Philip MacDonald : The List of Adrian Messenger, 1959

 

Philip MacDonald, one of the best writers of GAD, wrote, in 1959, this novel, the last of his literary production.

General Firth, deputy head of the CID at Scotland Yard, accepts a rather unusual request from his friend Adrian Messenger, an English writer, with a military past, and related to the Marquises De Gleneyre: to discreetly investigate a list of ten names, collecting material on them. The reason behind it would be an alleged guilt "far older than any political machination". Adrian leaves for America (California) and Canada, where he should find answers to his suspicions, but on his return, he is the victim of an attack on the plane he is traveling on: the plane crashes into the sea, but he, a woman, and a journalist, Raoul St. Denis, are saved. However, after Messenger, as if in a trance, has repeated several times some nonsense words, he dies at sea, while Raoul is saved and with him the woman. Firth then turns to his direct superior at the CID, the commander of the CID, Sir Egbert Lucas, submitting to him what Messenger had asked of him, especially since more than one source claims that Messenger was the target of the attack (which however killed 43 other people). In turn, Lucas turns to Anthony Gethryn, who has worked successfully at the CID several times, and they unravel more than one skein. With the results already collected by Firth, and with the help of several subordinates (the journalist Flood, the Superintendent of the CID Pyke and Sergeant Seymour) he manages to give an explanation of the list: almost all of them, 9 of the list, all died in accidental circumstances (elevator, car, train derailment, shipwreck, etc..) except one, Slattery, who despite being disabled in war, is alive. Slattery is the only one who fought in France, while all the other 9 fought in India and Burma. When they are trying to protect Slattery thinking that he could be the last victim, it happens that they realize that this Slattery is not the one Messenger had indicated, but his cousin: the real Slattery had also died in accidental circumstances, and he had also fought in Burma, against the Japanese. Having established a connection between the 10, it is learned that Messenger had also fought with them in Burma. Who on earth had an interest in killing 11 people, and to kill them did not take care to suppress about 60 other innocent people?

Gethryn will begin a 360° detective investigation, which by deciphering the last words spoken at sea by Messenger, will lead him to the trail of a military life novel that Messenger was completing to publish it, and to compromising photos, which will have as consequences, another victim (Messenger's typist-secretary). It will be discovered that a member of the regiment in which the 11 killed had served, had betrayed them by selling them to the Japanese. then after years he had killed them: why? One would have expected the opposite, as Sir Lucas reproaches Gethryn: that the betrayed had decided to take revenge on the traitor, and instead... But why does this happen? Gethryn will discover the real reason. a hereditary succession that would have led the criminal to become a Marquis, after having also eliminated the old Marquis and tried to eliminate the fifteen-year-old Viscount, heir to the Marquisate, if Gethryn had not discovered it and in a convulsive finale, forced to flee with no return.
This is a sort of summa of MacDonald: he who can be said to have invented the serial killer, in Murder Gone Mad, and in X v. Rex, creates in this novel, the perfect murder and the perfect murderer, when it had only been hypothesized many times but never realized: the result of a superfine plan built at the table, carried out over several years, with the sole purpose of returning to hold that power that his father had lost. Yes because, in this novel, in addition to there being what seems to be a serial killer but is not, and instead is a supercriminal, for whom five, ten, twenty, fifty, sixty victims are nothing, perhaps just a number (to paraphrase an old famous phrase: one death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic), there is also the return of the heir, one of the most recurring motifs of the most classic British mystery. But there is also the love story between Raoul St Denis, a French journalist, and Jocelyn Messenger, Adrian's sister-in-law and his brother's widower. And also a tight police investigation (should we say a classic precedural?), which makes use of Gethryn's acumen, but also of the collaboration of his closest aides, who also go to various places in Great Britain, to gather information. It will be Gethryn, who in the hypotheses of resolution of the sentences said by Messenger and misunderstood by Raoul who is French, who has also forgotten other vital ones for the resolution of the meaning, to gradually decipher the true meaning, until he discovers a diabolical plan. In which all the carnage had no other purpose than to eliminate possible witnesses of a terrible event that occurred about fifteen years before, who perhaps would never have known of the existence of their informer, but who if they had known, could have become very dangerous witnesses and derail the rise to the marquisate of their former comrade in arms.

