Sable Messenger

The Inspector Knollis Mysteries #2

by Francis Vivian

If Lesley Dexter had not been a snob her husband might have lived out his three-score-and-ten years.

Five years have passed without any major crime disturbing the provincial peace of the city of Burnham, and then, on an October night, a scream rends the midnight air in the residential suburb of Westford Bridge. P.C. Daker, hurrying to the door of Himalaya Villa in River Close, finds the tenant, Robert Dexter, lying dead across his own threshold. After a night's investigation, Sir Wilfrid Burrows, the Chief Constable, decides to call in New Scotland Yard.

Inspector Gordon Knollis, transferred to the Yard during the war years, is sent down to the city where he had once been the head of the C.I.D. He finds himself faced with a disturbing puzzle, a crime with no apparent motive, and even his knowledge of local conditions does little to help him in his endeavours to unravel it. There is a host of alibis, but he breaks them down one by one in his own inimitable way, eventually resolving the situation and providing a denouement that comes as a surprise even to his own assistant, Sergeant Ellis.

Sable Messenger was originally published in 1947. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Genres: Mystery

234 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1947

About the author

Francis Vivian, pseudonym of Arthur Ernest Ashley, was an English writer of detective stories. He was a founding member of the Nottingham Writers' Club. His series detectives are Insp. John Burnell, Sgt. Ronnie Drew and in most of his novels Insp. Gordon Knollis.

Reviews

[Francis]

Well typically British. We know pretty much nothing of the our protagonist/Inspector's personal life. No mention of a wife, friends, home, hobbies, or pets. Just his work habits. (Disclaimer, they often have acquaintances who specialize in something related to the ongoing investigation.)

The author follows the rules, 'it has to be fairly clued', but don't let that fool you, the clues are not there to allow you to figure out who the villain is. Unless, like the Inspector(s) you are really good at playing unrealistic hunches. The final denouement is often a real head scratcher as in ...you're kidding right?

On the other hand, they often present interesting plots/puzzles and if you suspend your imagination and think of watching late night movies from another era and not a recent one.

Well, like the movies, suspend the logical/judgmental side of your mind for awhile and they can often turn out to entertaining or fun or both, so yeah, for me entertaining and a bit of fun and therefore I conclude with four stars.

PS: I believe this review to be 'fairly clued'.

Thank You.

[Ann]

Snobbery and murder in suburbia! A man orders a knock at his door in the night, and is immediately blown away. Who would want to murder this mild-mannered functionary, whose only passion was Elizabethan poets and manuscripts? Inspector Knollis soon finds out that the entire street seems to be a hotbed of suburban vices : social climbing, adulterous flirtations, scheming in the local amateur dramatic society. The man's own wife is suspect. And so is the neighbor. And the neighbor's wife. And the victim's cousin, who was once his rival in love. Things are made even more complicated by the fact that the street lies close to the river, which could have enabled a silent escape. It takes a lot of painstaking sleuthing to figure it all out.

This was an old-fashioned puzzler, purely a police procedural, no brilliant amateurs with sudden flashes of insight !

[Eric]

"Red herrings are of two kinds. One kind tends—or intends—to lead us to the wrong person. The other merely intends leading us away from the right one." (Kindle Locations 1421-1422).

So says Inspector Gordon Knollis, back in his old stamping ground to investigate the odd murder of an amateur collector of books and manuscripts.

I did not find the fish in this one particularly scarlet. The plot, although it had its convolutions, was not very opaque, and the solution was clear to me quite early on.

Overall, not as gripping as the first in the series, so 3.5stars and recommendable as an untaxing puzzle.

Nevertheless, I shall read number three!

[Kristina]

I can't fathom why this has good reviews. I couldn't make it 1/3 of the way through. I have entire bookshelves of books written in this period and this is the most sexist one I've ever come across. All the female characters were utterly obnoxious and at one point a male character says he wishes he could bend a woman over his knee and hit her with a hairbrush. All the male characters are identical in personality and voice, and the whole thing is very scant on descriptions other than criticising the women.

[John]

Not a bad police procedural but rather slow.

[Allison Henle]

It's a clever mystery, but neither the lead detective nor his assistant were at all engaging - plus, I didn't find anybody I wanted to root for.