‘The Middle of Things’ by J.S. Fletcher

Published by Oreon, 2022.
Originally Pub 1922.
ISBN: 978-1-91-547506-0 (PB)

The Middle of Things is from the Oreon Golden Age series. Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863-1935) wrote more than 100 detective stories as well as a considerable number of books on a wide variety of subjects. He was also a journalist.

Richard Viner lives with his maiden aunt, Bethia Penkridge, in Bayswater. She is addicted to detective fiction (more of this later), and Viner reads to her each evening after dinner. The novel starts when, having read to his aunt as usual, Viner goes out for a walk before retiring to bed and comes across the body of a man in a dimly-lit passage near his aunt’s house just after a man has rushed past him. The victim is soon revealed as John Ashton, a wealthy man recently returned from many years in Australia whose ward and her companion live with him in his nearby house. A number of questions are immediately posed. Who exactly is Ashton, and who is his ward? Why was he murdered, and who was the man who rushed past Viner?

Langton Hyde, an impoverished old school friend of Viner, is soon arrested with impressive evidence of his guilt. Viner becomes convinced that Hyde is not the murderer and sets out to prove it, so the novel becomes not only a murder mystery but a quest to prove innocence, identities and inheritances. The current Lord Ellingham is the focus of the last of these, and as a consequence lawyers are actively involved in the investigation. Indeed, the police fade into the background for large passages of the story. A series of revelations about Ashton and other characters keeps the action rattling along and leads to Viner and the lawyers regularly revising their theories. However, it is Miss Penkridge (our detective fiction enthusiast) who notices a clinching clue and follows it up successfully by herself.

Apart from the plot there is much to keep the reader entertained. There are one or two memorable characters (my favourite is the diamond merchant Jan Van Hoeren and his idiosyncratic grammar), and it is good to know in these enlightened times that young ladies were already playing cricket at Roedean in the years immediately after the Great War (we learn this from Miss Wickham, Ashton’s ward). I also smiled at Carless and Driver, the name of a solicitors’ practice. This is a thoroughly enjoyable Golden Age novel, the best by Fletcher that I have read, and it is highly recommended.
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Reviewer: David Whittle

Joseph Smith Fletcher (1863-1935) was a British journalist and writer. He wrote about 200 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction. He was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the "Golden Age".

 

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then. He is currently convenor of the Midlands Chapter of the Crime Writers’ Association.