Читать книгу The Deductions of Colonel Gore - Lynn Brock - Страница 6

ALEXANDER PATRICK MCALLISTER’S literary career had had a very promising start. Born in Dublin in 1877 and educated at Clongowes Wood College, he later obtained an Honours Degree at the Royal University and was appointed chief clerk shortly after the inception of the National University of Ireland. His stage plays Irene Wycherly (1906) and At the Barn (1912), both written under the pseudonym Anthony P. Wharton, became great successes both in London and on Broadway.

Following these two hits, McAllister continued to write, but none of his subsequent plays could revive his early fame. He and his wife Cicely moved from London to Guildford, where they were to run a pub called The Jolly Farmer, and at the age of 46 he wrote his first detective novel, The Deductions of Colonel Gore (1924), under the pseudonym Lynn Brock. By this time, his early fame as a playwright had faded and he appears to have turned his hand to crime fiction simply to improve his finances at a time when detective books had begun to outsell all others. Nevertheless, the book was sold to William Collins in the UK and Harper & Brothers in the US, and became so successful that ‘Lynn Brock’ lived on to publish thirteen detective novels, seven of which featured his titular hero-detective Colonel Wickham Gore.

Brock’s complex plots and witty style won the praise of many critics including Dorothy L. Sayers and S. S. Van Dine, and his mysteries were often reprinted and widely translated. Despite their fame, however, the novels slid into obscurity shortly after the end of the Second World War—unjustly, some might suggest. Several recent reviews have criticised his novels as cliché-studded, dull affairs overloaded with Golden Age formulas and stereotypes. These reviews have missed the point: Brock actually played his part in the creation of those classic detective fiction patterns now so familiar and dear to us. He wasn’t a mere imitator of the genre, but rather experimented with existing formulas long before they became formulaic.

Comparison with some of his fellow-writers shows that Brock was an ‘early bird’ in the genre. Colonel Gore took the stage three years before Sherlock Holmes’ last appearance in ‘The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place’; he preceded the debut of S. S. Van Dine’s Philo Vance in The Benson Murder Case by two years, and Anthony Berkeley’s Roger Sheringham in The Layton Court Mystery, John Rhode’s Dr Priestley in The Paddington Mystery and Anthony Wynne’s Dr Hailey in The Mystery of the Evil Eye by one year. All these authors (and many more not mentioned here) established serial detectives in the fashion of the times, and Brock’s Colonel Gore appears to fit into this category remarkably well.

But was he really originally meant to be just another amateur detective with a military background like Philip MacDonald’s Anthony Gethryn, who made his debut in The Rasp the same year as Colonel Gore? It is reasonable to doubt that. Gore lacks too many of the typical characteristics of the traditional hero-detective. He is not a well-to-do super sleuth like Lord Peter Wimsey or Hercule Poirot. He has no profession that could help him solve crimes like the many doctors and scholars in the trade. He has no sidekick and no ally at Scotland Yard and, to cap it all, absolutely no talent for detecting! Gore makes mistakes. Many mistakes. In fact, he finds so many wrong solutions in The Deductions of Colonel Gore that the real solution ends up being the only one that is left.

T. S. Eliot called Gore ‘too stupid’. But he may have missed the parody in the title and the satirical undertones of Gore’s first adventure in his critique. The Deductions of Colonel Gore reminds one of Ronald A. Knox’s The Viaduct Murder (1925), where the four protagonists tumble from one wrong conclusion to the next trying to solve a murder on a golf course. Both books share the same tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the science of deduction and a tendency to spoof the methods of the great Sherlock Holmes. In fact, this similarity of approach suggests that Brock, like Knox, had intended to write a non-series book. Knox introduced a new detective in his next novel, The Three Taps (1927), whereas Brock—perhaps surprised by the success of his debut—elected for the security of continuing to develop his eponymous character. Colonel Gore’s Second Case (1925) shows Brock working to transform Gore into a sustainable serial protagonist, culminating in Gore finding a sidekick and, later in the series, establishing a detective agency in London. But all that is in the future.

Colonel Gore steps into his first adventure having just returned from Africa and looking forward to meeting many of his old friends. The story begins with a perfectly conventional dinner party. However, before the evening is over, ‘blackmail’ and ‘murder’ complete the guest list. These are not the only gruesome elements in the story. T. S. Eliot once mentioned the ‘extremely nasty people’ in Brock’s novels, and it is true that the author evokes a rather dark and pessimistic view of human nature. Nevertheless, The Deductions of Colonel Gore is a rip-roaring and, from today’s point of view, wonderfully old-fashioned mystery. It includes an archaic African murder weapon and a constantly confused detective who changes his mind about the possible culprit with each new clue he uncovers.

It is important to note that Brock’s stories contain some antiquated stereotypes of Jews and Africans. Such stereotypes would be intolerable in fiction written today, but were unfortunately not uncommon in the 1920s when these stories were published, and like similar writings of their era must be considered within their historical context.

The Deductions of Colonel Gore was reissued as Book 31 in Collins’ popular Detective Story Club in July 1930, and was joined by reprints of his second and third cases the following year. This new edition now includes for the first time the only published Colonel Gore short story, ‘Too Much Imagination’, which first appeared in Flynn’s weekly magazine on 30 January 1926. It follows Gore’s (by now more serious) deductions in a country house murder case. Connoisseurs of his adventures will be interested to note that the story appears to be a sketchy draft of Colonel Gore’s Third Case (1927, published in the USA as The Kink)—as well as the playful appearance of the author’s own home, The Jolly Farmer. It was in Guildford that McAllister wrote his first ‘Lynn Brock’ mystery and it is thus not surprising that most of his Colonel Gore adventures are set in or near Surrey.

In 1932, the innovative psychological novel Nightmare began a run of standalone books from Brock, although it was not quite the end for Gore: the Colonel returned after a break of ten years in his swan song, The Stoat: Colonel Gore’s Queerest Case (1940). Three years later, on 6 April 1943, Alexander Patrick McAllister died at the age of 66 at Herrison House, a hospital near the Dorset village of Charminster, ending a literary career very different from the one he had started, but no less successful for all that.

ROB REEF

February 2018