Anthony Wynne was the pseudonym of Robert McNair Wilson (1882-1963), an English physician and author. Wilson was Medical Correspondent for the Times from 1914 to 1942. He is the creator of amateur sleuth Eustace Hailey, an early psychologist and consultant to Scotland Yard. Hailey featured in 28 mysteries, one of which has been reprinted by the British Library. Wilson also wrote a number of short stories, about two dozen histories and biographies, and a few pieces for the Sunday newspapers. The titles of the latter are intriguing enough that I include the list here:
- Making Modern Girls Happier: Amateur Acting Cure for Temperamental Women. Sunday Mirror, 25 January 1925
- Shingling and Woman’s Moods: New Outlook Expressed by Hair-Cutting Fashions. Sunday Mirror, 12 April 1925
- How Modern Woman Is Spoiled: English Husbands Follow America’s Bad Example. Sunday Mirror, 19 July 1925
- Holiday Girls’ New Heroine: Choice of Books as Sign of Changing Mind. Sunday Pictorial, 19 July 1925
- Youths Who Are Rude to Women. Sunday Mirror, 24 January 1926
- Within the Dance. Nottingham Journal, 4 March 1926. Reprinted as The Whirl. Birmingham Daily Gazette, 20 May 1926
- Fashion as Fairy Godmother. Sunday Mirror, 26 December 1926
The third article in particular would be an entertaining read.
Red Scar is Hailey’s seventh appearance. Published by Hutchinson in the UK in 1928 and by J. B. Lippincott Company in the US in 1928.
Raoul Featherstone cannot leave women alone. Old, young, married, single, nothing stops him from courting every woman he meets and promising more than he intends to deliver. When he ends up on the floor of his studio, bleeding from a stab wound, no one is surprised, least of all Alaister Diarmid, who lives nearby and whose secret love is one of Featherstone’s victims. But to shield her, he hides the body and touches off a sequence of events that culminates in his being charged with murder.
While the story moved reasonably well to begin with, it seemed to stall about three-quarters through. That may be because that’s where the bulk of Hailey’s psychoanalysis of the characters is, and I found it tedious reading. But the surprise at the end is brilliant and I was pleased that I did not give up.
Readers familiar with the works of Dorothy Sayers will recognize one of the plot devices right away. I am curious as to whether this book or her story came first; they were both published about the same time.
Definitely dated, it is after all nearly 100 years old, this book is for students of the Golden Age and those interested in the early evolution of applied psychology.