Cyril Hare

• Born: September 4, 1900
• Birthplace: Mickleham, Surrey, England
• Died: August 25, 1958
• Place of death: Dorking, Surrey, England

Types of Plot: Police procedural; amateur sleuth

Principal Series: Inspector Mallett, 1937-1958; Francis Pettigrew, 1942-1958

Contribution

The best of Cyril Hare’s work in the detective genre is marked by closely observed characterization and a constant striving for verisimilitude. His characters are more fully rounded and more varied than many of those in the purely puzzle-based detective stories produced by the majority of his immediate British precursors; in particular, he offers accurate, vivid, and well-characterized portrayals of certain social groups. He is notable for his use of conversation, which is lively, contributes to plot and characterization rather than merely padding out an episode, and reproduces the vocabulary and manner of speech of different social classes; for the fine quality of his writing; for his often subtle humor; and, notwithstanding his concentration on characterization and authentic atmosphere, for the novelty of his puzzles, their careful and convincing construction, and their genuine surprise endings. Without directing the genre along any fresh and innovative paths, Hare enriched the body of well-written and enduring detective fiction that emerged in Great Britain during the period from just before to just after World War II.

Biography

Cyril Hare, born as Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, was educated at a British public school, where he claimed to have been starved of food and crammed full of learning. Thence he went to New College, Oxford, where he gained first-class honors in history. He was always destined for the law, however, and he was called to the bar in 1924 and practiced, mostly in the criminal courts, as a member of the chambers of Roland Oliver, one of the most prestigious firms of London lawyers.

In 1933, he married Mary Barbara Lawrence, and the couple had one son and two daughters. For some time, he had contributed lightweight, humorous material to Punch and other magazines; a few years after his marriage, he began writing detective fiction under the pseudonym Cyril Hare, derived from his home address (Cyril Mansions) and his practice address (Hare Court). He continued to do so for the rest of his life, often making use of material drawn from his own experience both within and outside the legal profession. At the start of World War II, he undertook a tour as a judge’s marshal, from which came Tragedy at Law (1942). Later, after a brief spell in the ministry of economic warfare (which helped him to write With a Bare Bodkin, 1946), he spent nearly five years as a temporary official in the public prosecutions department.

He returned to private practice in 1945, and in 1950, he was appointed a county court judge in his native Surrey, where he was concerned with civil rather than criminal proceedings. He was a supporter of amateur music making (this is reflected in When the Wind Blows, 1947) and was always much in demand as a public speaker. In the last years of his life, his other commitments limited his time for writing fiction, and his last works declined in quality.

Analysis

Cyril Hare’s first two novels are solid, workmanlike detective stories. Well plotted and convincingly structured, they are typical of British detective fiction in the late 1930’s but are not remarkable for any innovations.

Tenant for Death

The first, the rather ordinary Tenant for Death (1937), introduces Hare’s first series detective, the burly Scotland Yard man Inspector Mallett. Mallett has a lively intelligence, but he is no supersleuth and sometimes admits to being baffled. Yet unlike some of his near contemporaries, such as Anthony Berkeley’s Roger Sheringham and Nicholas Blake’s Nigel Strangeways, he does not confidently assert mistaken conclusions only to have them subsequently disproved. Hare took some pains over the characterization of his detective, and in Tenant for Death and his next two novels, Death Is No Sportsman (1938) and Suicide Excepted (1939), there are numerous references to Mallett’s enormous appetite, his extensive knowledge of food, his excellent memory, and his ability to appear suddenly and unexpectedly before someone.

Death Is No Sportsman

It was Death Is No Sportsman that, despite its conventional format (including the murder of a thoroughly unpopular man; a larger-than-usual role for the official detective; and a limited group of suspects, the least likely of whom turns out to be the criminal), first showed Hare’s talent for creating a microcosm of society (in this case, a weekend fishing club) with accuracy, loving care, and gentle mockery of the characters’ human weaknesses and idiosyncrasies. There is also an ending that surprises, inasmuch as both detective and reader are cunningly persuaded to be skeptical of all evidence save the false. On the other hand, once the falseness of the evidence in question is perceived, only one person can possibly be guilty: Indeed, because the evidence rests on the unsupported word of one person (the murderer, in fact), the alert reader may well penetrate the mystery before Hare intended. That may constitute a structural weakness, one found in much of Hare’s later work, which, if it should be anticipated by his regular readers, may dilute some of their enjoyment.

