The Murders in Praed Street Transcript

Caroline: Welcome to Shedunnit. I’m Caroline Crampton.

And welcome back to Green Penguin Book Club, a series within Shedunnit that documents my journey of reading and discussing every crime or green title from the main Penguin series, in order. Our book today is The Murders in Praed Street by John Rhode, Penguin 98.

This book was first published in 1928 and then joined the Green Penguin series in June 1937. It was the fourth novel to feature Rhode's recurring detective Dr Lancelot Priestley, a mathematics professor who, as you will hear, starts out in the early books as a forensic investigator in the mould of R. Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke, and then later develops into more of an armchair consulting detective over the course of the more than seventy novels in which he appears. As the title suggests, The Murders in Praed Street focuses on a series of killings that take place in and around Praed Street in west London, a thoroughfare near Paddington Station. Several of the victims are run businesses on the street or in its immediate vicinity and the ability of the murderer to strike repeatedly in the same area causes great alarm in the neighbourhood, as well as a lot of press coverage. Dr Priestley is drawn into the case when his Scotland Yard associate, Inspector Hanslet, comes to him for advice. He ends up detecting alongside the police and ultimately brings the mystery to a satisfying, if dramatic, conclusion.

John Rhode was one of several pseudonyms used by the incredibly prolific author Cecil Street. Under this name, he wrote more than seventy novels, and there were almost as many again published as Miles Burton. He had yet another outlet as Cecil Waye, in addition to various non-fiction projects and short stories. He was a founding member of the Detection Club and contributed to several of the Club's literary projects. Prior to becoming a full time writer, he was an engineer and an artillery officer, winning the Military Cross during the First World War.

Joining me to discuss The Murders in Praed Street is Ronaldo Fagarazzi, who has been an avid reader and collector of golden age detective fiction for over 30 years. On his blog, Witness To The Crime, he reviews crime and detective books from the golden age and beyond, including those by familiar authors such as Dorothy L Sayers, R Austin Freeman and E C R Lorac, as well as lesser known and harder to collect authors like John Rhode, Miles Burton, J J Connington, Cecil Freeman Gregg and Anthony Weymouth. Also on the blog you can read his detailed research into early TV adaptations of golden age crime, many of which sadly no longer exist in the archives. And if you've ever been to the annual Bodies in the Library conference at the British Library, you will recognise Ronaldo for his wonderful talks about these books on screen — this year, on 20th June, he'll be talking about the BBC TV series Detective, which contained many episodes adapted from golden age crime authors, including Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Anthony Berkeley, and John Dickson Carr. Ronaldo is the most knowledgeable person I know about all of Cecil Street's many, many books — he's actually read them all, unlike me — so I couldn't think of anyone better with whom to discuss John Rhode's first appearance as a green penguin.

Before we get into the book, though, I'll give my usual spoiler warning here. Until you hear me say that we are "entering the spoiler zone", you can safely listen without hearing major plot details. The timestamp for that point will also be in the episode description. After that, you can expect to hear major spoilers, up to and including the full solution to the mystery. And at the end of every episode, I ask my guest to award the book a rating, so stay tuned to the end to hear how many green penguins out of five Ronaldo gives this one and why.

We are now going to be entering the spoiler zone, so stop here if you haven't read the book yet and don't want to hear major plot details.

Music

**Caroline:** Tell me how you got interested in Cecil Street aka John Rhode.

**Ronaldo:** I would have to blame Dorothy L. Sayers for that. I'm a lover of the puzzle plot type of mysteries and Have His Carcase is one of the best of those. And obviously in that she mentions that John Rhode gave her help with the Playfair cypher that is part of that mystery. And in the book itself, Wimsey does say that he'd seen the Playfair cypher in a book of John Rhode's, but without mentioning which book it was.

So that intrigued me. At the time, this wasn't when you could get books online so easily. It was more going down to Cecil Court in London or Murder One Bookshop, which used to be in London who used to have a little bit of a secondhand section. And I started spotting one or two John Rhodes.

So I picked them up. This book, Murders in Praed Street, was one of the first that I picked up. I'm not sure the, actually the first, but probably within the first two or three that I read. And I liked them, so I started grabbing them where I could. Then it dawned on me that there were 76 to collect, and I suddenly realised that I'd taken on quite a task.

But thankfully, I have now managed to track down a physical copy of every one of his books, both in the Rhode and Burton which is quite a task.

**Caroline:** Yeah.

**Ronaldo:** Sometimes you have to put up with not very good secondhand copies. Sometimes you have to find an American edition or a very damaged paperback.

But I took that task on and since then I've really grown to love him as an author. Obviously his reputation wasn't particularly high at one point, but I think it's recovering slightly now.

