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Death of an Airman - Christopher St. John Sprigg
Just for the record, I bought this book because it had a biplane on the cover.
(And also because I like Golden Age murder mysteries; I mean, I likely wouldn't have done it if the book overall didn't look interesting. But the airplane on the cover was certainly a factor.)
And it was interesting, although it's also a very weird book. In fact it feels almost like two books stapled together; there is a very convoluted and occasionally very weird murder mystery plot with multiple murders and three detectives (two professional, one amateur). There is also an interesting, quirky, and often funny portrait of a working aviation club with a female manager.
The sheer number of women in this book was honestly very surprising to me, doubly so because the characters just take for granted that of course there are a lot of female pilots around and treat them just like any other pilots. (I mean, it's the 1930s so you have to account for language a bit, grown women being referred to as "girls" and so forth, but on the whole the book itself treats them in a very evenhanded and non-stereotypical way that I find really fascinating given that it's written by a male author in the 1930s.) There is also a tremendous range of female characters, from transcontinental aviators to a troop of small girls who are given the opportunity to help out with an aviation show. The book was published in 1935, so the author is presumably working off firsthand experience and/or expectations of the period.
And the book also leans into the aviation aspect; the airplanes are not merely set dressing. The book also deals quite a lot with the day-to-day workings of a small aviation club and charter flying business in the UK.
Things I have learned from this book about the general state of aviation in the 1930s (other than that there were a lot of women in it) include:
- Aero clubs were a bit like racehorses in that they were owned/funded by rich people who were vaguely interested in aviation, and then managed by people who were actually pilots, and visited by their rich owners occasionally.
- There were a LOT of aviation events just going on normally: exhibitions, airplane races, stunt flying shows and so forth. I cannot believe that there is not a single Biggles book that involves an airplane race, at least none I've encountered so far.
- Open cockpit 2-seat biplanes had a telephone connecting the two seats that plugged into the user's flying helmet, so that they could talk to each other without shouting while in the air.
And probably more, but these are what occur to me off the top of my head. There's a lot to do with ordinary aviation as practiced by normal people, the then-very-new field of using airplanes to fly consumer goods around, and that sort of thing.
Another minor thing that interested me as a general 1930s milieu thing is that the characters swear a lot, including the women - mostly mild stuff like "damn," but there's also the amusingly described:
Miss Sackbut's feelings found relief in an expletive which in the ordinary way would have staggered Creighton, as he had been brought up to suppose that it was a word ladies did not know, much less make use of.
(She definitely said "fuck" right there.)
Anyway ... the plot concerns the death of a flight instructor, at first appearing to be a fatal aviation accident, which then turns out to be a lot more complicated, of course. I found the actual murder mystery a bit dull just because it involves a lot of characters who aren't that interesting - a student at the aero club, a local policeman and (eventually) a Scotland Yard detective, all of whom are pretty bland. The solution to the mystery is interesting and it is a really fascinating puzzle, a seemingly impossible murder that happened in the air with a lot of witnesses who watched the flight - essentially it's a locked-room mystery in the cockpit of a biplane. But I was really more interested in everything happening around it.
The author doesn't shy away from making his characters likable, which can produce a bland effect in places, but also gives the book a cozy and pleasant flavor - it was actually more like modern cozies (sweet, funny, not too violent) than the sharper edge that a lot of Golden Age mysteries can have. Rather than the most unlikable person in the book getting murdered, it was a very appealing guy who everyone liked and no one - on the surface of it - had any reason to kill. (His death is actually really sad, which is something I don't feel in most murder mysteries.) Most of the suspects are also varying degrees of amiable and pleasant, and even their petty jealousies and resentments (as assorted motives start to emerge) are relatively minor, and the murderer, although ruthless, turns out to have a surprising amount of conscience.
