fullybooked2017

Denzil Meyrick introduced us to 1950s copper Detective Inspector Frank Grasby in Murder at Holly House, and you can read my review of that by clicking the link.

Grasby and his boss Superintendent Juggers are despatched to the little Yorkshire fishing village of Uthley bay to investigate the apparent murder of  fisherman. It is just before Christmas 1953 and, as in all good seasonal fiction, it is snowing heavily. When they take up their quarters in The Trout Hotel, they discover that they are in the middle of a very complex conspiracy, involving the smuggling and distribution of women’s stockings. Remember that this is Britain worn down by the struggle against Hitler and Hirohito and, eight years later, with no end to austerity in sight, many people are asking themselves, “ I thought we were supposed to have won the war?”

Despite the general tone of gentle humour there are moments that are deeply serious. Grasby is reassured by Superintendent Juggers that everything is going fine, but he has a pause for thought.

“Now, this instantly sends me into a funk. You see, I heard this type of thing so many times during the war from senior officers. Almost inevitably, there would follow an utter catastrophe, involving swooping Stukas, tanks appearing out of nowhere through a hedge in the bocage, or a division of German paratroopers landing on one’s head. However, I must remember that the war is over, but for me and so many others, we carry it with us like a millstone every day. One that becomes ever more cumbersome as the years go by and the memories crowd in on dark lonely nights.”

One of the things Meyrick captures with uncanny accuracy – and I use the word uncanny because he is too young young to have experienced it himself – is the unique bond which bound British society together in the 1950s. That bond was the shared experience of a generation that had fought two world wars in the space of four decades. Grasby fought Hitler, and Juggers was in the Great War trenches. I was born in 1947, but what my father – and his father – created was an almost tangible sense of time and place that belonged to all of us.

Of course, Grasby and Juggers eventually solve the mystery, despite many blunders and wrong turns, and Meyrick cannot resist the standard Golden Age denouement where the detective gathers everyone together (usually in the library) and exposes the villain after a lengthy explanation.

Meyrick has created a background set of characters who, undoubtedly comical, are just the right side of being grotesque. Grasby himself is undoubtedly clever, but has seen enough death and misery during his time with the army that has little personal bravery left, and his discretion trumps his valour every time. While Grasby is tall and spindly, Juggers is just the opposite. Short, square and perhaps running to fat, he always advances towards the sound of gunfire. Grasby’s father is a genuinely unpleasant fellow. He is a retired Anglican cleric and a total misanthrope. He is as horrible to his son as he was to the parishioners of whom he was supposed to have pastoral care. Grasby has fond memories of his late mother, and is genuinely disgusted by the fact that his father has a new paramour, in the spindly form of Miss Hetty Gaunt, an elderly psychic.

This is a seasonal delight, but would be just as good at any time of the year. Meyrick mixes some moments of knockabout farce with genuine reflections on human behaviour and our own history. To mix comedy with crime takes a very deft touch. We might read of a clumsy and overweight senior copper taking a pratfall, but a couple of pages later we witness the discovery of a dead body – someone’s husband, father or son. Few writers attempt it, and even fewer get it right. Back in the day, Colin Watson with his Flaxborough novels had it down to a ‘T’ and, more recently, Peter Bartram’s Crampton of The Chronicle novels strike exactly the right note. I suggest that Denzil Meyrick is just as good. This book is published by Bantam, and will be available on November 7th.