Make Death Love Me: Review

The next time I do fight I'll make death love me, for I'll contend even with his pestilent scythe.... 
~from Shakepeare's Antony & Cleopatra
quoted in Make Death Love Me (1979) by Ruth Rendell

Rendell's book brings togeth two story lines. We are introduced first to Alan Groombridge, an unhappily married manager at a small bank in a Suffolk village. Groombridge is a bookish daydreamer. A man who, when his shotgun wedding brought him a dull and unfulfilling life, retreated to the pages of poetry and plays and the romantic classics of the past. Each week when he must get into the safe, he allows himself to fantasize about running off with 3000 pounds of the bank's money. That would be the amount he has calculated would allow him to spend one year of freedom doing exactly what he pleased in a small bed-sit somewhere--somewhere far away from his wife and his obnoxious father-in-law. But he knows he could never really do it. When you have a small bank with only two employees and one of the employees disappears at the same time as nearly half of the on-hand cash....well, it wouldn't take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out who took the cash.

Enter two young misfits who are down on their luck, without jobs or a suitable source of income and who happen to meet up with someone who gives them (unknowingly) just the information needed to plot a bank robbery at Groombridge's bank. They plan the robbery for lunchtime and manage to make off with 4000 pounds--and the leggy, busty teller Joyce who has the misfortune to see their faces. The young men panic and set Joyce up as an unwilling roommate while they try to figure out what to do with her so they can make their escape.

Meanwhile, Groombridge was busy fondling his 3000 pounds in a closet and takes the opportunity presented by the robbery to disappear as well. He runs away to London with his small fortune to finally realize his dream. He finds the perfect room in a basement filled to the brim with books and also finds his ideal woman and settles down to enjoy her and her books. The setup is perfect--the police and his family believe that both he and Joyce have been snatched by the robbers, so no one is really hunting him for his embezzlement. But the chivalrous streak that makes Groombridge love the poetry and classic romances and tales of knights-errant won't allow him to ignore clues to the robbers' identities when they present themselves. He can't quite bear to go to the police with his knowledge, after all they will make him give back the money and return to the bosom of his "loving" family, so he follows the trail himself hoping to concoct a story that will allow him to rescue Joyce and manage to maintain the new life he has begun to build. 

Rendell gives us a dark drama filled with enough tragedy for a Shakespeare play. There are the pathetic, panicky bank robbers and poor Groombridge and his dismal home life. The two bright spots are Joyce's strong character in the face of her imprisonment and the brief moments when Groombridge is allowed to live out his dream. This isn't really a mystery--there's no secret about who did what, but there is suspense in waiting to find out if the robbers will be caught and what will happen to Joyce and Alan Groombridge. Rendell provides deft characterizations and superb, if rather bleak atmosphere. ★★★ and a half.

**********
This fulfills the "Skull" category on the Silver Vintage Scavenger Hunt card.

March Read It Again, Sam Reviews

March Mount TBR Reviews

Please link up reviews below.

March Vintage Scavenger Hunt Reviews

The image linky seems to be working well for the Vintage Scavenger Hunt Challenge. Thanks to everyone who has been linking up their covers! I've really enjoyed seeing the images that relate to the challenge.

 

Tuesday Night Bloggers: The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey

The Tuesday Night Bloggers have been meeting now for several months with a group of us who are interested in golden age detective writers. We started with Agatha Christie back in late September and October and have now found ourselves looking forward to a March full of impossible crime delight with one of the masters of the form, John Dickson Carr (and his alter-ego as Carter Dickson). If you have thoughts on JDC that you'd like to share, feel free to join us over at Noah's Archives where Noah will soon be putting up our first master post for the group.

Spring is a tough season for me--primarily because it is graduate admission season at the university, one of the busiest times of the year in the English Department. This leaves me with less time than I'd like for the in-depth reviews that are the staple of the TNB gatherings. This week I decided to feature John Dickson's fictional account of The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, a book that I reviewed in April of last year.

In 1678 a high-profile, well-known London magistrate named Sir Edmund Godrey disappeared for five days. Last seen asking for directions to Primrose Hill, he vanishes for almost a week amid cries that he has done away with himself or, worse still, that the horrible "Papists" have kidnapped him and possibly murdered him. Then his body is found lying in a ditch with his neck broken, marks of strangulation by cord or neck cloth, and run through by his own sword...on, of all places, Primrose Hill. His chest is bruised and his body shows evidence of not having eaten for two days. Where has he been for five days? How did he get bruised? Why are his shoes polished and shiny when any path leading to the hill would have been rain-drenched and muddy? Catholics are eventually tried and executed for the murder, but it is impossible to believe that a "Papist Plot" really called for the death of Godfrey. If innocent men did pay for the crime, whose account should have been charged? John Dickson Carr examines the historical evidence and the theories of various historians and other interested parties to weave a fictionalized account of the crime.

I started out thinking that The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936) by John Dickson Carr should be filed under historical fiction/mystery. By the time I finished, I realized it is more accurately fictionalized history. Carr makes no claim that his telling of the story and the final solution is the unassailable historical truth, but he does set himself the task to be historically accurate while entertaining the mystery lover. He says in the "Preface for Connoisseurs in Murder: 

That this is the true solution, of course, nobody would be presumptuous enough to declare. It is merely the solution which, while trying to meet with the full requirements of the historian, shall also meet with the requirements of the Society of Connoisseurs in Murder....This record does not presume to be history, except insofar as it tries to be true.

It is possible that some of my Vintage Mystery Challengers will cry "foul" when I claim this for the historical mystery category on the Golden Bingo Card. But Carr himself tells us that he is attempting to meet all the standards of detective fiction while giving as accurate a historical record as possible and who am I to argue with one of the masters of the field? 
 