Below the cut, a few spoilers about the mystery, not whodunnit but as far as generally what's going on and the locked room mystery solution:
The plot turns very Biggles-ish when it turns out to involve an insanely convoluted cross-Channel drug smuggling ring, with secret codes in newspaper gossip columns placed through multiple layers of secondary agents for maximum anonymity, and hidden packets of drugs slipped inside newspapers which are then disseminated to newsagents and bought by customers who are pretending to buy papers but actually are buying drugs. I am pretty sure no drug dealer in the world would go to this much trouble. But the novelty is the point, and the fact that using airplanes is incredibly new to everyone makes it interesting. The police initially don't even believe that airplanes could be used to transport drugs because it's such a new concept. (It did amuse me that if this had been a Biggles book, there would also have been an airplane chase and a shoot-out, and the resolution would have happened on-camera; as it is, most of the actual resolving of the drug smugglers side plot happens entirely off-page and we're just told about it later.)
(Edited to add: There was a curious terminology issue regarding drugs that I have genuinely no idea about, which is that drugs were evidently categorized as "white" drugs - cocaine - and "black" drugs - opium and marijuana. This turns out to be impossible to google for, because all you get are drug statistics by race, so I have no idea what this was actually referring to, if it was racial or based on the appearance of the drug or its origins or what, but in the book it's clear that the characters regard them as very different things and it's taken for granted in the book that people who deal one probably don't deal the other, at least not as part of the same business operation.)
The locked room mystery also had a very convoluted but clever solution which involved a stunt flyer actually flying the plane and fake-crashing, then the body - already killed elsewhere - being swapped in at the last minute by an accomplice to make it look like an accident and/or suicide. There are probably a dozen ways they could have faked his death or disappearance that would have been less public and risky, but it was a really fascinating puzzle and I had no idea how they'd done it up until the final reveal. There was a second murder later also involving an airplane flight, this time more directly involved in the murder (it's an open cockpit biplane and the victim's seatbelt was cut; he falls to his death when the plane flips over). It was clear that the author had put some thought into novel ways of killing people using airplanes.
Anyway, A+ leaning into the premise; the cover and title promised airplanes, and the book did indeed deliver airplanes and plenty of them.
(And also because I like Golden Age murder mysteries; I mean, I likely wouldn't have done it if the book overall didn't look interesting. But the airplane on the cover was certainly a factor.)
And it was interesting, although it's also a very weird book. In fact it feels almost like two books stapled together; there is a very convoluted and occasionally very weird murder mystery plot with multiple murders and three detectives (two professional, one amateur). There is also an interesting, quirky, and often funny portrait of a working aviation club with a female manager.
The sheer number of women in this book was honestly very surprising to me, doubly so because the characters just take for granted that of course there are a lot of female pilots around and treat them just like any other pilots. (I mean, it's the 1930s so you have to account for language a bit, grown women being referred to as "girls" and so forth, but on the whole the book itself treats them in a very evenhanded and non-stereotypical way that I find really fascinating given that it's written by a male author in the 1930s.) There is also a tremendous range of female characters, from transcontinental aviators to a troop of small girls who are given the opportunity to help out with an aviation show. The book was published in 1935, so the author is presumably working off firsthand experience and/or expectations of the period.
And the book also leans into the aviation aspect; the airplanes are not merely set dressing. The book also deals quite a lot with the day-to-day workings of a small aviation club and charter flying business in the UK.
Things I have learned from this book about the general state of aviation in the 1930s (other than that there were a lot of women in it) include:
- Aero clubs were a bit like racehorses in that they were owned/funded by rich people who were vaguely interested in aviation, and then managed by people who were actually pilots, and visited by their rich owners occasionally.
- There were a LOT of aviation events just going on normally: exhibitions, airplane races, stunt flying shows and so forth. I cannot believe that there is not a single Biggles book that involves an airplane race, at least none I've encountered so far.
- Open cockpit 2-seat biplanes had a telephone connecting the two seats that plugged into the user's flying helmet, so that they could talk to each other without shouting while in the air.