**Caroline:** By that, are you referring to Julian Symons and him being tarred as a humdrum?

**Ronaldo:** Yes. It's interesting that now I would probably say he's more collected than Julian Symons. Although Symons book is of great interest as a overview at the time of what the genre was, I think tastes have changed since then, quite significantly. And a lot of these authors that were dismissed are now being even reprinted, and although we haven't seen a really proper reprinting of Street's books, bits and pieces have come out over the years even in the last five or 10 years. Some have reappeared and as they come out of copyright in the US they're starting to appear now almost yearly. So this book, for instance, came out of copyright last year and copies are now starting to appear in America, and obviously it's an international thing now. So even though it's not officially copyright free over here, people still pick them up.

**Caroline:** Including John Rhode in that humdrum has always seemed a little bit odd to me. I am by no means as widely read as him as you are, but he doesn't have the obvious characteristics of someone like Freeman Wills Crofts. I think, especially in this book, his prose is great. It's really exciting which is not something I would ever call humdrum.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah, I think people assume that he's very poor on character, which in some books is not his interest, so he doesn't delve into it. But sometimes he can go into character. He's very good on atmosphere, I find. Not just this book, there's Dead Men at the Folly, for instance. He's good on particularly in the Burton books on things like old pagan things like witchcraft and stuff like that.

There's a lot of that in The Secret of High Eldersham, the first Merrion book and also Devil's Reckoning. So he's very good on those aspects and I think most people while there are some criticism of this book, I think most people would agree, at least the first half is excellently written and really interesting as a read.

And maybe it doesn't quite live up to that at the end. But that is often a criticism of his books. He has brilliant murder methods. Some of the most inventive murder methods you've ever heard of. Pyjamas, hot water bottles, exploding bathtubs, just bizarre really, but always well thought out.

But sometimes, at the end of the book it's a little bit less, of a, he doesn't have that kind of shock element at the end often that a Christie will have, where you are aching to know who's done it. Often the reader can spot the culprit, but it's more how did they do it is more the question, which I suppose puts him more towards the Sayers type of writer. I wouldn't necessarily call him Freeman Wills Crofts School, although I think Crofts is in the same school.

It's more of the R. Austin Freeman, H.C. Bailey realist school, I would say he's a part of. He's different enough from Crofts. I think Symons also Inc included Connington and a few other writers in that. But I find them all quite different. They come from the same tree of the genre, but they're very diverse writers. All scientific, although Connington and Street are more scientific than Crofts. I would say that Priestley is probably as a detective, closest to Professor Van Dusen at the beginning, Jacques Futrelle's detective, the Thinking Machine.

Now he's a waspy scientist who's got an assistant in this case, Harold Merefield. And in the case of Van Dusen, Harrington Hatch, the reporter who he sends out to find information for him. Obviously unfortunately, Futrelle died on the Titanic. So he didn't progress as a writer, but that's who he's the closest to as a character.

But he's definitely as a writer, although he did start with a couple of thrillers, he didn't go straight into detective fiction, wrote three thrillers before he wrote the first Priestley Yeah, he's the Freeman school, I think.

**Caroline:** Because although this has improved of late, there hasn't been this huge wave of republication for him as there have been for maybe some other writers. I think probably quite a lot of people listening won't have read much, if any, hopefully they've read this one because we're going to talk about it in some detail. But, so what do you think newcomers should know about his work before they, they jump in?

**Ronaldo:** In terms of the Rhode books, it evolves quite considerably over the course of his writing career. Particularly in the character and the activities of Priestley. He starts out quite ambulatory. He's prepared to go out and look at evidence and interview people and do all sorts of things. That diminished over time, particularly when his second police collaborator James or Jimmy Waghorn made his debut in Hendons First Case. He had just come out of the Hendon Police Training School, which at the time was considered very modern, very cutting edge, and he developed that character as Hanslett at who's the inspector in this mystery, petered out and retired.

It ended up more of a Nero Wolfe type detective where he would just hold court in his library at in Westbourne Terrace, and Jimmy Waghorn would bring a mystery to him and expound it, and Priestley would correct him and suggest things.

And then maybe he would do a second thing at the end where he would either solve it for Jimmy or Jimmy would come back and say, what you told me, it sparked a chord in me and I solved the mystery. So he becomes very much a different kind of character. He's still very waspish.

He's still very critical of any, what he sees as errors of logic or method. But he's less of a, the active detective as the books go on. The books are also of varying quality. There are some, particularly in the late fifties and early sixties in his last 10 years of the Rhode books that are not very good quality. The Burton books tend to maintain a quality level a little bit better through to the end because he didn't die till 1964. So he went on quite a long time. But there are some absolute classics in his early works. The problem often is finding them or identifying which are the ones it's worth actually checking out.

Because when you see them going secondhand for three figures and you think should I take a risk on that for this kind of money? It's understandable that people are a bit shy of taking the plunge. I've, on my blog, always tried to review as many of his books as possible to give people a little bit of an idea of what ones might be worth looking at if they can.

