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Colonel Gethryn #4
The Noose
This Detective Story Club classic includes an introduction by H. R. F. Keating, which first appeared in the Crime Club’s 1985 ‘Disappearing Detectives’ series.
Colonel Anthony Gethryn is recalled from a holiday in Spain to solve a murder in the November fogs of London. He finds that his wife is sheltering Mrs Bronson, whose husband is in prison awaiting execution for the murder of a gamekeeper six months before. A petition for reprieve has been rejected and Bronson will shortly hang for someone else’s crime. Convinced by Mrs Bronson of her husband’s innocence, Gethryn embarks on a seemingly hopeless race against time to overthrow the guilty verdict and find the real murderer – and he has only ten days before Bronson’s date with the hangman’s noose.
The Noose saw the return of Philip MacDonald’s gentleman detective Anthony Ruthven Gethryn, whose debut in The Rasp six years earlier had been a big success. Judged to be his best book yet, The Noose had the distinction of being chosen as the first book to be published in Collins’ Crime Club in May 1930, helping to immortalise it as one of the seminal books of the crime genre.
Colonel Anthony Gethryn is recalled from a holiday in Spain to solve a murder in the November fogs of London. He finds that his wife is sheltering Mrs Bronson, whose husband is in prison awaiting execution for the murder of a gamekeeper six months before. A petition for reprieve has been rejected and Bronson will shortly hang for someone else’s crime. Convinced by Mrs Bronson of her husband’s innocence, Gethryn embarks on a seemingly hopeless race against time to overthrow the guilty verdict and find the real murderer – and he has only ten days before Bronson’s date with the hangman’s noose.
The Noose saw the return of Philip MacDonald’s gentleman detective Anthony Ruthven Gethryn, whose debut in The Rasp six years earlier had been a big success. Judged to be his best book yet, The Noose had the distinction of being chosen as the first book to be published in Collins’ Crime Club in May 1930, helping to immortalise it as one of the seminal books of the crime genre.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1930
12 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
Philip MacDonald
152 books17 followersPhilip MacDonald (who some give as 1896 or 1899 as his date of birth) was the grandson of the writer George MacDonald and son of the author Ronald MacDonald and the actress Constance Robertson.
During World War I he served with the British cavalry in Mesopotamia, later trained horses for the army, and was a show jumper. He also raised Great Danes. After marrying the writer F. Ruth Howard, he moved to Hollywood in 1931. He was one of the most popular mystery writers of the 1930s, and between 1931 and 1963 wrote many screenplays along with a few radio and television scripts.
His detective novels, particularly those featuring his series detective Anthony Gethryn, are primarily "whodunnits" with the occasional locked room mystery. His first detective novel was 'The Rasp' (1924), in which he introduced his character Anthony Gethryn.
In later years MacDonald wrote television scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents ('Malice Domestic', 1957) and Perry Mason ('The Case of the Terrified Typist', 1958).
He twice received an Edgar Award for Best Short Story: in 1953, for 'Something to Hide', and in 1956, for 'Dream No More'. Indeed many critics felt that his short story writing was superior to his novels and they did win five second prizes in the annual contests held by 'Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'.
He also wrote under the pseudonyms Oliver Fleming, Anthony Lawless, Martin Porlock, W.J. Stuart and Warren Stuart.
During World War I he served with the British cavalry in Mesopotamia, later trained horses for the army, and was a show jumper. He also raised Great Danes. After marrying the writer F. Ruth Howard, he moved to Hollywood in 1931. He was one of the most popular mystery writers of the 1930s, and between 1931 and 1963 wrote many screenplays along with a few radio and television scripts.
His detective novels, particularly those featuring his series detective Anthony Gethryn, are primarily "whodunnits" with the occasional locked room mystery. His first detective novel was 'The Rasp' (1924), in which he introduced his character Anthony Gethryn.
In later years MacDonald wrote television scripts for Alfred Hitchcock Presents ('Malice Domestic', 1957) and Perry Mason ('The Case of the Terrified Typist', 1958).
He twice received an Edgar Award for Best Short Story: in 1953, for 'Something to Hide', and in 1956, for 'Dream No More'. Indeed many critics felt that his short story writing was superior to his novels and they did win five second prizes in the annual contests held by 'Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'.
He also wrote under the pseudonyms Oliver Fleming, Anthony Lawless, Martin Porlock, W.J. Stuart and Warren Stuart.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 23, 2017
Okay, I found this overall an interesting read, and I was really impressed with the ending and the surprise of who the murderer was which I definitely didn't guess. However, a lot of the book seemed to drag for me and I found it was mostly filler recapping the same points. I was rather disappointed as this was one of my first Detective Club offerings, but I should think I will try and pick up some others, just maybe no more by Philip MacDonald.
