J. S. Fletcher

• Born: February 7, 1863
• Birthplace: Halifax, Yorkshire, England
• Died: January 30, 1935
• Place of death: Dorking, Surrey, England

Type of Plot: Private investigator

Principal Series: Ronald Camberwell, 1931-1937

Contribution

Though J. S. Fletcher often utilizes traditional rural English settings in his detective fiction, his novels also are notable for an urban realism that is lacking in most of his contemporaries’ works. He can be depended on, too, to offer complex and original problems with an extensive array of rapid-paced incidents and logical, and yet surprising, conclusions. He also brought a journalist’s skill to the writing of crime fiction; because only a small proportion of his output was part of a series, his books offer more variety of characterization than is typical of the form. Despite the rapidity with which he turned out his whodunits (seventeen in one three-year period), reviewers in the 1920’s lavished praise on his works and marveled at his seemingly inexhaustible imagination. By that time, he had become a best-selling author on both sides of the Atlantic. His major achievement is The Middle Temple Murder (1919), one of the few Fletcher whodunits still being read; it is historically significant because its young detective, Frank Spargo, is one of the first newspaperman-sleuths, a type that later became popular in England and in the United States. During his career, Fletcher created many young sleuths, men in their twenties and thirties, whose energy and dedication compensated in part for their lack of experience.

Biography

Joseph Smith Fletcher was born on February 7, 1863, in Halifax, Yorkshire; his father, John Fletcher, was a Nonconformist clergyman. Orphaned as a child, Fletcher was reared by a grandmother and educated at Silcoates School and by private tutors. By the time he was twenty, he had published four books, including three volumes of poetry, and had gone south to London. There he wrote about rural life for newspapers and magazines, using the pseudonym “A Son of the Soil.” He also produced editorials for the Leeds Mercury and began to write biographies, historical studies, and romances. By 1898, he had decided to forsake journalism and devote himself solely to books. For the next thirty-seven years—until his death on January 30, 1935, at Dorking, Surrey—Fletcher published at least three books per year, gaining renown as a historian of his native Yorkshire for such works as A Picturesque History of Yorkshire (1899-1901), The Cistercians in Yorkshire (1919), The Reformation in Northern England (1925), and Yorkshiremen of the Restoration (1921). For these and other historical works, he was made a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He also was a chronicler of racing and continued to write poetry throughout his life. He was married to Rosamond Langbridge, the daughter of the canon of Limerick, and they had one son.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Fletcher began writing mystery fiction, which became his primary literary activity in the last decades of his life. About the origin of his work in the genre he said:

I believe I got my interest in criminology right from the fact that a famous case of fraud was heard at the Quarter Sessions at a town where I was at school—its circumstances were unusual and mysterious and the truth hard to get at; oddly enough, I have never yet used this as the basis of a story. Then, when I left school, I meant to be a barrister and I read criminal law and attended a great many queer trials for some time. But turning to journalism instead, I knew of a great many queer cases and mysteries, and now and then did “special commissions” for various big papers on famous murder trials. Also, I learnt a good deal about criminology in conversations with the late H. B. Irving, the famous actor, who was an expert.

Analysis

In the late 1800’s, J. S. Fletcher began writing short fiction. Within a decade, he published six volumes of stories; one of them was The Adventures of Archer Dawe, Sleuth-Hound (1909), an undistinguished collection of puzzlers. Much better is Paul Campenhaye, Specialist in Criminology (1918), ten stories narrated by a likable private investigator who not only labels himself a specialist in criminology but also says that he is not a detective and has nothing to do with the police. Indeed, Campenhaye works with only a clerk and a mysterious man about London, and some of his cases do not lead to police or legal action, partly because of his generosity toward women. Though most of the stories are set in London—about which Campenhaye is singularly knowledgeable—some cases take him as far north as Yorkshire. (Fletcher favored London and his beloved Yorkshire for his settings throughout his career.) A master of disguise as well as an astute observer of people and places, he nevertheless succeeds purely by chance, as in “The Champagne Bottle” and “The Yorkshire Manufacturer.” There is little doubt that Fletcher had Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in mind when he wrote the Campenhaye stories, but such imitation was commonplace with aspiring detective-fiction writers at the time.

Not until 1931 did Fletcher again create a serial sleuth. Ronald Camberwell, a London private eye, debuted in Murder at Wrides Park and was the narrator-sleuth in ten more novels, two of which were published after Fletcher died in 1935.

