Underground

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

‘A pleasure’ The Daily Telegraph‘Not a dull moment in it’ New York TimesThe much-revered crime writer J. Jefferson Farjeon’s mystery back in print for the first time in almost a centuryBy the author of the bestselling Mystery in White‘J. Jefferson Farjeon is quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures’ Dorothy L. Sayers
Perched up high on the edge of cliffs on Byford Moor, Northumberland, Coomber House was a desolate place. Strange sounds reverberated through its empty rooms and hallways; was it the booming of breaking waves crashing against the rocks below, or ghostly echoes from the old mine workings? Such is the setting for this puzzling country house mystery. But our story begins in London, three hundred miles south of the moor in a King’s Cross restaurant. Lowly clerk, Mr Brown is minding his own business when he overhears two men plotting to kidnap a Miss Joscelyn Marlowe. She is sitting a few tables away…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was born into a literary family in Hampstead, north west London in 1883. He was a prolific crime writer, writing over sixty novels over the course of thirty years, many published by William Collins & Sons and featuring in their hugely popular Collins Crime Club. Dorothy L. Sayers said of his work, ‘every word is entertaining.’ His best-known novel (and play) Number 17, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock. He died in 1955.

PRAISE FOR J. JEFFERSON FARJEON

Uninvited Guests
‘An ingenious country house mystery… absorbing’
New York Times

The Master Criminal
‘A Sherlock Holmes novel of the first degree’
New York Post

The ‘Z’ Murders
‘A classic serial killer mystery’
Martin Edwards

Mystery in White
‘The perfect book for a winter's evening, a cosy chair and an open fire’
The Daily Mail

Thirteen Guests
‘A country house mystery story firmly in the tradition of the “Golden Age of murder”… lively entertainment as well as a teasingly constructed mystery’
Martin Edwards

No 17
‘Works its way up by delicate graduations of horror to a climatic explosion of gun-play, diamonds and false identities, leaving the criminals safe in the hands of Scotland Yard’
New York Times

Genres: Mystery, Classics

260 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was always going to be a writer as, born in London, he was the son of Benjamin Leopold Farjeon who at the time was a well-known novelist whose other children were Eleanor Farjeon, who became a children's writer, and Herbert Farjeon, who became a playwright and who wrote the well-respected 'A Cricket Bag'.

The family were descended from Thomas Jefferson but it was his maternal grandfather, the American actor Joseph Jefferson, after whom Joseph was named. He was educated privately and at Peterborough Lodge and one of his early jobs, from 1910 to 1920, was doing some editorial work for the Amalgamated Press.

His first published work was in 1924 when Brentano's produced 'The Master Criminal', which is a tale of identity reversal involving two brothers, one a master detective, the other a master criminal. A New York Times reviewer commented favourably, "Mr. Farjeon displays a great deal of knowledge about story-telling and multiplies the interest of his plot through a terse, telling style and a rigid compression." This was the beginning of a career that would encompass over 80 published novels, ending with 'The Caravan Adventure' in 1955.

He also wrote a number of plays, some of which were filmed, most notably Number Seventeen which was produced by Alfred Hitchcock in 1932, and many short stories.

Many of his novels were in the mystery and detective genre although he was recognised as being one of the first novelists to entwine romance with crime. In addition he was known for his keen humour and flashing wit but he also used sinister and terrifying storylines quite freely. One critic for the Saturday Review of Literature reviewed one of his later books writing that it was "amusing, satirical, and [a] frequently hair-raising yarn of an author who got dangerously mixed up with his imaginary characters. Tricky."

When he died at Hove in Sussex in 1955 his obituary in The Times wrote of his "deserved popularity for ingenious and entertaining plots and characterization".

Gerry Wolstenholme
June 2010

Reviews

[Robyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gift card | Defies categorization, uses scene changes to create tension | This was difficult to get into, because the book doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a murder mystery, solving two deaths? Is it a spy thriller, keeping the secret plans out of dangerous hands? Is it romantic suspense, protecting the damsel from kidnap and ruin? It's trying to be all of these, but is actually none. The antagonists are never in doubt, the MacGuffin is barely included or resolved, the murders are given very brief page space, and the damsels are making their own decisions. The pace is kept up through the two common techniques of continuous movement of the characters--one goes to one house, another goes to another, a third goes to a pub, a fourth goes to Newcastle, then all rush from those spots to find the others, checking an Inn and a shed before meeting on the road and rushing off in different directions again--and having protagonists not explain things to each other, even when there's no reason not to. By the end it's a fairly enjoyable reading experience, assuming you can just be along for the ride, though it would be better without the heavy foreshadowing of the Mary Roberts Rinehart "had he but known" style.

[Arthur Fried · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not so Golden

This novel, first published in 1928, is marketed as a Golden Age murder mystery, but it reads more like an Edwardian adventure novel for boys. There are off-stage murders, wrestling and fist-fighting, plenty of explosions, a mad scientist, kidnapped maidens and a lurking foreign agent. Lots of action, but the characters are cardboard, the setting is barely sketched in, and the outcome is foreseeable. Not much mystery at all. I’ve read worse novels , but I’ve read a whole lot more that were better.

[Carissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Underground" is a cross between a detective story and a thriller. Desperate pursuits, sinister masterminds, and some good detective work.

One notable aspect of Farjeon's books, to me, is his frankness about the British class system. He includes members of the middle and lower-middle class in his books - clerks figure prominently in both this book and in Mystery in White. In both cases, though, Farjeon keeps them very much "in their place" - he writes about their secret dreams of heroic adventures or getting the girl, but is very clear that those are just dreams and the glory will actually go to the upper-class characters. This is quite different from American detective novels of the same period. For example, in this book, a clerk overhears the plot against the heroine and is the person who sets in motion the whole effort to aid her, at considerable financial and physical risk to himself (the person who is least able to be free with money). Yet it is made clear throughout the book that he has no chance of a romance with this girl - rather, the handsome upper-class fellow he meets along the way is the one destined to get the girl.

I knocked a star off the rating because Farjeon never explained what brought the heroine's father to the sinister house in the first place. The only explanation is that he was a detective who became convinced that there was something sketchy going on at this house. It's never explained why he took any interest in this house at all or how he became convinced that there was something to investigate. He is basically the MacGuffin of the book, and I thought that was rather sloppy.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Talk about a "Locked Room" mystery...at some point I quit trying to keep track of all the doors, cupboards, and rooms that were locked, unlocked, relocked and forced open, time and again until my head spun! Aside from the over abundance of locked rooms, there were other multiples of certain people and things that contributed to the feeling of imbalance and confusion. For instance, there were two fair damsels in distress, two creepy, old, decaying mansions, several revolvers turning up at strategic times, mysterious sounds and random lightning and thunder storms, not to mention a plethora o bewildering men who pop in and out of the scene like the doors in a bad French farce! The ridiculous premise was just as bad as the supporting (!) plot...two men bound for a hiking holiday would hardly drop everything to follow an unknown man who tells them about a partially overheard conversation, which he perceives as a threat to an unknown woman!
If this book had been more compelling, I would have tried harder to keep them all straight, (several of them were also sporting disguises!) but as it was, I gave up and realized that there's a reason why some "Golden Age" mysteries didn't make it as classics!

[Allen l Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story of love through mystery and adventure

Farjeon always delivers. I seem to become glued to the book on all of his mysteries.
A lot happens and I enjoyed every instance

[Patricia Roberts-Miller]

A fun book if you like classic thrillers. It isn't really a mystery, as much as something in the Bulldog Drummond vein. Better written and less racist than the Drummond stories, so that's a plus.