And probably more, but these are what occur to me off the top of my head. There's a lot to do with ordinary aviation as practiced by normal people, the then-very-new field of using airplanes to fly consumer goods around, and that sort of thing.
Another minor thing that interested me as a general 1930s milieu thing is that the characters swear a lot, including the women - mostly mild stuff like "damn," but there's also the amusingly described:
Miss Sackbut's feelings found relief in an expletive which in the ordinary way would have staggered Creighton, as he had been brought up to suppose that it was a word ladies did not know, much less make use of.
(She definitely said "fuck" right there.)
Anyway ... the plot concerns the death of a flight instructor, at first appearing to be a fatal aviation accident, which then turns out to be a lot more complicated, of course. I found the actual murder mystery a bit dull just because it involves a lot of characters who aren't that interesting - a student at the aero club, a local policeman and (eventually) a Scotland Yard detective, all of whom are pretty bland. The solution to the mystery is interesting and it is a really fascinating puzzle, a seemingly impossible murder that happened in the air with a lot of witnesses who watched the flight - essentially it's a locked-room mystery in the cockpit of a biplane. But I was really more interested in everything happening around it.
The author doesn't shy away from making his characters likable, which can produce a bland effect in places, but also gives the book a cozy and pleasant flavor - it was actually more like modern cozies (sweet, funny, not too violent) than the sharper edge that a lot of Golden Age mysteries can have. Rather than the most unlikable person in the book getting murdered, it was a very appealing guy who everyone liked and no one - on the surface of it - had any reason to kill. (His death is actually really sad, which is something I don't feel in most murder mysteries.) Most of the suspects are also varying degrees of amiable and pleasant, and even their petty jealousies and resentments (as assorted motives start to emerge) are relatively minor, and the murderer, although ruthless, turns out to have a surprising amount of conscience.
Below the cut, a few spoilers about the mystery, not whodunnit but as far as generally what's going on and the locked room mystery solution:
The plot turns very Biggles-ish when it turns out to involve an insanely convoluted cross-Channel drug smuggling ring, with secret codes in newspaper gossip columns placed through multiple layers of secondary agents for maximum anonymity, and hidden packets of drugs slipped inside newspapers which are then disseminated to newsagents and bought by customers who are pretending to buy papers but actually are buying drugs. I am pretty sure no drug dealer in the world would go to this much trouble. But the novelty is the point, and the fact that using airplanes is incredibly new to everyone makes it interesting. The police initially don't even believe that airplanes could be used to transport drugs because it's such a new concept. (It did amuse me that if this had been a Biggles book, there would also have been an airplane chase and a shoot-out, and the resolution would have happened on-camera; as it is, most of the actual resolving of the drug smugglers side plot happens entirely off-page and we're just told about it later.)
(Edited to add: There was a curious terminology issue regarding drugs that I have genuinely no idea about, which is that drugs were evidently categorized as "white" drugs - cocaine - and "black" drugs - opium and marijuana. This turns out to be impossible to google for, because all you get are drug statistics by race, so I have no idea what this was actually referring to, if it was racial or based on the appearance of the drug or its origins or what, but in the book it's clear that the characters regard them as very different things and it's taken for granted in the book that people who deal one probably don't deal the other, at least not as part of the same business operation.)
The locked room mystery also had a very convoluted but clever solution which involved a stunt flyer actually flying the plane and fake-crashing, then the body - already killed elsewhere - being swapped in at the last minute by an accomplice to make it look like an accident and/or suicide. There are probably a dozen ways they could have faked his death or disappearance that would have been less public and risky, but it was a really fascinating puzzle and I had no idea how they'd done it up until the final reveal. There was a second murder later also involving an airplane flight, this time more directly involved in the murder (it's an open cockpit biplane and the victim's seatbelt was cut; he falls to his death when the plane flips over). It was clear that the author had put some thought into novel ways of killing people using airplanes.
Anyway, A+ leaning into the premise; the cover and title promised airplanes, and the book did indeed deliver airplanes and plenty of them.
