June Thomson (1930-2022) was an English author who wrote 20 traditional detective mysteries about Inspector Jack Finch and Sergeant Tom Boyce, then focused on writing Sherlock Holmes adventures, producing six volumes of short stories, a novel, and a book of literary analysis. When her mysteries were published in the U.S., Inspector Finch became Inspector Rudd because someone feared reader confusion with the earlier Inspector Finch created by British author Margaret Erskine. Note that the UK publishers felt confident that their readers could distinguish the two.
One of the later Finch books came my way recently; The Spoils of Time (Constable, 1989) has two separate story lines, one about a missing geriatric entertainer and the other with Claudia Byrne, who is driving to Howlett, where her grandfather Edgar Aston has been taken ill and not expected to survive. She stops at a long-term care facility to advise her grandfather’s friend Roland Saxby of her grandfather’s status and arrives to find her aunt with her second husband and stepson, the housekeeper, and the family doctor at the house. They are startled to see Saxby, immensely frail himself, arrive in a taxi a short while later.
Claudia’s aunt felt forced to ask him to stay the night to recover from his trip, although no one felt equipped to care for him. Saxby was determined to speak to his old friend before he passed, and Claudia arranged it quietly after dinner. Saxby wanted to talk to the aunt after seeing his friend and when he was advised she had retired for the evening, he asked for the doctor, who was not present. He and Claudia agreed he would speak to the doctor the next morning.
Grandfather Aston died quietly in the night to no one’s surprise. When Claudia went to tell Saxby, she found him dead as well. She was upset but also noticed that the monogrammed linens she had put on his bed had been changed. The doctor declined to give a death certificate for Saxby, because he had never seen him before. When the police arrived, Claudia reported the difference in bed linens, a seemingly trivial detail launching an inquiry that first seemed to go nowhere, then transformed into another death and a series of slick plot twists.
Finch’s adventures were popular during Thomson’s life. I can see how he might have gotten lost in the crowd of fictional police inspectors and detectives since then, but he is a generous and thoughtful character and deserves a fresh life with contemporary readers.
Publishers Weekly (November 1, 1989) said “British author Thomson’s mysteries … are distinguished by plot ingenuity and titillating characters…” Reason enough to look them up!