This is another deviation
from my blog preamble – am doing something today which I’ve never done so far –
that is to feature a post on the detective novel(s) rather than a short story
or short story collection! This year, I’ve taken a lot of breaks in my pursuit
of the short story to devote valuable time to some of the longer versions of
the Golden Age of Detective fiction. In this regard, the latest detour took me
on a path to read all the novels by Todd Downing back to back after being
impressed by Vultures in the Sky which I read sometime last year after
seeing a review of this book by Curtis Evans on his blog.
It was a great pleasure to lay my hand on these Coachwhip reprints and read
them. The stories in most of these books are set in Mexico and come in as a
breath of fresh air amongst the myriad miasma of novels from the Golden Age of
detective fiction. Having a customs agent as a detective protagonist is not
only an ingenious idea but it serves as a wonderful framework to base his plots
on. These books certainly stand out for their plots, atmosphere, fair-play
clueing and the blending of the Mexican landscape and its legends (in a very
superior way) in to the structure of the plot. The modern readers certainly owe
their thanks to Curt and Coachwhip publications
for bringing these titles back from oblivion. What follows below are my
observations on all the 9 detective novels penned by Todd Downing in the order
that I read them rather than the order in which they were published.
Vultures
in the Sky
Any mystery set on a train
or a ship or a plane goes up to the very top of my To Be Read list immediately.
And that is how I ended up reading this third mystery offering from Todd
Downing as soon as I saw the review from Curtis Evans on his blog. It’s a
terrific performance – the setting, the atmosphere and the chilling suspense
that the author builds up to ratchet the tension is amazing. Arriving at the
murderer wasn’t too difficult – it’s fairly clued and at the end with only 3
suspects surviving, it’s not much of a mystery as to whodunit but the way you
get there is really one hell of a ride with 2 very memorable scenes. This book is
right up there with the 2 books that I rank so highly in this category
(mysteries set on trains) – Murder On The Orient Express & Obelists Enroute.
Murder
On Tour
Senior Customs Agent Hugh
Rennert travels with a party of American tourists to identify a killer whose
first victim has been a customs agent. There could be more as they wait for the
macabre Mexican holiday “Day of The Dead”. There are far too many suspects –
handling 13 suspects in just 180 odd pages does not give the author much scope
for fleshing out the characters. It’s fairly clued alright - one clue requires
the reader to know the history of a particular event and the other clues are
weak but the intention is there to play fair with the reader. The climax is on
a train with Hugh Rennert grilling the suspects for one final time before he
hands over the guilty party to the US authorities after crossing the border
from Mexico. Blending of the mystery novel with an exotic location and a
touring group exploring these locales of Mexico is the best part of this book.
A good debut to the series.
Murder
on the Tropics
The task for Rennert is to
find out who is stealing water bottles and to buy back the shares from an old
woman but he ends up unmasking a very clever multiple murderer. This one has a
better plot with 8 interesting characters stranded in a lonely Hacienda in the
middle of nowhere with no human habitation for miles. The blending of one of the
Mexican superstitions of “Yellow Death” and the atmospheric tension (with a
hurricane heading toward the hacienda adding to the tension) is handled
meticulously to provide the reader with a good puzzle. Fairly clued and it’s
not much of a problem to figure out the culprit before the detective.
Murder
Under The Moonflower
The first Peter Bounty mystery.
It has a very interesting premise – why would anyone want to murder all the
blood donors when the person who is supposed to receive the blood transfusion doesn’t
have an heir to whom the inheritance will be passed? If I’ve to just provide in
one word the biggest problem I’ve with this book is that it is loquacious. On
top of this, all the three deaths are caused not by the devious cleverness of
the criminal but by the stupidity of the Sheriff’s department (each time a
different individual) which is a bit of a drag. The last two deaths were
totally unnecessary. It’s fairly clued though and I knew who the murderer was
but I went hopelessly wrong with the motive. This book would have worked better
had it ended 50 pages earlier but that doesn’t mean in any way that I didn’t
enjoy reading this one.
