The Man in the Dark Transcript (Green Penguin Book Club 10)

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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 Man in the Dark by John Ferguson, Penguin 65.

John Ferguson is not as well a known author as some I have covered in this series, so I thought I'd start by introducing him to you. He was born in Callender, a small town to the north of Stirling in Scotland in 1871. He worked on the railways before becoming an ordained Episcopalian minister. This work saw him posted variously to Dundee, Glasgow and Guernsey — the latter later becoming the setting for two of his novels. In the years running up to the First World War, he had some success as a playwright focusing on historical Scottish subjects. During the war, he served as chaplain at a school near Folkestone in Kent, which is a location for The Man in the Dark that you'll hear more about later in this episode. It was also the basis for his first full-length novel, Stealthy Terror, which was published in 1918. The Man in the Dark was his fourth book and appeared in 1928. He wrote ten novels in all, with the last coming out in 1942. You might sometimes find him under the name J.A. Ferguson. Although he was never invited to join the Detection Club, he did achieve enough success with his early novels that in 1931 he was invited to move publishers and his subsequent novels were published by the Collins Crime Club . You might have come across one of them, 1937's Death of Mr Dodsley, because it was republished a couple of years ago by the British Library Crime Classics series. Ferguson retired from his work as a minister in 1946 when he was 75 and died in 1952.

Alongside his move to Collins in the early 1930s, that decade also saw his first time being republished for the Penguin series, with The Man in the Dark coming out in that edition on 29th July 1936. This was followed in 1940 by his first novel, Stealthy Terror, with Night in Glengyle and Death Comes to Perigord joining the series in October 1947 and July 1950 respectively. He also edited and contributed to two volumes titled Modern One-Act Plays that were published as Penguins.

Ferguson was never wholly a detective novelist, which perhaps explains why he wasn't a Detection Club member — even though Dorothy L. Sayers had approvingly reviewed two of his books. Some of his novels were pure thrillers, while others had elements of both thriller and detective fiction. The Man in the Dark is such a one. Subtitled "an Ealing mystery", the story begins in London with a character named Sandy Kinloch trying to find his way out to this west London suburb from the centre of the city during a thick fog. A chance meeting with a stranger on the street leads to a murder, for which the assembled sleuths determine there must have been a witness, yet nobody comes forward. A combination of Scotland Yard detectives, a journalist named Godfrey Chance who discovered the body, and a private investigator named Francis McNab, try to solve the puzzle before another death occurs. This is the first appearance of McNab, who was to become a recurring character for Ferguson.

Joining me to discuss The Man in the Dark is Kate Jackson, a golden age detective fiction aficionado and the author of the Cross Examining Crime blog. You might have also come across her work with British Library Crime Classics in the form of The Pocket Detective and How to Survive a Classic Crime Novel. Kate is extremely knowledgable and widely read in this genre, so I'm keen to hear what she made of this more obscure title in the green penguin series.

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 Kate gives this one and why.

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Caroline: Before we get to The Man in the Dark, I'd be really interested to know what was your prior knowledge of John Ferguson before going into this?

Kate: Well, The Man in the Dark is only my second read by John Ferguson, so my experience is not vast. But previously I have read Death of Mr Dodsley, which the British Library reprinted a few years ago. I think I found that book a little bit over long, but I really liked the bookshop setting and I think had some really good character moments.

I think my only other experience of Ferguson is the reviews that Dorothy L. Sayers wrote for the Sunday Times, because she reviewed two by him, Night in Glengyle in 1933 and The Grouse Moor Mystery in 1934. And interestingly, she seems to have preferred the first one to the second. I think finding his writing stronger when he was writing more purely in the thriller mode.

Caroline: Yes that's definitely a topic I'd like to come on to today: is this detective fiction versus thriller, how they blend because I do think Ferguson is a writer who is straddling that divide in quite an interesting way. I had the same experience as you. I read Death of Mr Dodsley when it came out from the British Library. But I'm not sure I'd hugely registered John Ferguson other than that. For instance, I don't think I knew that he was a minister, and that he belonged to that little club with Ronald Knox and Victor Whitechurch, of clerics who turned to crime fiction in their spare time.

