The historian AJP Taylor thought himself above whodunnits. In his book English History 1914-1945, he insists that the only thing detective novels have to offer is that they sometimes provide social details that proper literature misses out.
“Otherwise,” he sniffs, the genre is “without significance: an intellectual game like the crosswords”.
Mere crosswords are often evoked when discussing the genre, both by those who require all their reading to be “significant” and by those who pooh-pooh cosy crime for not treating murder with the grisly respect it deserves.
So when, in Murder Fantastical, our hero Henry AKA Ch Insp Tibbett reacts in the following way …
Henry forced himself to be stern. ‘This isn’t a game, Major Manciple,’ he said. ‘Nor is it a crossword puzzle. A man has been killed.’
… you might think: “Ah, this must be one of those novels that breaks the cosy conventions and shows the reader what life is really like.”
If you haven’t yet read it, a quick sketch of one of the characters should be enough to confirm or deny that possibility.
Everyone devoted to puzzles surely has the same favourite character (after the lovable Henry). For me, the abiding image of “the bishop” is of him in an old-fashioned bathing costume and wellington boots, carrying a clarinet and a flowery Japanese sunshade and announcing himself to the man who will become the murder victim with the words: “I am the bishop of Bugolaland and I want half a pound of margarine.”
Reader, this is very much cosy crime, 1967 version, and all the better for it: Moyes is a persistently funny writer. And how are her clues?
Push along with a pole? Well – er – it’s a theory (7)
I hadn’t known that punting could also be called “quanting” until reading this. I’m not convinced that the Times (the purported source of the clue) would use that definition for QUANTUM but I appreciate the liveliness. This one …
A female relative, we hear, died with a broken toe. But this should cure her (8)
… for ANTIDOTE is a little long for my blood. The best crossword moment is based around a similarly flawed clue, and comes when Henry first meets the bishop.
Then he lowered The Times and said, ‘Lazy type, the policeman. You need help.’
‘I certainly do,’ said Henry, surprised.
‘Lazy type,’ repeated the bishop very distinctly. ‘Policeman.’
‘I’m sorry you find us lacking in energy, sir,’ said Henry.
After some more enjoyable misunderstandings, the bishop explains that the lazy type is the kind of sloth known as an AI and the policeman, being a “copper”, is a D – and so the “help” is the definition part of a clue for AID. Messy wordplay, but the same joke as when Billie Whitelaw’s character first meets Simon Pegg’s policeman in Hot Fuzz …
‘I’m Joyce Cooper. I trust you had a pleasant trip. Fascist.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘System of government characterised by extreme dictatorship. Seven across.’
… though with a clue rather than an entry, which is more satisfying. We should later have a look at 1983’s A Six-Letter Word for Death, from the period in which Henry has become a chief superintendent, and see whether Moyes has honed her cluing; anyone who enjoyed meeting the Manciple family should know that they reappear in Twice in a Blue Moon and for anyone who wants to start the Henry Tibbett tales from the start, you’re in luck: he is introduced in the splendid Dead Men Don’t Ski.
Our next book
Suggestions for future book club reading are very welcome. In the meantime, we have our first play: Clutterbuck by the former Labour MP Benn Levy.
Other puzzling books
Missing clues in PG Wodehouse’s Something Fishy
Wodehouse in general, including The Truth About George …
Fun, a graphic novel about crosswords
Curtain, AKA “Poirot’s last case”
David Nobbs’s Reginald Perrin and more
Cain’s Jawbone, in which you have to work out in which order the pages go
Genuinely funny legal comedy Uncommon Law
Have His Carcase and The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager’s Will by Dorothy L Sayers
Alan Plater’s mystery Oliver’s Travels
Crossword Ends in Violence (5), James Cary’s D-day novel
The Moment Before Drowning, a crime novel by the setter Picaroon
Len Deighton’s thriller Horse Under Water
Nick Hornby’s drama State of the Union
The 12 Quizzes of Christmas by Frank Paul
Michael Gilbert’s whodunnit Close Quarters
Nonfiction grab bag The Puzzler
Patrick Hamilton’s Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse
Novel-as-crossword Landscape Painted with Tea
Collections-cum-diaries Boatman: The First 50 and The Second 50
Marc Breman’s Crossword Chronicles
… and much of Morse
Find a collection of explainers, interviews and other helpful bits and bobs at alanconnor.com
The Shipping Forecast Puzzle Book by Alan Connor, which is partly but not predominantly cryptic, can be ordered from the Guardian Bookshop
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