I stayed up until the wee hours of Monday morning finishing Not to be Taken. It was so good that I just could not go to bed without having finished it. Then I made the mistake of picking up another book before starting work on this review. Never a good practice for someone like me who struggles with switching between tasks. I really did think I would just dip into the British Library Women Writers book, The Spring Begins, read a couple of chapters in the morning and then work on my review of Not to be Taken that evening. Needless to say, I got completely swept away by Katherine Dunning’s writing. But more on that captivating book in a future post. We’re here to talk about Anthony Berkeley’s 1938 novel, Not to be Taken.
Not to be Taken is a deceptively simple village mystery on the surface, but do not let the bucolic setting and the first-person narration of a self-deprecating gentleman fruit-tree farmer lull you into complacency, like it did me. Anthony Berkeley is at his finest in this seemingly straightforward mystery.
John Waterhouse has died of some type of gastric illness. He had been having some trouble with his stomach off and on for a while, but nothing to raise any alarm bells. Even his doctor was not too concerned about the complaint. Still, he died a few days later, leaving behind an ineffectual wife, and a brother who suspects foul play. The body is exhumed and lo and behold it turns out to be death by arsenic poisoning. Soon the Dorset village of Anneypenny is the centre of a media and gossip frenzy. Everyone is a suspect, and each seems as unlikely a murderer as the last.
The novel was first published in serial form under the title Poison—Not to be Taken in the highly popular John o’ London’s Weekly from November 1937 to March 1938, as a competition by the magazine. Readers were invited to act as detectives in the case, and anyone who was able to fully answer the three questions provided at the end of the second to last chapter was eligible for the first prize of £200. The British Library thoughtfully inserted the questions at this point in the novel, giving modern readers the opportunity to play along, as it were. Although, I was eager to read the last chapter, I found this invention too fun to pass up. While I will admit I did not come close to getting any of the answers correct, it was a thought-provoking activity that greatly added to my enjoyment of the last chapter. Every revelation in the conclusion added a new dimension to how obviously wrong I had been in my assumptions, and while it was undeniably humbling, it was also great fun!
Now, I loved where this book went. But I have to admit that while I never considered putting this book down, the first half felt incredibly tame. Yes, someone had just died in suspicious circumstances in this sleepy village, but the reader gets everything through the perspective of a gentleman farmer, who, while not a bumbling fool, does just sort of wait around for things to happen. If I am reading a book I plan to review, I normally try to make note of interesting passages as I read. I think it is telling that I do not have any passages marked in the first half of this book. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy the first half, but the narration provided by Douglas Sewell lulled me into a similar feeling of complacency that seems to arrest Sewell himself. I do believe this is a device the author uses to pull one over on the reader. Well done, Berkeley! I let the plot spin out while paying little attention to the clues, trusting that all would be revealed eventually, and not worrying myself over it. I’m slightly exaggerating to make my point, as I did in fact read the first half of this book in two sittings, so I couldn’t have been all that complacent about the result.
I hesitate to share too many quotations from this book because I think to highlight too much from the second half might draw attention to one suspect over another and I want readers of this review to have the same experience I did with trying to solve the crime before reading the last chapter. Instead, I will just share a couple of fun scenes that don’t directly relate to the mystery.
Eventually Scotland Yard are called in to investigate, and our narrator, Douglas Sewell, is taken aback by the bland and polite Detective Chief Inspector and Detective Sergeant that show up at his door, a stark contrast to the “bullying, hectoring, loud-mouthed, exceedingly unpleasant detective” to be found in the American detective fiction he had been reading lately (166).
Quite five minutes were wasted in their apologies for troubling me and my protestations that it was no trouble. Would they like to see my wife? Well, if it really wouldn’t be too much inconvenience, they would be grateful for the opportunity. Would they like to see her alone, or with me? That was just as I, and she, preferred. Would they have a glass of sherry? Why, that was exceedingly kind, almost too kind of me, but they found it better not to drink on duty. But I was just going to have a glass of sherry myself, and it was awkward to drink alone. Oh, well, in that case, they would come to the rescue but only just a drain in the bottom of the glass, really. Ha, ha. Yes, yes. Dear, dear. (165-66)
I think I would be a little surprised if these two came to my door under the guise of police detectives. They seem like very polite guests, indeed!
The interview lasted half an hour and was conducted in the same charming spirit throughout. Frances joined us in ten minutes or so, and the proceedings were more in the nature of an informal chat than a police interrogation. In point of fact, Frances and I did chat, quite garrulously. A question from one or other of our visitors would produce not merely an answer, but a confirmation, an allusion, an anecdote, all manner of divergencies. I think that secretly Frances and I felt that the two men, so far from being frightening, were so pleasant, and so much at sea, and so rather helpless, that we became doubly talkative in a kind of subconscious effort to help them out. (166)
All I could think while reading this passage is alternately, “oh, no!” and “you idiots!”. Although, now that I think about it, I would likely want to help out these nice men as much as I could too. Of course, the detectives are not quite as ineffectual as they seem. This should come as no surprise to the reader, as the chapter is humorously entitled, “Scotland Yard Is Not So Dumb”.
The novel starts on 3 September with the narrator observing “there is always something slightly sinister about the third of September”, it is always “one of those decadent days, half dying summer and half autumn, with the worst features of both” (15). Martin Edwards points out in his introduction that it was on 3 September 1939 that the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. A spooky coincidence as this book was published in 1938. From the introduction, I learned that Berkeley had a propensity to use material from his own life in his fiction, so that date may have held some special significance for him. What Berkeley does make clear in this book is his disdain for the Nazis. The tension with Germany reaches this sleepy village in Dorset with the person referred to in the chapter “Disappearance of a Nazi” not being the only Nazi in the book. This adds a timely dash of the spy thriller to this mystery, while not actually crossing over into tense thriller territory.
Overall, I enjoyed this one much more than I expected to from the quiet start. It actually took me my surprise to be honest. As I said, it is a quiet, unassuming mystery that does not rely on cheap thrills or a twisty plot to carry itself. Berkeley’s very good writing and fair play mystery holds its own among the British Library Crime Classics. And while it is not going to take the top spot, which I believe belongs to Christianna Brand’s London Particular, it is definitely up there among the ones I would gladly reread in the future. If you are looking for a crime novel that is not at all gruesome and won’t make your stomach churn with anxiety, while still keeping you reading late into the night, then Not to be Taken is the book for you.
I had such a great time swapping theories about the suspects with my friend Sabine (find Sabine's fabulous Instagram account here). I think that if you can find someone to read this one with it will greatly improve your enjoyment. It would be a great choice for a book club. You could meet before reading the last chapter, go over your theories together, and then read the last chapter as a group! You could even arrange your own contest but perhaps the prizes would need to be slightly more modest than the one run in John o’ London’s Weekly!
Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Not to be Taken for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.
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