So coming onto this book, which I believe I'm right in saying, was his first to feature Francis McNab, which is this recurring detective character who comes along a bit after as well. What was your initial impression? What did you think first, going into reading The Man in the Dark?

Kate: I think the initial feature which most grabbed my attention was the intense nighttime fog and it was interesting to see an earlier classic crime novel using that weather condition because my other experiences of it is from books which were slightly later, like London Particular by Christianna Brand, The Port of London Murders by Josephine Bell, QED by Lynn Brock and Don't Open the Door by Anthony Gilbert, so thirties, forties, and fifties.

And I guess the thing that I noticed about Ferguson's fog is that it's almost an aggressor in its own right. It's not a passive part background, because I think on the first page we're told that "the sulfurous taste became intensified while in addition, a new and acid flavour, probably the river's contribution to the mixture made its presence felt on the roof of his mouth".

Which is Kinloch in this case. And no, I've been in fog, but I've never had such a kind of intense experience of it, and I think it really adds to the very sensory focused opening, and it's almost like quite a nightmare experience.

Caroline: I agree. I also highlighted that quote, I thought that writing about fog was really good. And fog is like a little sub interest of mine in crime fiction anyway. I think it's interesting as a metaphorical, you know, moving from the sort of fog of unknowing into the clarity of seeing what's really happened and all that.

But as you say, the sensory description of this man being in the fog trying to get somewhere, it being really uncomfortable, it being difficult. I thought that was really well written and made for quite a striking opening. I think I felt like it slightly tailed off a bit after we left the fog, as it were, once we got into more dialogue driven scenes.

This character who's stuck in the fog is Sandy Kinloch, who's bit of a down and out, and he's groping his way from central London to Ealing where he's going to try and ask an old friend he hasn't seen for years for money. Their scene together actually felt like a bit of a letdown even after what I felt was the real mastery of this foggy journey.

Kate: Hmm. Once we kind of start hitting that dialogue, I guess if you are someone who's read a lot of books, read a lot of mysteries, you're already starting to narrow down the options of what's going to happen next, because you know, he's had the big argument, he's flung himself out the house, he's decided to take every identifying mark out of his clothing. He's just

Caroline: Yeah.

Kate: You just know something bad now has to happen to that man. It's just a rule of fact.

Caroline: Yes, that did feel like maybe that detail could have been handled a bit better. I'm imagining, I don't know, that Ferguson maybe wrote a draft of his book and then was going back through it, looking for places where inconsistencies where his plot didn't quite add up and he was like, oh, no, they would be able to tell who he is, I better just have him rip up all of his papers and throw them on the floor.

Which yeah, maybe there was a more organic way of weaving in that detail. And then we come to this chance meeting with the future murder victim on the street, which again, made me think of earlier crime fiction. This book is 1928, of course, but it made me think of earlier stories maybe John Rhode and people like that, or even Conan Doyle to an extent, this sort of chance meeting on a foggy street, please come in my house, stranger and witness a blackmail meeting I'm having. Just felt like something that it was from maybe a decade prior. What did you think?

Kate: No, and I sort of got that feeling in different ways. I think from the book where I think because it's not pure detective fiction, it's straddling detective fiction and thriller, I feel like that often opens up a risk in 1920s fiction for it to sound a lot older than it is.

Caroline: Yeah. Why do you think that is?

Kate: I think it's perhaps because crime fiction pre 1920 or particularly detective fiction, was not quite so defined, so narrow, so kind of I know exactly what it is. Because a writer would quite comfortably have detective fiction, but then it might have sensation fiction elements, or we might just throw a ghost in there just for fun because it was quite sort of fluid genre, I think.

I think it's only really when you start getting the Detection Club, the different rules that we start getting this feeling of actually this is what detective fiction is, then this is what not detective fiction is.

Caroline: I think that's a good point that this book comes immediately prior, all of that starting, doesn't it? In it being from 1928 that yes, there are definitely elements of this book that feel older. The almost naivety with which some of the characters navigate the world.