It is quite obvious that Carr has done his research. He not only gives us what he believes to be the solution to the ultimate questions--Who killed Sir Edmund Godfrey and Why--but he also supplies the reader with eleven other possible solutions complete with historical details that might lead one to at least consider them if not actually believe them. The historical detail accurately brings to life a bawdy, brutal time period full of plots and counter-plots. He informs us of all we need to know about the reign of King Charles II. I have no quibble there and if I were to rate this book on historical accuracy and interest alone, then there is no doubt that it would earn 4 1/2 to 5 stars. But...

Carr makes the claim that the murder of Godfrey is "a very nearly perfect mystery story" (emphasis mine). And, here, for me, this book falls short. Perhaps it is the deluge of historical novels in the last decade or two that has spoiled me--breathing life into historical characters of all sorts from queens and presidents to Thomas De Quincey and Noah's wife. Carr's book, after all, is one of the very first fictional retellings of true crime and, so, is an early venture into this genre. But loving Carr's detective fiction as I do, I expected more entertainment--or at the very least to be entertained while he was providing all the historical background for Charles II's reign and his Opposition and the "Papist Plot"...etc. I never completely felt like I was reading a story. It was very much like reading a history of the events--lots of telling what happened rather than allowing the actors to take the stage, act out the drama, and speak their lines. 

And even though Carr says (again in the preface) that there should be "no nods or elbow-joggings from the author" there are moments where it seems as though there is just a bit of a wink and a nudge...little do these historical figures know, but we know....For example, when Sir Edmund Godfrey's body is found and the men are carrying news to the local magistrate, Carr notes: "They did not know, at the moment, that the sword had been thrust through the body of a man already dead from being strangled." There aren't many of these instances, but they are there and they serve to distance the reader from the story. We are no longer caught up in the tale as it happens because we have knowledge that the players do not.

Overall, a very detailed look at an interesting moment in history and a convincing argument for the murderer of choice. Carr is very good, as always, with his explanation of the crime. The foreward and afterward by Douglas G. Greene are gems--excellent and informative framework for Carr's historical narrative.

February Wrap-Up & P.O.M. Award

I'm ready for another year of tracking reading progress and statistics for all things bookish on the Block. I will also be contributing to Kerrie's Crime Fiction Pick of the Month. So, here we go--let's take a look at February....

Total Books Read: 15
Total Pages: 3286 

Average Rating: 3.4 stars  
Top Rating: 5 stars 
Percentage by Female Authors: 40%
Percentage by US Authors: 33%
Percentage by non-US/non-British Authors:  13%
Percentage Mystery:  87% 
Percentage Fiction: 93%
Percentage written 2000+: 13%
Percentage of Rereads: 0%
Percentage Read for Challenges: 100% {It's easy to have every book count for a challenge when you sign up for as many as I do.}    
Number of Challenges fulfilled so far: 3 (10%)


AND, as mentioned above, Kerrie had us all set up for another year of Crime Fiction Favorites. What she was looking for is our Top Mystery Read for each month. February was a very full month--nearly all were mystery or mystery-/crime-related. Here are the books read:

The Clock Ticks On by Valentine Williams (3.5 stars)
The Clue of the Judas Tree by Leslie Ford (2.5 stars) 
The Doberman Wore Black by Barbara Moore (3 stars) 
The Fifth Passenger by Edward Young (4 stars) 
The Bridal Bed Murders by A. E. Martin (2 stars) 
The April Robin Murders by Craig Rice & Ed McBain (3 stars) 
The Silver Anniversary Murder by Lee Harris (3 stars) 
Poacher's Bag by Douglas Clark (4 stars) 
The Spiral Staircase by Ethel Lina White (4 stars) 
The Black Rustle by Constance & Gwenyth Little (3 stars)
The Bachelors of Broken Hill by Arthur W. Upfield (4 stars) 
Gently with the Painters by Alan Hunter (3 stars) The Calcutta Affair by George S. Elrick (3 stars)
 
And one non-fiction entry with a coffee table book celebrating the spy genre send-up: 

The Avengers: A Celebration by Marcus Hearn (5 stars)

This month four books earned four stars out of five: The Fifth Passenger the lone mystery novel for Edward Young, Poacher's Bag by Douglas Clark, The Spiral Staircase by Ethel Lina White and The Bachelor's of Broken Hill by Arthur W. Upfield. Both Clark consistently entertains with his novels featuring Masters and Green--but I have already awarded him with a coveted P.O.M. Award. White's book is a classic example of good suspense done right without blood and gore or explicit scenes. It is also a terrific character study with plenty of misdirection to allow the reader to question each person's motives and whether they are really what they seem. A very good read for a dark and stormy night of your own.  Upfield not only gives us the usual police procedural, this particular outing provides an interesting character study. Bony must first understand the character of the victims before he can begin to understand the character and psychology of the woman who kills them. The ending is a bit darker than the usual fare by Upfield--giving the reader a very intimate look at what could drive someone to kill in the manner portrayed in the book. These are all excellent reads and well worth the time, but this month's  P.O.M. Award goes to The Fifth Passenger by Young for providing such a delightful surprise from an author I knew nothing about. 

As mentioned above, this was Young's single foray into the espionage/mystery field. It is a pretty nifty story for a first and only fiction effort. Carrington's adventures as he tries to make contact with Howard--all while avoiding the men who are on Howard's trail (including one of Howard's oldest friends, Tony Gardner)--are played out like a chess match, particularly with Gardner. There is also a love interest for Carringtion that actually fulfills an important role in the game rather than serving as a distraction. Overall, a well-done, yet low-key espionage thriller.