And what could have become, according to the murderer's plans, the last act, that is, the death of the very young heir, due to a fatal accident, turns into a resounding victory for Gethryn, with the disorderly escape of the murderer who then dies in a car accident. Which, however, does not seem to be a casual accident: Gethryn, with the help of his French partisan friends, makes sure that someone who could never have been convicted for his numerous crimes, because he had taken care not to leave traces of his passage, disappears forever? Philip MacDonald does not say it clearly. It seems to me, however, that he, at the conclusion of his literary experience, imitating Christie who had the perfect murderer killed, by a Poirot much older in Curtain, arrives at the same conclusions, or rather seems to arrive at them. I repeat. The interpretation of the kiler's death is entrusted to the reader's sensitivity. In other words, to defeat the perfect murderer, and stop him and make him pay for what no earthly judge could ever do, MacDonald, unlike Agatha who clearly says that Poirot kills the perfect murderer, is more diplomatic, we would say more sly, and does not say that Gethryn causes his death, but he implies it. He does not even say how it happened.

After all, Gethryn and his old Maquis allies, wait until they can hear the roar of the car driving away, and then not hear it anymore: "It was Raoul who broke the silence which followed. He said, “So
his death is through explosive accident——” He was philosophical.
“What you would call, I think, a justice poetic. . .” . He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
So his death occurred in an explosive accident, says Raoul. But did the jeep explode before falling into the ravine, as a boy testified, or did it explode after falling?
The novel is MacDonald's last masterpiece, I would almost say his true masterpiece: a book that after almost seventy years is still a great read, and has its own catalyzing energy. A mystery that gradually becomes a thriller. And that has a thriller ending.
From this novel, moreover, an unforgettable film by John Huston was made, in 1963, The List of Adrian Messenger, with a stellar cast for the time: Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Dana Wynter, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, George G. Scott (who played Anthony Gethryn).

 

Pietro De Palma 

Philip Macdonald: The Wraith, 1931

 

 

 

The novels based on the character of Colonel Anthony Gethryn are twelve and The Wraith occupies seventh place:

The Rasp, 1924

The White Crow, 1928

The Noose, 1930

The Link, 1930

The Choice or The Polferry Mystery or The Polferry Riddle, 1931

The Crime Conductor, 1931

The Wraith, 1931

The Maze, 1932

Rope to Spare, 1932

Death on My Left, 1933

Warrant for X, 1938

The List of Adrian Messenger, 1959

However, even if it occupies seventh place, in reality the novel contains the beginning of the parable of Colonel Anthony Gethryn. In fact, as we read at the beginning of the novel, recalling the beginning, Gethryn reveals to his friend Toller and his wife that there is a case that no one knows about, which is essentially the first time in which he, a former military , found himself carrying out a police investigation in contact with the authorities.

It's a bit like what happens in the Ellery Queen novels, when we learn in the introduction by JJMcClure, that the fourth novel The Greek Coffin Mystery, actually from the list of Ellery's adventures, constitutes the beginning.

WARNING : SPOILERS !!!

The drama takes place in High Fen, a village of 300 souls, where the colonel intends to spend a holiday. He knows that in that village there is an inn called Il Buon Ristoro run by an ex-military acquaintance of his and his wife, who welcome him in the best possible way. Visiting nearby places, you come across Fridays, the home of the richest in the area, the scientist John Manx, who conducts unspecified experiments there. John lives together with his wife Joan Nealson, his sister Penelope Marsh Manx, the Butler Belby, John's assistant and secretary, Grimsdale, and occasionally Joan's brother, William Nealson and Joan and William's cousin also visit the house, Arthur.

 

While Gethryn is talking to people, here comes one of the main characters of the drama, a certain Alfred Georgius Host, a man crippled by the Boer War, with a leg to which he an orthopedic brace on his right hand (he always wears black gloves from which you can see two fingers standing at right angles to the palm), and on his skull where he is said to have a plate (in fact he always wears a black cap). He also has a noticeable scar on one cheek which he conceals with powder.

 

 

 

This character has an exaggerated love for cats, to the point of harboring a profound hatred towards John Manx himself, due to his experiments which, he says, seem to be aimed at dissecting cats. And in fact some carcass was found dissected, in front of Gethryn, this Host is almost hit by a Morris driven by two women, Penelope Marsh Manx and John's niece, Mary Manx.

The evening in which, as is done between neighbors, Gethryn from the Manxes is invited to Villa Fridays, the bad thing occurs: Belby, invited to call his master who is in his studio, located in a hut, a small low building isolated from the central body, at the Villa, to play bridge, he finds him dead, shot in the middle of the forehead by a gunshot. When Gethryn, William and Arthur Nealson and Grismsdale immediately go to look, they find Joan on the ground unconscious a few dozen meters from the cabin.

The investigations are coordinated by Inspector Ruddock, who knows Gethryn and takes advantage of her presence and sagacity: nothing seems to be missing from the hut, and everything seems to be in order in the house too. An investigation of the nearby places leads to the discovery of a pistol, which is the weapon used for the assassination, on the ground, near a tree. It is probably thought that the murderer, running away and tripping over the root of the tree, dropped it and did not pick it up.

