“Filthy” Lewker
21
Carr has a good sense of humor, which frequently appears in these tales:
witness his native Welshmen, provincial of outlook and given to odd speech, yet
these accounts are as dark as the usual detective fiction. The genre, of course, is
almost anomalous by definition. Detective fiction is more or less considered
light reading fare, and yet deals with murder, theft, illicit sex, guilt, envy,
greed—the staples of tragedy. Great works like L e s M is e r a b le s or C r im e a n d
P un is h m e n t, for instance, deal with identical problems but aren’t even
considered in the same circles. The tone of the detective novel can be flat (police
procedurals), humorous, blase, noir, featuring, say, case-hardened cops, the
mercenary but somehow moral private eye who’s seen it all and survived, but
the genre never seems to plumb the depths of despair or enlightenment of
serious fiction. The ingredients are present but the product does not quite justify
the expense. Still, murder and death are by definition serious. Even the lightest
of crime novel protagonists, Christie’s Tuppence Beresford, for instance, or her
gentle Jane Marple, must face evil. Do they deserve more serious respect and
attention? Ruth Rendell pretty much demanded it, calling Christie superficial
and preferring to be compared to Patricia Highsmith, another possible candidate
for higher awards (M u rd ero u s Ink 60). Dorothy Sayers at her best is a bit
beyond summer vacation pages out of a handbag.
In any event, where does Carr stand vis-a-vis such competition? His puzzles
are ingenious if not superb. He can fool us and he isn’t given to outrages like
Christie’s having the narrator himself do it, or the dead victim do it in another
case, or everyone do it in her famous O r ie n t E xp ress. Further, he has blocked off
an area peopled by few rivals. Jill Neate’s exhaustive bibliography of
mountaineering literature lists 411 works of fiction dealing with mountains
(most of them, of course, not involving crime, and many only peripherally
connected with mountains as such). Styles, under various interests, counts for at
least 10 percent of them. Dorothy Sayers took Peter Wimsey to Scotland’s
heights in F iv e R e d H e rr in g s (1931). Mary Stewart’s W ildfire a t M id n ig h t
(1956) uses The Isle of Skye. There’s Lionel Davidson’s R o s e o f T ibet (1962),
or Duff Hart-Davis’s H eig h ts o f R im rin g (1980), Steven Voien’s In a H ig h a n d
L o n e ly P la ce (1992), James Ramsey Ullman’s The W hite T o w e r (1945), or Van
Wyck Mason’s H im a la y a n A ss ig n m e n t (1952), this one even furnished with
Colonel North, a sort of detective. Trevanian’s E ig e r S a n ctio n (1972), back in
Switzerland, reached a million copies and sired a blockbuster movie featuring
Clint Eastwood. We fans of such thrillers are all supposed to know A.E.
Mason’s R unning W ater (1907) with the spectacular climb on the Brenva Ridge
of Mont Blanc. There are a few others, but straight sleuthing on the heights is
pretty much Lewker’s exclusive territory.
We need to examine in greater detail the 15 forays into mountainous thinner
air. Number one in the series is D e a th on M ile s to n e B u ttress (1951). We have
already met Lewker in T r a it o r ’s M ountain but as a secret-service agent, not part
of this series and brought to life under Styles’s real name. Here is the classic
examination of places, times, possible speeds in ascent and descent, the breaking