The Books of Leo Bruce: Another Text Forthcoming

RUPERT CROFT-COOKE (1903-1979), a rather prolific author, wrote two series of detective novels under the pseudonym Leo Bruce: one featured Sergeant Beef, a (serving and then retired) police officer; tother featured Carolus Deene, the senior history master of the fictional Queen’s School, Newminster.

Sergeant Beef Novels:
1. Case for Three Detectives (1936);
2. Case without a Corpse (1937);
3. Case with No Conclusion (1939);
4. Case with Four Clowns (1939);
5. Case with Ropes and Rings (1940);
6. Case for Sergeant Beef (1947);
7. Neck and Neck (1951); &
8. Cold Blood (1952).

Carolus Deene Novels:
1. At Death’s Door (1955);
2. Death of Cold (1956);
3. Dead for a Ducat (1956);
4.  Dead Man’s Shoes (1958) ;
5. A Louse for the Hangman (1958);
6. Our Jubilee Is Death (1959);
7. Jack on the Gallows Tree (1960) ;
8. Furious Old Women (1960) ;
9. A Bone and a Hank of Hair (1961) ;
10. Die All, Die Merrily (1961);
11. Nothing like Blood (1962);
12. Crack of Doom * (1963);
13. Death in Albert Park (1964);
14. Death at Hallows End (1965);
15. Death on the Black Sands (1966);
16. Death at St. Asprey’s School (1967);
17. Death of a Commuter (1967);
 18. Death on Romney Marsh (1968);
19. Death with Blue Ribbon (1969);
20. Death on Allhallowe’en (1970);
21. Death by the Lake (1971);
22. Death in the Middle Watch (1974); &
23. Death of a Bovver Boy (1974).

* also titled Such Is Death.

As Leo Bruce, Croft-Cooke also wrote thirty or so short mystery stories, mostly for London’s Evening Standard, whereof a third feature Sergeant Beef.

Short Stories:
Murder in Miniature: The Short Stories, ed. B.A. Pike (1992);
from The Tatler and Bystander (1957), “Beef for Christmas”.

Leo Bruce on Fair Play:
“A critic recently accused me of being ‘frantically serious’ about the problem set in one of these books. I can’t quite see the point of a who-dun-it unless the thing is laid out as fair and square as a crossword.”—footnote in Die all, Die Merrily (1961)

Synopses of Sergeant Beef novels:

Case for Three Detectives

The morning after the mystifying murder of Dr. Thurston’s wife in a locked room, three famous, eccentric, amateur sleuths arrive to investigate the baffling crime and, of course, ultimately, to provide ingenious solutions therefor; meanwhile, stolid Sergeant Willam Beef, the village policeman, considers the case a simple one.

Case without a Corpse
A young man bursts into the pub wherein Sgt. Beef is playing darts, loudly confesses to having committed a murder, drinks poison, dies, and leaves everyone wondering whom he killed and where the body might be.

Case with No Solution
Feeling unappreciated by Scotland Yard, Sgt. Beef quits the police force and becomes a private investigator in London; he is hired to prove that a young man’s brother, a prime suspect, is not a murderer.

Case with Four Clowns
Sgt. Beef travels with a small circus, hoping to prevent a murder therein, after he receives a letter from his nephew revealing a fortune-teller’s dire prophecy.

Case with Ropes and Rings
Sgt. Beef believes that the younger son of the Marquess of Edenbridge, found hanging in his exclusive school’s gymnasium, did not commit suicide.

Case for Sergeant Beef
A retired watchmaker plans a perfect, motiveless (and therefore, he gloats, unsolvable) murder, but after the murder is committed Sgt. Beef plans to identify the killer.

Neck and Neck
Sgt. Beef is enlisted by Lionel Townsend, his Watson, or Boswell (and also—as an heir to a substantial legacy—a suspect), to find his aunt’s killer.

Cold Blood
Sgt. Beef is hired to discover who killed, apparently with a croquet mallet, a rich and elderly recluse—a cuckold or even, perhaps, a wittol—at his country house.