And some have been reprinted. I wouldn't say necessarily the best have been reprinted, although I think the two that the British Library Crime Classics did of the Merrion books which was the first one The Secret of High Eldersham and Death in the Tunnel. They're pretty good choices. Both were well regarded at the time.

But there are some, particularly in the Burton books in the mid thirties, there are some really good ones that are almost impossible to track down, unfortunately.

**Caroline:** Hopefully that won't always be the case, but he's so prolific, I wonder if publishers just get overwhelmed by the variety and the effort involved perhaps.

**Ronaldo:** Yes. And it, even at the time his American publishers were criticising him on how many Burton books were being produced or too quickly at the time in the early thirties. I think there's one period in 1933 that he had seven books out, I believe. because he remember he also had Cecil Waye at the same time which was four books.

Yeah, there are often years when three Burton books came out and two or three Rhodes came out. 140 books in about 40 years, 38 years is an astonishing output. Maybe they suffer slightly from that. But as far as plots go, he had an endless supply. There's one well-known story of a female crime writer saying to him, I'm really struggling for a plot for my new book.

And he's come to my house. I've got a filing cabinet full of ideas.

**Caroline:** Help

**Ronaldo:** Yeah, just help yourself to one of my plots. And particularly, in this book, there's various murder methods, but particularly in the murder methods. He's great. He's got some unusual ones. And he often uses his knowledge engineering knowledge or scientific knowledge for those ideas.

And there's one in this book, particular that's probably very much influenced by his time when he was with the Lyme Regis engineering people. I'm talking about the one where chap is killed in the basement. Obviously it's a technical idea, it's electrical engineering idea, so he used things like that quite a lot.

**Caroline:** This book because it's a I'm never totally sure on the difference between a serial killer or a spree killer. But because it's a sequence of murders it almost feels like he's just throwing away great ideas for free. Any one of the murder methods, you can totally imagine a whole book being built around them, but he's like, oh yeah, that's one onto the next.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah, he does repeat himself once in this, doesn't he? Two people are killed by the same method, but yes. And considering the six victims in the book, he's got quite a lot to cover, hasn't he? I call it a serial killer. because it's, there's a definite idea behind the...

**Caroline:** yes. It's a it's a campaign rather than just randomly going out and killing people.

**Ronaldo:** And it's probably the first proper serial killer mystery. People will point at Marie Belloc Lowndes' The Lodger, but that's more of a thriller and obviously it's based on Jack Ripper and it only just beat out Anthony Berkeley's Silk Stocking Murders by a few months. That was probably the next one that came out.

So it's an important book in that sense. That became very popular over the next few years. You had Philip 's Murder Gone Mad, Ethel Lina White's Some Must Watch, A.B.C. Murders obviously by Agatha Christie and Christopher Bush with The Case of the Monday Murders all followed within the next 10 years. So it became a bit of a sub genre in golden age of Detective Fiction. And this is probably the first realised one.

**Caroline:** Yeah, I think it has a very strong claim to it. I think I've seen a lot of Philip McDonald being cited as the first, but obviously not. I think it's so interesting that because I don't think the popular conception of Golden Age crime fiction is that it has things like serial killers, that it's far too genteel or I don't know, cosy or whatever.

But actually, as you say, it became quite a substantial thread. My feeling about it as a reader is it's simply a great narrative device. It's a great way to plot a book. It's a way to be original.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah. And Rhode is a long way away from the typical country house mystery that we think of Golden Age as being very much made up of. He doesn't really go for that.

And class we could talk about class in this is also a long way from a lot of golden age of mysteries. It's an interesting thing, the characters of Ted and Ivy, how they're both working class people who are trying to get a trade or a skill to improve their lives. She's trying to become a typist and he's learning to, to run a shop and things like that.

So he's very aware of things like that. There's little snobbishness in his books, which is quite refreshing with quite a lot of golden age mysteries. He's well aware of that aspect of the change that's happening in the country, but most of his mysteries on the Rhode side are either country or London based. The Burton books tend to usually occur in a fictional seaside or country town or village, where you've got the usual characters that you might find in that village, but although you could argue that they're never really developed significantly, they're never just cliches, cardboard cutouts. There's always something about them that, that makes them quite interesting.

**Caroline:** Yeah, so the setting of this book particularly I absolutely love it. I think it's sketched so well. It's right there in the title. It says a book about a street, and it's about the shopkeepers and the people who inhabit Praed Street in London. The very opening of the novel really recalls for me Howard's End by E.M. Forster, where he talks about the different characters of the different London stations.

And Rhode starts this one by saying, Praed Street used to be one way, and then they plunked Paddington Station down on it and the street has never really recovered from this indignity. But he just so perfectly paints this picture of this kind of slightly mulish, backwater street that's got too many people in it for its liking.

And as you say, it established this kind of, I suppose would you say like lower middle class or upper working class community there, of shopkeepers. And that's among whom our victims start appearing. I think it's a brilliant piece of writing.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah, obviously there's no pictures to go along with this, but if you've ever seen the original dust cover, it's got a night scene of Praed Street with a London bus, 27 bus, which still runs along there. I live a couple of streets away.

