Michael Underwood was the pseudonym of John Michael Evelyn (1916-1992), a British civil servant and author. Evelyn was called to the Bar in 1939, then served in the British Army during the war. Afterwards he entered the Department of Public Prosecutions, where he stayed for some thirty years until his retirement in 1976. He began writing crime fiction in the1950s. He wrote about a half dozen stand-alone novels and established series featuring barrister Martin Ainsworth, solicitor Rosa Epton, lawyer Richard Monk, Scotland Yard sergeant Nick Atwell, and Inspector Simon Manton. Bibliographies generally agree that he published 48 books between 1954 and 1992.
The Manton books at least are very good. I read the last in the series two or three years ago and I was impressed with the original plot. The second title about Detective-Superintendent Manton, Murder Made Absolute (Hammond, Hammond & Co., 1955), starts off sedately with Mr. Christopher Henham, Q.C., wrapping up another day in divorce court. The day ends with the police at his house, asking his wife Celia if she had been driving the automobile that Henham had borrowed. She admitted to driving it, thinking to shield him from a speeding ticket, and then learned it had been involved in an accident. Before long, she is charged with manslaughter, facing the disgrace of a public trial and the potential of a jail sentence. Henham pressures her not to say anything, pointing out no one would believe her if she changed her story at this point and that it would jeopardize his chances at a judgeship.
When Henham dies suddenly in a courtroom, poisoned by the throat lozenges he used routinely, Celia isn’t the only one with cause to dislike him. Both her ex-husband and her son hate Henham. In addition, his casual flirtations with women that he just as casually discards leaves a trail of ill feeling, and his dealings with his colleagues have not always been happy. Since a poisoned lozenge could have been slipped into the container he carried at almost any time, opportunity was nearly as widespread as motive. The culprit was a surprise but in retrospect it was another instance of the solution hiding in plain sight.
Underwood combines the conventions of the police procedural with the legal thriller in interesting ways. He had a clear gift for clever plotting and innovative scenarios. This title is a briskly told mystery that works the details of daily 1950s life into the narrative. Doris, the Henham’s maid, devotes every spare minute to entering newspaper competitions in order to win a pressure cooker. Henham uses Dictaphones to record his legal opinions and to-do lists on vinyl disks. Celia’s ex-husband live and works in the British colonies in Africa with a rare visit home. Characters are sketched with just a few words that somehow convey volumes.
I have no idea why the name of Michael Underwood doesn’t come up more often in discussions of traditional mysteries. I intend to find more of his work. Recommended.