Promoting Crime Fiction : ‘Pistols, Bombs and Motor Bandits’ by Joan Lock

Saturday 1 October 2022

‘Pistols, Bombs and Motor Bandits’ by Joan Lock

Published by Robin Books,
18 May 2022.
ISBN: 978-1-84396654-8

This is an interesting non-fiction study that compares the crime portrayed by Golden Age writers of fiction in parallel with real life crimes and policing over the same time period. The book starts with a chapter entitled ‘The Birth of a Genre’, which outlines how, in 1920, two first-time authors produced groundbreaking novels of detective fiction. They were a young woman challenged by her sister to write a book and an engineer bored because he was on sick leave: in other words Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Croft. The books in question were Christie’s first Hercule Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and Croft’s The Cask, which features a Scotland Yard detective inspector. The second chapter, ‘Reality’, explores the truth about crime in Britain in 1920 and examines factors such as the excess of weapons that had been brought back to the country by a large number of soldiers who were discharged from the army at the end of the First World War. Added to this was the danger of the change in attitude of many young men who had become desensitised to violence at the same time as they were trained to fight and kill; plus the lower number of fit young men able to join the police force after the losses of the Great War. Another relevant factor was that many of the factories that had been dedicated to making munitions were now turned over to making motor cars, which allowed villains to access these vehicles and use them to commit crimes and escape the police officers, who were not so well equipped.

Throughout the book there is an exploration of the context of the various political ramifications of the time, notably the Irish dissent that led to violence and murder in Ireland and the rest of Britain, often by the use of bombs. It also considers the fact that when a murderer was brought to court, often the all-male juries would be unwilling to convict a man for murdering his wife, especially since the penalty would be death.

In the early chapters, the author describes real-life murders committed in 1920, which are very different to the sophisticated country house murder created by Agatha Christie in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, despite the fact that she set the book in the First World War, and it featured Captain Hastings as a wounded soldier and Hercule Poirot as one of a group of Belgian refugees.

Pistols, Bombs and Motor Bandits continues in this style, with year-by-year descriptions of the fictional crimes created by authors such as Christie and Crofts, and Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Anthony Berkeley and numerous other detective fiction authors of the Golden Age. A few of these authors consulted Scotland Yard in an attempt to create an authentic police detective but many writers preferred the police detectives of their imagination. Alongside this the author provides details of crimes committed each year and the development of forensic techniques and other investigative changes throughout the years, including the reorganisation of Scotland Yard and the establishment of the Big Four. This Big Four was not the quartet of super-villains created by Christie in the novel of the same name, but four senior detectives who were put in charge of different branches of Scotland Yard. The book follows the changing make-up of the police, and reminds the reader that, in the early years, most policemen were working class men. These were not the cultured, highly educated aristocrats beloved of detective fiction, but dogged, ambitious men who educated themselves by attending evening classes after their long, hard days on duty. The author draws on her own experiences as a policewoman in the 1950s to set in context the painfully slow advance of women in the police force.

Pistols, Bombs and Motor Bandits draws on numerous sources, including several autobiographies by detectives of the 1920s and 1930s, and contemporary experts such as John Curran and Martin Edwards. The book contains several fascinating insights into real life crimes of the time and the development of the police and detective services, which puts into a new context the increasingly popular genre of crime fiction. It is a fascinating concept and an excellent read for those who are interested in the history of crime and its detection, both in reality and fiction.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron

Joan Lock is a former nurse and policewoman. Her first book Lady Policeman described her six years as a policewoman in London's West End during the 1950s. The next, Reluctant Nightingale, her previous training as a nurse. Nine non-fiction, police/crime books followed including three on Scotland Yard's First Detectives and a history of the British Women Police a subject on which she is an authority. Joan has also written short stories, radio plays (some historical) and radio documentaries and has been a regular columnist for the Police Review and Red Herrings, the journal of the Crime Writers' Association. Her crime fiction includes one modern crime novel, Death in Perspective which was based around house-sitting experiences, and seven Victorian featuring the charismatic Scotland Yard Detective Ernest Best.

Carol Westron is a successful author and a Creative Writing teacher. Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times. Her first book The Terminal Velocity of Cats was published in 2013. Since then, she has since written 6 further mysteries. Carol recently gave an interview to Mystery People. To read the interview click on the link below.