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 This is an intense, tightly-wound mystery novel set in 1930s London, with a backdrop of the rise of the homegrown English Fascist movement. Andrew Taylor is an abundantly gifted English writer who is (fortunately for readers!) quite prolific, and has authored a pageful of titles on his "also written by" page...all of which this reader wants to order immediately! He composes intriguing metaphorical labyrinths which pull the reader in. One feels present with the characters; one nearly chokes on the smoke at the pub; one is sometimes as frightened as the very actors in this drama.
Taylor uses many double entendres in his books, so always look for clues in his nomenclature. Bleeding heart could be a heart that is bleeding to death, a heart which is bled of all it has to give (in the emotional sense), one who cares for others, the Sacred Heart…all these come to mind. An undertheme of the story is supplied by the mysterious packages delivered regularly to the owner of the house on Bleeding Heart Square, Joseph Serridge. They contain the hearts of farm animals and the odd animal cranium and point to evil being gradually unearthed. (The goat's skull is particularly apt since it's a sign associated with the daemonic).
This tale is narrated by Lydia Langstone, a young aristocratic woman who abruptly abandons her abusive, borderline personality husband and is hiding out at Number 7 Bleeding Heart Square, where her father, Capt. Ingleby-Lewis, lives a down-and-out lifestyle. It's pretty much a crash pad; the Captain (a former officer but not really a gentleman) spends most of his time getting sloshed at the local pub, the Crozier. (The Cross Bearer, as derived from the old French language…is the more relevant meaning here)....Capt. Ingleby-Lewis is crucified by alcohol and by an unsavoury role he played in a murderous scheme hatched by his former sergeant/now landlord, Joseph Serridge (who appears to collect no rent from the Captain). Lydia has not seen her father since childhood, and has certainly never lived in such a low-rent district. Now she is counting her pounds and shillings as she hides out from her husband, Marcus, a Fascist party leader-wannabe.
Lydia takes her meals at the local cafe, The Blue Dahlia. We are reminded here of the famous Black Dahlia murder case but may not be aware that that case itself was named after a murder mystery movie called ... The Blue Dahlia. The lane which leads to the Blue Dahlia is called Fetter Passage....fetters are restraints such as leg shackles or irons which allow one to barely walk, but not to run. This suggests that the very location can be crippling. In the beginning, Lydia wanders down Fetter Passage into Holborn. Immediately my memory jogged: Holborn was famous for, among other things, a terrible outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in the mid 1660s. A pharmacist working from a pub called The White Hart (Heart) did what he could to save lives. Please note the relationship between hart and heart, deer (hart) and dear, which are interwoven in the novel. One of the historic hints about Bleeding Heart Square dropped by the author is that it is centered round the death of a hart (deer) in a royal hunt. A denizen of the boarding house at number 7 says "So perhaps a bleeding hart would be a hart that had been run down by the hounds, and torn apart"(p. 203). And perhaps the heart of the hart was bleeding, if you see what I mean. It all comes back to the bleeding heart, Mrs. Langstone." Between the gory title and suggestive place names we have to know someone's been done in and it will be simply a matter of time before we uncover the crime. We also know there was robbery: not only material goods, but someone's heart was stolen as well.
By now we know that the murder we are to discover will be a grisly one indeed. The remains we can expect will be (*as in the bleeding hart and the Black Dahlia murder) dismembered and mutilated. We can also assume that there's a "broken heart" and that a "heart" has been "bled" of all it had to give. Someone was done in for money but walked herself to her own scaffold, convinced that her murderer was the love of her life...and not disillusioned until it was too late.
The story unfolds both in the pages of an old diary and in the action of the characters Lydia encounters: people in the building and the neighbourhood, a journalist who befriends Lydia named Rory Wentwood, the former fiancee of Fenella Kensley. Fenella has him investigating the disappearance of her Aunt, Philippa Penhow, the former owner of the house now claimed by Joseph Serridge. The diary of Philippa appears throughout the book, a page here, a page there, as a tributary which is actually, as it turns out, the mainstream. Through the words of the diary we learn how Philippa, in her forties but to her contemporaries an "old maid" (we must remember that in the 1930s, forty was over the hill. Think about the film Sunset Blvd., made in 1950, starring Gloria Swanson as a star of the silver screen whose days of glory are long gone. One of the supposedly most awful things revealed in the end is her age. Her younger lover discovers, and is appalled by, her real age...she's...a mummy....she's...decrepit....she's....fifty!) So, understand that for Philippa, by this time in life, there was not much hope of marriage. In her diary we learn of her visit to her property, her chance encounter with a tenant, Joseph Serridge, and her subsequent fate.
