Last
time, I discussed Anthony Lejeune's Key
Without a Door (1988), second and last novel in the
short-lived James Glowrey series, which began promising enough with
the disappearance of a man in pajamas from the doorstep of his London
home and an intriguingly-posed puzzle – concerning the titular key
and absentee door. Regrettably, the book regresses from a bright
detective story into an uninspired crime/thriller novel closing this
two-book series with an open ending. Key Without a Door had
nothing to recommend in the end and guaranteed to make an appearance
on the annual round-up of the years best and worst detective novels
and short stories under the latter. So needed something really good
as a palette cleanser, of sorts, which brings me to a long-standing
recommendation. John
Norris, of Pretty
Sinister Books , was sufficiently tempted by my 2021 run of Roger
Ormerod reviews to pick up the Ormerod's first Richard
Patton novel, Face Value (1983). The book was published in the
United States under the lurid title The Hanging Doll Murders
in 1984. Face
Value blew John away like a shotgun blast, " rarely
am I as thoroughly surprised by everything in a story as I was by
this book ," presenting " an excellent example of a
modern mystery that honors the traditions of the Golden Age and still
incorporates modern police technique, modern behavior and a motive
that will never go out of style ." John was not wrong. Face
Value is the best of Ormerod's detective novels to date and
perhaps one of the ten best pure detective stories from the last
twenty-five years of the previous century! A mystery that not only
upholds the values and traditions of John
Dickson Carr , Agatha
Christie and Ellery
Queen , but delivered something that can stand right alongside
their best works. Detective-Inspector
Richard Patton, a widower of three years, is mere days away from
retirement and dreaded a big case would present itself at the last
minute, because it would be handed over to his successor, Inspector
Donaldson – an idea he finds appalling. Patton whittled away his
last two months on the force keeping a low profile and "dicker
around with a couple of minor issues ." So on the first of his
last three days, Patton appears on the scene of an abandoned, burnt
out car wreck and meets a young, imaginative police constable,
Brason. A character who would not have been out of place in an E.R.
Punshon novel and would go on to play an important part in the
unfolding story as Patton got his first inkling something was
brewing. A second problem is the return to the district of a
notorious character, Clive Kendall, who received a life sentence for
the rape and murder of 9-year-old Coral Clayton. Prisoners' Aid
Association turned Kendall into a pet project and got him released
after only eight years. Carol's father committed suicide and her
mother moved away, but she has two uncles, Ted and Foster, who
threatened to outright murder Kendell, if he dared to show his face
in town. Patton finds a message on the window of Kendall's old
bungalow, " THIS FOR YOU—BASTARD —> ."
The arrow pointing to a child's doll hanging by the neck from a tree
branch. A report of a shotgun gone missing from a nearby farm only
adds to the impending doom, but the most important of these minor
matters is a missing person's report. You
may, or may not, remember from previous reviews, I referred to this
series as the Richard and Amelia Patton series. Face Value
introduces Amelia as Amelia Trowbridge and, two weeks before, she
reported her husband has gone missing without a trace (" no
suggestion of a crime involved—no foul play hinted "). So
nothing to act on for the police, but now there appears to be
connection between her missing husband and the burnt out car wreck.
Amelia is the counsellor in the Prisoners' Aid Association who was
instrumental in getting Kendall released from prison (" he's been
my own special case "). These little threads get pulled together
to form a dense, intricately-woven web when a man's body is found in
a cottage on a farm called Swallow's End. A
body was found in the living room of the deserted cottage, head and
shoulders against the cold grate, whose face was on the receiving end
of a double barreled shotgun blast (" very little of the skull
was left, just enough for the bit of hair to hang on "). The
victim had his hands up to his face and " blast had shattered
both hands on the way through, leaving little more of them than
tatters of flesh clinging to the hones ," which poses a problem
in 1983 when it comes to identification. And then there's the locked
nature of the cottage. I say locked nature as Face Value
offers one of the oddest and original impossible crimes from the
post-WWII era. Firstly,
the cottage is surrounded by tripwire, strings and old electric wire " looped over the trees, with rusty cans tied to the ends ,"
to rig up " some sort of a warning system ." Secondly, the
rear door and windows are locked on the inside, while the cold
weather wedged the unfastened front door solidly in its frame.
