DP54Cover - Deadly Pleasures

THE THE AFRICAN
AFRICAN
CONTINENT CONTINENT IN IN BRITISH
BRITISH
CRIME CRIME FICTION
FICTION
by by Philip Philip L. L. Scowcroft
Scowcroft
Some of the worldwide settings of British crime fiction
are owed, at least in part, to the existence of the onetime
British Empire and this is particularly due to
those books which are set in the continent of Africa. My
examples, and I am sure these are far from being comprehensive,
come from all over that large continent. Agatha
Christie, much traveled, supplies several examples from
her output of crime stories. THE MAN IN THE BROWN
SUIT (Lane, 1924), a thriller rather than a detective story,
reflected Christie’s Empire-wide tour with her first husband
in the 1920s; we visit South Africa and Rhodesia (now
called Zimbabwe) – the story is fun.
At extreme ends of Africa from South Africa are
Morocco, scene of the later Christie thriller DESTINA-
TION UNKNOWN (Collins, 1954), a bit of a farrago but
entertaining with it, and Egypt. DEATH ON THE NILE
(Collins, 1938), an orthodox murder mystery with Poirot
present and in his best form, is set largely on a river Nile
steamer on which the murder(s) take place. It exists not
only as a novel but also as a play (which was called
MURDER ON THE NILE and did not feature Poirot) and
as a film which was based on the novel version.
Egypt and its ancient history was particularly
popular in the 1920s (when Tuankhamen’s tomb was
discovered). Christie cashed in on this with her short story
“The Adventures of the Egyptian Tomb,” collected in
1924 in POIROT INVESTIGATES. Later she set a
detective novel, DEATH COMES AS THE END (Collins,
1945) in ancient Egypt and this is still, in the present age
in which so many historical crime stories appear, one of the
very earliest periods in which such a story has been set.
There was, or could be, a dark side to the exciting
discovery of the treasures of ancient Egypt. Unscrupulous
people saw the chance to make money out of these
treasures and this is a feature of Carter Dickson’s LORD
OF THE SORCERERS (Heineman, 1946, a.k.a. THE
CURSE OF THE BRONZE LAMP). The action takes
place in 1935, mostly in England. Egyptologist Lord
Severn suffers the death of one of his associates and this
is blamed on an ancient bronze lamp and its supposed
curse. Severn’s daughter Helen vows to scotch the curse
and on her return to England, she takes the lamp with her
to Severn Hall. She is seen and heard entering the front
door but then disappears (the lamp, however, does not).
Despite an immediate search, she cannot be found and
soon afterwards Lord Severn, too, disappears. Has the
Deadly Pleasures
73
lamp “got” them? No murder has been committed,
though there is no lack of criminal activity. Sir Henry
Merrivale is equal to all the magic and is as robust and
cantankerous as ever, especially in a memorable row with
a welshing Egyptian taxi driver at Cairo’s main railway
station. All told, this is a fascinating tale which I never tire
of re-reading.
Dickson visited Morocco in his later “HM” novel
BEHIND THE CRIMSON BLIND (Heinemann, 1952).
Moving a little further south J.R.L. Anderson’s DEATH IN
THE DESERT (Gollancz, 1977), set in and around the
Sahara region in a fictitious West African republic, has a
Secret Service flavor to it with Anderson’s Colonel Blair
equal to all skulduggery. R. Austin Freeman, creator of
Dr. Thorndyke, most famous of all medico-legal sleuths,
was at one time a medical officer in British West Africa and
his short story “The Case of the White Footprints,” from
DR. THORNDYKE’S CASE-BOOK (Hodder, 1923)
draws on this experience and Freeman’s knowledge of
diseases common to that part of Africa.
Finally a word for A.E.W. Mason, much traveled
, both in a personal sense and in his books. He set a book
in Morocco, THE WINDING STAIR (Hodder, 1923), but
it is not really crime; nor, quite, is his most famous novel,
the oft-filmed THE FOUR FEATHERS (Hodder, 1902),
which largely takes place in the Sudan – a good adventure
story, with elements of secret service. Mason’s last Haraud
detective novel, THE HOUSE IN LORDSHIP LANE
(Hodder, 1946) includes a sub-plot in which an attempt is
made to destabilize Egypt by drug imports. This is
doubtless a good idea for a book, but the two chapters
devoted to it merely serve to distract attention from the
main plot and spoil the structure of what is a good detective
story, if not quite Mason’s best.