Murder of the Ninth Baronet

A typical example of the Camberwell series is Murder of the Ninth Baronet (1932). Fletcher whodunits frequently center on a disappearance that is followed years later by an unexpected reappearance. In this novel, however, John Maxtondale disappears again, within a day of his return after a decades-long disappearance. As a young man, the eldest son of a Warwickshire baronet, he had eloped with Lucy, a tenant farmer’s daughter, and completely dropped out of sight. Because worldwide efforts to locate him were fruitless, John’s younger brother Stephen inherited the title when the baronet died, but with the provision that if John ever returned, both title and estate would revert to him. The mystery of John’s second disappearance is solved when his body is found on the family estate. Among the several suspects are Sir Stephen and his son Rupert (John was childless), a dismissed workman, and a man who years earlier had vowed vengeance on John for his elopement with Lucy. When this would-be avenger and Sir Stephen are murdered, the focus of attention shifts to the dismissed workman, who has disappeared. Then Camberwell and his team learn that Rupert has secretly married the gamekeeper’s daughter and is living part of the time in London with her and their son under assumed names. With its action shifting between country and city, the book proceeds at a rapid pace, each brief chapter full of stirring action and surprising revelations. Camberwell’s efforts not only take him from country to city and back again but also have him shifting back and forth between the past and the present. The basic elements of the narrative—property, an inheritance, and long-standing rivalries—are commonplace, but Fletcher’s deft handling results in a compelling mind teaser.

The Ebony Box

The Camberwell books were so popular that although Fletcher retired the sleuth after eight “Case-books,” he brought him back within a year. The first of the new series was The Ebony Box (1934). Having retired from the detective life, Ronald Camberwell—a self-described “dull and retiring old bachelor” of thirty-one—becomes steward of a Yorkshire baronet’s estate. Within a month, however, his master is dead, having mistakenly drunk potassium cyanide, which was stored in a brandy bottle in his photographic laboratory. This death initiates a series of events that center on a missing ebony box filled with jewels and negotiable securities that Sir John had given to his mistress. Camberwell, having lost his post as steward after a conflict with the family solicitor, drifts back to his old firm and joins the search for the box and for the baronet’s missing valet. This difficult and dangerous quest, which includes local police and Scotland Yard, leads to the discovery of the murdered valet as well as the box and its contents.

Even more than in his other books, Fletcher’s detectives in The Ebony Box join so many chases and stalking missions that they have little time for reflection. Camberwell and his former partner Chaney, particularly, are so caught up in the hunt that they fail to assimilate information; as a result, they make hasty judgments that are quickly proved wrong. They are little more than legmen in this case, and when Chaney is ready to concede failure, unwilling to waste any more of his time on a futile case, his new partner Chippendale must rally the group. Camberwell, whose retirement led to Chippendale becoming Chaney’s partner in the firm, has high praise for the young man’s abilities:

He was a typical specimen of the naturally sharp-witted Londoner, whose native acuteness had been further accentuated and deepened by a good deal of experience in quarters where readiness of perception and quickness of resource were necessary—moreover, before ever entering our service, he had been a solicitor’s clerk and had acquired a legal outlook on things.

Chippendale solves the case, demonstrating that he has more of a natural instinct for detection than do his partners and the police. As for Camberwell, though he again narrates the book and is involved in the investigation, he reveals even less intellectual acumen in this novel than in earlier ones. Luck, legwork, and the perceptiveness of a junior partner are what lead to the apprehension of the thief-murderer, Smorfitt; nevertheless, The Ebony Box concludes with key questions unanswered:

I have never been able to decide in my own mind between two possible theories. Did Smorfitt find out, somehow, that Marsh had stolen the contents of the ebony box?—or did Marsh, having stolen them, . . . turn for help in getting rid of his swag to the sly and cold-hearted scoundrel who coolly murdered him?

Once again, Fletcher has created a marvelous puzzle to challenge the reader, but missing is the awesome intellect of a Holmes or a Hercule Poirot to orchestrate a solution that provides the expected enlightenment.

The Eleventh Hour (1935) was the second of the new series of Camberwell novels, but Fletcher died before he completed the third. Edward Powys Mathers, known by the pen name Torquemada, finished it, and it was published in 1937 as Todmanhawe Grange in England and as The Mill House Murder in the United States.

The Middle Temple Murder

The popularity of this series notwithstanding, Fletcher’s best detective novel is The Middle Temple Murder. Praised by President Woodrow Wilson on its American publication, it became a best seller and established Fletcher’s reputation in the United States. In 1951, Howard Haycraft and Ellery Queen included the book in their Definitive Library of Detective-Crime-Mystery Fiction as a cornerstone selection. Fletcher’s fluent style, realistic urban setting, and unusually complex puzzle offered jaded mystery readers a fresh approach to the genre; these qualities also attracted many readers who had scorned crime fiction as an inferior literary form. In a sense, he can be said to have made the reading of whodunits respectable.