I live the next street along from Westbourne Terrace, which is where Dr Priestley lives, and it's very much derived from that area. It's well drawn from that area. He'd already used that location in The Paddington Mystery, which was his first Priestley mystery. So it was obviously an area that he knew well.

And I think he conjures it up brilliantly. If you walk around it now and it's pretty much okay, there's been some changes and modern buildings in some places, but it really feels like it's still like that. Some of the shops have gone unfortunately. But that's happened everywhere, hasn't it? That small shops have disappeared, but yeah, it, it really does conjure up that area of London quite well.

**Caroline:** And I think that's, for me, one of the great pleasures of reading this kind of fiction is when it's so specific and recognisable that I don't really enjoy detective fiction where it's just generically London or generically Edinburgh or whatever. Because you just know it, the writer either had never been there or couldn't be bothered to be specific.

But yeah this one, one of its its great features for me is the setting and how specific and recognisable it is. We have this great setting. We start being introduced to these characters, as you say, immediately he starts drawing in the light and shade for these people.

Because, we've got here's our character. He's a grocer, but he's got a daughter that he's educated to be a scholar. And she's, her father has all these dreams about how she's going to be a typist. And then she's going to marry a professional. one day he's going to open the Illustrated News and he's going to see a picture of her at Goodwood.

And, he's got these class aspirations for her. Which in the grand scheme of the novel is not very important. It doesn't really tell you anything about the murders or anything like that, but it tells you about the people.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah, absolutely. And obviously her relationship with the neighbour's son also tells you about her attitude towards that. She's not looking at being on the arm of the Duke at Ascot. She's more interested in this working man who's trying to, learn his father's business. So yes he's an interesting first character. You learn about in the book aspirations. He doesn't live on Praed Street himself. He lives on Lisson Grove, which is just the other side of of the Euston Road.

But of course he's lured back to the scene of the crime by a false phone call, which when I first read the book, I thought was Rhode referencing the, the Wallace case.

But actually the Wallace case was a few years after this. So he preempted it because that was a case that he wrote a book about, and also he used that in one of his later books, a telephone call as the basis of that. So it was, he was very interested in that case. So it's interesting that he already thought of this idea of someone being lured out of their house by a phone call while a crime is being committed.

**Caroline:** Yeah it I did a whole episode about that case, years and years ago. It is such an interesting collision of who gets believed and how can you ever prove anything. And the themes that I do actually associate with John Rhode, the idea that you feel like something that is, based on engineering and science and modernity, like telephone calls, you feel like you should be able to prove that, that there shouldn't be any doubt.

But in fact, it's not like that at all. So yeah, no, very interesting parallel. And in this instance, the phone call is there to draw the victim into the trap of the murderer, which obviously works very well as we know. I think by the end of the first chapter, because these people do need to start dropping like flies in order to get through the crimes fast enough. So he does briskly canter through several deaths.

**Ronaldo:** He does. Yeah. You've got the first one and it's quite quickly followed by the second one who's another shop owner. More subtle method than just being stabbed in the street. And, the poison, not quite sure, that's not really identified until quite long afterwards.

And it's only after the second murder that we find out about the bone counters and the fact that people are receiving these because the first victim threw it in the fire, didn't he? When he got it and just disregarded it. And no one knew about it until the police asked his widow later, oh yeah, he received one that he dismissed it and threw it in the fire, thought it was a joke or some kind of advertisement scam or something like that.

I think he thought it was. And then once we know that people are being marked and warned and killed one by one, then we're really into the fast part of the plot where people are starting to drop and this panic going on. One victim dies from shock just by receiving because he's old and very frail and probably wasn't going to live very long anyway. So the murderer takes the risk. Oh, I thought I'd send him this bone counter and see if that did the job.

**Caroline:** See if that's all that was needed.

**Ronaldo:** I'm not to get into this sick man's bedroom and carry out my nefarious deeds. So yeah, people start really really disappearing quickly, don't they? And by the end of the first half of the book, six people have died.

**Caroline:** The counters are a really clever device, because as you say they fulfil a lot of functions. They're murder weapon in that instance. They're also a way of instilling this climate of fear of making people be afraid look over their shoulder, rumours, fly, all of this kind of thing. But they're a good device for the reader as well.

There's something that you can track through the book and keep an eye out for. And so they're clue as well. It's also just interesting that the serial killer's token or calling card becomes such a feature of the genre as it moves on. Obviously A.B.C. Murders is great example, leaving the railway guide by the bodies, all of that. So it's fun to see that's there from the very start here.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah. And they, as you say, they fulfil several purposes. They instil fear in the victims, particularly in the later stages when Priestley himself gets the counter. And also obviously there's a bit of a red herring with another one. The idea is obviously you are going to know that sometime in the future it's coming, it might be tomorrow, it might be six months, and it's just to keep someone on edge, isn't it?

