The Mystery of Max Saltmarsh

“It was a wonderful June morning when I stood under the Ritz portico, watching the traffic go by and wondering just what a man like myself, back from seven years in the East, could do in this present-day London to find a job.”

Sounds just like the beginning of a John Buchan thriller, doesn’t it? It isn’t: but it might just be the next best thing. It's the opening of Highly Inflammable (1936) by Max Saltmarsh, and it certainly lives up to its promise. "Does a high-powered intrigue thriller step up your pulses?" enquires the dustwrapper flap of the Little, Brown & Co American edition. "Then your expert eye will spot this one as superior. You'll find yourself spellbound  in the grip of this tale of international intrigue and crime in modern Istanbul."

Contemporary reviewers  were quick to invoke Buchan. The Bookseller called Highly Inflammable the best thriller since Greenmantle. The crime writer Nicholas Blake (pen-name of the poet C. Day Lewis) said in The Spectator, “a disciple of Mr Buchan and does his master credit . . . Mr Saltmarsh has infinite verve and inventiveness.”

The book certainly follows the Buchan formula very closely. The ingredients are all there: a young Scot returned to London from abroad, jaded and at a loose end; a mysterious advertisement and a seedy employment agency; sinister encounters with ugly customers; a global conspiracy affecting the entire world order; a resourceful and well-connected Scottish compadre.

The plot revolves initially around an attempt by the Soviets to rig the oil market and hold the West to ransom. To thwart this, our hero is commissioned to destroy a Russian pipeline in the Caucasus, working with an agent in Istanbul. But all is not quite what it seems, and he also crosses paths with several memorable villains and a criminal organisation involved in the drugs trade, the white slave trade and other nefarious pursuits. The author perfects the pace, the twists, the dry humour and above all the tone of the Buchan yarn.

Max Saltmarsh was the author of three other thrillers, all (like the first) published by Michael Joseph, in a short period in the mid-Thirties. After Highly Inflammable there was Highly Unsafe (1936), The Clouded Moon (1937) and Indigo Death (1938). 

But who was Max Saltmarsh? Scott Thompson at the excellent Furrowed Middlebrow blog, devoted to early to mid 20th century women writers, kindly identified the author as:

‘Marian Winifred Saltmarsh, nee Maxwell, 13/10/1893-1975
Born Scotland. Married Ronald Victor Saltmarsh, who died 1948, circa 1930 (no marriage registration yet found). Died Maidstone, Kent.’

And that is pretty much all we know of her. Her first book is dedicated to ‘E.M.M.’ and ‘R.V.S.’, “for without them it could never have been written”. The latter is no doubt her husband, and we might guess the surname of the first was Maxwell, her own family name, so perhaps the initials are those of a parent or sibling.

The only other slight clue we have is that her second novel, Highly Unsafe, is dedicated to “Sir Thomas and Lady Segrave, My First and Kindest Critics.” This suggests they were either close friends, or relations. Segrave, born in Tralee, Ireland in 1864, was a naval officer knighted in 1923. His second wife was Violet Beatrice Fox, twenty-one years younger than him, who had been a clerk in the Ministry of Shipping, where he presumably met her. They lived at Ascotts, a country house on the Surrey/Sussex border.

Highly Unsafe begins with a motor rally event, the “Penzance Trial”. A relation of Thomas Segrave was Henry O’Neil de Hane Segrave (1896-1930), the son of a cousin, who was a pioneer in land and water speed records.  A local history website (www.fellbridge.org.uk) says: “He was famous for setting three land speed records and the water speed record.  He was the first person to hold both the land and water speed records simultaneously [and] the first person to travel at over 200 mph (320 km/h) in a land vehicle.”

It seems more than a coincidence that Max Saltmarsh’s book about fast cars is dedicated to relations of the pre-eminent speed champion of the day, but quite how this all links up is not clear. 

It does seem surprising that such an accomplished author wrote four well-received thrillers in quick succession in her mid-forties, but with apparently nothing before and nothing after. Unless, of course, she continued under another pseudonym still to be discovered.

