Continuing to read my way through the anthology SEXTON BLAKE WINS, the next story is the novella “The Man I Killed” by Rex Hardinge. That’s a familiar name to Blake fans, but it’s the first thing I’ve read by Hardinge and I really liked it.
Originally published in the July 8, 1933 issue of DETECTIVE WEEKLY, “The Man I
Killed” is the first Blake story I’ve encountered that’s written in first
person. It’s certainly the first one I’ve read from the point of view of the
killer! So this is, of necessity, an inverted mystery where the reader knows
the identity of the murderer all along, and the appeal lies in watching how
Sexton Blake figures it out.
But after Hardinge shows us how sports journalist Matt King murders a wealthy
toymaker named Brandt and then sets up an alibi using his old friend Sexton
Blake himself, the story takes some unexpected twists. In fact, considerably
more is going on than Hardinge reveals to us at first. As the story races on
with several excellent action scenes and plenty of suspense, more and more
layers of the plot are peeled away until the final outcome was satisfyingly
different from what I thought it might be.
A couple of minor quibbles: At one point, a character impersonates Sexton Blake
with a degree of success that’s much too great to be believed. And some of the
late twists, while effective, come from pretty far out in left field. However,
without them the story’s impact would be lessened, and hey, miraculous
disguises are accepted plot devices in popular fiction, right?
Neither of those things keep “The Man I Killed” from being the best story I’ve
read so far in this anthology, as well as one of the best Sexton Blake stories
I’ve read, period. I’ll definitely read more by Hardinge.
Note: The scan above is from Mark Hodder's invaluable website Blakiana. If you're a Sexton Blake fan and haven't checked it out, you need to immediately. But be prepared to be immersed there for hours because it's compulsive reading.
5 comments:
Yes, James, this is Hardinge at his best for sure! If you haven't already done so, you (and others) might like go to this Blakiana page, http://mark-hodder.com/blakiana/authors.html. There you'll find three articles, two of them being actual scans of letters from Hardinge. "The Woes of Rex Hardinge" is quite the saddest response I received when recruiting Sexton Blake writers for EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERY MAGAZINE in my early editing days. From memory, I believe Rex did write one script for me: a Western I used for one of the Micron 64-page "adventure libraries" which were comic-book series.
Many thanks for this, Keith. I hadn't seen that page on BLAKIANA, and it's full of fascinating material. I can certainly sympathize with Rex Hardinge. He never got out of the factory and back to full-time writing, did he?
No, he never did get back to full-time writing as far as I know. He also wrote romances and Westerns in his later writing years. The Westerns were originally written for the Sexton Blake Library's 1950s companion series Western Library as "Rex Quintin" and "Charles Wrexe". These later appeared as hardcovers for publisher Herbert Jenkins. At least one was chosen as the month's selection for bookseller Foyles' Western Book Club, all this being in pre-digital times. These days, Hardinge would have had the chance to eke out some residual income with ebooks and POD paperbacks. I've taken a recent course in that direction myself, reissuing "Chap O'Keefe" Westerns in both formats. (Details at www.blackhorsewesterns.com.) The O'Keefe books were originally Black Horse Westerns, a series operated in hardcover along similar lines to Western Library by now-defunct publisher Hale, and had also been previously reissued as softcover selections by large-print Ulverscroft companies. Another self-publishing option not open to writers of Hardinge's era is platforms like Fiction4All. I've uploaded a "Kathy Britton" novel there recently, and another will probably be on sale later this week. But these are adult fiction best avoided by the easily offended!
I hadn't heard of Fiction4All. I'll check it out!
Don't forget to change the Fiction4All content filter if doing a search for Ms Britton!
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