January 16, 2022
Daniel Bronson is to be hanged for murder in five days time. With an appeal and a petition for clemency having failed, his wife , Selma, is convinced that only Anthony Gethryn can save the man she knows is innocent.
What follows is not so much a classic detective race against time as a classic expose of a monstrous male ego at work.
On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, Gethryn decides that Bronson is innocent and sets off to direct a search for evidence to prove the thesis. Conveniently, he has the cooperation of Scotland Yard and the local Chief Constable, and the able assistance of his wife, CDI Pike (handily on holiday), and two ace reporters from his own newspaper, as well as all his War Office and other contacts.
Despite this formidable array of helpers, Gethryn guesses the solution and outs the murderer strictly on his own, still with no tangible evidence, until a witnessed confession is made.
So, for me, this was not a great read. Even if I had not worked out the whodunnit and why almost from as soon as they appeared, the whole set up was just so badly done as to be laughable. The police case against Bronson was tenuously based on circumstantial evidence and gossip, and his defence as presented here was ludicrously incompetent. A wife who so ardently believed in her husband's innocence would not have waited until after the verdict, appeal and petition before enlisting other help.
3.25 stars.
What follows is not so much a classic detective race against time as a classic expose of a monstrous male ego at work.
On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, Gethryn decides that Bronson is innocent and sets off to direct a search for evidence to prove the thesis. Conveniently, he has the cooperation of Scotland Yard and the local Chief Constable, and the able assistance of his wife, CDI Pike (handily on holiday), and two ace reporters from his own newspaper, as well as all his War Office and other contacts.
Despite this formidable array of helpers, Gethryn guesses the solution and outs the murderer strictly on his own, still with no tangible evidence, until a witnessed confession is made.
So, for me, this was not a great read. Even if I had not worked out the whodunnit and why almost from as soon as they appeared, the whole set up was just so badly done as to be laughable. The police case against Bronson was tenuously based on circumstantial evidence and gossip, and his defence as presented here was ludicrously incompetent. A wife who so ardently believed in her husband's innocence would not have waited until after the verdict, appeal and petition before enlisting other help.
3.25 stars.
December 7, 2023
Very similar plot line to the later ‘The List of Adrian Messenger.’
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 27, 2021
As with other review comments, I found the style a bit stilted. Old fashioned can be very readable as in the Sherlock Holmes stories, but this seemed arid and the characters rather one dimensional, all in thrall to the mysterious processes of the great mans mind. Nice twist to the ending, but lots of casting about in the process, never fully explained which cover up the real stages of detection which are revealed by the great detective, a style which does get old as his numerous assistants are repeatedly left trailing in his wake. The gentleman sleuth has perhaps had its time for our more egalitarian age.
September 10, 2021
This is a 1930 book by British author Philip MacDonald and is the fourth book in his amateur detective Anthony Gethryn series. It is a relatively short book. Gethryn, a British ex-secret service agent who is independently wealthy and is the co-owner of a weekly newspaper called The Owl, has a good working relationship with Scotland Yard and often helps the official police to solve their cases. The version I read has a very good introduction written in 1985 by mystery author and historian H.R.F. Keating which gave a good background on Gethryn. The plot of the book is essentially a race against time to prove a wrongfully convicted man (Daniel Bronson) was innocent and to find the real murderer before Bronson is hanged in five days. The setting is in late 1920s in the Village of Farrow outside London. While the story and the plot are interesting, I am disappointed in the melodramatic way MacDonald writes. MacDonald tried to introduce human sentimentalities to the logician Gethryn but overdid it so it came across as over the top melodramatic. Also, I do not like the way MacDonald set up Gethryn to solve his case. Instead of presenting the facts and evidence, then have the detective use those to come up with a theory, MacDonald had Gethryn lay out his bold assumption and theory of the case before he has done an iota of detection, and the book is just how Gethryn found facts to support his theory. I rate it a 3.5 Star. One thing that I do find useful is MacDonald set out in the beginning of the book a list of “Characters in the Story” which makes it quite easy for readers to follow the cast of characters in the story.