And then also later on we get this journey where the man doesn't know where he's going or who's abducted him, being stuck in a house that he doesn't know where it is. All of that feels like it could be much earlier actually, like Wilkie Collins or something in a way. But then at the same time you have coupled with that, a private detective using fingerprints, tyre treads, all of this stuff, which is more of the detection genre.

So yes, interesting blend. Another way in which this book stood out to me was its format, because it isn't just written in one narrative voice all the way through. It divides, I think, into four sections. One of them is third person, another is a first person, another is a written statement. Then I think we go back to the third person for the end.

So it's not quite a documentary or epistolary novel, but it does switch between sources. What did you make of that?

Kate: I think I have mixed feelings on it because to begin with I quite liked it. We were moved from first person focusing on Sandy into the second section, which is Godfrey Chance, the journalist, recalling the events he's involved in. So I was really quite relieved when that happened because Kinloch was getting a little bit too soppy about his captor.

He was just getting, it was getting to that irritating mark. So I was quite glad to go no, no. You can be soppy off the page. I'm going to hang out with Godfrey Chance and see what's happening over here, thank you. And that also means we get access to McNab and see what he's doing in terms of sleuthing and detecting.

So we're sort of coming at the crime from a different angle. So I really like that. I think I found the changes in narrative voice less effective once we get to the third section, which is the witness statement by Peter Dunn because this is when it really started to feel like an older book, because having a witness statement by a respectable character who has to vouch for themselves at the beginning and explain, why am I telling you all of this?

That's quite an old feature I think it really feels a lot more slow in terms of pace once we hit Peter Dunn's section because he's involved in Kinloch's predicament. He then decides not to help the police very much, and because of that choice, he very much bogs down McNab's investigation.

Also, I think at the end I was less happy with all these narrative changes because I realised that after the first section we'd rather lose sight of Kinloch. And equally by the end I think we're at too greater distance from the principal crime characters, so that when you get to the conclusion, they're a little bit more like a memory rather than a distinct individual. And I think it's fair to say the murderer is not really fleshed out as a character.

Caroline: Not at all. They're barely on the page. I think that's for me, probably the book's chief failing actually. It's not quite as bad as the murderer is just a character who wanders in, in the final chapter and everyone turns around to point at them. But it's in that region, it's certainly a very long way from, the book that comes to mind immediately is something like Agatha Christie's Murder In Mesopotamia, where you've got this really tight closed circle and you get to know all the characters, and then one of them is revealed.

It's very much not like that. I felt similarly that the switch between narrative styles was quite effective at the beginning when we're dealing with the actual crime scene. I quite like that we got almost in a howdunnit way we get Kinloch's experience of what happened.

Then we get the switch of point of view. Almost like you're in a film and it's being filmed from a different angle. You get the point of view of the person who discovers the body coming in on the same scene without knowing what's immediately transpired. But of course, as the reader, we do know. So that second version gives us added context and detail.

After that it didn't really add a lot. Like you, I found the doctor statement quite dull. One other little bit I liked about it was because we switched into first person for Godfrey Chance, who's a character I quite liked and I understand he does recur as McNab's Watson in some other Ferguson books. I like the detail about journalism and what he's up to.

And I like his take on McNab's Scottishness. He's quite grumpy about the fact that McNab is Scottish and he has all these stereotype views about how that makes him closed off and parsimonious and these various other baseless stereotypes. But it was just interesting to get that personal touch through that first person narrative.

I think we'll now move into the spoiler zone, so anyone who doesn't want to hear more plot details about this book, please come back when you have finished.

The big reveal I feel like in the first third of the book is that our protagonist, Sandy Kinloch, is blind, which is held back for all of that stuff in the fog. And so we don't find out until he's actually been abducted from the crime scene and he's on the road with his abductor and she says to him something like, we had to take you. The only way we couldn't take you is, you know, if you were blind and hadn't seen anything. And he says. Well, I am. I'm paraphrasing, but that's essentially it. What did you make of this big revelation?

Kate: I was really interested in that, because I think I knew going in that he was blind, so that's why I...

Caroline: Now I didn't, yeah.

Kate: I can't remember where I picked it up from, but I think I must have known because I was a bit like, why doesn't he just refer to it? because I think obviously fog camouflages Kinloch's blindness, and then he just euphemistically says, Kinloch's condition, which could mean he was unwell or drunk.

