Given that Inspector Littlejohn is a detective working for Scotland Yard he spends a surprisingly large amount of his time solving mysteries on French soil. I previously reviewed Death Spins the Wheel which saw him make a short fact-finding trip across the channel but Death in High Provence is the first I have read where he is investigating a crime abroad.

In this novel Littlejohn is approached by the British Minister of Commerce whose brother had died in a car accident in Provence. The Police quickly ruled it an accident but the Minister feels that something is suspicious and wants some answers. Being concerned about causing a diplomatic incident the minister asks Littlejohn to visit the area in an unofficial capacity to obtain some evidence of foul play so he can get the investigation reopened.

Littlejohn and his wife travel to the quiet village of St. Marcellin under the less-than-convincing pretense of being travel writers. They try to befriend some of the locals to find out more about the death but the few who do share information disappear…

Because we can already guess much of what Littlejohn discovers in the opening third of the novel its early chapters of the novel concentrating on establishing an atmosphere. Some of this is giving a sense of life in the rustic, decaying village but it is also about building our understanding of the almost feudal relationships that still exist there and that the answers to the recent crime lies in the village’s past.

I have written appreciatively in the past of Bellairs’ ability to write about rural communities and that same skill is very much in evidence here. The descriptions of the landscape and the buildings when they first arrive are rich and wonderfully detailed giving the sense that he is describing real places and people. I really enjoy the small details that pepper the early chapters like the negotiations that have to take place between Littlejohn and the hotel proprietor about when they will have a bath and whether the water will be hot or cold.

Death in High Provence is quite a strange book structurally because the reader begins the novel already aware or at least strongly suspecting the answers to the questions Littlejohn is investigating. To give an example, I doubt that any reader will seriously believe that the deaths were really the result of a car accident and it will soon be clear to the reader who is manipulating the villagers into keeping quiet.

This choice gives the novel some of the texture of an inverted mystery novel and yet I think that would be a misleading label (not least because it is only very strongly implied rather than confirmed in the text). While we know who is behind the conspiracy of silence that does not necessarily equate to knowing the identity of the killer, their motives or exactly what was done. What it does do however is establish a tension that will run throughout the novel and give Littlejohn an opponent of sorts to maneuver against.

Bellairs adjusts the style and pacing of the novel once that opponent emerges, shifting from a slow, conversational approach to investigation to something more active and direct. The book never feels action-driven but I think it finds a new focus in those chapters. It helps that this shift coincides with the discovery of information that gives Littlejohn’s investigation a much sharper and slightly different area of focus though we do not lose sight of the car accident.

I do appreciate that this second phase of the story introduces some stronger mystery elements, creating a puzzle for the reader to solve although the writer’s focus remains on developing his characters and the relationship between Littlejohn and his opponent. The situation Bellairs describes is interesting and I did appreciate that it becomes more complex the more we know about it, building to the very welcome discovery of a second mystery for Littlejohn to work out.

I found that second mystery to be much more intriguing than the first and was surprised by several of the developments and by the overall premise which I thought was clever. Unfortunately I think it also feels a little rushed, in part because it is introduced quite late in the book leaving little time for a focused investigation. When Littlejohn does start to work it through I found I had to reread the conversation to clarify aspects of the complex explanation and wished that a little more room had been allocated to exploring this portion of the story.

Pacing is really the principle issue with Death in High Provence. The opening chapters are certainly atmospheric and establish a sense of obstacle but Bellairs takes too long to begin moving his narrative forward, leaving little room for the meat of the mystery. The circumstances of the second investigation are much more interesting than the first and could easily have supported a whole novel in themselves and yet they feel buried away in the final third of the novel, hinted at but not directly addressed until shortly before the end.

For that reason I cannot say that Death in High Provence is a particularly successful novel. It certainly stands out as being quite different in structure and style than any of the other Bellairs novels I have read so far but I couldn’t help but think that this would have worked better as a novel with a French policeman such as Bellairs’ Dorange taking the lead rather than an English detective like Littlejohn. Making that change might have allowed Bellairs to skip over some of the necessary establishing material to explain how and why Littlejohn gets involved and get directly to the mystery which, given more space, had potential to be quite interesting.

Vintage Mysteries Challenge: Any country but US or UK (Where)

I had my first taste of George Bellairs last month when I wrote about Death of a Busybody, a novel that I felt had plenty of character but that the mystery was too simple to solve. While I felt a little underwhelmed, I could see some elements I liked and was keen to dive right back in and give him a second go. There are a lot of different Bellairs titles available so I selected one at random and hoped for the best.

The Case of the Demented Spiv is another outing from Inspector Littlejohn published some seven years (and eleven books) after Busybody. While its title is certainly striking, I must say that it doesn’t really reflect the body of the work. There is a spiv in the story but he only appears in the opening scenes and he barely figures in the rest of the story. Still, it led to me taking a closer look at the book so as a title I suppose it did its job.

The novel begins with the titular spiv running into a pub to let people know that he has found a body at a textiles factory and he repeatedly professes his innocence. The body is that of the factory’s manager and is found wearing theatrical paint. The local police seize on him as the most likely suspect however but before the case is brought to trial he hangs himself in his cell. Stuck, the local police call Scotland Yard who assign Littlejohn to the case and after he arrives and the question of his lodgings are settled (this seemingly is an important part of any Littlejohn investigation), he sets to work, listening to village gossip to help him understand the relationships between the various characters he meets.

Bellairs understands rural communities well and captures the strange power an employer can have over their local population. From the beginning of the novel we are led to understand that the Fenning family’s status causes others to alter the way they perceive and interact with them. For instance, we learn that the initial investigation was somewhat half-hearted because of the policeman’s ties to the family. This material is interesting and I felt gave the book some rich themes to explore.

While I think the book never really pulls off any surprises in its situations or characterizations, it executes its plot and character development well. The Fenning family are comprised of some interesting figures and I felt that Bellairs managed the revelations about them very well, slowly building up a clear image of them over the course of the book.

As a sleuth, Littlejohn is very practically minded and methodical and there is a hint of the plodder about him yet I enjoy the way he interacts with the locals, sometimes manipulating them a little while following a lead. Those easy interactions with the locals  are one of the things that make him stand out most as a character.

This brings me to the case itself and here I have somewhat more mixed feelings. On the simplest level, I felt that this novel does not give itself away as badly as Death of a Busybody and I appreciated that the suspects are interesting. However, the nature of the crime feels a little more drab and commonplace while the origins of the most striking aspect of the death, the greasepaint makeup, are less interesting than you may assume. Still, the case builds at a good pace and does have some very satisfying moments in its conclusion though this is not the sort of puzzle mystery that a reader could figure out through ratiocination. Instead the reader should size the suspects up and deduce how the crime might have been achieved.

While The Case of the Demented Spiv is a flawed novel, I find it tidier and much more entertaining than my previous experience with Bellairs’ work and I find I am looking forward to trying other books in this series.