A review of The Sussex Cuckoo by Brian Flynn

We live in a world of instant communication where a carefully targeted use of social media can whet the interest of your Intended Audience or solicit information from previously unknown sources. Almost a century ago, the only way to achieve the same end was to insert a personal notice in a newspaper and hope that the intended audience spots it. It is an anachronistic wonder that in detective fiction a carefully placed advertisement in a newspaper often not only produces the desired result but often within hours of the rag hitting the presses. Of course, adverts, at least in The Times, were on the front page and the reader had little else to compete for their attention, but it is a remarkable curiosity how effective they seemed to be.

In this, the seventeenth in Brian Flynn’s Anthony Bathurst series, originally published in 1935 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, such a notice catches the eye of the amateur sleuth as he peruses his copy of The Times before visiting the home of James Frith in Little Osney at the behest of Inspector MacMorran of the Yard. Frith has a rare collection of Jacobean antiquities which he has inherited and is about to sell them. He is concerned because he has been receiving anonymous and threatening letters and seeks the protection of Scotland Yard. They do one better and send Bathurst down to see him.

Despite taking Bathurst’s advice, Frith is (inevitably) found dead on the lawn, wearing his pyjamas, apparently having suffered from a fatal attack of tetanus. That evening he had interviewed each of the six potential purchasers and, curiously, had told each of them that he had decided to sell to a different person. What was his game? Why was no money or cheque found on the premises? Did Frith really suffer from a fatal attack of tetanus as his physician, who had made the disease his speciality asserted, or was it foul play? And if it was murder, why would a potential purchaser murder the man he was buying from? Surely, if he had murder in mind, he would kill the successful bidder.

There is a distinct change in tone and pace in this story from the previous couple that Flynn wrote. It is less of a thriller, more a contemplative analysis of a complex puzzle à la Sherlock Holmes. Bathurst operates on his own with little interaction with the police, not least because there is little direct evidence of foul play, only Bathurst’s suspicions, the oddity of the situation, and the eccentric behaviour of some of the characters.

It is also a masterpiece of misdirection with the reader only realising late on in the story that they have been led down a very long, complicated, intriguing, perplexing garden path and that there might be a simpler and more mundane explanation closer to home of Frith’s demise.

The old joke that if you borrow a crime novel from a library, always check that the last page is not missing has never been more apt than with this book. Flynn drops his big bombshell right at the last moment with very little explanation or notice, although the warning signs are there if you take the care to spot them. I reread the last quarter of the book to satisfy myself that Flynn had just not pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Flynn clearly had fun at his readers’ expense and this reader, at least, had fun in enjoying a well written, intriguing mystery, where almost nothing is as it seems.