But I did wonder whether the emphasis on sound in the street descriptions was perhaps a small clue.

Caroline: I think again, they refer to his condition or something euphemistic and, then they have their big row because I think the doctor sort of implies that he should be able to make a bit more of himself. Like go back to university and finish his medical degree.

And he's kind of like, well how am I supposed to do that with this condition? You know? Probably if you do know everything makes sense. I, for whatever reason, did not know until they actually said it. I'd not read any reviews or anything that said that detail.

Kate: Oh, that's very interesting. So we had slightly different experiences then. Because I knew from the get go he was blind, I was intrigued that to begin with as a disabled war veteran, he was shown to be quite vulnerable. As you said, he is down and out, can't sustain employment and obviously psychologically he's still suffering from that time.

When he gets attacked at as it Ponsonby's house, he doesn't feel capable of defending himself. I think he just screams and then he feels really acute shame for that cowardice afterwards. So I think in some ways his blindness, I think you could even argue, makes him a bit, suffering from depression.

I wouldn't be surprised because he, I probably feel a little bit emasculated, he isn't able to earn a living, he isn't able to defend himself. When we hear a character is blind and we see them as vulnerable, we go, well that makes sense. And I'm sure readers in 1920s would go, that makes sense.

But something that occurred to me was that actually in a lot of classic crime fiction, to have a vulnerable blind person is almost unusual because there's quite a few interwar mystery authors who created blind detectives who are extraordinarily talented and taking on bad guys, finding out murderers, and in some cases these skills like near superhuman.

So I'm thinking of Clinton H. Stagg's Thornley Colton and Ernest Bramah's Max Carrados. There's also Baynard Kendrick's Duncan Maclain, but I think because of his experience with blind people, that author was able to make the character a bit more realistic. But the other two, some of their skills are near magical.

So I was wondering if a 1920s reader was familiar with Thornley Colton and familiar with Max Carrados, would they be expecting Kinloch to maybe be more like them? I'm not sure.

Caroline: Yes. Interesting comparison, because there is some reference to this thing of, oh well, you know, he's lacking in one sense, so all his others are heightened. But it's not a superpower like it is for those other detectives. And we get some in the section where Kinloch is being held prisoner essentially in this remote house so that he can't reveal what he knows about the crime.

We do get some details about him trying to use those senses to work out where he is. He hears things, he hears a bell, he tries to work out what kind of village he's in and so on. But it doesn't really work very well. It's not the sudden fix that it might be with one of those other characters.

So in a sense I think it's maybe a bit more of a realistic portrayal of what might happen if somebody vulnerable in that way was prey to nefarious people like that. But yes, I hadn't thought of that, that for the reader at the time, he's a bit of an outlier in a character in this way.

Kate: Yeah, I think perhaps he's also more vulnerable because of his poverty, because he thinks I can't just leave the house because I look disreputable. Because if I was a super posh person with money, people would probably listen to me and believe me, but if I am a nobody down and out no one's going to believe the story I've just told them and I can't even hire a taxi to take me anywhere. Because of the change in narrative voice, we don't really see much of a development of Kinloch's powers because they stay in that first section. They don't really get much of an outing after that.

Caroline: Yes. His captivity and his vulnerability during captivity reminded me of an Anthony Gilbert book, The Woman in Red. I don't know if you've ever read that one, where the woman who's held captive in that has a similar problem in that she has no money, she has no friends, she has no relations, so if she tries to escape her captivity, she has no resources and she feels that no one's going to believe her about what's happened.

And so Kinloch's situation is analogous to that maybe. So all the while that he is being held captive and perhaps slightly soppily, as you say, falling in love with the woman who's in charge of him, we get Godfrey Chance and Francis McNab back in London trying to detect this. This was the first appearance of McNab. What did you make of him as a detective?

Kate: I think when I was reading the book, I didn't actually realise it was his first appearance, and I think the way he's presented makes it seem like he's been doing this sleuthing for ages. He feels very established, I think. Based on just the two books I've read, I think he's quite keen on keeping cards up his sleeve, which can be a bit problematic for the reader as it goes along. He's a little bit Sherlock Holmes like, because he's quite good at theorising from a slim number of clues.

