest recourse while the gang seeks him out. Approached by Cauldron, he reluctantly agrees to help pursue the gang. Meanwhile Cauldron is also cultivating Limbrook's lady friend Billie Wingrove with the same intention.
Various adventures take place. Billie is lured to a Soho restaurant and only escapes with the connivance of a reluctant gang member. Small fry are collected by the police. The hotel shooting is eventually cleared up. Mr. Mildew appears in person. Things are gathering to a head when -- the book ends abruptly with nothing resolved. Luckily there is a sequel; but Fowler's original readers must have felt very disgruntled when they got to that last page.
And the style? Freeman Wills Croft meets Harry Stephen Keeler. Cauldron is placid and colourless and his colleagues are competent and unemotional. As a police procedural it flows extremely well. Most of the names are normal, but some of them -- Mildew, Backwash, Cauldron -- are straight out of Dickens. The civilian hero and heroine show an interest in their financial reward which is quite alien to the usual gung-ho thriller. Similar oddities abound.
The verdict? An out-of-the-ordinary writer who is going to take more work to digest. I shall be going back for the sequel -- but not straight away.
Jon.| < Prev | Next > |
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