British author Cecil Freeman Gregg (1898-1960) was a chartered secretary and accountant like fellow Golden Age author and contemporary Richard Henry Sampson (1896-1973) who wrote under the name Richard Hull. Gregg published 42 mysteries between 1928 and 1960, with two main series characters, Detective Inspector Cuthbert Higgins and Harry Prince. Prince was a thief who was driven to a life of crime by the death of his wife Ethel. Higgins, a shining light of Scotland Yard, appeared in 35 books.
In The Body Behind the Bar (Methuen, 1932), the eighth case for Higgins, crime has hit a slow patch and Higgins is at loose ends. His wife is visiting friends, and he’s contemplating a quiet evening after an uneventful day when his supervisor Chief Inspector Dryan tells him Bernard Bruin, known as the Bear, has escaped from Brockhurst Prison, where he was incarcerated after Higgins successfully built a case against the career criminal. The Bear had pledged vengeance against Higgins in convincing enough terms that Dryan wants to assign bodyguards to Higgins. Higgins is more interested in watching the Bear to learn his hiding place for the plunder from his various criminous ventures, particularly the fabulous Mountham jewels which the Bear was believed to have stolen. Thus far they have not been recovered and financier Montagu Mountham is vocally upset with Scotland Yard’s failure to restore his property.
Thus begins a fast-moving, sprawling story of underworld retreats, hidden rooms, rooftop escapes, and criminals with appealing monikers such as Baldy Merling, Dopey Joe, and Harold de la Mare.
This story is more action-oriented and less cerebral than many Golden Age mysteries, with strong overtones of the sensationalism from earlier in the century. However, I was enchanted when I saw the table of contents and the list of chapter names which are individually named beginning “Consultation, Confabulation, Confliction, Consternation, Condescension, Contradiction, Conundrun, Contestatation” and so on for 33 chapters, ending with “Conclusion”. It is hard not be impressed with a list like that.
Gregg’s books are harder to find than other Golden Age authors and perhaps less likely to be reprinted due to their dated social references. I found only one blog review of this book, on the Witness to the Crime blog: https://witnesstothecrime.wordpress.com/2023/12/31/cecil-freeman-gregg-the-body-behind-the-bar-1932/.
While not in the top tier of Golden Age classics, Gregg’s books contribute to a rounded view of the style of the time and are worth examining from that aspect as well as for an unabashedly galloping escapist read.