Caroline: He does some good Holmes stuff with Kinloch's walking stick doesn't he? He's the only one of the assembled detectives that deduces from that that Kinloch is blind because the stick is too long and it's worn down in a particular way and et cetera, et cetera.

Kate: Yeah. So I think that's one of the things, he knows there was more than one person at the crime scene, that the blind person must have been innocent. And I'm not really sure the reader would've come to the same conclusions as McNab if they only had access to the same amount of data.

One difference between Death of Mr Dodsley and The Man in the Dark is that there's much less interaction between McNab and the police, which I thought was a little bit of a shame, as I quite liked that in the other book.

Caroline: Yes. I tend to like that in books generally, actually, where you get that amateur-professional dynamic and you get to see the strengths and weaknesses of both kinds of detective. It also felt a little bit blunt therefore, when at the end Chance is saying to McNab, oh, well, the police detective is going to get all the credit for this case.

And McNab goes essentially yeah and I don't mind because it doesn't really serve my business to be well known. I felt like there was a missed opportunity there for a relationship between those two detectives, whether it's a amicable one or one of tension. You get both examples. Holmes-Lestrade have their tussles over credit Japp and Poirot, generally, they're quite content, I think, with the way it falls for them. But it just felt like a bit of a gap left there.

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So if you were going to recommend this book to someone else, or tell them about it, what do you think would be the most arresting feature that you described to them?

Kate: Yeah, I'm not, I don't know if I would be recommending or at least I wouldn't be sort of saying it had an arresting feature because for me, Kinloch as the blind protagonist, he should have been that most arresting feature, but his removal from the page for a large chunk of the narrative, I think prevents that from happening.

The changing narrative voice could have been an interesting feature to bring up. But again, it is a bit different, but it's not unusual for the era. And I just think other books did it better like Murder Isn't Easy by Richard Hull.

Caroline: Yes. And the blindness for me was undermined later on when it was just seemingly magically cured, which I did try and do some research into whether that was even vaguely plausible. And I found that the problem is plausible, but not necessarily the solution, if that makes sense, in that mustard gas and other toxic substances used in the First World War did cause a huge number of eye problems for people returning from the war.

Often ones that were progressive, so didn't show them themselves immediately, but got worse and worse as the years passed. So that much definitely plausible that someone could be blinded in that way. I couldn't find any reference to a suddenly innovative surgery that appeared in the years after the First World War that could take someone from not being able to see at all to seemingly being able to see really well in quite a short space of time.

That doesn't seem to be a medical marvel that occurred at the time, when this book was written. So it's a literary device and I didn't think it was a particularly good one. I didn't really find it plausible or useful to have Kinloch suddenly being able to see, because it didn't really go with any great plot revelation.

I think if it had been the case that he went from being blind to being sighted, and this meant he could recognise someone or put a face to a voice or something like that, but that isn't really what happens. It just occurs.

Kate: Yeah, I don't know, I think it also hinders McNab because nobody tells him that he's got his sight back. So McNab's plans are all based on a man who can't see. Maybe a different author could've done something quite interesting with that disguise. But I think in Ferguson's hands, it just runs along more conventional lines.

Caroline: Yes, because there is this set piece isn't there where Kinloch is pretending to still be a blind person and he's reading Braille on the street. I think that must have been something people did in return for donations, demonstrating their skills that way. And so he's doing this and McNab's got him surrounded by officers and they're going to follow him if he makes contact with anyone from the case. And then of course, he just hops it because he can see. And they're not expecting that. Which is in, in one way slightly amusing, but it's not great for the plot.

Kate: Yeah, it just means everything takes that little bit longer to resolve.

Caroline: Mm-hmm. So zooming back a bit and thinking about this book in the context of the genre, it was first published in 1928, did you feel like it was typical of that time? How well does it fit in with what you know of what was going on in crime fiction then?