Although in this respect the influence of the ingenious but dull Freeman Wills Crofts is perceptible, there is more to Hare’s novels than the mere construction and demolition of a seemingly unbreakable alibi. Although Suicide Excepted and Tragedy at Law are notable for their inclusion of perhaps the most unlikely murderers in Hare’s work—though not necessarily the best surprise endings—they also constitute two of the five major novels that he produced in the period between 1939 and 1951.

Tragedy at Law

Many of Hare’s stories feature some technicality of civil or criminal law that would not be immediately obvious to the layman. In Suicide Excepted, a clause in an insurance policy causes three amateur detectives to seek to overturn the verdict of a coroner’s jury, though the underlying reason still comes as a surprise. Tragedy at Law involves a little-known legal technicality relating to the timing of civil proceedings. What is most striking about the five principal novels, however, is the feeling of tremendous human warmth they generate, their constant demonstration of Hare’s ability to provide deft, well-observed, authentic, and affectionate portraits, laced with inoffensive humor, of particular professional and social milieus—a bereaved family coping with the gathered relatives and the legal complexities arising from the dead man’s estate, a county court judge and his entourage on circuit, government officials conducting their business, a local musical society with its triumphs and petty musical jealousies, and a dying peer’s house party and his butler’s struggles to keep up standards despite the restrictions imposed by an unsympathetic, egalitarian postwar society.

In many of these novels, Hare drew on his personal experience—of the wartime civil service, amateur music associations in his home county, and the law and its workings. In an article published shortly after his death, he told of an incident involving the head of the chambers in which, as a young man, he had first practiced law. On learning that Hare was convinced that a prisoner he was defending had been wrongly accused, his principal remarked skeptically, “On the whole, it is sometimes not a bad thing for a young man to believe in his client’s innocence.” Readers of Tragedy at Law will recognize that as a remark made by “a sarcastic senior” to Pettigrew when Pettigrew was a young man. One can only wonder how many other similar comments and situations found their way into his writing, which also shows the precision of expression and accuracy of effect that one might well expect of a lawyer pleading his case or a judge summing up the evidence.

In Tragedy at Law, Mallett deduces the solution to a curious series of mysterious events, but he cannot explain the underlying motive or prevent a murder that occurs very late in the story. It is another character, Francis Pettigrew, who provides the final piece of information and precipitates the denouement. After the introduction of Pettigrew, whom Hare obviously regarded with some affection, Mallett’s role gradually diminished, and Hare came to prefer writing about the activities of his modest, barely successful, benevolent lawyer. The best of the Pettigrew novels is the third, When the Wind Blows.

When the Wind Blows

When the Wind Blows depends on an esoteric fact about matrimonial law; it also includes some of Hare’s delightful cultural cross-references—in this case, the reader will be helped toward the solution of the mystery by familiarity with Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849-1850) and especially by knowledge of a peculiarity of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Prague Symphony (though it must be conceded that the peculiarity is fairly well known among the musically literate and that the reader’s realization of it and its inevitable consequence too early in the narrative is enough to destroy the puzzle).

Pettigrew, whose earlier disappointment in love is chronicled as part of the background to Tragedy at Law, is now happily married to a woman much younger than himself; her fortune enables him to worry less about his own financial position, to be happy despite his relative lack of professional success, and to concentrate instead on living a pleasant life. As ever, he is a reluctant participant in events; just as he is pressed into participating in the musical life of the local community, so he finds himself drawn into investigating a murder the solution of which is of no interest to him whatever. It is in this novel, incidentally, that Mallett is only briefly mentioned and does not appear: The official investigation is carried out by the carefully portrayed and initially unsympathetic Inspector Trimble, a character who in fact comes to life even more convincingly than the nearly ubiquitous and ultimately caricatural Mallett. Hare’s delightful sense of humor may be seen here in the portrait of the gruff orchestral conductor Clayton Evans; the almost hilarious misadventures of Judge William Barber in Tragedy at Law provide another example.

