Arnold Bennett was a hugely successful and popular of novels, stories and plays, whose reputation among the intelligentsia was ruined for some time by the Bloomsbury Group, who were probably just resentful but who were also pimping for replacing Realism with psychological portraits of characters. Bennett was reassessed and restored to the canon, even placing a novel on the Modern Library Top 100 Novels, though, sadly, he had to share that platform with his chief attacker, the dreadful Virginia Woolf.

At any rate, I read a few of his Five Towns books years ago and found him an author more to be admired than enjoyed. The griitiness of Realism simply seems a lie: our assumption that our working-class ancestors led joyless lives of drudgery runs contrary to what we know of our own lives and of human nature. I never felt much need to pursue further readings.

Imagine my surprise then when a Bennett story popped up in my podcast feed from Classic Detective Stories: Murder!. And, nevermind that he dallied in the genre, this little gem turns out to be quite funny. We are thrown off the scent by an opening that features two antagonists heading for a confrontation:

Two men, named respectively Lomax Harder and John Franting, were walking side by side one autumn afternoon, on the Marine Parade of the seaside resort and port of Quangate (English Channel). Both were well-dressed and had the air of moderate wealth, and both were about thirty-five years of age. At this point the resemblances between them ceased. Lomax Harder had refined features, au enormous forehead, fair hair, and a delicate, almost apologetic manner. John Franting was low-browed, heavy chinned, scowling, defiant, indeed what is called a tough customer. Lomax Harder corresponded in appearance with the popular notion of a poet — save that he was carefully barbered. He was in fact a poet, and not unknown in the tiny, trifling, mad world where poetry is a matter of first-rate interest. John Franting corresponded in appearance with the popular notion of a gambler, an amateur boxer, and, in spare time, a deluder of women. Popular notions sometimes fit the truth.

Accusations are made, threats are issued and one of the men is shot and killed, thoughBennett has so stacked the deck that we sympathize with the murderer. But then the story takes a twist as we are introduced to a pompous Sherlock Holmes stand-in:

The Superintendent of Police (Quangate was the county town of the western half of the county), and a detective-sergeant were in the billiard-room of the Bellevue. Both wore mufti. The powerful green-shaded lamps usual in billiard-rooms shone down ruthlessly on the green table, and on the reclining body of John Franting, which had not moved and had not been moved.

A charwoman was just leaving these officers when a stout gentleman, who had successfully beguiled a policeman guarding the other end of the long corridor, squeezed past her, greeted the two officers, and shut the door.

The Superintendent, a thin man, with lips to match, and a moustache, stared hard at the arrival.

"I am staying with my friend Dr. Furnival," said the arrival cheerfully. "You telephoned for him, and as he had to go out to one of those cases in which nature will not wait, I offered to come in his place. I've met you before, Superintendent, at Scotland Yard."

"Dr. Austin Bond!" exclaimed the Superintendent.

"He," said the other.

They shook hands, Dr. Bond genially, the superintendent half-consequential, half-deferential, as one who had his dignity to think about; also as one who resented an intrusion, but dared not show resentment.

The detective-sergeant recoiled at the dazzling name of the great amateur detective, a genius who had solved the famous mysteries of "The Yellow Hat," "The Three Towns," "The Three Feathers," "The Gold Spoon," etc., etc., etc., whose devilish perspicacity had again and again made professional detectives both look and feel foolish, and whose notorious friendship with the loftiest heads of Scotland Yard compelled all police forces to treat him very politely indeed.

I’ll go no further because the story really deserves to be heard and Tony Walker reads these things so well. But by the time you’re done even the exclamation mark in the title seems satirical. Woolf produced nothing this enjoyable.

(Reviewed:21-Oct-24)