Kate: That is a really interesting question and when I was thinking it over before today, I had this little look online and I was like, there's well over a hundred crime, mystery, espionage novels that came out just in that year alone. And it was quite interesting seeing how Ferguson compared or interacted with them. Because obviously 1928 is the year that Agatha Christie's The Mystery of the Blue Train came out. There's also Dorothy L. Sayers' The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. And obviously that latter one shares that theme of the World War I veterans who are struggling.

Caroline: Mm.

Kate: We've also got Margery Allingham's The White Cottage Mystery. And that has that trope of the really hateful murder victim who has queues people lining up to take him out. And I think Ferguson's novel shares that feature as the victim is a blackmailer.

But interestingly, you never get to see any of the possible suspects. They're all privately investigated by the police off the page. So that's one of the examples I think, where Ferguson's novel is not a traditionally structured detective mystery. It's definitely got at least one leg in the thriller camp. Again, you see that when it comes to the theme of blackmail, because in 1928 we've got Brian Flynn's The Mystery of the Peacock's Eye, Anthony Gilbert, The Murder of Mrs Davenport. And I think in both of those books, the blackmail victims are more sympathetically dealt with. We get more up close and personal with them. And when murder strikes despite incriminating evidence, we don't really think they're probably going to be the guilty ones.

Whereas I think Ferguson takes a different approach because the unknown person being blackmailed is undoubtedly the killer. And we don't really to know anything about them until the end. And I think that is a bit of a weakness of Ferguson's novel because normally with the slightly more inverted mysteries, this is kind of an inverted mystery.

Caroline: Yes.

Kate: I think with that style you normally get an opportunity for interesting characterisation or a consideration of the murderer's psychology, which you get in Francis Iles's Malice Aforethought a few years afterwards. But despite the thriller notes of Ferguson's novel, I still think he steers away from some of the more typical material found in 1920s thrillers, because they often had espionage elements and you'd have national secrets being sold, new deadly weapons ending up in the wrong hands. From 1928 you've got The Havering Plot by Richard Keverne, Oppenheim's Matorni's Vineyard, and The Professor's Poison by Neil Gordon.

I did find quite an interesting example of a 1928 thriller, which I think, because it does make The Man in the Dark look highly unimaginative. But I would say it's probably not a bad thing because I did come across The Emerald Tiger by Edgar Jepson, and I've not read it, but according to online information, it's a quest adventure and mystery novel in which Hannibal vanquishes some fascinating and devilish skeleton monks from China before the tiger rests safely in the palm of his beloved Esther.

Now we'll let listeners make of that what they will. It sounds utterly bizarre, but also utterly awful at the same time.

Caroline: In a way, it's got more of the of features you might expect from a thriller, mysterious jewels, criminals from all over the world, not espionage in that case, but often espionage, thinking of some of the thrillers that Agatha Christie wrote during the 1920s, for instance, that one feels like it maybe belongs in that group in the way that it doesn't necessarily belong with The Man in the Dark.

Kate: Yeah, I think another slightly bizarre book, which listeners might find amusing is Rufus King's 1928 novel, The Fatal Kiss Mystery. It sounds to begin with straightforward because it blends romance and suspense. You know, we've all read a Patricia Wentworth, we know that. The information online then said, within the nascent field of atomic energy.

Now I'm trying to think of romance, suspense, atomic energy. Of course those three all go together but it did get me thinking a little bit about the romance in Ferguson's novel, which I think is quite a subdued, eleph— not an elephant, element even. Because I think the romance is only really hinted at, it does shape the plot it, but it's more behind the scenes, I think influencing Kinloch's decisions.

Looking at something like the Edgar Jepson novel and also something like The Mystery at Lynden Sands by JJ Connington, The Man in the Dark in comparison seems quite simple or quite a streamlined plot because The Mystery at Lynden Sands, that had a missing heir, bigamy, secret marriages, embezzlement, kidnapping, murder, and a potential imposter.

Which I don't think we couldn't make a similar list for Ferguson's novel, or you know, Caroline Wells' Deep Lake Mystery from 1928 where the victim had a nail driven into his skull and around his body there were flowers, fruit, a feather duster, and other meaningless articles, which again, sounds like a slightly more involved plot, I would say.

