Customer Reviews

A Puzzle in Pearls

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My wife - a mystery fiction obsessive - has about fifty books by John Creasey staring from our bookcase, so I eventually gave in and read one, to see why he is so compulsive. the Fernando Pessoa of sensationalist crime fiction, Creasey wrote hundreds of books under as many pseudonyms, such as JJ Marric and Gordon Ashe, creating popular series with heroes like Gideon, Inspector Roger West, The Baron and the Toff, which sold by the millions. Almost all of his books are today out of print, and his name, like Nobel and Francis MacManus, only survives by virtue of a literary prize named in his honour. One of his books was filmed by John Ford as 'Gideon's Day', a police procedural starring Jack Hawkins.

'A Puzzle in Pearls' was first published in 1949, but the version I read was a 1971 revision. Judging by the increasingly lurid covers of Creasey's books, the rewriting probably resulted in additions of violence, but 'Puzzle' remains as quaint as a fistfight. The story centres on Roger Macclesfield, an innocent on holiday at an English sea-side resort, who gets involved with the Boon family, the father a retired Colonel, his beautiful daughter Angela, and her jocular brothers, Peter and Adam; and a brutal gang of jewellery-smugglers led by the mysterious Mizzy, who abduct their victims' children to ensure stolen jewellery isn't downpriced by being 'hot'. The dull-witted local police are supplanted by a benevolent seven-foot giant, Patrick Dawlish, a private detective unofficially sanctioned by Scotland Yard to do the dirty work they can't be seen to.

It's easy to see why Creasey was once so popular. He is an efficient technician who knew how to set up plot and set-pieces for maximum, if simple-minded, effect. Like Garcia-Marquez in 'No-one writes to the colonel', he tells the story through his protagonist's point-of-view, without delving too deeply into his psychology, allowing us to simultaneously identify with and mistrust him, adding to the tension. Although there is an almost jolly picaresque mood, considering some ghastly incidents, conservative institutions such as the family, the army and free trade are critiqued, if not dismissed.

The book's opening is almost Surreal - an obsessive man stalking an elusive woman, like one of Breton's amants fous, on the edge of a steep English cliff. A car approaches behind him silently, a motorboat appears below. A man suddenly emerges from the cliff and asks him to light his cigarette. Soon crime narrative proper takes over from enfantomastic fantasy, but there is an amiable air of make-believe underlining the gritty generics throughout.