The Rabbity Mr Pinkerton

Before mystery writer Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown [1898 - 1983]) fell from grace for writing a mystery series featuring a wealthy Washington socialite widow, she wrote several books under the pen-name David Frome while living in England, the most endearing of these featuring timid and elderly widower Evan Pinkerton. Dominated for years by a shrewish and parsimonious wife, enslaved as a menial in her boarding house, Mr Pinkerton felt the only relief from his terrible life was his friendship with a Scotland Yard copper named J. Humphrey Bull, who eventually rose in the ranks to Chief Inspector, and stayed his friend even after he moved out.

No doubt Mr Pinkerton, a Welshman who would have become a school master had his wife not told him to marry her, would have remained a penniless drudge under her thumb till the day of his death had his wife not had the good fortune (his, not hers) to die intestate. Although it was her intention to leave her money to anyone but her worthless and rabbity husband, she was too much of a skinflint to pay the tuppence it would have taken to buy and file the will form. So, Mr Pinkerton not only finds himself master of a house that no longer needs to take in borders, but he discovered his wife had much more money than anyone ever thought possible, saved from a lifetime of holding tight to every bloody half-penny, skimping on the gas, and cheating boarders and tradesmen whenever she could. Although 75,000 British pounds may not seem excessive, the buying power at the time would have been in the vicinity of $1.5 million. Despite his sudden wealth, he cannot bring himself to buy new clothes, fearful his dead wife will rise wrathful from her grave, so his only indulgence is going to the cinema thrice weekly, and even that he does with a nervous little glance over his shoulder.

While Mr Pinkerton loves the cinema (he has some very odd notions about America from our gangster and western films) what makes his life worth living is the opportunity to help Inspector Bull in solving crimes, even if he has to dig up the body himself, so to speak, or stumble over it in the fog. Inspector Bull is generally grateful for the help rendered by his little friend, though his gratitude is sometimes after the fact, when he discovers he has been helped, and must save Mr Pinkerton from being murdered himself. When the Inspector knows he is being helped, he will set Mr Pinkerton to some safe, rather innocent task, such as watching a building he has suspicions about, but which is not actually involved in any case. Of course, with Mr Pinkerton's endless curiosity, his love of mysteries, his ability to know what Inspector Bull needs even when the Inspector doesn't, and the heart of a lion that lurks beneath his lamb's clothing, even the most innocuous task soon spirals into a matter of life and death...usually Mr Pinkerton's.

Very cleverly, Ford worked into the narratives of the books references to other cases that were never recorded, such as Watson did in the Sherlock Holmes cases. Rather than being cast-off bits, they work to make Mr Pinkerton seem even larger than life, such as when we have an image of a knife being wrestled from the hand of a madman in the Welsh mountains during a lightning storm before the future Mrs Bull can be done in; or they are infused with humor, such as when we are presented with a remembrance of Inspector Bull transporting Mr Pinkerton down the High Street at great velocity in a wheel-barrow in pursuit of a villain. The entire series is an even mix of humor and adventure, with nearly everything seen from Mr Pinkerton's unique and often skewed point of view. The books are, unfortunately, out of print, but still easily available, and well worth the effort tracking down for the fan of the sort of light-hearted British mysteries popular in the Golden Age.

1. The Hammersmith Murders (1930)
2. The By-pass Murder (1931) - Brit title: Two Against Scotland Yard
3. The Man From Scotland Yard (1932)
4. The Eel Pie Murders (1933) - Brit title: The Eel Pie Mystery
5. Mr. Pinkerton Finds a Body (1934) Brit title: The Body in the Turl 
6. Mr. Pinkerton Goes to Scotland Yard (1934) Brit title: Arsenic in Richmond
7. Mr. Pinkerton Grows a Beard (1934) Brit title: The Body In Bedford Square
8. Mr. Pinkerton Has the Clue (1936)
9. The Black Envelope (1937) Brit title: The Guilt Is Plain
10. Mr. Pinkerton At the Old Angel (1939) Brit title: Mr. Pinkerton and the Old Angel
11. Mr. Pinkerton: Passage for One (1945)
12. Homicide House (1950) Brit title: Murder On the Square

Leslie Ford's Fall from Grace

Leslie Ford (Zenith Jones Brown)
1889 - 1983

Many people often accuse me of possessing the sensitivity of a paving brick; those who actually know me, however, aver that a paving brick is much more sensitive by far. When I delve into the world of potboilers and pulp thrillers from years gone by -- the secret and guilty pleasure of many bibliophiles and book-snakes -- I sometimes need a bit of insensitivity, otherwise my self-esteem and emotions would get ripped by the self-appointed jackbooted Book Police from the Ministry of Politically Correctness: "How can you possibly read that filthy trash, so full of cultural stereotypes and racist hate-speech?"

Since none of them read much of anything, and especially not period fiction which is my forte, I have to commit a visual sin to arouse their ire -- The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, any of the Charlie Chan or Mr. Moto books, or, perhaps, a pulp magazine or a 1950s adventure magazine with any kind of a native depicted on the cover. With mystery writer Leslie Ford's Washington Whispers Murder (1952), however, I am safe from their hateful predacity...if they only knew!

