FFB: The Six Men

Edwin and Mona Augusta (M.A.) Radford were a husband and wife writing duo — Edwin, a journalist on Fleet Street for 45 years and member of the Savage Club (gentleman's club) in London, and Mona a writer of children's verse and stage plays. Both voracious readers, Edwin was particular fond of Richard Austin Freeman, a Golden Age of Detection writer known for his fictional creation and amateur sleuth, Dr. Thorndyke.

There is surprisingly little information available about the Radfords and their works. Their first book, Inspector Manson's Success, was published in 1944 and followed up by no less than 37 murder mysteries, the last published in 1972 (Edwin died in 1973). Their primary series character was Inspector Manson, hero of their first effort and many to come. The only book they wrote that appears to still be in print, or at least more readily available, is their collaboration The Encyclopedia of Superstitions.

Another curiosity: The Six Men was originally published in 1958, but there appears to have been a British made-for-TV movie by that title and written by the Radfords that was broadcast in 1951, starring Harold Warrender (who once played Lord Peter Wimsey in 1947), Peter Bull (Tom Jones, Dr. Strangelove) and comic actress Avril Angers. Bull later said in his memoirs the film had a shooting schedule of ten days. I'm guessing the screenplay came first and the novel followed, unless the Radfords found a time machine.

The plot of The Six Men is seemingly simple enough; six criminals, each a specialist in his field form a gang and within six months have hauled in 250,000 pounds (close to $1 million today) in jewels and bank notes. Scotland Yard is baffled until the gang suffers its first casualty when the youngest member is shot dead by the head of the operation, known only as The Chief. Detective Inspector Holroyd is frustrated by the fact that he knows the identities of most of the gang, but they always have unbreakable alibis. He takes it upon himself to trail the gang's members, marking their habits and pecularities. Slowly but surely he plays a game of divide and conquer as he rounds them up one by one, leading himself closer and closer to The Chief.

Edwin Radford's idol, R. Austin Freedman, is often credited as being the inventor of the inverted mystery, where the reader knows the identity of the culprit. There is a  bit of that in this story, too, although the Radford team employs a twist at the end (which is nonetheless fairly well telegraphed—from the viewpoint of a modern reader, at least). It's not so much a police procedural in the traditional sense, and not just because that genre was still relatively new around 1950; perhaps "procedural suspense" might be an appropriate description, with elements of the lone-wolf policeman, smatterings of Holmes, bits of George Simenon and a hint of the hard-boiled cop fiction that was to come.