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My understanding is that "white drugs" were legal with a prescription—which cocaine and morphine were in the UK during the interwar period—and "black drugs" or "brown drugs" were not, so the distinction is something like whether you're assumed to get your fix from a doctor or a dealer, but also there are racial, colonial connotations baked into the terminology with the idea of the white drugs being scientifically pharmaceutical and the black drugs being rawer roll-your-own and I can't imagine there weren't class distinctions as well, cf. the aristocratic addicts of Murder Must Advertise.
I have read this book, although not recently, but I remembered liking it, so I'm glad it gave you such good airplane value for money!
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It was a fun book - maybe not a forever favorite, but certainly an enjoyable read.
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The humor in the book was delightful! It definitely had a few laugh-out-loud places, and I really enjoyed the cheerful and ridiculous chaos of the airshow. (I really want something with Biggles getting somehow pressured into a race or a stunt show; I'm amazed Johns never actually went there with the books, but maybe he would have if WWII hadn't come along so quickly and given him a new military purpose for his characters.)
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ETA: the author died three years after writing this, fighting for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, so I guess he never had the chance to write sequels - I agree, I’d have read more about the two of them as well.
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The idea of the SAP team having to deal with movie stunt flying is amazing, though.
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You're welcome! It turns up in other literature of the time and I think has died out completely even as slang.
It was a fun book - maybe not a forever favorite, but certainly an enjoyable read.
I think that's what most mysteries of this era were written to be, so, score!
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+1. Dick Francis inherited it, but I don't know who inherited it from Dick Francis.
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This is fascinating and very cool! Together with everything you say about the story, this sounds like something I should read. :)
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I thought white drugs were called that because that's how they looked: white powders. I've not come across brown drugs before but that's certainly the colour of cannabis resin and the like. I think it would be a simple description of appearance with no particular racial overtones in the UK.
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I'm not laughing at you; I'm laughing near you.
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The variety of coca plant from which cocaine is derived is mostly from South America, whereas opium and marijuana are associated with Asia and the Middle-east, so it would make some sense that different organisations handled them.
I always thought the black and white thing had to do with both opium and marijuana also being usually in resin form (very dark brown), and cocaine being white, even as cocaine base. That prescription point is interesting, though.
Based on the era, the country, the presumed social class of the persons involved and my memories of my colonial-era grandparents, Miss Sackbut probably said 'bugger'.
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In modern detective fiction, I think it's a lot more common for this to happen on the series level rather than the individual-book level, like Tony Hillerman's Navajo detectives or Ellis Peters' Welsh monastery. It may just be that there are a lot more people writing series than standalones now. But they also seem to stay in their milieu and not step outside it much, whereas in classic detective fiction it wasn't that uncommon for each new book to involve the detective being inserted into a new investigative setting. Maybe it's just a difference in what readers want, with more of a focus now on continuity and building up a series cast and recurring settings, whereas Golden Age readers were more interested in the puzzle.
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Most of the detective stories I've read that have been concerned with drugs are concerned with the illegal import and supply of cocaine and heroin to the extent that any mention of a white powder and I deduce cocaine or heroin is going to be a plot line. Occasionally, in older books, it can be arsenic but context tends to give the clue. I recall mentions popping up quite frequently in Ngio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn books. There's a Desmond Bagley novel, The Spoilers, which I recall as being a very detailed drug trade thriller. I also remember being confused by it when I first read it as a teenager as the UK drug laws had changed since it was written.
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Fascinating about the treatment of women in the book!
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I found out about aero clubs from the Biggles books and didn't previous realize it was a thing, although it makes sense once I thought about it since airplanes were very much a "hobbyist" thing at the time and it seems logical that hobbyists would want to band together. I should look into what it's like now, because I have the vague impression that Alaska is a bit different (private airplane ownership is very common here, but when I lived in Illinois I got the impression it was far more common for people with airplane hobbies to share ownership of a plane or rent one - so that seems to still vary a lot from place to place).