Dark Days by Hugh Conway

HarperCollins Publishers have been releasing hard to find or little known classic mysteries selected by The Detective Club, including novels by the likes of Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera), highlighting ingenious authors from the Golden Age of crime fiction.

Dark Days was first published in 1884 (!) as part of the Christmas Annual, a Victorian tradition of seasonal short stories which a few years earlier introduced Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. British auctioneer Frederick John Fargus found success in these Annuals writing under the name Hugh Conway (most especially with Called Back in 1883). The 1930 selection of Dark Days by The Detective Club helped popularize his name and keep his work in print, adding in their introduction: "The novel is arresting...most intriguing of all is the fact that the criminal of the novel is the victim of the crime!"

Dr. Basil North is smitten by Philippa's dark beauty. Heavens! How fair she was! Alone now in London after her mother dies, Basil rushes to her side but cannot convince her to be with him! to love him! to marry him! - for she has already fallen for the very handsome Sir Mervyn Ferrand and announces they have secretly married! Even though Ferrand maintains other girlfriends, and even, a wife! One winter night Basil convinces her to leave this known cad for her own sanity, and in a violent snowstorm where she leaves her house for his, and he walks to meet her halfway, unbeknownst to either that Sir Ferrand is going to intercept them, he hears a scream in the swirling snow and finds her rushing towards him with a gun in her hand. When he sees Ferrand has been shot, he rolls the body into a snowbank. She remembers nothing of that night and, with every effort of Basil to shield her from the shame, the details, the madness never to be recalled - she ends up falling in love with him! Ah! Life now held something worth living for! They take off to France and Spain for a few chapters before discovering another man has been accused of the crime! An innocent man is rotting in prison! They hightail it back to London to attend the trial - if Justice finds the man innocent, it is over. If he is found guilty, she must stand up! and declare the truth!

Written in 1884, the writing is! of course! florid and melodramatic! with much agonizing and emotion over every detail of what is essentially a straightforward plot. If you have read stories of this time period, you know they are very talky. Every move is point and counterpoint, what if? and can it be? - but that is not to say it isn't clever and above all, an entertainment. I fancied this was a Christmas mystery, but alas! it is only the night of the crime that is snowy.

This first rate mystery holds up - in fact, it could easily be updated today, and has probably inspired, or been been adapted by, authors for the past 139 years.

1884 / Hardcover / 222 pages