The
Case of the Unconquered Sisters
This is a daring attempt
to have just three suspects (if we can take the word of the US authority that
the Sisters family is in the clear) and yet aim to pull off a surprising
conclusion to a well rounded mystery but the problem lies in the execution. The
Sisters (2 sisters and a niece) have been hosting an archaeological group who
are conducting an expedition in the black lava fields of Mexico’s Pedregal.
Rennert is sent to this house to investigate the disappearance of one of the
members of this expedition whose skeleton (with a gunshot hole in its skull) has
turned up in a consignment headed to a US museum along with 2 other prehistoric
skeletons. With very few suspects, there aren’t too many plot threads to juggle
around with and being a small book, looks like the author was constricted to
use his clues because when the two major events or clues does appear, it
becomes too obvious as to who the culprit is and ends in a disappointing
finish.
The
Lazy Lawrence Murders
The final installment from
this very entertaining author takes place on a train – the third time in as
many as 9 novels – inspired by Rufus King’s 3 novels all set on a yatch or a
ship as pointed out by Curt in Clues & Corpses.
But it’s really nowhere close to the performance which we see in Vultures. An
ex-Texas Governor is travelling in a Pullman with two of his family members and
his secretary. When the Governor meets a violent death just minutes after Peter
Bounty boards the train, he has a number of suspects to contend with including
a Mexican police officer and a US customs official. The book takes a long time
in eliminating one suspect after another and like its predecessor (Moonflower),
it is wordy. But this one’s merit is that it hides the murderer in a much
better way compared to some of his earlier novels.
The
Last Trumpet
All the previous plots
involved the closed group of suspects - enclosed in a stranded house or an
enclosed space like a train. This is his first book which breaks away from this
tradition and what you have here is a murder committed inside a bull ring arena
in front of thousands of witnesses. By the end we have a total of 4 (or was it
5?) deaths – the only thing common to all of them being that the victims were
all supposed to testify in a court against an insurance company so that a
crippled man who met an accident continues to receive his monthly compensation.
But the irony is that it was not mandatory for any of them to testify. The
author is at the top of his form here and it would take a very careful reading
to pinpoint the murderer – though I knew the answer to the other plot strand
which is so crucial to the solution, I just couldn’t decide between two of the
suspects and I finally had my answer just before the beginning of the final
chapter. Also, I was helped by a spoiler from a comment which Peter Bounty
makes in one of the novels. So I would suggest others to read it before they read
the Bounty titles even though the spoiler is a trivial one and the reader
wouldn’t realize it till the end of the book. All in all a wonderful effort and
certainly one of his best books!
Night
Over Mexico
Rennert takes a detour and
takes shelter in a stranded house when the weather turns bad. There are 9
others who have more or less ended up in the house for the same reason and the
caretaker of the house is already dead when Rennert makes his entry. 2 more
mysterious deaths follow – with Rennert finding no sign of foul play on any of
the bodies. It includes a very strange motive and a strange murder weapon but
the reader may find it hard to figure them out even though it’s abundantly
clued. It has a terrific start, a lame finish and a very interesting plot in
between.
The
Cat Screams
This is Downing’s second
book and this is certainly an improvement over the first one. Rennert is on
vacation in one of the hotels in an exotic location. There are 7 more guests, a
servant who is suffering from some unknown ailment due to which the house is put
under quarantine and a Cat which brings about a death every time its guests get
to hear its scream! A terrific set up, interesting interplay between the
guests, a well hidden motive all make for a breezy read. However as a whole it
left me with mixed feelings: the murderer did come as a pleasant surprise
(kudos to the author on this one) but the clues are so subtle and so indirect
that it was hard for me to pinpoint the motive or the culprit, simple things
which people would do under these circumstances are not seen here and some of
the things which looked strange to me remained unexplained in the end and hence
my equivocal stance on this where I was neither too thrilled nor was I too disappointed
(to deem it as an average effort).
To conclude, it’s been a
fascinating few weeks spent with these novels. All the novels are certainly
worth reading with my nomination for the top 2 going towards Vultures in the
Sky & The Last Trumpet. And I’ve no doubts in agreeing with Curt that Todd
Downing is a far superior author to the average mystery writer.