The device of telling the story in Philippa's faded calligraphy (her last name isn't Penhow for nothing) as well as the action which takes place among the characters as the plot leads to her (burial) plot, totally engages the reader. Just when one wants to know what Philippa writes next, the diary ends as Lydia's narrative takes over (and sometimes the story is told in Rory's voice). Just when one's dying (ah, bad choice of words) to know...extremely curious about what Lydia will do next, one's back to the diary. The book is completely intriguing and the characters are vivid and real. A little too real in some cases: "Serridge" doesn't sound like "savage" by accident. There's an intense feel for place. The dank, cold, sometimes stenchy Square surrounds the reader. One knows that the cuisine at the Blue Dahlia will be foul. One wants to lay out a towel before sitting down on any surface at Number 7. Rosington Chapel nearby is no solace, either...especially as Lydia is nearly locked in the crypt. Rosington is a place name which crops up from time to time in this book (as do different forms of the woman's name Rose) in Taylor's Roth Trilogy. With Taylor we know there's always a reason: rosemary was an herb used in the old days in England, laid round the deceased to cover the smell of death.
Thinking back, it is also not a coincidence that Lydia, a single woman, is so involved in the telling of Philippa's tale. Lydia represents a very different kind of woman. Although she has had a privileged upbringing and a wealthy marriage, she is able to manage independently. She sells some jewels; she gets a job working for a seedy attorney, Mr. Shires (who handles Serridge's affairs). At a Fascist rally (held in the undercroft or basement of Rosington Chapel) in which her spouse is a major player, Lydia fights back when things get ugly, and rescues Rory from the chapel ossuary (charnel house) in which he was imprisoned by the party faithful, basically just for being a reporter.
We get more pointers: Morthams Farm ... a name like that can bode no good, the first syllable being death. Part of the genius of the book is the creative weaving of such editorial hints into the language, the geography and the names of those one encounters in these pages.
Although it's a brilliant mystery tale, we also delve here into some spiritual themes. There are some inversions here.... Sacrificial love, for one. Philippa, who isn't evil but merely naive, has become a sacrificial lamb. She has money and property so she becomes a magnet for the opportunistic Serridge, who wants both. So much for Thou Shalt Not Kill. Rosington Chapel, a church, should be a place of sanctuary, peace and blessing; instead it's Fascist HQ, and people keep getting locked in the ossuary or the crypt...I don't think its sanctuary is once mentioned in the book! Where's God in here? It's as gray, dreary and completely creepy as the rest of the Square. Having heart... bleeding hearts...the smell of Bleeding Heart Square is the odour of an ill-prepared corpse...it seeps in here and there, leading the reader to the truth at the end of the story. The good guys win here (barely), and the truth does out (eventually)...yet not without suffering. Theodicy rears its ever-difficult head. Why does evil exist? How can one take someone else's life for material gain? (Obviously it takes a sociopath, which is how the antagonist of this yarn is clearly portrayed). Observe that the evildoer gets hints that all is not going to remain buried and that his karma has tanked. He does not live a complacent life because there are always reminders and eventually all the little pieces come together. He does not rest easy. The entire saga is full of barbs and little disturbances directed at the murderer. Eventually it adds up to revelation.
Murder mysteries have always been popular, whether in movies, books, mythology or religions. There's always a mystery, frequently murders (Greek gods kill each other right and left, as did the Borgias, a powerful family from whom a series of Popes sprung. Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was murdered by a mob, and in turn the Mormons, disguised as Indians, murdered innocent pioneers in the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre. Jesus was crucified for crimes uncommitted. Joan of Arc was killed because of her beliefs.) Examples abound.
Murder mysteries always were and ever will be a part of human lore. They relate to that part of us which wonders "what if....what if he (I) got away with it?" They engage our shadow selves. They remind us that crime doesn't pay and that the right wins out; although sometimes only by a nose. Murder mysteries are today's morality plays. And Bleeding Heart Square poses some serious moral and spiritual questions for all, whilst providing a magnificent atmosphere of wonder, suspense, and surprises. I highly recommend it, but not for the faint of "Heart."
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