The investigations seem to be directed in a specific direction: Holst. Add to this the fact that the strange individual's housekeeper saw him holding a gun and uttering meaningless sentences before the crime occurred. When they go to her house, she isn't there: she left the cats, and it seems she wants to kill herself and in fact she left a farewell note. Indeed, one of the guests of the villa saw him walking down the street gesticulating, and followed him to the swamp, where he found his clothes on the shore. Did he kill himself?

End of investigations. Ruddock found the culprit in him.

But Gethryn isn't. Gethryn suspects the other. In fact, on the basis of certain behavioral oddities of Host and the accusations that Penelope Marsh made to her sister-in-law, who according to her killed her brother to pocket the inheritance, a sister-in-law who apparently had had a lover during her marital interlude, elaborates her own theory that takes a very specific direction when he discovers, by writing all the names and surnames of the characters in the play, that the mysterious suicide is Alfreg Georgius Host, and that by combining first names and surnames together one obtains A G + HOST = A GHOST.

In essence, someone gifted with macabre irony and sarcasm perpetrated a conspiracy against Manx, creating a false character who does not exist in reality, impersonated by certain people from Manx's circle, so that he could be identified as the perfect culprit, freeing those from suspicion instead he killed Manx. It is clear at this point that whoever reported having followed Host to the quagmire must be an accomplice in the conspiracy, if not the murderer. And Gethryn, after a series of conjectures, which also involve the strange episode of the valet Forbes, who disappeared from home on the night of the murder and was then found mad with terror, locked up in the cellars of the villa, and we learn that he was hit by someone who was wandering around the villa at night. He identifies the accomplice and the murderer, who however flee, ending up with a motorboat on the rocks and dying.

THE END OF SPOILERS

It must be said that the novel is essentially a Black Comedy, in which a subtle, even macabre, irony pervades the crime scenes. There is not only the revealing charade, but also another detail, which is well suited to the atmosphere of Black Comedy: Manx is not only the surname of the landowner but also identifies a breed of cats which, typical of the island of Manx, are tailless. It can therefore be said that this novel, in which cats have a well-identified part of themselves, begins its own tragedy with them and ends with another cat without a tail, a Manx, who is a Man and therefore a man (animal which as we know has no tail).

Everything is evidently well thought out by Macdonald to create a beautiful, lively and not at all obvious novel in which everything falls into place (even if the desire to identify the perfect culprit immediately undermines the investigation and the well-accustomed reader understands that there is 'is something else).

It is certainly not a cornerstone of Macdonald's fiction, nor does it, like other novels, innovate the genre (just think of The Rasp, 1924, or Murder Gone Mad, 1931 or even X v. Rex, 1933, or The Maze, 1932). But it is almost an exercise in style, a joke that in some ways harks back to older novels, a mockery, which however has something new compared to many other novels of its time, almost a trademark: originality of the plot structure, which however yields to the goodness of the whodunnit.

the greatest originality of the novel consists in the character invented by the culprit, to be pointed out as the perfect culprit, a subject that recalls the invention in every way: a series of characteristics (the serious impairment in the left leg, the hand with index finger and ring fingers stiff compared to the other fingers, a cap always pulled down on the head) easily impersonable, so much so as to be recognized as the possessor of these very specific characteristics, which however are a mockery. In addition to the charade, even the impaired hand, if we observe its shape carefully, always brings us back to cats.

Lastly, I would like to point out the curiosity that it is not the only novel that talks about dead cats. In fact there is at least one other, that of Anita Blackmon, The Riddle of the Dead Cats, a 1938 novel. 

Pietro De Palma

Philip MacDonald : Murder Gone Mad, 1931.

When you speak about great writers of detective novels, generally you speak about the great triad - Carr, Christie, Queen - forgetting many other names, sibling, if not quantitatively, at least qualitatively. Among these others, there are what I call the "innovators", the writers who have innovated the genre, not at the variation of plot, but at the invention of a different narrative structure. Among the innovators, securely I must remember Philip MacDonald, english writer..

He was definitely one of the most important writers of the twentieth century detective: I would say that of his production many are masterpieces, worthy to be authoritative in any ranking of the best novels of all time: The Rasp, The Noose, The Link, Rynox, The Choice, Murder Gone Mad, The Maze, The List of Adrian Messenger , X v. Rex (aka: Martin Porlock). Why? Because he has got ever originality and almost every time he writes a novel, makes some surprising stylistic changes to the whodunnit: writing a novel about the serial killings, Murder Gone Mad, he met a huge success and it was repeated with another on a more series of crimes committed by a killer, X v. Rex; he subverted the rules of the English whodunnit in The Maze; I didn’t introduce the murderer in the Warrant for X; in Rynox, he began with the epilogue; still in seventies, Barzun and Taylor described  The Rasp, a "epochmaking": in it was all: the murder of a head of state, clues, extraordinary ambience and atmosphere and a variety of psychological thrill.