(Mark Valentine)

Recent editions of old books

 A couple of recent books I've edited and introduced that may be of interest to readers.

H.T.W. Bousfield, The Unknown Island, collects eight of Bousfield's short stories that appeared mostly in the 1930s in the slick magazines of the day.  He's an interesting English author, best known for 'The God With Four Arms,' which Richard Dalby reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories 2.

The book is available from Ramble House.

The Vampire is a rare novel published by occult specialists Rider, and appeared in 1913, the year after Rider published the 9th edition of Dracula.  Presumably The Vampire was conceived to cash in on the success of its famous predecessor.  The author, Reginald Hodder, was a New Zealander, a relative of the Hodder family of publishers, and the introduction looks in some detail at his life.

Also published by Ramble House, this one is available from Amazon.

Finally, a reprint of Australian Nightmares, part of an anthology series I put together some years ago.  Wildside/Borgo has reprinted the other two books in the series, Australian Gothic and Australian Hauntings, and this is the last.

This one is also available from Amazon.  And here are the contents, slightly revised from the previous edition:

Introduction
Mary Fortune - The Blighted Meadow
Charles Junor - The Silent Sepulchre
Ernest Favenc - What the Rats Brought
Ernest Favenc - On the Island of Shadows
Hume Nisbet - The Odic Touch
J.A. Barry - Told in the 'Corona's' Cabin on Three Evenings
Rosa Praed - The House of Ill Omen
Morley Roberts - A Thing of Wax
James Edmund - The Prophetic Horror of the Great Experiment
James Edmund - The Precipitous Details of the High Mountain and the Three Skeletons
Lionel Sparrow - The Strange Case of Alan Heriot
Beatrice Grimshaw - The Blanket Fiend
James Francis Dwyer - The Phantom Ship of Dirk Van Tromp
Dulcie Deamer - The Devil's Ball
Helen Simpson - The Pledge
Vernon Knowles - The Watch
Vernon Knowles - The House That Took Revenge
Roger Dard - The Undying One

Finest Quality Old English Yarns - A Choice of Twenty

In one of Michael Innes’ very enjoyable detective novels he has a character who is, like him, the author of fairly popular thrillers and she feels rather the ill-concealed disdain for her work by fellow-writers who have more literary aspirations (though fewer readers).

I have not to hand the exact quotation, but there is a passage where we may suppose Innes was speaking on behalf of his own books too when his character says, in effect, that good yarns do have their merit, particularly as a solace for people in tricky times or as a pleasing diversion from hard realities, and so on. It is these books readers turn to when they need reading most, she avers.

I was reflecting on this, and thinking the other day which ‘yarns’ have given me the most pleasure so that I look back upon them, and indeed re-read them, with fondness. I then tried to come up quickly with as frank a list I could of such titles. Not the ones I thought I ought to include, not necessarily ones that mark particular points in my life, but those that I read, and still read, with the most enthusiasm and delight.

I have of course done various versions of this list, which changes almost every time I look at it, but here it is just now:   

The Man Who Was Thursday – G K Chesterton (1908)

Undergrowth – Francis & Eric Brett Young (1913)

The Thirty Nine Steps – John Buchan (1915)

The Rector of Maliseet – Leslie Reid (1925)

Cups Wands Swords – Helen Simpson (1927)

Armed With Madness – Mary Butts (1928)

War in Heaven – Charles Williams (1930)

Look to the Lady – Margery Allingham (1931)

The Place of the Lion – Charles Williams (1931)

Sweet Danger – Margery Allingham (1933)

The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L Sayers (1934)

Old King Cole – Edward Shanks (1936)

The Dark Frontier – Eric Ambler (1936)

Picture of Nobody – Philip Owens (1936)

The Secret Vanguard – Michael Innes (1940)

The Devil in Crystal – Louis Marlow (1944)

Appleby’s End – Michael Innes (1945)

The Moving Toyshop – Edmund Crispin (1946)

Conor Sands – Elisabeth Kyle (1952)

The Kraken Wakes – John Wyndham (1953)

What, no Arthur Machen? Well, no: because I prefer his short stories, and though his novels (or romances as he called them) have many fine qualities, they are not exactly yarns, except for The Three Impostors, and that is really an album of linked short stories. Perhaps I ought to include The Great Return though. And what about Sarban's The Doll-Maker? Choice of 22, anyone?

