Back in 2016, when the mood took me for a bit of Golden Age Crime reading, I picked up a book I’d come across in a charity shop and had always intended to read. The book was titled, in that particular edition, “Dead Mrs Stratton” and the author was Anthony Berkeley. I’ve read a number of his titles featuring his regular detective, Roger Sheringham, and most have been wonderful (apart from the horrors of “The Wychford Poisoning Case“…

Intriguingly, however, when “Dead Mrs Stratton” was first published it had a very different (and perhaps somewhat controversial) title, and that was “Jumping Jenny” – and it’s under this name that the book has now been reprinted in the British Library Crime Classics series. It’s always a delight to see another of Berkeley’s good titles back in print, and this is certainly one of those!

As I said at the time, as the book opens “Roger Sheringham is attending a rather macabre Murder Party being hosted by his friend Ronald Stratton (a detective novelist…) Hurrah, thinks the reader, a country house setting – and you wouldn’t be far wrong, although this isn’t a big Downton Abbey-style place, just a more modest and quirky one, with a large roof terrace upon which is set a gallows. At present, it has three dummies hanging from it, one female and two males (the Jumping Jenny and Jumping Jacks); however, it doesn’t need a Poirot to see that someone more substantial will end up hanging there.

The party is populated by an interesting collection of relatives and locals; there is Ronald’s ex-wife, her man friend, and Ronald’s new fiance; Ronald’s brother David and his hideous wife Ena; David and Ronald’s sister Celia; some local doctors plus their wives; and a forthright Scottish journalist. The complex relations between this group of people gradually develop as the party and the night goes on; and it seems that the vicious and unpleasant Ena is lining up to be the perfect victim. There is in fact a murder which happens very much on camera, and that’s when things start to get complicated…

I shan’t reveal too much more about the plot because this is such a joy to read that I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. Let’s just say that much of the so-called detecting in fact involves efforts to convince the local plod that the victim committed suicide and Sheringham is as inaccurate in his deductions as everyone else. In fact for a substantial part of the story, he’s under suspicion himself and so has to do plenty of sleuthing to try to clear himself. There are twists and turns up till the very end, and I didn’t see the final page’s revelations coming at all. Berkeley can plot and write remarkably well and he’s head and shoulders above some of the writers from the Golden Age whose works have also gone out of fashion.”

Revisiting the book, those twists and turns and machinations are just as wonderful, and it’s clear that Berkeley really does love to play with the tropes of GA detection. As for the amorality, well that turns up in several of his other books too. There’s a sense that Sheringham rather regards himself as above the law and in a number of books manipulates events to arrive at his own form of justive – most interesting!

As I said in my earlier review, “I’ve headed this post “Amorality…” because when you stand back and look at it, the plot is in fact strikingly *wrong*! Someone is killed, and regardless of their faults, the usual modus operandi is for the Golden Age detective to solve the mystery and thus put the world to rights. The world is certainly put to rights here, but in fact it’s the murder that’s done so, not the solution of it. The victim is described as mad at several points, and the modern me feels just a little uneasy at the fact that it was considered better by Berkeley to kill off a (fictional) mad person rather than have them get some help.” I can see what I was thinking here, but I also find myself wondering a little about Berkeley’s attitude towards women. With more of his books under my belt nowadays, I do sense that he wasn’t particularly fond of them. Some of his female characters are monstrous creations, and certainly passages in “Wychford…” were incredibly misogynistic. He toned this down in later books, but it’s still notable that a lot of his women really aren’t very nice at all…

Anyway, putting that aside and looking purely at the mystery, “Jumping Jenny” is a really enjoyable and clever GA mystery, with all the twists and turns you’d expect from Berkeley. As Martin Edwards point out in his excellent introduction, none of Berkeley’s Sheringham books were “entirely orthodox” and this one is suffused with dark and macabre humour. Edwards mentions that Berkeley was gassed during WW1, never completely regaining full health, and this of course may have affected his personality going forward.

So another very individual and entertaining reprint from the BL.  It continues to amaze me how they keep rediscovering GA crime of such quality; and it’s a delight to be able to explore these authors and their lost books. Long may the BL Crime Classics continue! 😀