**Caroline:** And it's actually even, I think just thinking to the very end of the book, when we get the big multi chapter revelation, monologue, explanation, I think the killer even explains that the counters were an afterthought. That they were just, oh, something I thought of that could tie the crime to someone else that could incriminate someone else.

Which is just a nice bit of a narrative closure that you get the origin of them as well. What do you make of the fairness or the clueing quality in this book?

**Ronaldo:** I think it's pretty good. I think most seasoned readers will probably guess the murderer. There's a couple of things early on that become important later on. That if you pick up on that will help really. And also I would say during the third murder we see the steps the murder is taken without them being identified to get where they need to go, to commit the murder and follow the victim back on a train back to Paddington.

And using that along with other information that you're told in those early chapters about the activities of the various people involved in the story, that again points to the actual perpetrator. So I think it's fairly clued. There isn't anything in it that you would suddenly go there was no indication whatsoever that that was the reason, so there's nothing like that. Which I think is good. In fact, if anything, there's probably a little bit too much information early on that makes it a little bit simpler for the reader to think. That doesn't mean that they can work out how the various murders were committed though. So even if you could put your name on the person you think it must be, but how did, they couldn't have done that, could they? So it still leaves you with issues and problems that you need to resolve or solve to really find out what the full story is.

**Caroline:** Yeah, I don't have a good word for that, but I find it, it happens sometimes, especially in slightly earlier, 1920s as opposed to thirties where I feel like I know who it is based on various kind of narrative, structural hints, but I couldn't tell you how they did it. And that sometimes almost feels a little bit unfair because I'm reading with the hindsight of having read like another decade's worth of detective fiction to educate me. Whereas the contemporary reader of this book wouldn't necessarily have had all of those pointers already. But, such as life.

**Ronaldo:** There are certainly a couple of Sayers like that aren't there? And this becomes a little bit of that because I think most people will spot the killer. I'm not saying they're going to do it within first 30 pages, but I think by the end of the first half, you're going to know who it is. And of course once Priestley enters the story, then it becomes a little bit more direct about what's going on.

**Caroline:** I was interested to hear what you said about how Priestley becomes much more of an armchair detective later on because in this, he's basically an action hero. He's travelling around the country. He has his memorable multi chapter trip to Dorset and he's charging around the place, interviewing people, and the set piece at the end is definitely action film worthy.

I, I wasn't really expecting that somehow I think because when I've read about him, the phrase armchair detective is never far from his name.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah. All the way through, and as I say, until particularly when Jimmy Waghorn comes on the scene, which would be about 1936, 37, but for Rhode of course, that's about 20 books in, they only started in 25, because he wrote at such a pace. But yeah he does start to become more and more, he has his regular friends who he dines with at Westbourne Terrace his, in his, in his study.

And that's Dr. Oldland who doesn't appear in this story, but appears in nearly all of them, particularly the early ones. Harold Merefield himself who not only is his secretary, is also his son-in-law, which is a very strange thing to think that Priestley was married and had a daughter in the first book who Harold Merefield married who then did completely disappears from the rest of the series. You never hear

**Caroline:** I was going to ask you about that. because I, the first first Rhode I ever read was The Paddington Mystery. And so when I read this one I was like, hang on, where is she one.

**Ronaldo:** She's been, I think she might be mentioned in the second book Dr Priestley's Quest very peripherally. But no, she doesn't appear as a character again at all. It's almost like Rhode forgot that he'd even were given Priestley a daughter at all or Merefield a wife. Even the books he narrates, which a couple of the early ones he does Paddington Mystery and also the second one, Dr Priestley's Quest, he doesn't mention. And then I went back home to the wife, as Watson does in the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Yeah. He would have his regulars, Hanslett, Inspector later Superintendent Hanslett, that becomes one of those regulars at his dinner parties and his discussions about crime.

He was always very keen to keep his involvement out of the public knowledge. So that does become a bit of a trope in his stories that, and he doesn't want his name like connected. So it's quite interesting that it, this story. He is connected with crime by a couple of the people who've heard his name, but ah, weren't you the guy who was solving crimes.

That's quite interesting. But though in those latest stories, it would just be him and his cohorts discussing the latest case that's of interest or particular case that Waghorn or Hanslett has been given charge of, and him making suggestions or criticising the steps they've taken, if they're like it's definitely a suicide, but no, it's not.

He would say no. And he would send them off with a flea in their ear with ideas or just rethink your ideas, or You should be doing this or interviewing this person. And they'd come back later and say, you were right. I should have followed your advice, or I did follow your advice. And that led me to this solution.

So that becomes his way of solving crime later on. And from the mid forties on. He's very rarely seen outside Westbourne Terrace.

