Reading the Detectives discussion

Welcome the 16th, and last, in the Nigel Strangeways series, first published in 1966.

Private detective and poet Nigel Strangeways is staying at Cabot University, an Ivy League university near Boston, while he undertakes some research. There he encounters the Ahlberg brothers - Chester, Assistant Senior Tutor in the Business School, Mark, who lectures in the English Faculty and their half-brother, Josiah, a professor of Classics.

When one of the brothers is found murdered, the local police request Nigel's help in catching the killer, but little does Nigel know just how close he is to the murderer.

Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, who was born in County Laois, Ireland in 1904. After his mother died in 1906, he was brought up in London by his father, spending summer holidays with relatives in Wexford. He was educated at Sherborne School and Wadham College, Oxford, from which he graduated in 1927. Blake initially worked as a teacher to supplement his income from his poetry writing and he published his first Nigel Strangeways novel, A Question of Proof, in 1935.

Blake went on to write a further nineteen crime novels, all but four of which featured Nigel Strangeways, as well as numerous poetry collections and translations. During the Second World War he worked as a publications editor in the Ministry of Information, which he used as the basis for the Ministry of Morale in Minute for Murder, and after the war he joined the publishers Chatto & Windus as an editor and director. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968 and died in 1972 at the home of his friend, the writer Kingsley Amis.

We do intend to cover the non-series books by Nicholas Blake as future buddy reads:

A Tangled Web (1956)
aka Death and Daisy Bland
A Penknife in My Heart (1958)
The Deadly Joker (1963)
The Private Wound (1968)

Interested to hear everyone's thoughts on this, last in the series, and on the series in general.

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

As Judy has now finished, I will mention Nigel's infidelity. He seemed to think it was a fairly meaningless event. I was outraged on Claire's behalf!

I was also somewhat amazed by this casual infidelity - in one recent book Nigel kissed another woman and Clare didn't seem too bothered, but this goes way beyond that. Also, as Sukie is a possible suspect (maybe not by this point though?) it hardly seems right for him to do this as a detective, apart from cheating on Clare!

The whole episode also seems rather unlikely - Nigel has never been described as particularly handsome and must also be well into middle age by now, but Sukie is so busy swooning over him that she decides to ditch her current young boyfriend. I'm reminded that this was just after the era of the James Bond books - the whole idea of a beautiful woman throwing herself at him is very Bond-ish, I'd say.

Another unwelcome sexual plot point involving Sukie is the claim that she possibly enjoyed poet Charles's "attempted rape". Blake doesn't really make it clear exactly what happened, but several characters seem to think the whole thing is quite amusing.

I suppose it's another example of Blake and Nigel's worrying attitudes to women, which we've seen quite a few times during the series - I think there was a similar rape mention in one of the previous books?

Yes, you are right. I suspect this series contained a little wish fulfillment by Mr Day-Lewis...

Speaking of Day-Lewis under his own name, I've noticed he actually makes Nigel quote one of his own poems in this book!

When talking to Sukie about how she needs to stop mothering her brother, Nigel says, " 'Love is proved in the letting go' - that's what an English poet wrote. "

I googled it to see which English poet, and discovered it is from Walking Away by Day-Lewis - a lovely poem about watching children grow up. I'm pleased to have found the poem, but a bit surprised that the author used the quote! I found the poem on a GCSE revision page:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides...

Ah, narcissism is a trait which is coming back in fashion ;)

I was very annoyed by Nigel's infidelity not only for Clare's sake, but because Sukie seems young and vulnerable, Nigel is so much older, and he takes it casually. I agree there may have been a bit Day-Lewis' wish fulfillment.

I finished this today and it occurred to me this is the very day the Harvard (excuse me, Cabot) / Yale football game would be played if there were no pandemic.

Not my favorite of the series, partly because of the audio version. I disliked Strangeway's voice and the narrator pronounced Concord like the airplane, not the local pronunciation. Some of his accents were quite strange.

Between Nigel's voice and his infidelity I would have thought better of him if I had skipped the last book. On the positive side, I loved the North Station joke that started the book.

Very true about Sukie being young and vulnerable - this reminds me that Nigel also didn't seem too bothered about the very young woman involved in a damaging relationship in the previous book, but at least he didn't get involved with her himself!

Sandy, I had no idea that Concord was pronounced differently from Concorde - I've just looked it up and found suggestions it is pronounced like "Conquered". Is this right? Thank you for the info!

Yep, that is right, at least by local standards.

Thank you, Sandy! Always good to know how place names are said.

Yes, you would think that a tiny amount of research could give the correct pronounciation.

Hello, Susan, Judy and Sandy --

I finished Morning earlier this week, but only had time to marshal my thoughts this weekend...

Thank you for connecting a line from the author's own poetry, Judy; that slipped past me completely, which just underscores what a terrible classic detective I would make!

Agree fully with the consensus that Nigel blithely cheating on Clare (and the author allowing and encouraging it) is distasteful and likely wish-fulfillment (actual or imagined) on C. D-L's part. As I mention in my review, it is the relationship with Clare Massinger that the series reader has become invested over the last seven books.