Thirdly, there's a new, fist-sized hole in the living room window,
but why are the broken pieces of glass scattered outside in the snow
a patch about a foot square? Did the victim fire the first shot with
the shotgun that was found leaning next to him against the wall? But
why casually put it away like after emptying a barrel at an intruder
without even reloading it? And the murderer could not have returned
fire through the hole in the window. The victim was shot from no
greater range than three feet, but he was found nearly ten feet from
the window. This description barely does any justice to the
simplistic complexity of the situation. It's like Schrödinger's cat,
but with an unidentified body, who could be one of two men, inside " a
locked and fastened cottage " that's not as locked or fastened
as it looks. Or is it? A locked room mystery you should not read just
for how the murderer entered, or exited, the locked cottage – only
for that very same locked room-trick to take you by complete
surprise. Not on account of that small detail of entrance, or exit,
but how it dovetailed everything together with several twists and
false-solutions before the truth is finally revealed. What an ending!
Something truly worthy of Carr or Christie. I
can't tell much more without running the risk of spoiling the game,
but, to give some you an idea, Face Value is the kind of
detective story that at the time was just beginning to take shape in
Japan and Western equivalents would not really appear until James
Scott Byrnside picked up the gauntlet in 2018. Ormerod
dashed one off from scratch in 1983 to start a new series. However,
the irresistible comparison between Face Value and the
Japanese shin honkaku movement is perhaps not so strange as
they share the same quality: a clear and sound understanding of what
makes a proper detective story tick and getting the people who devour
them. That understanding mercilessly efficient used against poor,
unsuspecting readers like John and I. So
while I can't tell much more about the plot, there's something else I
can ramble and rattle on about. Hercule
Poirot pointed out in The ABC Murders (1936) how terribly
revealing crime can be, " try and vary your methods as you will,
your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is
revealed by your actions ." A reason why the Golden Age
detective story is so varied is that they all approached the problem
of the detective story in their own individual way. So you get
Detection Club members like Agatha Christie and Gladys
Mitchell who both wrote detective fiction, but in such a radical
different way that they might as well take place in completely
different realities. Not to mention Christie's preference for
administrating poison or Mitchell's never explained obsession with
drownings and water in general. I've now read a dozen of Ormerod's
novels from which a fascinating, multi-varied kaleidoscope of
personalized tropes and plot-patterns emerged. I
noted in a previous review how Ormerod utilized cars, moving or
standing still, to drive the plot with a preference for firearms
rarely discharged in traditionally-styled detective stories
(shotguns, rifles and target pistols), but Ormerod had another
unusual fixation – which turns up time, and time, again. Namely
broken windows and shattered glass. For example, A
Shot at Nothing (1993) also concerns a shotgun murder inside
a locked room with a hole blasted through one of the windows from
which Ormerod spun a great deal of complexity and two completely
different solutions. When
the Old Man Died (1991) is another locked room mystery with a
broken window and, most originally, the shattered glass from a
grandfather clock is all over the floor where the door opened. So
nobody could have opened the door and left without creating a wide
arc in the carpet of glass. An
Open Window (1988) is another example of broken glass playing
a part in the solution to an impossible murder. The
Key to the Case (1992) has a variation on the broken window
as the smashed front door provided the story with an excellent
false-solution. There are other things that turn up every other novel
like (ex) policemen too personally involved and toying around with
clocks. Never with the same answers and results. So they're never
repetitive. And the more you read, the more you notice there's a sort
of rhyming quality to Ormerod's overall body of work. According
to When the Old Man Died , Richard Patton was on his first,
unrecorded case around the same time David Mallin and George Coe were
on their last recorded investigation ( One
Deathless Hour , 1981). Both stories deal with murders
committed with a target pistol, smashed clocks and shooting clubs as
alibis. Yet, they're nothing alike. Same goes for Face Value
and A Shot at Nothing . So
to cut another long, senseless rambling short, Face Value
toppled The Key to the Case and A Shot at Nothing as
the best of Ormerod's (locked room) mystery novels and a haunting
glimpse of what could have been had the Golden Age detective story
persisted pass the 1950s. Highly recommended. Particularly to those
who were less than impressed with previous recommendations.
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