The story begins when London newspaperman Frank Spargo happens on a murder scene in Middle Temple Lane: An old man has been bludgeoned to death. His curiosity aroused, Spargo starts to work on the case, first with a Scotland Yard detective, later independently. Using the columns of his paper to seek witnesses and information, he identifies the victim as John Marbury, recently returned to England from Australia. Later, however, Spargo determines that Marbury actually is John Maitland, a convicted bank embezzler who disappeared after serving a prison term. A barrister friend of Spargo, Ronald Breton, coincidentally turns out to be Maitland’s son (though Breton has always believed that he was an orphan whose maternal aunt entrusted his upbringing to a barrister). Stephen Aylmore, a member of Parliament and the father of Breton’s fiancé, is charged with Marbury-Maitland’s murder (under a different name, Aylmore had been a prison mate of the dead man). Spargo’s investigation (which takes him to Yorkshire) eventually clears Aylmore, establishes Marbury-Maitland’s innocence (as he claimed at his trial years earlier), and exposes Breton’s aunt as the murderer of her brother-in-law, whom she hated.

Too many coincidences surface at crucial times in the book, a recurring problem in Fletcher’s work as a whole, but the multifaceted problem is replete with unexpected twists, and everything meshes neatly. Like Ronald Camberwell, Frank Spargo is a pleasant chap who is more akin to Watson than to Holmes, but the reporter’s diligence compensates for any lack of ratiocinative skills. The reader cannot help but be pleased at the end of the novel, when Spargo seems ready to make a match with Jessie Aylmore.

The Charing Cross Mystery

A 1923 novel, The Charing Cross Mystery, is the only other Fletcher work that continues to attract interest, perhaps as much for its similarities to The Middle Temple Murder as for its own merits. Fletcher’s sleuth again is a young man, this time a wealthy barrister named Hetherwick who spends more time pursuing his private interests than he does his profession. Like Spargo, he accidentally comes on a crime and engages in an investigation increasingly independent of the police. The book also has its share of coincidences, including the fact that one of Hetherwick’s friends is from the same town as the first victim and knows his granddaughter. At the end of the novel, Hetherwick and this heiress are about to marry. There are more similarities between this novel and The Middle Temple Murder, including the pervasive influence of the past on the present and the disappearance of a key character who emerges years later with a new identity. As in the earlier novel, this reappearance opens old wounds and spawns new crimes. The Charing Cross Mystery is a weaker book, however, for the villains are unrealistic, and the resolution is predictable. Finally, although there are dramatically realistic London and Yorkshire moors sequences, many scenes lack verisimilitude.

Given the prodigious output that Fletcher maintained for so many years, there are bound to be similarities in plot, technique, characterization, and setting from one novel to another, though some are indigenous to the form. His skill as a puzzler, however, cannot be denied, and while he worked within the bounds of traditional English detective fiction, Fletcher’s books are written in a distinctive style, feature young sleuths who are engagingly different from the typical eccentrics of his contemporaries, and accurately present aspects of Great Britain’s landscape, both rural and urban.

Principal Series Character:

• Ronald Camberwell is a private inquiry agent in London in partnership with a former inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department. A self-effacing man, Camberwell cooperates with Scotland Yard and local constabularies and lets his partner, Chaney, or their associates, Chippendale and Fanny Pratt, reap the glories of success. Though Camberwell’s primary role is that of reporter in the manner of Dr. Watson, he and the others share the legwork in their cases.

Bibliography

Barnes, Melvyn. “J(oseph) S(mith) Fletcher.” In Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers, edited by John M. Reilly. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980. Combined biography, bibliography, and criticism of Fletcher and his works.

Kestner, Joseph A. The Edwardian Detective, 1901-1915. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000. This tightly focused reading of fifteen years of British detective fiction is crucial for placing Fletcher’s early work and for understanding his overall career’s trajectory.

Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Malden, Mass.: Polity, 2005. This overview of detective fiction focuses on the relationship between literary representations of private detectives and the cultures that produce those representations. Sheds light on Fletcher’s writing.

The Saturday Review of Literature. Review of Murder at Wrides Park, by J. S. Fletcher. 7 (July 18, 1931): 981. Review of the first book in Fletcher’s Camberwell series. Provides a contemporary perspective on this popular series.

The Saturday Review of Literature. Review of Murder of the Ninth Baronet, by J. S. Fletcher. 9 (August 13, 1932): 47. Contemporary review of the fourth work in Fletcher’s Camberwell series novel in an influential critical magazine.

Turnbull, Malcolm J. Victims or Villains: Jewish Images in Classic Detective Fiction. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1998. Contains some discussion of Fletcher’s works and his portrayal of Jewish figures.