**Caroline:** Interesting because, so how would you describe him as an investigator in this one? Before he retreats into his house like that.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah, it's not his strongest because he doesn't solve the motive by detection. He solves it by memory. because he remembers the case that it's all based on, because obviously he was involved in it and obviously he falls a victim to trusting someone he shouldn't have trusted and nearly loses his life as a result of it.

So he's smarter in other books by quite a considerable margin, but he's also quite decisive, the way that he goes and collects the information he needs to collect. He's quite good at that, I think in this book. The investigating the original trial and going down to Devon and finding out all the information there yeah he's pretty good in those sections.

**Caroline:** Yeah, you're right. The personal connection is something that feels maybe a little bit more thriller in a way. The coincidence of him having been involved in the original case of which this is all a elaborate extension, revenge plot of means that he knows things automatically that had somebody else been on this case, they just wouldn't have known.

**Ronaldo:** Once he remembers where he'd heard that name before for the first 50 pages, you're thinking this is a really unusual name. But then there's a reason that this first victim Copperdock has got that name because it enables Priestley to go, I've heard that name, where did I hear that name before?

And it's when, after a night of thinking about it, when he suddenly realises where he's heard it, that gives him the first in into how, what's going on and how he can set about solving these murders.

**Caroline:** Yes. If he was called Smith or Jones, it wouldn't work. Yeah.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah. So that's quite a clever piece of writing by Rhode, because I think, it's not a ridiculous, unusual name, but it's just one of those Oh, it's quite unusual, and it acts as a clue. And for the first half of the book you don't realise that. So that's quite clever, I think.

**Caroline:** And I think he blends it in well to the background because he establishes the slightly backwater nature of the street and the elaborateness of the signs of the different shopkeepers and so on. So I think having someone with that name there doesn't feel odd.

**Ronaldo:** No, not at. Not at all.

**Caroline:** One really important thing in this book is disguise. We've got a character who is in two levels of disguise. In one way he's like a Russian doll. And this has come up in at least one other Rhode book that I've read as well.

People's ability to completely transform themselves physically, to the point where even people who know them well don't recognise them. And this to me feels a little bit Conan Doyle esque, Sherlock Holmes' ability to, become a down and out or pretend to be whoever he was.

And it's something that always slightly takes me out of a story because I just don't quite believe in it. But I think maybe I'm just a bit too sceptical in that regard. How do you feel about it?

**Ronaldo:** I kind of agree. There are some instances that really do just make you think I would think classic might be The Mystery of Angelina Frood by Freeman, where you've got a sex change disguise. Which to the modern reader is just a little bit unbelievable. But I think in this case, it's worth remembering that the second disguise is mostly at night in a dark street in not good lighting conditions.

And he's got a lot of facial hair and a mark on his cheek, which is something that is immediately going to be what people look at and remember. So he's using a deliberate tactic of making someone look at something that's part of his disguise and not looking at maybe his gait or his height, or something like that. Or the voice even, so not brilliantly done, but I don't think it's a critical issue with the book.

**Caroline:** No, you're right. It is done with some subtlety the use of that scar and so on. Yeah, it's like a magician trick, like directing attention towards something that they can be removed so as to make someone look completely different.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah. And of course Priestley when he meets the sailor he hasn't met the perpetrator either. So he is not, he's not in the same position as say Copperdock was or a couple of the other people who saw him. And remember the first person to see him is just totally disregarded because he's a bit of a young thug. And again, probably would had been drinking, Copperdock was regularly coming out of the pub, I think when he saw him, so

**Caroline:** Yes, that's right. Yeah.

**Ronaldo:** he'd had, had a drink or two. And I think when Priestley comes across him on the wall, Isle of Purbeck, isn't it? I think.

**Caroline:** That's right. Yeah.

**Ronaldo:** again it's not middle of the day, great lighting. It's darker, but it's, again, someone he's, he hasn't seen in any other context. So he's not immediately going to say, oh, that's x. He might imagine that's someone disguised, but it wouldn't necessarily help him to identify who was behind the disguise.

**Caroline:** That's true actually. Yes. And I suppose, yeah, maybe I, sort of overestimate people's ability to seek explanation for everything. because yes, you could see oh, I think I feel like this man's like wearing some makeup, or he's like wearing a wig. He's each of their own, you, we don't necessarily think it's some something significant and portentous.

Yes. So coming through Priestley's investigation how do you feel about the police presence in this book? How well does that work?

**Ronaldo:** So we start off with Inspector Wyland, don't we? He's like the local inspector in F division in the area. And obviously he's being a bit led by the nose, isn't he? That's the simple truth about it.

**Caroline:** Yeah.

**Ronaldo:** He evolves an idea, doesn't he? When he's at the pictures about what's going on. And he's got his eye on one person, but of course that person becomes a victim later on. So all these ideas go out the door. What would've been interesting, I think would've been to establish in the book whether he was in that area at the time of the original crime, and where we, he would have any knowledge at all of the original Dr Morlandson case. Assuming that he didn't then, perhaps his failure to really grasp what was going on is a bit more understandable. But really the main criticism of him is he's too susceptible to being led by characters in the book, in one character in particular, into deciding what's going on rather than stepping back and thinking huh.