The Buchan will cause no surprise, but the Ambler is not so well-known and is an excellent chase thriller too, and with a Ruritanian dimension, much to my taste. I was surprised by how quickly the two Allinghams came to mind – she can be uneven, but one of these has a madcap Ruritanian element too, and the other concerns a Grail-like holy cup and ritual, another great interest, as do Armed With Madness and War in Heaven. I might almost have added Allingham’s The Tiger in the Smoke also, which has some richly bizarre scenes, but it is for me just a bit too crowded with picturesque incident.

The Chesterton is the only novel of his that I thoroughly enjoy, and also has a very extravagant plot, which continues to be great fun even when you know the secret of it, and it has a sublime final scene.

There are several other Michael Innes I might have chosen (eg The Journeying Boy) for their sheer story-telling gusto, but Appleby’s End has a darkly comic Gothic dimension which I regard with affection and The Secret Vanguard is another great chase thriller, and with eccentric characters too. There might equally be more by Edmund Crispin, but to my mind The Moving Toyshop is his classic performance, and also includes a madcap chase scene.

Naturally, since I enjoy occult and supernatural fiction so much, several choices feature this strongly. The Dark Tower might have been my Francis Brett Young choice, but Undergrowth has pagan worship and bookish elements for extra pleasure: and several other Charles Williams novels could easily be added to the two here.

There are some where I have to admit my affection may be enhanced because I think I “discovered” them. But that is never the only reason. Leslie Reid’s The Rector of Maliseet has so many ingredients I relish: a train  journey to unknown regions, a scholar visiting a remote place, an ancient secret, haunted country. The Helen Simpson has a subtly-handled Tarot theme, and is both eerie and well-crafted. 

Likewise, Old King Cole by Edward Shanks, about the survival of Roman paganism in a secluded village, also has many of the elements I like, including archaeology and an undiscovered ancient monument. Philip Owens’ Picture of Somebody, a portrait of a Shakespeare-like poet in Thirties London, starts as a neat literary conceit, but then launches into turmoil and insurrection.

The Sayers is not supernatural, but its atmosphere is very similar: and I like it for its fine evocation of the Fen country in winter.  which I think enriches her work more than those which are more plot-driven: Five Red Herrings, set in Galloway, would be another close runner. Similarly, the Elisabeth Kyle book gains from its setting in an East Anglian coastal town threatened by sea and sand.

I am not a great follower of SF generally, but I am a devotee of John Wyndham’s work, which also often has an ambience similar to that of the classic otherworldly tale. The Kraken Wakes is the one that I find has the most human qualities and the surest understanding of how things work out in a prolonged crisis. And the Louis Marlow is there for its very deft handling of a timeslip theme.

A kind colleague at work one said to me, bemused by some of my more archaic traits, “it’s always 1936 in your world, isn’t it, Mark?” And I notice that there are no less than three choices from that very year. It’s a fact that the fiction I most enjoy is from the interwar and mid-20^th century period, which is near enough to us to seem modern, but sufficiently far away to have the charm of distance.

My particular preference, reflected here, is for stories that are based in our world but have an overlap from an otherworld, or glimpses of other dimensions. I am not now so much attracted to works of pure fantasy, and equally find it hard to get interested in entirely mundane matters.

From the ones I have chosen, I can see other characteristics that attract me: well-evoked landscape, a real sense of place; a mystical dimension or if not some distinct peculiarity;  a madcap or bizarre plot; eccentric, unconventional protagonists; and colourful minor characters.

Now I look again, there should be one or two by P M Hubbard. 

And . . . well, any others?

(Mark Valentine)                                               

Picture: A 1980s library campaign badge.