An English Murder

Tragedy at Law was Hare’s own favorite novel, an opinion that is shared by many of his readers; nevertheless, his masterpiece is perhaps the single novel in which he included neither Pettigrew nor Mallett, An English Murder (1951). It is Christmas. The dying Lord Warbeck has convened one last festive gathering of family and friends. These consist of his son, Robert, a dislikable neofascist; his cousin, Sir Julius, chancellor of the exchequer in the postwar socialist government; Mrs. Carstairs, the ambitious wife of the man who stands next in succession to the chancellorship; and Lady Camilla Prendergast, whose matrimonial hopes once extended to Robert and who is making one last attempt to discover his intentions toward her. To these are added Dr. Wenceslaus Bottwink, a historian of Middle-European, Jewish extraction, who has suffered greatly at the hands of prewar fascist regimes; Briggs, the butler, and his daughter Susan; and Sir Julius’s bodyguard, Detective Sergeant Rogers.

The title, An English Murder, is justified in a number of ways. The setting, traditional in British detective fiction, is a country house conveniently cut off by snow. The Englishness is explicitly underlined, however, by Dr. Bottwink, whose amused observation emphasizes the illogicality and unlikelihood of the relationships between social classes, the speech patterns, and the quaint customs stocially maintained even when murder occurs. Moreover, Bottwink’s gentle amusement is evidently shared by Hare himself. By the time the unpleasant Robert is poisoned, all but one of the guests, as well as Briggs and Susan, have a substantial motive. Consequently, this is probably the only detective story of quality in which the butler cannot be ruled out as a serious and genuine suspect: By this device, Hare pokes gentle fun at the British joke about detective fiction—“the butler did it.”

Hare often provides the reader with a clue to the mystery by means of a reference to a book. In An English Murder, the clue is Lord Rosebery’s Pitt, a biography of British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger; once again, when the technicality on which the plot turns is appreciated, there can be only one criminal, though Dr. Bottwink experiences a shudder of apprehension when, for a time, it appears that his diagnosis must be wrong. It is not to reveal too much to say that the final justification for the title is that the motive could have existed, as the pedantic but sympathetic Bottwink himself remarks, nowhere but in England, or, more properly, Great Britain. A decade and a half later, the peculiarity of the British constitution that, according to Bottwink, had needed correction since at least 1789, would at last be amended; however gentle its thesis, An English Murder is one of the more eloquent and pleasurable fictional protests to appear in the postwar period.

Lord Warbeck’s ancestral home is in the imaginary region of southern England used in most of Hare’s work. An impression of unity of place is thus afforded to the whole body of his novels, though in An English Murder the supporting references—to the fictional county of Markshire and the flooding of the fictional River Didder, for example—are fewer. Initially, the atmosphere is more conspicuously one of political dispute. The characters are well drawn, from the obnoxious Robert with his juvenile expressions of hatred for Jews and socialists to the respectful Briggs; from the urbane but ailing Lord Warbeck to the boring Mrs. Carstairs; from the polite and well-bred Lady Camilla to the pert Susan; from the consummate politician Sir Julius to the self-effacing Bottwink, constantly claiming that his knowledge of England is imperfect but just as constantly showing remarkable powers of insight into his companions’ behavior. There are well-judged episodes indicative of social stratification, such as the worried Briggs’s dilemmas over the proper company (guests or staff?) in which Bottwink and Rogers should take their meals, and there is at least a hint that the worst sin that a guest can possibly commit is to take a tray of tea upstairs to another guest, thus usurping one of the rightful duties of the butler. At the behest of Sir Julius, Rogers investigates the crime; the stolid bodyguard is forced to admit defeat, however, and he would simply have handed his dossier over to the local police when the thaw came had not Dr. Bottwink, supplementing his powers of observation with his knowledge of history and the British constitution, presented him with the solution.