Leslie Ford was born Zenith Jones (nee Brown) in 1889 in Smith River, Calif., where her father was a missionary among the Indians, and spent her earliest years in a papoose, raised among the Indians to whom her father ministered. She studied to be a journalist and started freelancing in 1928. She wrote her first novel, Footsteps on the Stairs in 1931 and her last, Trial for Ambush, in 1962. In-between, she wrote more than 60 mysteries, created two major crime series (as Leslie Ford and David Frome), and was a foreign correspondent in the European and Pacific Theaters.

As Leslie Ford, she is best known for a mystery series featuring retired Army officer Colonel John Primrose, his inimitable man-at-arms Sergeant Buck, and widow Mrs Latham. To the world, it was "A Colonel Primrose Mystery," but I always called them Grace Latham Mysteries, for Grace was the narrator and, to me, the more dominant and more interesting character. Yes, I realize that no one calls The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Speckled Band Doctor Watson stories, but there I am, and there I stay -- Grace Latham Mysteries they are and will be.

Grace is a Washington, DC, widow, whose diplomat husband was killed in an aircraft accident, and who has since been trying to raise her two sons with the help and moral guidance of her Negro housekeeper. Grace is a woman with high social connections in a town where society and politics are very often the same thing. And, truth be told, she's something of a busybody, a meddler and a danger magnet, and often finds herself in hot water, embroiled in murders with far-reaching ramifications. Her world is a now-vanished one of mink coats, afternoon cocktails, garden parties, political intrigue (well, yes, that's still around, but not the same flavor), cultural mores, lunches with the girls, and, of course, the Negro servants living their separate lives away from the knowledge and understanding of the white folk.

Ah, perhaps you begin to understand why the Ministry of Politically Correctness get their knickers in a twist about Leslie Ford and her Grace. Leslie Ford's popular morality tales, easily argued to be "American cozies," were serialized in the once-prestigious Saturday Evening Post (holy grail of many a pulp magazine writer) before being ushered into hardcover and mass market pocketbook, but are now all out of print, found only in the few remaining brick-and-mortar used bookshops and in dusty Internet niches. Now, here's the thing -- Leslie Ford's precipitous fall was from Grace, but, as will all too-rapid descents from high places, we have to ask, Did she fall, or was she pushed?

"Then there are writers like Leslie Ford, whose ubiquitous and unconscious racism automatically eliminates her from our consideration, customer requests notwithstanding."-- Tom & Enid Schantz, Rue Morgue Press

One thing I have noticed about book censors ("It's for your own good") is that they have much in common with former smokers, redeemed hookers and people who have discovered Islam -- they not only eradicate  everything (now) unacceptable  from their own lives but from everyone elses as well. They purge from culture all that with which they disagree and now hold to be evil -- the Liberal prude will denounce Charlie Chan films  he has never seen and the reformed chain smoker will shoot you dead for second-hand smoke; explorer Thor Heyerdahl had a devil of a time researching the early history of the now-Islamic Maldives for The Maldive Mystery -- artifacts had been destroyed or hidden away -- and who can forget that the Taliban celebrated the 21st Century by dynamiting 400-foot-tall statues of Buddha?

Whenever I start a book, vintage or modern, I look at the copyright date, for I need to envision the clothes worn by the people in my mind, and what vehicles they use. I need to know if the buildings will be anonymous glass, streamlined deco or Victorian grotesque. Will I see color? Black and white? Sepia? When my college professor told us the setting of Camus' The Guest was totally immaterial in reading and understanding the story, I told him he was full of...hot air.

With Leslie Ford's stories, I was not judgemental. I envisioned the period and let her tell the story. It was humorous, charming, chatty and fraught with danger. Unlike others of her time, she did not ignore her black characters who were very much a part of the lives of people like Grace. No cruelty, derision or "monkeyshines" -- her Blacks were carefully crafted sympathetic characters, true to their times; what's more, Ford portrayed the society they kept amongst themselves with sensitivity and as much insight as could an observer. In retrospect, she would have been better off had she shoved all her black people in a bag, as did many writers. Her books would be "safer," and they might be rescued from oblivion, but they would not be nearly as good.

And they really are good novels, not just for the murder mysteries and the glimpses of pre-war and wartime America, but for the complex personal interaction between Mrs Latham and Colonel Primrose, which occurs much to the chagrin of Sergeant Buck, who always worries that his boss will fall into the clutches of the scheming and highly influential Washington widow. Although the series can be enjoyed in any order, it's best to read them in the order published to trace the development of that relationship, from initial encounter to final question. And it really does help your enjoyment if you do not demand that mid-century characters have early 21st Century sensibilities; after all, the popular fiction  of our own "enlightened" age will surely also be out of style, if not out of favor (451 degrees Fahrenheit?) less than two generations from now.

• The strangled Witness (1934)
• Ill Met By Moonlight (1937)
• The Simple Way Of Poison (1937)
• Three Bright Pebbles (1938)
• Snow White Murder [False to Any Man] (1939)
• Mr. Cromwell Is Dead [Reno Rendezvous] (1939)
• Old Lover's Ghost (1940)
• Road To Folly (1941)
• A Capital Crime [Murder of a Fifth Columnist] (1941)
• The Priority Murders [Murder in the O.P.] (1942)
• Siren In The (1943)
• Crack Of Dawn Night [All for the Love of a Lady]  (1944)
• The Philadelphia Murder Story (1945)
• Honolulu Murder Story [Honolulu Story] (1947)
• The Woman In Black (1948)
• The Devil's Stronghold (1948)
• The Lying Jade [Washington Whispers Murder] (1952)

Could the murderer be the ghost of Benjamin Franklin?