John Stephen StrangeRezensionen

Orig. publ. as by John Stephen Strange.

Bolivar Brown, a Baltimore lawyer, receives an invitation to visit the south Florida island estate of Senator Stephen Huntington, who disappeared 7 years previously when essentially the same guests (except Brown) were visiting. After a violent storm strikes, Huntington's skeleton is found encased in a strangler fig. Only a few hours later, the body of one of the guests is found, an apparent suicide. The local sheriff dismisses Brown's belief that both were murdered, but Brown persists in his investigation. A good, complicated, Golden Age American detective story.

I really enjoyed preparing this old, out-of-print book for reprinting. It is a terrific debut mystery for John Stephen Strange, set in 1926 New York City. Detective Van Dusen Ormsberry is a dapper, clever detective, and his protegee, Billy Adams, is a lovable boy detective wannabe. The victim in this mystery is a Crime Writer himself, but what was he writing about that may have lead to his murder on the top of an omnibus? This title was one of the first recommendations of the newly created Crime Club in 1928, and Fans of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction should really enjoy this first of Strange's 22 mystery novels.

John Stephen Strange is actually the pseudonym for a lady by the name of Dorothy Stockbridge Tillet, and English author who published 22 mysteries over a nearly fifty year career. Her 19th novel, Catch the Gold Ring, was first published in 1955 under the original title A Handful of Silver. It tells the story of a former French Resistance fighter named Henri and his search for his brother’s betrayer seven years after the liberation of Paris. Being the self-styled WWII buff I am, the plot immediately captured my attention.

The story begins with a series of flashbacks detailing Henri’s experience during the war, his family, and life in general under Nazi occupation. During this period there are two defining points in Henri’s life: his brother’s arrest and tortured execution at the hands of the Gestapo, and his love affair with his neighbor Magritte (who eventually leaves him inexplicably). Fast-forward seven years, and Henri still doesn’t know who betrayed his brother to the Gestapo. His Resistance friend Genet, now inspector of the Metropolitan police, has just uncovered a treasure trove of documents recording the identities of dozens of collaborators who spied for the Germans. They make several arrests, and after exhaustive interrogations they learn that every one of them received instructions and made reports to a man over the phone they knew only as “Albert.”

The trail goes cold for several weeks as both Genet and Henri follow their own lines of inquiry into the identity of Albert. At the same time, Henri’s old flame, Magritte, reappears along with her rich American husband. She flirts with Henri, tries to seduce him, and then abruptly pulls back. Henri realizes then that he still loves Magritte, and soon both his desire for her and the search for Albert begin to consume him. As the investigation begins to pick up steam, though, it becomes obvious that his brother’s betrayer is someone close to the family, and Henri begins to simultaneously yearn for and dread the coming revelation that will turn his world upside down.

To be honest, though, the final revelation ain’t exactly very… revealing. Astute readers out there will find the ending plot twist to be pretty transparent. I figured it out about 1/3 of the way into the book. That isn’t to say, however, that Catch the Gold Ring was a horrible read. It was very well written with deep characterization, an absorbing setting, and an engaging plot. But perhaps the most intriguing facets of the book—to this reader, at least—were the historical details with which Tillett peppered the narrative. It prompted me to do a little research of my own on the French Resistance, the establishment of the French Provisional Government, and period of vigilante justice that took place in between. And when a book prompts me to do even more reading beyond its own two covers, well that one’s a winner to me.

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