He Should Have Died Hereafter

The technique and relative lack of inspiration of his last two novels show Hare’s declining powers. He Should Have Died Hereafter (1958) echoes his genius in, for example, the deft portrayal of a country hunting fraternity and a deeply mistrustful village community. Despite the usual reliance on a technicality (a little-known area of the law of succession), despite the references to other books and the flashes of dry humor, despite even the presence of Pettigrew and his young and sympathetic wife, however, this relatively obvious—and, in the end, explicit—reworking of Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story “The Adventure of Silver Blaze” is unfortunately a rather predictable, ill-structured, and disappointing swan song.

Principal Series Characters:

• Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard, who appears in six of Hare’s nine books, is mentioned in a seventh, and features in a small number of short stories, is a large man with a prodigious memory, the ability to appear as if from nowhere, and a great fondness for food.
• Francis Pettigrew , who appears in five books (three of them with Mallett), is a middle-aged, moderately successful lawyer who barely makes a living and is drawn reluctantly into amateur investigation. Pettigrew gradually supplants Mallett, though Mallett—by now retired—reappears (with Pettigrew) in Hare’s last book.

Bibliography

Beahm, George W., ed. Stephen King from A to Z: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Work. Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews McMeel, 1998. Encyclopedic compendium of entries on every aspect of the author’s fiction and biography.

Beahm, George W. The Stephen King Story. Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews and McMeel, 1992. A good, updated biography of King. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Stephen King: Modern Critical Views. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1998. This is the best single collection of essays about King, many collected from other sources listed here, but including previously unreprinted pieces from journals or non-King-specific books. High-quality pieces cover a range of themes and King’s works through Needful Things. Good chronology, bibliography, and index.

Collings, Michael R. Scaring Us to Death: The Impact of Stephen King on Popular Culture. 2d rev. ed. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1997. Examines King’s influence on the rise of horror fiction in the United States.

Collings, Michael R. The Work of Stephen King: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide. San Bernardino, Calif.: Borgo Press, 1996. Provides both a good chronology and useful descriptions of some of King’s hard-to-find works, as well as a copious annotated list of secondary sources.

Docherty, Brian, ed. American Horror Fiction: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. This collection of essays places King’s works into context with other American horror writers.

Herron, Don, ed. Reign of Fear: Fiction and Film of Stephen King. Los Angeles: Underwood and Miller, 1988. The essays in this collection discuss the significance of film in the development of King’s reputation.

Hohne, Karen A. “The Power of the Spoken Word in the Works of Stephen King.” Journal of Popular Culture 28 (Fall, 1994): 93-103. Discusses the tension in King’s work between slang speech, which codifies a knowledge rejected by those in power, and monologic orality, which embodies that power; claims his works illustrate the tension between official and unofficial languages and ideologies that exists not only in literature but also throughout society.

Hoppenstand, Gary, and Ray B. Browne, eds. The Gothic World of Stephen King: Landscape of Nightmare. Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1987. The collection of academic criticism of King includes an introduction by Hoppenstand and essays on themes (“Adolescent Revolt,” “Love and Death in the American Car”), characters (“Mad Dogs and Firestarters,” “The Vampire”), genres (King’s “Gothic Western,” techno-horror), technique (“Allegory”), and individual works.

King, Stephen. Bare Bones: Conversations on Terror with Stephen King. Edited by Tim Underwood and Chuck Miller. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1988. Though many of the interviews collected in this volume become somewhat repetitive, they provide a good sense, in King’s own words, of what he is trying to do in his fiction and why he does it. The interviews were held between 1979 and 1987; the opening transcript of a talk King gave at the Billerica Public Library is most useful.

King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Everest House, 1981. King researched and wrote this critical work on horror fiction and film at the instigation of his editor. He focuses on works since the 1940’s and discusses novels, B-films, and horror comics to support his thesis that monsters such as Godzilla are a way of making tangible the fear of such things as nuclear war.

