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Cyril Hare (1900-1958) - pseudonym for Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark |
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British mystery writer, lawyer, and country court judge in Surrey, who combined in his work his knowledge of subleties of law with sympathetic portrayal of his characters and unexpected plot developments. Hare's most famous work is Tragedy at Law (1942), widely acclaimed as one of the great classics of detective novel. In 1987 the critic and mystery writer H.R.F. Keating included it among the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. "The book is also a first-rate 'backgrounder', one of those detective stories half of whose attraction lies in the setting in which the crime takes place, in this case the legal world in general and circuit life in particular. And, finally, the book contrives in those last pages to be a beautifully unguessable murder story." (from Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating, 1987) Hare's pricipal series characters were Ispector Mallet and a fellow barrister Francis Pettigrew, who first appeared in Tragedy at Law as an unhappy, near-defeated aging lawyer. In With a Bare Bodkin (1946) he meets Miss Eleanor Brown, a young woman half his age, and later has peaceful retirement in He Should Have Died Hereafter (1958). Pettigrew, as a character, is carefully developed book by book by the author, who once remarked that writers may be excused, if they surround principal policeman with contrasting colorful types and streamline police routines. Hare had a good ear for different social languages. His narration is mildly humorous and charming, but he did not make condescending fun of ordinary police officers, familiar from the work of Dorothy Sayers. Basically, the real target of Hare's irony was the speech and pretentious manners of the British upper classes, especially the judges of the High Court of Justice: "There is however, something about judical garments that gives consequence to any but the most undignified figure," Hare wrote in Tragedy at Law. Cyril Hare was born Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark in Mickleham, Surrey. His father, Henry Herbert Gordon Clark, ran the family wine and spirit business, Matthew Clark & Sons. Most of his early years Hare spent in the country, where he learned to hunt, shoot, and fish. After studies at St Aubyn's, Rottingdean and Rugby, Hare entered the New College, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1924, fulfilling his part of the family tradition. In 1933, he married Mary Barbara Lawrence; they one son and two daughters, With his family, he settled in Cyril Mansions, Battersea, London. At the bar Hare's practice was largely in the civil and criminal courts in and around London. He worked in the firm of noted barrister Ronald Oliver, in Hare Court, Temple, where many of the great crime cases of the 1920s were handled. During World War II, Hare toured as a judge's marshal for some time. This experience formed the background for Tragedy at Law. In 1942, he was employed as a Temporary Legal Assistant in the Director of Public Prosecutions Department. He then served with the Ministry of Economic Warfare. From 1950, he was County Court Judge in Surrey. Hare's duties then concerned civil disputes only. After some occasional sketches for Punch and other journals, Hare published his first mystery novel, Tenant for Death (1937). It dealt with the disappearance of a financier, who is the found dead in South Kensington. His pseudonym Hare took from his London home, and his Temple chambers, Hare Court, where he worked. The well-received debut was followed by Death Is No Sportsman (1938), and Suicide Expected (1939), which were good, solid mysteries, but did not drew to any great extent on his legal background. Hare's great interest in music is seen in When the Wind Blows (1949). Tragedy at Law was set in the legal world. In the story Mr Justice Barber, journeying from court to court, receives threatening notes and a mysterious stranger arranges nasty surprises for him, until on page 253 out of a total of 290, the dagger gets thrust between his shoulders. Pettigrew appears as an amateur detective, who doesn't have much pages between the murder and its solution. In With a Bare Bodkin Hare returned to the atmosphere of WW II. The story is set in a remote part of Britain, Marsett Bay, where Francis Pettigrew and his civil service branch is sent to escape the Blitz. Hare keeps the pace slow, plays with the labyrinth of fiction within fiction, and murder doesn't occur until halfway through the book. Pettigrew falls in love with his secretary, Miss Brown, who is courted by a widowed man who much her senior. In An English Murder (1951) Hare used the conventional setting-a country house-and the usual suspects-there is a butler-but managed to come out with an original and fresh tale. An English Christmas party is disturbed by a murder and a Czech refugee, Br. Bottwink, starts to help Scotland Yard. The book was made into a two-part television film in the Soviet Union under the title A Very English Murder (1975), directed by Samson Samsonov and produced by Mosfilm. Hare joined the the Detection Club in 1946. Along with the London solicitor Michael Gilbert, Anthony Berkeley, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, and other member of the Club, Hare carried the Golden Age tradition into the late 1950s. Hare died on 25 August, 1958, at the peak of his career. His last Pettigrew story was He Should Have Died Hereafter, in which Pettigrew and his old friend Inspector Mallett solve the mystery of a disappeared body in Exmoor. "It was all of fifty years since he had last seen a hunted deer and now the sight of it in some way dispelled the enchantment of reminiscene in which he had been living up to that moment. Willy-nilly, he found himself looking at the hapless beast through the eyes of the elderly, urban humanitarian who had somehow evolved from that small boy." This sight leads Pettigrew to recall an experience of his childhood, which he had buried: he found a dead man in his childhood in Bolter's Tussock and left it there. The nightmare repeats itself when he again stumbles over a body on the moor. However, Pettigrew realizes that there must be a perfectly rational explanation to the whole thing and finds the answer from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Hare's later stories and articles were published in Illustrated London News and The Law Journal. Best Detective Stories of Cyril Hare, which came out in 1959, included two Pettigrew adventures and an introduction by Michael Gilbert, his friend and fellow-lawyer. Hare's Tragedy at Law fell in the hands of Gilbert while he was a prisoner of war during WW II. The book inspired him later in his career as a mystery writer. Hare was not a prolific short story writer, but he nevertheless contributed stories to three CWA (the Crime Writers' Association) anthologies, Choise of Weapons (1958), edited by Michael Gilbert, Planned Departures (1958), edited by Elizabeth Ferrars, and Some Like Them Dead (1960), edited by Roy Vickers. 'Name of Smith' (1952), first published in the Evening Standard, illustarates Hare's ability to inject into his stories questions about truth and justice without being didactic. Based mostly on dialogue, it tells of a judge, "an old ruffian", whose soft side is revealed to his colleagues only after his death. The story was reperinted in Mysterious Pleasures (2003), celebrating the 50th anniversary of CWA. In 'An Unpleasant Man', set in an English village close to an American airbase, the detective sergeant solves a crime, when the murdered makes a mistake by using an American expression. For further reading: Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection by Chris Steinbrunner, Otto Penzler (1976); Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating (1987); Crime & Mystery Writers, ed. by Jay P. Pederson (1996); Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea (1997) - See other lawyer-authors: Erle Stanley Gardner, Michael Gilbert Selected works:
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