Devil's Reckoning

Desmond Merrion #37

by Miles Burton

A village steeped in black magic, an aristocratic vicar and his wayward wife (whose corpse turns up on the family tomb), and a neat tying-in of local legend.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

AKA John Rhode, Cecil Waye, Cecil J.C. Street, I.O., F.O.O..
Cecil John Charles Street, MC, OBE, (1884 - January 1965), known as CJC Street and John Street, began his military career as an artillery officer in the British army. During the course of World War I, he became a propagandist for MI7, in which role he held the rank of Major. After the armistice, he alternated between Dublin and London during the Irish War of Independence as Information Officer for Dublin Castle, working closely with Lionel Curtis. He later earned his living as a prolific writer of detective novels.

He produced two long series of novels; one under the name of John Rhode featuring the forensic scientist Dr Priestley, and another under the name of Miles Burton featuring the investigator Desmond Merrion. Under the name Cecil Waye, Street produced four novels: The Figure of Eight; The End of the Chase; The Prime Minister's Pencil; and Murder at Monk's Barn. The Dr. Priestley novels were among the first after Sherlock Holmes to feature scientific detection of crime, such as analysing the mud on a suspect's shoes. Desmond Merrion is an amateur detective who works with Scotland Yard's Inspector Arnold.

Critic and author Julian Symons places this author as a prominent member of the "Humdrum" school of detective fiction. "Most of them came late to writing fiction, and few had much talent for it. They had some skill in constructing puzzles, nothing more, and ironically they fulfilled much better than S. S. Van Dine his dictum that the detective story properly belonged in the category of riddles or crossword puzzles. Most of the Humdrums were British, and among the best known of them were Major John Street.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspector Arnold is sent to investigate a woman's mysterious death in the small, oddly sinister village of Dellmead, and his friend Desmond Merrion, a gifted amateur, tags along. The one man who seems to have a motive is, Merrion declares, clearly innocent. When a second body is found, and then a third, it seems that events are replaying a centuries-old tragedy, but Merrion won't buy that either. To make the plot come out right, the author forces both detectives to make a really ridiculous error in their digging, which lost the book a star right there.

[Chavi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had the not uncommon and highly irritating flaw of making the main character intelligent by dunbing down his companion to an unbelievable degree. And what was even worse about this book is that Arnold is of Scotland Yard, so it was not at all believable that he would be to this degree incompetent.

And I do think, being from Scotland Yard, he would have traced the background of both the victim and the only stranger in the parts right from the get-go, as a matter of routine which would be so in line with Arnold's practicality to be a massive plot-hole of this book.

Because if he had done what is so in line with his routine-loving nature, then the mystery would have unravelled itself before Merrion's so-called imagination had a chance to knit convoluted patterns when a simple straight line could have got us there faster.

[Puzzle Doctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great lost classic. Good luck finding a copy. Full review at classicmystery.wordpress.com

[Crich70]

I liked this book. The plot wasn't overly complex but it kept me guessing right to the end as far as who the murderer was. Mr. Burton (a pen name of Cecil Street) does seem to have a formula that he used in his books but even having recognized that pattern I still can't guess who did it before the end of the book comes.