Magistrale, Tony. Stephen King: The Second Decade, “Danse Macabre” to “The Dark Half.” New York: Twayne, 1992. Discusses King’s work in the 1980’s, including his nonfictional analysis of the horror genre in Danse Macabre, his Richard Bachman books, Misery, and the novellas of the Dark Tower saga. Also includes a 1989 interview in which King discusses fairy-tale references in his work, as well as his treatment of sexuality, masculinity, and race; discusses critical and popular reaction to his fiction.

Magistrale, Tony, ed. The Dark Descent: Essays Defining Stephen King’s Horrorscape. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992. This academic collection of interpretive essays covers subjects such as homophobia, treatment of female characters, and dialogic narratives in King’s work; the sixteen pieces examine most of King’s novels and some short fiction. Individual essay bibliographies, book bibliography, and book index.

Magistrale, Tony, ed. Landscape of Fear: Stephen King’s American Gothic. Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1988. Placing King in an American gothic tradition with Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and William Faulkner, this study treats sociopolitical themes such as “The Betrayal of Technology,” individual accountability, innocence betrayed, and survival in the novels through It. The text is supplemented by a bibliography of scholarship from 1980 to 1987.

Miller Power, Brenda, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, and Kelly Chandler, eds. Reading Stephen King: Issues of Censorship, Student Choice, and Popular Literature. Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1997. Examines issues at the heart of horror fiction. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Reino, Joseph. Stephen King: The First Decade. Boston: Twayne, 1988. This book-by-book analysis, from Carrie to Pet Sematary, attempts to show King’s literary merits, stressing subtle characterization and nuances of symbolism and allusion. The text is supplemented by a chronology, notes, and primary and secondary bibliographies.

Rogak, Lisa. Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King. New York: St. Martin’s. 2009. This easy-to-read biography examines King’s life chronologically by focusing on his books and their film adaptations. It also covers his childhood, his determination as a writer, his struggles with alcohol and drugs, and his near-fatal 1999 accident. Contains eight pages of black and white photos.

Russell, Sharon. Revisiting Stephen King. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. Analyses of King’s later works, from The Green Mile through Dreamcatcher.

Spignesi, Stephen J. The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Works of America’s Master of Horror. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1991. First published with the title The Shape Under the Sheet, this is an important guide for all students of King. Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Spignesi, Stephen J. The Essential Stephen King: The Greatest Novels, Short Stories, Movies, and Other Creations of the World’s Most Popular Writer. Franklin Lakes, N.J.: New Page, 2001. A useful discussion of the horror writer’s works by a King enthusiast.

Underwood, Tim, and Chuck Miller, eds. Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King, 1976-1982. San Francisco: Underwood-Miller, 1982. This is another collection of articles on King’s work. The articles vary in quality, with Ben Indick’s “King and the Literary Tradition of Horror” providing a good introduction to the history of the horror genre. Douglas Winter’s essay, “The Night Journeys of Stephen King,” discusses several of the short stories. Includes a bibliography.

Vincent, Ben. The Road to “Dark Tower”: Exploring Stephen King’s Magnum Opus. New York: NAL Trade, 2004. In-depth study of King’s seven-volume masterwork, which revolves around the mystery of the tower from which the series takes its name.

Wiater, Stanley, Christopher Golden, and Hank Wagner. The Stephen King Universe: A Tale-by-Tale Examination of the Interconnected Elements in His Work. Los Angeles: Renaissance Press, 2001. A critical feast of all things King. The authors explore the common themes, places, and characters that run through King’s novels. Resources include a biographical chronology, a bibliography, and an index.

Winter, Douglas E. The Art of Darkness: The Life and Fiction of the Master of the Macabre, Stephen King. 1984. Rev. ed. New York: New American Library, 1989. Winter’s work provides a perceptive critical overview of King’s work, with long articles on each novel up to The Talisman and a chapter on the short stories in Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. Winter also includes summaries of King’s short stories, a short biography of King, and extensive bibliographies both of King’s work and of books and articles written about him.