Friday's "Forgotten" Books: The Port of London Murders

Josephine Bell, the pen name of  Doris Collier Ball, was born in Manchester in 1897, educated at Cambridge, and became a University College Hospital of London physician. She married a fellow physician who died at a young age in 1936, which is when Bell turned her hand to writing, even as she maintained her medical practice.

She was a co-founder of the Crime Writers' Association, serving as its chair in 1959, and also became a member of the Detection Club. She eventually closed her medical practice at age 57 but continued to write full time until she was 85, creating numerous sleuths in her more than 40 crime novels (at the rate of two a year), such as AmyTupper, Dr. David Wintingham, Dr. Henry Frost, and Scotland Yard Inspector Steven Mitchell.

Not surprisingly, her novels often feature a strong medical component, not the least of which were two of her doctor-protagonists. She also featured poison and other unusual methods of murder prominently in her plots. Bell and her family were experienced sailors, and the author drew upon this knowledge, too, using many vivid passages in her books that relate to the water and to various nautical details.

Water is certainly at the heart of the setting in Bell's novel The Port of London Murders from 1938, specifically as the title suggests, the port area of London's River Thames. It's a tough neighborhood, but the death of one Mary Holland is still a bit of a shock, even though it appears at first to be a suicide by Lysol poisoning. Tell-tale needle marks on the victim's arm lead Detective Sergeant Chandler to suspect murder tied into a drug ring—which seems even more chillingly apparent when Chandler disappears shortly after he starts to investigate, right before he's due to testify at the inquest. It's up to Inspector Mitchell of Scotland Yard to unravel the layers of deception and addiction that are exploiting rich and poor alike in a way that hasn't changed much in the seventy years since the book was written.

Bell is particularly good with settings, even the squalid ones that pop up in the novel, no doubt witnessed first-hand in her role as a physician who saw people from every walk of life. Her take on the state of medicine in her day was often somewhat bleak, as in this passage from the book—again, as true today as it was in 1938:

For the great majority of these cases, too poor to have a doctor of their own, there was little he could do...Dr. Freeman could encourage them with a bottle of medicine and help them with a pint of milk a day, but it was not in his power nor that of anyone else to effect a lasting cure of their complaints. There were others, too, not old, but equally hopeless, who attended the dispensary as regular visitors; those struck down in youth or middle age by tuberculosis, rheumatism, heart trouble, and a number of more rare diseases. They had come to the end of their resources, their insurances, and their capacity for earning. The hospitals could do nothing more for them, but they still lived, in the worse possible surroundings, and the Public Assistance saw to it that they did not die too soon.

Comments

[Patrick Murtha]

I happen to be reading this book at the moment. It indeed has great atmosphere and is really quite gritty for the period, more in keeping with the down-and-out novels of a writer like Patrick Hamilton than with other Golden Age mysteries.

[BV Lawson]

I'm so happy to hear you are reading and enjoying the book, Patrick! And also that you found a copy - I was able to get mine thanks to my local public library. If you find other Bell novels you can recommend, please feel free to do so - I'm hoping to carve out a space on my To Be Read pile for some more.

[Patrick Murtha]

My copy is from the Pandora Women Crime Writers series of the 1980s. I ordered it for a few dollars through Ebay. I always check Bookfinder, which usefully aggregates listings for Ebay, Amazon, Amazon UK, Alibris, AbeBooks, Biblio, and others.

[Patrick Murtha]

I should add that I must have seen a laudatory reference to the book somewhere, although I can’t remember where exactly. The title itself was a come-on, because I am always drawn to anything nautical or waterfront-related. In that respect, another intriguing Bell title is Backing Winds aka The Dark Tide, but that is a rare one - I don’t see any copies under $40.00.

[BV Lawson]

I haven't dealt with Bookfinder lately, but I need to check it out again soon, especially since the brick-and-mortar rare and used bookstore numbers in our area keep plummeting.

Thanks for the recommendation about "Backing Winds (Dark Tide)." If I find an easy-to-locate copy, I'll post a notice here....