Spoiler Alert. A man called Daniel Bronson was framed and wrongfully convicted of the murder of a man called Blackatter. Five days before Branson’s scheduled hanging (walking the “nine o’clock walk”), his wife, Selma Bronson, reached out to Anthony Gethryn and his wife Lucia for help. Selma convinced Anthony and Lucia that Daniel was innocent. What follows is a five-day mad rush to try to find the real murderer. Anthony made an important assumption early on that the real murderer chose to frame Bronson instead of somebody else because the murderer wanted both Blackatter and Bronson dead (instead of just Blackatter). Therefore, there must be a connection among the murderer, Blackatter and Bronson. Anthony quickly put together a team and set up camp at the Horse and Hound Inn, a hotel and pub owned by the Bronsons. In addition to Anthony and Lucia, Anthony also drafted two investigative reporters on the staff of his newspaper The Owl to help (Francis Dyson and Walter Flood). Chief Detective Inspector Arnold Pike of Scotland Yard CID, who was on vacation, also volunteered his service. Anthony then assigned his team to pursue different lines of inquiries at the same time. In the end, in order to trap his suspected murderer into a confession, Anthony set himself up to be “alone” with the murderer and tricked him into trying to kill Anthony to silence him (which, of course, failed). It turns out the murderer is none other than the local police chief, Chief Constable Geoffrey Ravenscourt, a local big wig. The root cause of the events traced back to March 1918, when the real murderer Ravenscourt, the murdered man Blackatter, and the framed man Bronson were all serving in France with the British Army (but in different regiments). Happenstance put the three in a situation where Blackatter and Bronson witnessed Ravenscourt’s cowardliness in battle. Later, Ravenscourt’s actions were misinterpreted as bravery, and he was awarded a Victoria Cross for it. Years later, Ravenscourt has become a very successful man in society. Both Blackatter and Bronson ended up in the same village with Ravenscourt. While Bronson was not bothered with Ravenscourt’s getting the VC and did not see what it has anything to do with him, Blackatter saw an opportunity and started blackmailing Ravenscourt, who then started paying him to avoid a scandal that may affect his social status. Finally, Ravenscourt got tired of the blackmailing and decided to kill Blackatter. However, Ravenscourt was afraid Bronson would put two and two together. So, he set up a quite ingenious scheme to kill Blackatter and framed Bronson for the murder, in order to kill two birds with one stone. That plan, however, failed when Gethryn intervened and solved the case and saved Bronson from the hangman. In the end, in classic 1930s cozy mystery fashion when a murderer is of high social status, he committed suicide before he can be arrested, leaving a full written confession behind.
Spoiler Alert. A man called Daniel Bronson was framed and wrongfully convicted of the murder of a man called Blackatter. Five days before Branson’s scheduled hanging (walking the “nine o’clock walk”), his wife, Selma Bronson, reached out to Anthony Gethryn and his wife Lucia for help. Selma convinced Anthony and Lucia that Daniel was innocent. What follows is a five-day mad rush to try to find the real murderer. Anthony made an important assumption early on that the real murderer chose to frame Bronson instead of somebody else because the murderer wanted both Blackatter and Bronson dead (instead of just Blackatter). Therefore, there must be a connection among the murderer, Blackatter and Bronson. Anthony quickly put together a team and set up camp at the Horse and Hound Inn, a hotel and pub owned by the Bronsons. In addition to Anthony and Lucia, Anthony also drafted two investigative reporters on the staff of his newspaper The Owl to help (Francis Dyson and Walter Flood). Chief Detective Inspector Arnold Pike of Scotland Yard CID, who was on vacation, also volunteered his service. Anthony then assigned his team to pursue different lines of inquiries at the same time. In the end, in order to trap his suspected murderer into a confession, Anthony set himself up to be “alone” with the murderer and tricked him into trying to kill Anthony to silence him (which, of course, failed). It turns out the murderer is none other than the local police chief, Chief Constable Geoffrey Ravenscourt, a local big wig. The root cause of the events traced back to March 1918, when the real murderer Ravenscourt, the murdered man Blackatter, and the framed man Bronson were all serving in France with the British Army (but in different regiments). Happenstance put the three in a situation where Blackatter and Bronson witnessed Ravenscourt’s cowardliness in battle. Later, Ravenscourt’s actions were misinterpreted as bravery, and he was awarded a Victoria Cross for it. Years later, Ravenscourt has become a very successful man in society. Both Blackatter and Bronson ended up in the same village with Ravenscourt. While Bronson was not bothered with Ravenscourt’s getting the VC and did not see what it has anything to do with him, Blackatter saw an opportunity and started blackmailing Ravenscourt, who then started paying him to avoid a scandal that may affect his social status. Finally, Ravenscourt got tired of the blackmailing and decided to kill Blackatter. However, Ravenscourt was afraid Bronson would put two and two together. So, he set up a quite ingenious scheme to kill Blackatter and framed Bronson for the murder, in order to kill two birds with one stone. That plan, however, failed when Gethryn intervened and solved the case and saved Bronson from the hangman. In the end, in classic 1930s cozy mystery fashion when a murderer is of high social status, he committed suicide before he can be arrested, leaving a full written confession behind.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 2, 2022
As a lover of traditional British crime fiction I had high hopes of this novel which, according to its cover, was ‘the very first choice of The Crime Club [an imprint of the publisher William Collins] and has rarely been excelled since’. Perhaps the questionable use of the verb ‘to excel’ in that phrase should have alerted me to the poor quality of the book. It’s extremely dull and boring and a real drudge. I did finish it but it took me several weeks (when I would normally get through such a novel in a matter of days). The plot features a detective, Anthony Gethryn, who is in a race against time to clear a condemned man, Bronson, who faces being hanged in ten days for the murder of a gamekeeper some six months earlier. Gethryn’s wife persuades her reluctant husband to investigate the case and to try to find the real murderer.
