Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #28

THREE “BUCKET” MYSTERIES, by Eugene D. Goodwin

THREE “BUCKET” MYSTERIES, BY EUGENE D. GOODWINA Review

Anthony Berkeley: Trial and Error

Leo Perutz: The Master of the Day of Judgment

Stuart Turton: The Seven ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Recently I encountered the third of the three novels listed above. Upon reading it, I knew I had to review it for Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine and as long as I meant to do so, I thought I should add two more mysteries that are in their own way as unique.

Anthony Berkeley (1893-1971) was a prolific British mystery writer who wrote under several names, including Anthony Berkeley—his full name was Anthony Berkeley Cox—as well as A. Monmouth Platts and Francis Iles. Perhaps best known for his series of Roger Sheringham novels, one of which is The Poisoned Chocolates Case, cited in Act One of Anthony Shaffer’s play Sleuth.

While the posioned chocolates mystery is interesting in its own right, it is outstripped by Trial and Error, one of the most clever and unpredictable mysteries I’ve ever read. Not only is it ingeniously plotted with a wonderful protagonist, it also contains much sly understated humour.

Its central character Lawrence Todhunter is a fiftyish moderately wealthy gentleman who has done little with his life except write book reviews for a weekly London magazine whose principal is a friend. At a dinner party for a group of acquaintances, Todhunter proposes the hypothetical question, If you knew you must die soon, what would you do to make your remaining time worthwhile? To his amazement (with one abstention by a priest at the party) they say they’d find some terrible person who is making life miserable for good people and murder her or him, for if they are going to die, anyway, they do not fear the consequences of being caught.

What they don’t know is that Todhunter’s physician has told him that he has an aortic aneurism and cannot expect to live longer than a few more months, perhaps less or if he is very careful about his lifestyle, possibly as much as a year.

At first Todhunter does not intend to follow his friends’s advice, but then he comes upon an actress who is ruining the lives of a family he knows. So eventually, of course, the murder takes place.

But then things go wrong. Todhunter has decided to take a long cruise where he will see things he never saw before and if he dies along the way, fine. But when he reaches Tokyo he discovers that an innocent man has been arrested for the murder. Of course he returns immediately to London to turn himself in … but the authorities regard him as a crank. They have their killer. The innocent man is soon tried and sentenced to be hanged.

Thus Todhunter must become a detective and uncover clues to prove that I dunit!

Which he does, but the police still won’t take him seriously and since the criminal trial has already taken place, in a splendid further twist Todhunter must become involved in a civil trial to prove his guilt.

Trial and Error is a “f******d” and contains one further twist that I shall not spoil.

* * * *

Leo (Leopold) Perutz (1882-1957) was an Austrian critic, mathematician and novelist who wrote eleven unusual novels, some of them fantasies; two have not yet been translated into English. His work has been praised by such literary luminaries as Jorge Luis Borges, Anthony Boucher, Ian Fleming and Graham Greene. Karl Edward Wagner called The Master of the Day of Judgment (original title: Der Meister des Jungsten Tages) as one of the thirteen best non-supernatural horror novels (though it does skirt with the supernatural). The editor of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine Marvin Kaye found a copy of the Collier Mystery Classics edition and was actually reading it on his honeymoon!

Anthony Boucher, editor of the Collier series, said this of Perutz’s novel: “The Master of the Day of Judgment starts off as a formal period drama of Vienna in 1909, with officers and actors and adultery and horror—all suggestive of a play by Schnitzler. It shifts into a straight detective story, then into a tale of supernatural terror, then finally into an ending as Viennese as the beginning—if you recall that Vienna is the cradle of psychiatry. Like every story of Perutz’s, it creates its own form and sets, rather than follows, precedents.”

When I first read it, I could not accept its ending, but then I went back and reread it and found that its ending is well set up and positively inevitable. It is a rare performance when a genre novel is also a great work of art.

* * * *

Stuart Turton’s The Seven ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a complex mystery, but it is also a fantasy and as one nears its end the reader discovers that it is science fiction as well. I came upon the American hardcover edition of this book several weeks ago and was fascinated by the favorable reviews quoted on it. The one that struck me as most interesting is one critic’s characterization of it as (words approximate) ‘Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day.’ Though not entirely accurate—Turton’s style is much more polished than most of Christie’s works—it is a fair capsule of the unusualness of the book.

I did not buy it when I first came upon it because the price was more than I cared to pay, so I went online and discovered a much cheaper edition of the British paperback called The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Why the title change? I consulted Turton’s British agent and they explained that they learned that another U. S. book was being published: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I thought it a good reason for the titular alteration and I think 7 ½ makes it more interesting, anyway.

The book is long (though never tedious) with a plot so complicated that it is best to read it with as few interruptions as possible. There are many characters; fortunately, at the beginning of the book a complete cast list is included. I referred to it often while reading.

The Christie-like aspect of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is that the action takes place at Blackheath, a large decrepit estate that has been reopened by Lady Helena Hardcastle on the twentieth anniversary of her son’s murder. Many guests have been invited and the first night a masked ball will be held. At eleven p. m. Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered.

From this point on, Turton’s book bears no resemblance to a traditional mystery. One does not even know who the protagonist is for quite some time, though one assumes it is Doctor Sebastian Bell, whose actions are the focus of the first chapters. But it turns out that the real hero, so to speak, is Aiden Bishop, who finds himself trapped each day in the mind and body of one of the guests or staff members at the estate. He learns from a disguised “plague doctor” that several people, including Bishop, are meant to identify Evelyn Hardcastle’s murderer before she is killed. If not, when the second day dawns Bishop has become a different person—and Evelyn is alive again!!!

Bishop is told he (and the other “sleuths”) have eight days to identify the killer. If they do not the entire cycle will start all over again. However, among the guests—many of whom are dire scoundrels—is a footman who means to murder every one of the would-be detectives. As a matter of fact he does kill Bishop’s host more than once, after which of course he wakes up trapped within another person.

Turton further complicates matters by not making the story’s timeline linear. When we reach Day Four the story reverts to events on Day Two. Several times we go back and forth in such a manner.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is indeed an unusual, perhaps unique, mystery novel. Its characters are fascinating, its dialogue excellent, its setting described masterfully. And maybe you’ll even figure it out, though I doubt it.

I certainly didn’t.