Caroline: The Man in the Dark seems pretty tame by comparison. It's got a very ordinary killing. And one small abduction about, the only thing that I think would even slightly touch that realm is the miraculous curing of Kinloch's blindness. But even that is mostly adequately explained by, oh, you know, his doctor friend takes him to see a specialist surgeon.

It's not like he, I don't know, washes his eyes in a magical lake and then he can suddenly see again, you know, it is put in a medical context, even if that medical context doesn't quite hold up in real life. So, yes, that's very interesting. So I'd say the takeaway from your research there is that The Man in the Dark is quite a pedestrian thriller for 1928.

Kate: Yes, by comparison.

Caroline: I'm now enjoying imagining the reader of 1928 with all of this on offer, all these different books they could have had. And, uh, maybe it's not particularly surprising that The Man in the Dark was not a huge hit at the time. It is intriguing to me though, thinking about this in the Green Penguin context as why this book ended up in the series.

Sometimes I find speculating on this is not especially productive, unfortunately, because I think we want it to be the case that they were choosing for the Penguin series, the best crime fiction or the most innovative, or the most interesting, or the most popular, but from the research I've been able to do, sometimes that was the case, but sometimes it was also what we could get the rights to cheaply.

And perhaps that was the case here. Given that 1928 context, because this book is a bit more readily available because it was in the Penguin series. How do you feel like it holds up from the perspective of a reader who might pick it up in a secondhand bookshop or similar?

Kate: I guess in some ways I would want to look briefly back at the 1928 reader because I came across a review written by the Book of the Month Club News, which the Saturday Review of Literature quoted at the time, and their impression of the novel was that it was quite different from the n ow well known pattern.

"There is no attempt to fool the reader by casting suspicion in various directions. One's interest in the manhunt is built to a steadily mounting crisis by observing the coils gradually narrowing around him." And then I was kind of thinking, well, if that's what the book's meant to be, you know, how would a 2025 reader come to that?

And I think in some ways that pattern is, we're quite familiar with it. It's not particularly new, different or surprising. And I'd also probably question this idea of the buildup of danger, because I don't really feel like Kinloch was in much peril at all. And then there's this very dramatic conclusion at the end, which I felt was a bit rushed through.

And I think also the modern reader might be possibly expecting more from Stella, as she is termed the book, because I think she has a different name, but she holds it back for quite a long time.

Caroline: Yes. Kinloch's captor, the woman he gets Stockholm Syndrome for, essentially.

Kate: But she kind of says, yes, you can call me Stella. So I will call her Stella as well.

I don't know, because at the very beginning you think, oh, she's an ambiguous character. She's clearly not an out and out baddy. But again she's not an out and out goodie either. Instead of being this more complicated either femme fatale or others sort of more interesting characters, she just simply becomes the woman who abets a crime.

Her captive feels sorry for and falls in love with her. Then she becomes this stereotypical heroine character who I think loses agency quite quickly. Which again, it contrasts to some of the 1928 mysteries, such as The Factory on the Cliff by A.G. Macdonell, which has a woman called Susan Blake in there who was a very interesting anti heroine.

Caroline: Yes. I think you're right that there's not much in there that would surprise an 2020s reader and a fair bit that they might feel was missing. I come back to what we were saying earlier about the lack of suspects in this book that I think, especially if you're accustomed to reading interwar detective fiction. After reading the first opening crime scenario of this book, you might expect that McNab is going to investigate the various possible blackmail victims of this murdered man. I was quite intrigued by the description of the victim's newspaper that he runs called The Eyeopener which is a kind of scandal sheet that deals in probably libellous secrets, and this is his business.

I thought that that was where it was going to take us. And in fact, it doesn't take us in that direction at all. We don't meet any suspects or anyone who knows the murdered man apart from his butler very briefly. And that's it. And instead we leave the scene in the city where the crime took place and we go on this long meandering journey with Kinloch, et cetera, et cetera. So my impression was that a 2020s reader would find that odd.

Kate: I think that's another example of how it comes across as an older style of mystery, I think.

Caroline: Yes, I agree. Having said all the things that we don't really enjoy about it, was there anything you would pick out as a favourite moment or character in The Man in the Dark?