Our novel is of 1931. John Dickson Carr, who at first was called The Rasp, the debut novel of the Colonel Anthony Gethryn, “one of the ten greatest detective novels”, he later replaced it with The Murder Gone Mad, to enshrine the importance that " The Murder Gone Mad " has and that was already recognized eighty years ago.

The novel is a precursor, one of the first to talk about serial killings, in a time when The ABC  Murders of Agatha Christie was yet to come: a novel counter, whose mere mention would be enough to erase all an annoying literary criticism, which tends to frame the Mystery as a genre dead and buried, unable to generate tension, and prepending to it a paraliterature; forgetting that the serial murder genre was born with Steeman and MacDonald. But if Steeman, with "The démon de Sainte-Croix" opens the strand talking about a series of crimes apparently disconnected and then that prove joined by a particular truly surprising, and if Christie christen the murder multiple that must conceal in the series apparently disconnected interest to a single murder (as if concealing something from other things like that and putting everything under the sun becomes it unknowable), Philip MacDonald provides to exaggerate the genre. In fact, for the first time ever, we see a litany of murderers, quite disconnected from each other, can be associated only in the unknowable depths of a sick mind who likes to kill for the sake of it, keeping police at bay .

So slowly, then more quickly we witness the horrible business of "The Butcher", the psychopathic murderer that, in the charming town of Holmdale, a few miles from London, sowing chaos is the discovery of the bodies, all killed with a bloody same technique (using a sharp knife blows, usually to the stomach), to dictate the pace, and especially through authorship of the letters to the police, the pathos and tension. Thus, where in many other examples of contemporary thriller, the tension is crystallized in literary devices, for example in the construction of floors and temporal narrative that often run in parallel and then intersect (for example the Lee & Child’s novels starring Aloysious Pendergast), here the tension is a characteristic of wisdom literature that articulates the writer with a relentless procession of the deads, before with frustrating attempts , then more more specific and more selective for identification of the murderer, with the growing dissatisfaction of the public, represented by newspapers, politicians, and less and less popular demonstrations peaceful, and the sardonic safety sported by the murderer in  mock and ridicule of established even in charge of the investigation, Arnold Pike, superintendent of Scotland Yard, which, like a bloodhound, regardless of the tricks of the murderer and reproaches of his superiors, leads his investigation made by attempts, each one different, but always more effective to end once and for all the carnage. So to mark the time of novel are more extensive tables that contain the likely suspects. As a corollary, a series of unlikely assassins arrested: the boeotian, the director, the famous doctor.

Without doubt the most curious and interesting history, is that a procedural analysis of the survey, lack any evidence that in an usual survey that was based on abduction of Sherlock Holmes, should abound: instead they roam here. In the painful deaths (Lionel Colby, promising young man, from  middle class family; Pamela Richards, rich bourgeoisie; Amy Adams, bartender, working class; Albert Rogers, skilled worker, about to become a soccer player; Marjorie Williams, nurse), relentless and ferocious in its impartiality, as if death is common to all, a "leveling" relentless, you do not see nothing but the absence of any motive: unknown to each other, elements taken at random, whose unique common reasons are the horrible gash in the belly and enjoy the chilling of the murderer about the death of one and about the pain of those who loved this victim. The killer comes even to send a letter to the police, promising that he will hit on December 7, this time enjoy pain just of Pike who finds the mother of a girl with which he enjoyed playing with the train, Molly Brade, curled up next to a wall and behind the chair where he sleeps unaware her daughter Millicent.

She will be the last to fall.

After Pike will ariive briskly, with a series of insights on how to proceed, that have nothing to do with normal investigative inquiries, as here, there is no evidence that helps to discover the killer. He is discovered because Pike is increasingly resorting to the help of improvised means of investigation: reflectors located in the town, they will turn on randomly illuminating different parts of the city; lights that are lit in the post office where the yellow envelopes with the offending oblique black handwriting, are wrapped and then fall directly on the table in front of employees and policemans; cameras, as cameras are today, they control the various streets of the city .. But Arnold Pike, with an idea as old as the world, he will manage to reveal the true identity of the murderer: creating a false butcher eager to take the fame of the real and the true is induced  not to resist the temptation to see who has the will to emulate himself

And so from an entire city sifted, he will lead to narrow the grid of the suspects in only 4 suspects, one of which necessarily will be "The Butcher". But the truth will surprise all. Because once the killer will be again the least suspected, and the weapon .. the least suspected.

A novel in conclusion, of a disarmingly modernity, that in the absence of any indication enlightening and rambling in the theory of serial murder victims, clearly does justice to the title Murder Gone Mad.

A masterpeace.

Pietro De Palma