The principal problem is Philip MacDonald’s writing style which, if I had any, would have had me tearing my hair out. It’s dreary and featureless. His characterisation is one-dimensional. His dialogue seems completely unrealistic. There is very little tension. As a result, I simply did not care about Gethryn’s attempt to redress what might have been an injustice or about Bronson’s fate. A page-turner this novel most definitely is not! And readability is surely the one characteristic that any work of fiction should have in abundance, particularly one which does not purport to be serious literature but merely simple entertainment. To be honest, the more I read some of the recently republished crime fiction of the 1930s and 1940s (the British Library Crime Classics imprint is seemingly thriving), the more I realise why much of it fell into neglect. A lot of humdrum stuff was published. After reading ‘The Noose’, it’s really not hard to see why the reputation of Agatha Christie is still so high. She was undoubtedly head and shoulders above almost all her contemporaries. Avoid this novel at all costs.
The principal problem is Philip MacDonald’s writing style which, if I had any, would have had me tearing my hair out. It’s dreary and featureless. His characterisation is one-dimensional. His dialogue seems completely unrealistic. There is very little tension. As a result, I simply did not care about Gethryn’s attempt to redress what might have been an injustice or about Bronson’s fate. A page-turner this novel most definitely is not! And readability is surely the one characteristic that any work of fiction should have in abundance, particularly one which does not purport to be serious literature but merely simple entertainment. To be honest, the more I read some of the recently republished crime fiction of the 1930s and 1940s (the British Library Crime Classics imprint is seemingly thriving), the more I realise why much of it fell into neglect. A lot of humdrum stuff was published. After reading ‘The Noose’, it’s really not hard to see why the reputation of Agatha Christie is still so high. She was undoubtedly head and shoulders above almost all her contemporaries. Avoid this novel at all costs.
May 28, 2022
Entertaining and engaging but stretched out. I estimate its 213 pages could have been reduced to 150 without negatively impacting the story. MacDonald pads it with detailed descriptions of irrelevant things and by spending an inordinate amount of time on the behaviour of the wife of the unjustly convicted prisoner. If I had been his editor, I would have had a long and pointed conversation with the author. Not his best effort by a long shot.
June 3, 2017
I found this decidedly inferior to Warrant for X and even to Murder Gone Mad. Bogged down by irrelevant details and devoid of the suspense I have looked forward to in Colonel Gethryn's chase for the villain. Just a classic run-of-the-mill mystery.
February 21, 2021
A classic race against time story. Anthony Gethryn has just a matter of days to save an innocent man from the gallows, and the only way to do that is to ferret out the real killer. A neatly put together crime thriller.
June 19, 2016
Two women believe in Bronson's innocence--but he is going to be hanged for murder in five days. Anthony Gethryn is convinced by the women (one of whom is his wife) and enlists a few friends to give his investigation a fighting chance. But the only way to save Bronson is to find the real murderer and proof of his guilt. The copy of the book I have indicates a last chapter beginning on page 309, but the book ends, with a confession by a surprising culprit, on page 308. Perhaps there was a page or two missing.
December 31, 2021
A good story, though strangely old-fashioned. There are a couple of hurdles to negotiate before you get into the worth of the story: too much of the first chapter's devoted to establishing the greatness of the great detective, which soon becomes frankly tiresome; and the writing style of the second chapter reads like it's a translation from the French, which is most odd. There are occasional re-eruptions later on in the book but these are easily navigable.
June 9, 2014
This felt too conversational to be a satisfying crime mystery. I did not engage with the characters or the plot.
June 13, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews