Death of an Author by ECR Lorac

 Death of an Author by ECR  Lorac

published 1935

 

He found himself in a long low room, furnished as a study. A kneehole desk stood at right angles to the window, on his right as he stood looking round; in the wall on his left was a fireplace with an electric “log fire,” a big easy chair on either side of it. Facing the window was a typist’s desk, with the typewriter neatly covered; bookshelves, well filled, covered most of the walls to half their height, and a few etchings hung on the creamy space above the bookcases. It was all perfectly neat and peaceful; the parquet floor was polished, the rugs in place, and there was no indication of the unusual

 

A rather idealized writer’s study perhaps? This book has a lot to say about authors, and has some splendid Golden Age quotes in it:

“James was a pretty lively fellow, a good hand with a gun and a line, and a rare runner after petticoats.”

“While your mind harps continually on hard facts, mine goes a-whoring after its own inventions, as the psalmist has it”

The study description, and those two quotes, would definitely have me thinking the writer was a man.

ECR Lorac is a Golden Age writer who has been sneaking her way back into the public eye over the past few years, and with good reason – she wrote a ton of books, of very varying styles and some variation in quality, but in amongst them there is something for everyone. (Three of her books have appeared on the blog already: Two way Murder, Accident by Design, Bats in the Belfry)

Famously, she was generally assumed to be a man, writing under the ECR Lorac name: she also experimented with other names. It wasn’t a spy-level secret, but still, when this book starts with a well-known crime author, one with a unisex name, turning up at an event as a woman – well, our ears prick up.

She was dressed in a well cut blue suit, with a light blue shirt and dark tie

 

There is some discussion about whether a reader can always tell the gender of a writer, and this is argued out at some length, although, honestly, it is not all that relevant to the plot. But presumably was a consideration of Lorac’s.

Death of an Author is hard to describe – it is perky and unexpected, and I defy any reader to predict what the next turn in the plot will be. The plot then goes off in other directions: with the disappearance of a male writer, with suspicion cast on another writer. Eventually a body turns up a long way from London – who is it, and what is the history of this tangled set of people? Speedily and lightly, Lorac offers more ideas and variations – they’re not twists, but alternate hypotheses about what is going on. It skims by (raising some questions when you think about it later, but never mind that) but is very easy to read and to enjoy.

 

Vivian Lestrange was dressed in the simplest of black georgette frocks, which fitted her slender body like a bud sheath. Her arms and shoulders were victoriously white, and her golden head so well shaped, that Marriott—who hated ‘mannish’ women—had to admit that the boyish crop became her.  She wore long earrings of deep blue lapis lazuli… her lips were reddened to just the degree compatible with artistry, and her skin smoothly powdered so that it had a damask quality.

It has a strange similarity with Christopher Priest’s 1995 book The Prestige, which was turned into a film by Christopher Nolan in 2006, long before he got busy with Oppenheimer. Both film and book are excellent, on the blog here, (and have a supernatural dimension not in Lorac’s style) and they make you think a lot about brothers, which the Lorac does too. Can’t really say more. 

The picture of a man at his desk in his study actually shows the Governor of the Seychelles, from the UK Archives, but  it had a look of an author at his work.

Daytime outfit from the NYPL. Evening dress from a fashion magazine of the era.