Basically, Wynne's writing is excruciatingly dull (potentially a cure for insomnia, though maybe not an infallible one), and though his plot is interesting, it is poorly paced, with long stretches of silence in between the action.

By the way, in case you're worried I've spoiled something for you by grabbing a murderer's confession or something, let me assure you there's still a large chunk of novel left after that speech. Dr. Hailey proves he is omniscient by going to a random town, asking around, and stumbling over a story of a dead man who may have been responsible for the first victim's depression prior to death. This really irks me because he had literally no reason for going to the place, and in fact had to be told about the person in question, as he didn't know about him himself. Pulling random plot threads out of a hat is not a trick I'm fond of.

Am I being too harsh? Maybe. I still have a huge chunk of novel left and I just want to find out how it was done already- I gave up keeping track of the who after the 4th murder/attempted murder.

You might as well scratch "Death of a Banker" off my reading list for a while. I will be sure to take a good, long break from Wynne. If I get through the book alive and well, I think I will move on to Sax Rohmer next.

Patrick O

Dr. Hailey is possibly the most bland character I've come across this year. Not just bland, but also incredibly boring and colourless to the extreme.

The weird thing about Wynne is that his prose definitely sounds like an awful Victorian melodrama. So much so, in fact, that every time he mentions a car or some other 1930s gadget, like a telephone, it's a jarring experience.

And for anyone who doubts the "Victorian melodrama" assessment, I would like the book to speak for itself and prove my case:

"He died for us!" she exclaimed in a voice in which ecstasy and revenge were mingled. "He laid down his life for us. Oh, sir, he was a good man and a fine one. Listen, the night before he died he talked a long while with our boy. John told him to go straight and tell the truth and love his mother. There were tears in his eyes, believe me, sir. Oh, si, I didn't know then that the medicine was beginning to take effect on him. 'You're tired, John,' I said. But he wouldn't have it. He got up, after the boy went to bed, and walked about the room. Like he used to walk on his bridge. 'It's been a hard fight," he said, 'but I've won. And I want you to know that, my girl. I'm a happy man this night and I haven't known happiness for years.'"

What have we got here? Tiresome cliches? Check. Boring characters monologuing their sad excuse of a heart out? Check. Dialogue that sounds like a shoddy attempt at creating Victorian language by someone who didn't bother to do any research? Check. Lack of personality or humour of any kind? Two checks!

Patrick O

I would have liked to have written about him, but I actually like Street, Crofts, Connington, etc. better. And of course, Wynne, whatever you think of him, is not a "Humdrum" and has never been so categorized to my knowledge. The melodrama and the outlandishness of many of the plots removes him from that category. Though he was a doctor, Wynne was not as into meticulous science/technology as a true humdrum should be. He had this tremendous romantic sense, which links him with Carr, but he too often created the same stock characters over and over again. Just your usual gentry country house sticks, behaving in high-handed fashion.

On thing I liked about Silver Scale and Iron Shutters was I felt like the characterization was more sober and restrained. His personal Scots background helped lend interest to Silver Scale, I thought.

Wynne had two sons who served as conservative M.P.s in parliament. One is still living but he repeatedly declined opportunities to respond to me (I had been able to contact his son, Wynne's grandson). It was a disappointment, but I suspect there was a wariness, given that Wynne's economic philosophy actually was a big influence on Ezra Pound when Pound turned fascist (!). Wynne's theories are still popular today with anti-Semitic traditionalist conservatives.

Curt

I never found any anti-Semitic material in Wynne's work, but he in the 1930s he became sympathetic to big government authoritarianism (whether Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin or Roosevelt--he linked these leaders himself). Despite the romanticism of the past he shared with Carr, he rejected individualism and embraced expanded government as a way of best achieving justice for the people. He saw global capitalism and international banking as a worse menace than Communism or Fascism. I think he really was a romantic roylist and feudalist himself. He reminds me quite a bit of Chesterton, actually, though he certainly lacks Chesterton's brilliance and humor as a writer. Carr romanticized the 17th century as well, but he never lost his pronounced libertarianism when he looked at modern political and social questions.

Curt