**Caroline:** The murderer maybe does get a little bit lucky with that thuggish witness. You mentioned the one who the police just immediately disregard him or are prejudiced against him because of who he is. But he does actually have some key information because he did see the face.

**Ronaldo:** Exactly. And when Copperdock sees him the murderer then says, I was there and it was only me and him there. And Wyland is not smart enough to say, hang on. All that is just one person's word against the other. Why did he immediately assume that Copperdock was drunk or just seeing things or, having a vision or something.

That's his main fault, I think is that witness thing that you mentioned, that he disregard one witness because of who he is and one because someone who he trusts says, no, that didn't happen.

**Caroline:** Yes. He doesn't have a good habit of external verification, does he? Yeah. He's not always cross-checking what people are saying. Which as I say, turns out well for the murderer. But also, maybe that's just a comment on, that's your average local policeman at the time.

**Ronaldo:** Exactly. Yes. The policemen in Street's books, they have an amazing ability to be really smart when they're needed to detect on their own. And absolute morons when he wants to really push his main detective's ideas. This is particularly true in the Burton books of Inspector Arnold.

Because there's three or four books where he investigates on his own and he's pretty competent. But as soon as he is there with Desmond Merrion's, like running rings around him and Arnold's just stuck to his theories. And the same is partly true again, of Hanslett even in this one.

But. But more generally although there aren't really any Rhode books where the police are on their own. Priestley is always apart from one non series book Priestley is always involved. They always have to be a little bit less smart than Priestley, because he's always there at the end to sort them out or point them in the right direction.

**Caroline:** And so coming to the big conclusion of this one, we get, I think it's, I think I counted it's three, maybe four chapters of explanation of almost the cliche like villain monologue where he explains, but again, that has its own explanation. The murderer has their reasons for why they are telling Priestley all of which I appreciated. I think if he hadn't introduced that factor and had just done that now I'm just going to tell you all how clever I am. That would've rung a little bit hollow. But the fact that there's a narrative rationale for the revelation that pleased me. I like that.

**Ronaldo:** Yeah. So Priestley could have had his near, death experience at the end. And then afterwards he could have been the one saying this is what happened and solve the whole thing for the reader. But it's interesting that he does it as the murderer saying to Priestley, we're going to die. So I'm going to tell you everything that's happened. And he explains a lot of detail in how he did it. In particular, two of the murders, because two obviously are just stabbing murders, but the two more technical murders, but one in the basement with the poison gas and the one with Copperdock, the last victim with a syringe in his back, how he'd done those which are the two that would probably test the reader the most. Although I think if anyone had read Freeman's Aluminium Dagger, they would probably solve one of them. When I was reading it, I was like hang on. I think I know how that might have been done.

So he does explain in great detail how he did it, and at least the solutions are not fantastical or fanciful. They are believable in terms of how that was done and the one with Jacob Martin, the wine merchant, when he's lured back to the cellar of his previous premises because he thinks there's some information about his illegal activities has been discovered. That one's really quite technical and carefully thought out and Rhode explains it really well. But as I said, he was an engineer with the Lyme Regis company and held shares in it as well, actually for a few years in the early part of the century.

So he's always very good on wireless and typewriter and telephones and modern technology. So that's one of the first ones in these books where he really shines on that technical thing because this is his fourth mystery. So still quite early on in his career, but he brings that out even more later on, as I say, with some really outrageous murder methods.

**Caroline:** So Rhode brings it all home neatly at the end. We have the death side conversation, the explanation of it all, and then Priestley makes his dramatic and unlikely escape from certain death. And then we get the nice little bit at the end where Ted and Ivy are going to get hitched and there's going to be new life on Praed Street and it's all going to be fine.

I think he, he sticks the landing. I think it's good. What I wanted to ask you about, because you have much more knowledge of this than I do, is the film side of this, because this book was filmed. But I think you told me it's now considered lost, so

**Ronaldo:** It is unfortunately at the moment considered lost. It's on the BFI list of a hundred British films that they're seeking to get back into their archive. That doesn't mean that there isn't a copy out there. And with the, some of the work that's going on at the moment, you might have heard of the Film is Fabulous campaign, which are going through people's film collections and trying to find a lot of this old stuff. So I would be pretty positive that a copy is out there and will turn up. It was renamed 12 Good Men for the cinema version.

**Caroline:** Feel like that's a really big clue that's giving away half the story in the title.

**Ronaldo:** Exactly. And, The character of Priestley was removed.

**Caroline:** Oh ok.

**Ronaldo:** Right? So Priestley doesn't appear in the film. It was made in 1936, so we're talking eight years afterwards. As a quota quickie, which as were made by American companies in Britain, which allowed them to show their American films in Britain. A certain percentage of films had to be made in Britain at the time and it was made at Teddington by Warner and directed by a chap named Ralph Ince who'd started as an actor in silent films and then had become an actor and director.