Kate: I am not sure I've got one, but I feel like Stella could have been my favourite character if she'd been better developed, because when first started reading the book, I really was quite intrigued by her because she seemed a little bit like a bright young thing gone rogue because she was well to do, socially all respectable, but seemingly is also doing something very dodgy, I guess I was trying to decide if she was brave or foolhardy for taking an unknown unconscious male into her car to drive him into the middle of nowhere by herself before then deciding to keep house with him for a couple of weeks. You know, this behaviour raises a lot of questions, yet the narrative doesn't really explore any of it.

Caroline: No, I agree. And her only peril or concern is that her cleaning lady will find out. Um, which you're right is if you think about it a bit more objectively is not the worst thing that could happen to them there. Yes. I think my favourite thing about the book is very personal and specific and it's in that very rushed ending that you mentioned where there's a bit of a car chase and then the car goes over the cliff and we finally, very, very briefly actually meet the murderer.

That all takes place quite near where I grew up in Kent. And from what I understand, Ferguson was also very familiar with that area because he was the chaplain at a school, in Folkstone for many years. And the description of the geography is quite good and the landscape. So I quite enjoyed the car sort of rattling down roads I knew and then going over a cliff I've been to and that kind of thing.

But yeah, that was it really. And on that basis I might recommend it to my mum to read because she also knows that area. But that's specific to me.

Kate: We can give him top marks for geography.

Caroline: But only at the very end. I felt like some of the London geography earlier on was a bit, Hmm. I wasn't totally sure about the journey to Ealing and how that worked out in the fog, but I don't think you can be too detailed about these things in a book like this.

So, coming to the end of our appraisal of The Man in the Dark, I have to ask you the question I ask everyone. How many green penguins out of five would you like to rate this book?

Kate: I think I would give it a three and a half because I think it does have some good ideas in there. They just don't get to reach their full potential.

Caroline: And a supplementary question, would you seek out another John Ferguson after reading this book?

Kate: I'm not sure I'd be, you know, rushing out as this recording is over or looking up on eBay, but I think if I came across one in my secondhand book hunting, I'd at least take a look at the blurb and I don't know whether it would be better to follow Sayers' advice and just go for a pure thriller rather than one where he's trying to do two things at once.

Caroline: Yes, I would be interested to check out her recommendations. I'm also a bit curious about the couple that he set in Guernsey, I think it's called Death Comes to Perigord, because that also was a Collins Crime Club title. So I'm a bit curious about that, but I'm not going to be spending a lot of money. It's more of a, if I trip over it, I might read it type situation.

Well thank you very much Kate for considering The Man in the Dark with me. It's been wonderful to have you.

Kate: It's been great to be here. Thank you.

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I hope you enjoyed our discussion of The Man in the Dark by John Ferguson. If you have thoughts of your own to share on this book, please send them to caroline@shedunnitshow.com for possible inclusion in a future edition of the Shedunnit newsletter — that's where I like to keep the conversation going with listeners about everything that I cover on the podcast. There will also be pictures from my own green penguin collection, and those of listeners if you want to send them in. If you aren't already receiving the newsletter, you can sign up now at shedunnitshow.com.

Finally, I must announce our next book for Green Penguin Book Club, which will be Penguin 78, Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley. Although first published in 1913, this novel was frequently cited as highly influential by such greats of the golden age detective fiction as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, so I'm really looking forward to getting into this one. That episode will be coming your way in September. Until then, I wish you all the best for your green penguin hunting and reading.

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This episode of Shedunnit was produced and hosted by me, Caroline Crampton. My guest was Kate Jackson. You can find more of her thoughts on a wide variety of golden age detective fiction at her blog, crossexaminingcrime.com.

You can find a full list of the books and sources used in the making in this episode at shedunnitshow.com/themaninthedark. I publish transcripts of every episode including this one; find them all at shedunnitshow.com/transcripts.

If you'd like to ensure the podcast's continued existence and get some extra audio goodies in the bargain, become a paying supporter now at shedunnitbookclub.com/join.

Shedunnit is edited by Euan McAleece. Production assistance from Leandra Griffith. Member support for the Shedunnit Book Club from CC McLoughlin.

Thanks for listening.