Review of Crime at Christmas by C.H.B. Kitchin (Hogarth, 1934; reprinted Faber and Faber 2009)

Malcolm Warren is a stockbroker in the City.  On Christmas eve his wealthiest client, Mr Quisberg asks him to increase his shareholding of the Harrington Cobalt Company before he travels out to Beresford Lodge, a large house in Hampstead Heath, to spend Christmas with his client and his other guests.  Warren arrives just as Quisling and his secretary, Hartley, are leaving to travel into the city to meet the owner of a company intent on purchasing the same company in which he's just bought shares.  After being shown to his room he joins the others for dinner, including Mrs Quisling, her daughters from her second marriage, Amabel and Sheila, her son from her first marriage, Clarence, Amabel’s would-be fiancée Len Dixon, the mother of Quisling’s secretary, Mrs Hartley, and Dr Green, Quisling’s right-hand man. Elsewhere in the house is another son, Cyril, who is being tended by the attractive young nurse, Ms Moon, and the house staff including Edwins the footman and several housemaids, cooks and gardeners.  When Warren awakes on Christmas morning he discovers the body of Mrs Hartley on the balcony outside his room.  It seems she had fallen from an open window whilst sleep walking.  The news of the accidental death unsurprisingly unsettles the household and Warren witnesses a number of odd occurrences.  Then he discovers a second body, this time most definitely the victim of foul play.

Crime at Christmas is the second novel in a short series of four books featuring Malcolm Warren.  The first, Death of My Aunt, published in 1929 is considered something of a classic.  Crime at Christmas follows a familiar trope of the golden age of crime novels - several people are staying in a large house and one of them dies.  It could be an accident or it could be murder.  The various family members, guests and domestic staff have varying status, relationships and conflicts, and the resident amateur detective sets about solving the mystery.  With regards to the latter, Warren is somewhat of a fey, upper-class gentleman character and reluctant detective who hoards clues to protect reputations rather than handing them over to the police.  Kitchin spins the tale out in an engaging fashion with a vivid cast of characters.  However, in the latter half of the book the story starts to unravel, with the solution to the puzzle being a little ridiculous and difficult to believe, and the denouement weak.  Kitchin himself seems to know this, with a final chapter that consists of a conversation between author and imagined reader that tries to provide reason to some of the more fanciful elements of the story.  Overall, an engaging and mildly amusing story that suffers from a weak resolution.  On the subject of production, I much prefer the Hogarth cover to the Faber and Faber one, which also lacks a synopsis or any details about CHB Kitchin or his work.  It's great that some of his novels have been reprinted, but it would have taken very little effort to add some value to the books in terms of design and an intro.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas to all who read The View from the Blue House. I hope you have an enjoyable day (and were gifted some some great reading!).

We're still iced in and its due to snow again this afternoon. Thankfully, a neighbour has gifted us two chicken fillets for our Christmas meal to save us from tuna surprise. Thank heavens for neighbours!

Roll on the great melt ...

C.H.B. Kitchin, Crime at Christmas

I read with some interest on Mysteries in Paradise blog a mention of a crime novel by namesake, C.H.B. Kitchin, who published a number of books in the first half of the twentieth century. Kitchin is the 5816th most common surname in the UK according to the National Trust Name mapper, so its not that often that I come across the work of other members of the clan. I've been trying to get a copy of Crime at Christmas (first published in 1934, and reissued this year) ordered through a local bookshop in time for the xmas break, but I've had no luck so far as it's sold out in Ireland. Rather than resort to an online retailer I'm going to have a search for it on a trip later this week to Exeter, London and Oxford (it'll be an excuse for a good browse).

C. H. B. Kitchin was born in Harrogate 1895. He read classics at Oxford (Exeter College) and, after serving in France during World War I (1916-1918), worked at the stock exchange before being called to the bar in 1924. He led a varied and colourful life, born into wealth which he increased after inheriting in the mid-1920s through shrewd stock market investment. On inheritance he moved to Brighton to become a full-time writer. He published 13 novels (4 of them crime novels) and one collection of short stories. He died in 1967.

Kitchin's approach to crime fiction is revealed a little by Warren, the detective in his crime novels, when he tells the reader in a Crime at Christmas, "A detective story is always something of an étude de moeurs--a study in the behaviour of normal people in abnormal circumstances.... You want the revolver shot, the blood-stained knife, the mutilated corpse--but largely because they bring out the prettiness of the chintz in the drawing-room and the softness of the grass on the Vicarage lawn." The detective story, Warren continues, provides one with "a narrow but intensive view of ordinary life, the steady flow of which is felt more keenly through the very violence of its interruption." (from the Dictionary of Literary Biography, which I managed to get partial access to at Bookrags).

Faber have reissued six of his novels - Crime at Christmas, The Auction Sale, The Secret River, Streamers Waving, Death of my Aunt, and Mr Balcony.