He did a few of these crime things. He did one called The Perfect Crime, which he acted in as well. And then one called Jury's Evidence, which is a very interesting one because it's very similar in plot to 12 Angry Men, there's a jury sitting on a case that led by their foreman through an imaginative survey of how the crime a murder was committed. So he made that one as well. And it was written, adapted by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. So these are the people who did The Lady Vanishes, obviously based on The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White and also Green for Danger, Christianna Brand film or adaptation of hers. So a top team did it, it was a 65 minute long film, obviously black and white, sound. And in the film the jury men all go and hide in a house, which is owned by a, like a leading actor called Charles Drew.

But the mystery itself is actually solved by an aspiring actress called Anne Parks. So they changed the story quite significantly. It got very good reviews. It's quite surprising that it doesn't exist anymore because it's quite a late one, 1936. But as I say, we can only hope that someday it will come back. And there's never been any other film or TV adaptation of a Street story. He never appeared in, in on the tv. He did do some radio but he never appeared on tv in any adaptation.

Not in Detective, for instance, in the BBC series that covered so many golden age writers. But he did write some plays for the BBC. There were like two or three that actually featured Jimmy Waghorn rather than Dr Priestley. And they're pretty good. A couple of them have appeared in Bodies from the Library collections. So they're out there if people want to have a look at them. But apart from that, no. This was the only time any of his stories ever got adapted.

**Caroline:** That makes it feel all the more important that it's recovered, honestly because there's nothing else to look at.

**Ronaldo:** It it had Priestley, it would be even more important, wouldn't it? It'd be interesting to know who would've played him, how they would've played him. Whether there'll ever be an adaptation, I don't know. They seem to be trawling, all the writers these days.

**Caroline:** Yes. I do feel like because of the certain very modern feeling aspects of this book, like the serial killer thing, the jury thing, which has obviously then been made very famous in subsequent films. The revenge part of it, I feel like I could see this over definitely over something like The Paddington Mystery. I can definitely see, a film of this really working. I don't know whether you could keep Priestley in it, maybe. Obviously they didn't feel like they could for the 36 one. But yeah, I feel like structurally it, it lends itself to something quite pacey and thriller ish.

**Ronaldo:** It's an idea that's been reused multiple times, hasn't it? There's an episode of Monk that's only a few years old that used the idea of the person killing the jury members one by one, for instance. So yeah it's, think you could make it quite quite riveting, quite a lot of, tension. You could have tension in it easily.

I agree. I don't know whether you necessarily need Priestley to solve it, but maybe the, a police officer would solve it instead, but, yeah. I think if someone did a modern equivalent of a Detective and like a mystery hour or mystery, or classic mystery or something like that, and picked some of these stories from some of these various writers, you could get some really good stories together and make some really interesting TV or film.

**Caroline:** Drawing our consideration of this book to a close, I have to ask how many green penguins out of five would you like to give The Murders in Praed Street?

**Ronaldo:** I would certainly give the first half, four out of five, definitely. I think it's really well written. Second half, not quite up to the same level, although I think there's still things in there that the reader wants to know and are still revealed to the reader that are of interest particularly the murder methods.

So overall, I'd probably give it three and a half green penguins out of five. And remember it, it was chosen for the Haycraft Queen Cornerstone. So it was a well regarded book. Barzun and Taylor don't say quite such positive things about it in A Catalogue of Crime, but yeah I'd say three and a half.

**Caroline:** That's wonderful. Thank you very much Ronaldo, for sharing the Murders in Praed Street with me.

**Ronaldo:** Always a pleasure to talk about Cecil John Charles Street to give him full title. And hopefully more people will go out and discover his books and realise that there's lots to enjoy in them.

Music

This episode of Shedunnit was produced and hosted by me, Caroline Crampton.

Many thanks to my guest, Ronaldo Fagarozzi. His blog, Witness to the Crime, is a brilliant source on John Rhode's detective fiction and much, much more — you can find a link to that, as well as information about all the books we referenced today, in the episode description and at shedunnitshow.com/themurdersinpraedstreet. I also publish transcripts of every episode including this one; find them all at shedunnitshow.com/transcripts.

Ronaldo has also kindly recommended some good starting points for readers curious to go further into the work of John Rhode and Miles Burton after reading this book — invaluable advice given that the man published over 140 books, some of which now go for thousands of pounds on secondhand sites. You'll find his guide to what's actually worth reading and investing in in the Shedunnit newsletter, available at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter.

The next episode of Green Penguin Book Club will be covering Mr Justice Raffles by E.W. Hornung, so if you're reading along with me, that's your next target.

Shedunnit is edited by Euan McAleece and production assistance came from Leandra Griffith.

Thanks for listening.