I also spend a bit of time talking about the strange hybrid of 1930s cerebral puzzle and 1960s sex and psychology crime story that the author apparently felt needed to occur to keep his readers engaged. There is that interesting (and none too complimentary) exchange between Nigel and May about crime writing in Chapter Two.

Finally, I'll quickly mention the puzzle itself, which I thought was pretty rote and unremarkable when compared with the plots of the other titles. The high point for me was the killer reading Nigel's letter where he spells out his failing: his scheme is transparently academic, and as such has no ability to adapt to practical reality.

My blog review of the book is here:
https://www.jasonhalf.com/blog/book-r...

Thanks once again for giving me another mystery to visit (or revisit)!

Jason wrote: "Hello, Susan, Judy and Sandy --

I finished Morning earlier this week, but only had time to marshal my thoughts this weekend...

Thank you for connecting a line from the author's own poetry, Judy; ..."

Thank you for the link to your review. They are always interesting and insightful. Much of the book's plot has already escape my memory.

Thank you very much for your comments, Jason - I will be over to read your review shortly.

Like Sandy, I am also already forgotting the ins and outs of the mystery. I didn't think there was much choice of suspects in this book - I think it's clear fairly early on that it has to be one of the brothers, but I wasn't sure which one!

Judy wrote: "Like Sandy, I am also already forgotting the ins and outs of the mystery. I didn't think there was much choice of suspects in this book - I think it's clear fairly early on that it has to be one of the brothers, but I wasn't sure which one!"

Yes, utter forget-ibility of plot is hardly a sign of a good mystery! There was so much silly bluffing, with the manufactured practical jokes and the spilled poison, that it became rather tedious. I agree that choice of suspects was really limited. This is in part because so many of the other fringe characters felt undersketched and disposable, so they really aren't in contention as suspects, either by Nigel or by the reader.

Thank you, Sandy and Judy, for the kind mention of my review. Never feel obligated to read them, but posting them there helps me build my own little archive in my own little corner of the Internet, and perhaps guides new readers about what to read and avoid...

I really enjoy reading your reviews, Jason - and great that you are building your own archive, as you say. With this one, I agree with all your criticisms, especially the stereotyping of Sukie, but still enjoyed it, perhaps because I thought it was so much better than the previous book!

The aftermath of Nigel's letter is certainly exciting - I think sending it is probably a miscalculation, as things turn out, but it makes for a thrilling set-piece at the football game.

Judy wrote: "The aftermath of Nigel's letter is certainly exciting - I think sending it is probably a miscalculation, as things turn out, but it makes for a thrilling set-piece at the football game."

Thanks for the support, Judy!

I don't have the book available to skim quickly, but I think Nigel was expecting to push Chester into a suicidal fury with the letter. He planned to send the solution to the police right after, and said so in the letter as a way to show the killer he is trapped. But it does seem shortsighted not to consider that he may turn the anger upon others.

As for the (emphatically American) football game in the final pages: Fight fiercely, Harvard -- er, I mean, Cabot University...

Great review, Jason. Wonder why Day-Lewis thought he had to change the name to Cabot, unless he used more than one real person, hardly disguised?

Susan wrote: "Wonder why Day-Lewis thought he had to change the name to Cabot, unless he used more than one real person, hardly disguised?"

It could very well be that some character sketching is too close to the academics they're modeled after; that does seem like it's occurring in the (unflattering) personalities of some of the supporting cast.

Personally, I think inventing a fictitious location, even one based on an obvious corollary, frees a writer from being beholden to details like geography and also reduces the possibility of offense or insult to readers familiar with the place. (No writer wants to see readers complaining, "That's not where the Great Hall is situated off the quad!")

A more subtle observation is that satire always works best with a placeholder, so it's not Harvard that's a den of murderers and adulterers, but the imagined Cabot University. The only challenge is when those real landmarks are mixed in, like Emily Dickinson's birthplace and Walden Woods, and then it's a reminder that fiction is supposed to live awkwardly amongst fact, and it's then that Harvard's imposture is noticed...

I agree with everyone’s comments regarding Nigel’s infidelity with Sukie.

I also agree that there were too few real suspects. Not only was it obvious it was one of the brothers, it seemed obvious to me that it was Chester; Simply because Chester clearly tried to frame Mark.

I was also disappointed that a poet laureate made a basic mistake regarding a mixed metaphor! When Charles Reilly says ‘...when something happens to knock them off their beautifully laid tracks, they’re helpless as overturned beetles.’, Nigel comments that this is a mixed metaphor. However, it isn’t. That Americans travel on tracks is a metaphor; That, having been knocked off those tracks, they’re helpless AS overturned beetles is a simile!

Despite all this I nevertheless enjoyed reading this. I’ve missed reading most of the Strangeways books, but will try to catch up when I can.

Thanks for your thoughts Jason, and Nick. We will be reading the stand-alone Nicholas Blake books as well, so plenty of time to catch up.