Grade: (A+) Orrin C. Judd

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Arnold Bennett Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Arnold Bennett
    -Arnold Bennet Society
    -TRIBUTE SITE: The Arnold Bennett Blog
    -ENTRY: Arnold Bennett (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -ENTRY: Arnold Bennett (THe Modern Novel)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Arnold Bennett (IMDB)
    -AUTHOR PAGE: Arnold Bennett (Penguin Random House)
    -ENTRY: Arnold Bennett - Son of Stoke-on-Trent (The Potteries)
    -ENTRY: Arnold Bennett (American Literature)
    -ENTRY: Arnold Bennett (Encyclopedia.com)
    -ENTRY: Arnold Bennett (Spartacus Educational)
    -ENTRY: Arnold Bennett (Oxford Reference)
    -COLLECTION: Arnold Bennett Collection (Staffordshire University)
    -ETEXT INDEX: Arnold Bennett (Project Gutenberg)
    -COLLECTION: Arnold Bennett Papers (Keele University)
    -AUDIO INDEX: Arnold Bennett (LibriVox)
    -ESSAY: How to Live on 24 Hours a Day: Arnold Bennett on Living a Meaningful Life Within the Constraints of Time (Farnham, Street)
    -AUDIO: Murder! by Arnold Bennett - 1927 (Classic Detective Stories, 12 October 2024)
    -ETEXT: Murder!
    -ESSAY: Is the Novel Decaying? (Arnold Bennett, 28th of March, 1923, Cassell’s Weekly)
    -PODCAST 107: Arnold Bennett - Riceyman Steps (Back-Listed, December 09, 2019)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Classics Club Spin Delivers Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale (Booker Talk, December 11, 2022)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Arnold Bennett (eNotes)
    -ESSAY: Mr. Bennett ands Mrs. Brown (Virginia Woolf, 1923)
    -ESSAY: Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (Aleksandar Stevic, Yale Modernism Lab)
    -ESSAY: Omelette Arnold Bennett – the making of a masterpiece (Neil Sowerberry, 9/10/24)
    -ESSAY/RECIPE: Easy Omelette Arnold Bennett (Delia Online)
    -ESSAY: A Little History of Omelette Arnold Bennett (Good Food Ireland, April 2021)
    -BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY: Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) (Frank Swinnerton, Our Civilization)
    -ESSAY: Who's Afraid of Arnold Bennett? (Wendy Lesser, September 28, 1997, NY Times Book Review)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennett: poet of the Potteries: His output includes wonderfully bold characters and transforms the sullen Stoke landscape – 150 years after his birth, it’s time his reputation was restored (Charlotte Higgins, 20 May 2017, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennett: poet of The Potteries (Senior Times, September 29, 2022)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennett: The Edwardian David Bowie? (Samira Ahmed, 23 June 2014, BBC)
    -ESSAY: Five Fascinating Facts about Arnold Bennett (Interesting Literature)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennet Snubbed Literary Society (Roger Lewis, 5/19/22, Daily Mail)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennett (Susannah Fullerton)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennett and Late-Victorian "Woman" (Clotilde De Stasio, Spring 1995, Victorian Periodicals Review)
    -ESSAY: Local Heroes: Arnold Bennett (BBC, 04/08/2009)
    -ESSAY: How to make the perfect omelette Arnold Bennett: Do you use smoked haddock or another fish? Hollandaise, bechamel, double cream – or all three? And which other elaborate breakfasts are worth getting up an hour early to make? (Felicity Cloake, 4 Jun 2015, The Guardian)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennett should be remembered for more than an omelette: It’s time to rescue one of England’s most successful novelists from the dish that hijacked his name (Simon Heffer, 09 July 2022, The Telegraph)
    -ESSAY: Our Women: Chapters on the Sex Discord by Arnold Bennett (StuckinaBook, May 22, 2017)
    -ESSAY: History and the Everyday in Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale (Ryan John Edwards, 2020, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920)
    -ESSAY: Remythologizing Arnold Bennett (Gloria G. Fromm, Autumn 1982, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction)
    -ESSAY: Arnold Bennett at the Ministry of Information: ‘The most marvellous, disconcerting and romantic thing that ever happened to me’: Arnold Bennett at the Ministry of Information, May-November, 1918. (George Simmers, A paper given at the conference of the Arnold Bennett Society, June 2016.
    -ESSAY: Between Two Worlds: The In-between Aesthetics of Arnold Bennett in Anna of the Five Towns (Yeo Sun Park, 30 June 2022, Literary Imaginatio)
    -ESSAY: Who's afraid of Arnold Bennett? (Simon Heffer, 12 January 2016, The Telegraph)
    -BOOK LIST: The Old Wive’s Tale by Arnold Bennett (Modern Library: 100 Best Novels)
    -ARCHIVES: Arnold Bennett (Internet Archive)
    -REVIEW: of The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett (Charlotte Jones, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of The Old Wives' Tale (Sathnam Sanghera, Independent)
    -REVIEW: of The Old Wives’ Tale (William Whyte, Church Times)
    -REVIEW: of Arnold Bennett’s A Man from the North (Vulpes Libris)
    -REVIEW: of Norman Flower (ed.), The Journals of Arnold Bennett (Derek Parker, Slightly Foxed)
    -REVIEW: of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett (1910) (Reading 1900-1950)
    -REVIEW: of Arnold Bennett, Imperial Palace (Kate MacDonald)
    -REVIEW: of Arnold Bennett A Biography. By Margaret Drabble (Lawrence Graver, NY Times)
    -REVIEW: of Arnold Bennett: Lost Icon by Patrick Donovan: Arnold Bennett’s success made him loathed by other writers (A.N. Wilson, 16 April 2022, The Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Arnold Bennett (Margaret Drabble, TLS)

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