More About Death of an Airman
In Death of an Airman, George Furnace, flight instructor at Baston Aero Club, dies instantly when his plane crashes into the English countryside. People who knew him are baffled - Furnace was a first-rate pilot, and the plane was in perfect condition. The inquest records a verdict of death by misadventure. An Australian visitor to the aero club, Edwin Marriott, Bishop of Cootamundra, suspects that the true story is more complicated. Could this be a dramatic suicide - or even murder? Together with Inspector Bray of Scotland Yard, the intrepid bishop must uncover a cunning criminal scheme.
More About Christopher St. John Sprigg
Christopher St John Sprigg (1907- 1937) was born in London to a literate family of writers, journalists and editors. The youngest of three children, Sprigg attended Catholic boarding school for ten years, until a downturn in family finances prompted a departure from schooling at age 15. He immediately became a trainee reporter at the Yorkshire Observer where his father was then literary editor, and father and son lodged together in a boarding house in Bradford. He kept wry observations about the residents, “two old ladies in the boarding house who used to put on their hats, gloves & prayer books to listen to the BBC Church Service in their room on Sundays and who used to send invitations by the maid to the next door bedroom inviting them to teas”. No doubt these experiences provided background for his first detective novel Crime in Kensington, with its genteel Garden Hotel and comic residents Miss Geranium, who receives messages from the prophet Ezekiel, and Miss Mumby, owner of the ‘tracker’ cat Socrates.
In 1925 Sprigg joined his older brother Theo as the editing team of Airways magazine. During this time Sprigg also produced technical books and air adventures stores for Popular Flying magazine. He had a fondness for noms-de-plumes, writing adventure stores under the names ‘Arthur Cave’ and ‘Icarus’, using ‘St John Lewis’ for articles in Airways, and ‘Christopher Beaumont’ for his book reviews.
Over a three year period, Sprigg wrote several more detective stores stories including Fatality in Fleet Street, The Perfect Alibi and Death of an Airman. and Death of a Queen. In 1935, he joined the Communist party and focused on Marxist writings. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, he drove an ambulance to Spain and joined the International Brigade. After four weeks of training and poorly armed, his unit was thrown into the Battle of the Jarama River in February 1937. He was killed in the first day of fighting, along with more than half of his battalion.
Until recently Christopher St John Sprigg was largely remembered for his Marxist writing and poetry, all of which was published posthumously under the name Christopher Caudwell. The reprinting of Death of an Airman by the British Library in 2015 has helped revive interest in his fiction.
Thoughts on Death of an Airman
Death of an Airman plunges you into England during the interwar period, when people were holding on to some vestiges of their lives pre-World War I while embracing the advances brought about, for the most part, by that war. Sprigg effectively portrays the period without any modern day alterations sometimes found in historical fiction. Of course that could be because (surprise!) this book was written in the 1930's (more on that in A Little Extra below).
This book doesn't have the fast pace of modern mysteries, instead it slowly introduces you to the world these people live in, hinting at secrets kept but leaving it to you to wonder what those secrets are. This murder mystery revolves around a small airport, airplanes and pilots. Some of the plane related details readers may be tempted to skip turn out to be key to the solution. It isn't all airplanes. There are also charity fetes, love triangles, criminal enterprise, police officers across several countries, surprise reveals and a secret code. Quite a lot packed into 253 pages.
There was an interesting mix of characters, particularly the Bishop/Amateur Detective/Newbie Pilot, and most were wearing masks that only slipped occasionally to give you a hint at the true personalities and relationships at play. The hints and clues dropped had me suspecting everyone from the Bishop to the mysterious stranger from America. If you enjoy a spider web story where even the smallest actions are felt in the most unexpected places this is the story for you.
A Little Something Extra
Death of an Airman is part of the British Library's Crime Series. For a decade the British Library has been reissuing mysteries from the Golden Age. Of course when thinking of the Golden Age, writers such as Dame Agatha Christie, G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers pop to mind but there were so many more that published a few books and then slipped into obscurity (or actually...well, died). After all, this time period included the 1920s and 1930s and there quite a few wars and skirmishes going on at the time. There are also a few vintage titles ranging from World War II to the 1960s.
Each book has an introduction giving you some background on the author, which is fascinating because it's quite possible you've never heard of them before pickling up this title. Check out a list of the titles available HERE. It's fun to escape into a murder of the past and think, "This was written almost a century ago!"
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