Hunt for JM
Hunt for JM is a crime novel by the German writer and parapsychologist Rudolf Schwarz , which was first published in 1948 by Hunia Verlag in Berlin under his pseudonym Ralph Black . Two years later the Karl-Mayer-Verlag published a new edition under the slightly different title Jagd nach JM .
action
Jack Murton ( JM ), an employee of a London banana wholesaler, brought home a waybill addressed to JM that his company accidentally received. When the opportunity arises on the following day, he decides to deliver it personally at “14, St. Andrews Drive, Holborn”. In the seemingly abandoned building he meets a stranger. The next day, his wife reports him missing to the police. Weeks later, her brother, a taxi driver, believes he saw him at night in Holborn. However, he loses his track.
Some time later, the police are alerted about an intentional clogging of the London sewer system . Someone has dammed it up so that it can be secretly transported by boat. Scotland Yard's Inspector Grinder and his assistant, Sergeant Dick Humphrey, discover a secret entrance from the canal system into the vacant house on St. Andrews Drive, which the reader is already familiar with, as well as evidence of the smuggling of diamond fragments. The building is managed by broker John Mallot ( JM ). The gang even left a letter signed with JM mocking the police. A member of the gang who was left unconscious provides a personal description of the leader, who was always addressed as JM . Since his description coincides with that of the taxi driver from Jack Murton, he is identified by the police with him and written down for a search. But when Murton's sign of life arrives at his former company in the form of an order for bananas from Maracaibo , the inspector is embarrassed in front of the public. The trail is lost in the jungle of Guyana .
Sergeant Humphrey, who is in love with Daisy King, the daughter of his landlord, jealously observes this one day with the realtor John Mallot. But Grinder & Humphrey is assigned a new case: the Count of Orphington's lock has been broken into. Nothing of value was stolen, the traces point to a woman and a man as the perpetrator. In addition, a few days earlier a stranger in the neighborhood had asked about the castle, the description of which corresponds fatally to that of the wanted gangster JM and who pretended to be Inspector Grinder! A piece of rubber from a woman's shoe discovered at the scene of the crime can be attributed to the horrified Humphrey Daisy, which he keeps secret and continues to investigate secretly. Daisy is apparently working with private detective James Morris ( JM ) and is planning another break-in in Orphington. He follows them to the castle that night and believes he has clues that Morris and Mallot are one and the same person. After shots are fired, Daisy and Morris flee and a known burglar is found dead in the park. He was shot with Humphrey's police revolver, and his pocket knife is at the scene. The sergeant has disappeared for the time being.
Shortly thereafter, Grinder received a report from Guyana that Jack Murton had been arrested there. However, when he learns a few days later that the governor in Georgetown has dismissed him, he reacts perplexed and angry. Meanwhile, Sergeant Humphrey, who is being wanted on suspicion of murder, comes to in a locked cellar. He was held there for days, cared for by a stranger and repeatedly anesthetized with gas. In the end he believes he can outsmart his jailer, but the one he has depressed turns out to be the secretary of the Count of Orphington. However, he claims to have discovered the dungeon, which is actually in the basement of the castle, only by chance.
The inspector is meanwhile informed by the secret service that Murton is on his way back to England. To his confusion, Daisy King now contacts him and offers to help arrest Jack Murton, with whom she had an appointment that evening. Her main concern seems to be Sergeant Humphrey, whom she believes Murton has captured and who she asks the inspector to help free. However, your companion uses a magic show to disappear with Daisy. She finds herself in a luxurious prison, the door of which is only supposed to open for her after marrying her kidnapper.
After Daisy's disappearance, the inspector also decides to investigate underground. When he tried to go into hiding with an old war comrade, he ran into Sergeant Humphrey. The two decide to follow in the footsteps of Morris and Mallot. To his surprise, Humphrey finds Morris dead in his coffin, having died peacefully of natural causes. The real estate agent Mallot, on the other hand, has apparently moved to a country house near Denham, in whose basement they discover a corridor to Orphington Castle. All traces seem to lead there, even the Buick used in the kidnapping of Daisy is registered on the Earl of Orphington. When they visit Mallot's country house again the next day, they find the count's tied up secretary there, who claims to have been drugged by a stranger. The Buick was stolen months ago. Only a long search through the London auto repair shops leads Grinder and Humphrey to the abandoned smuggler's house on St. Andrews Drive.
Here everything comes together, the two of them can free Daisy from her prison there. According to her account, she only got involved in the whole matter to further the career of Sergeant Humphrey, whom she loved. The Count's secretary, Mallot, and her kidnapper are said to be one and the same person. The next one is not this one, but Jack Murton, who has just returned from America. He claims to have traveled to Guyana on behalf of the house owner, a certain Mont Pherson ( JM ), as his double. The reason for the maneuver was not to let the rights to a banana plantation, which is about to be expropriated, expire. There, by the way, he grew a long-lasting “super banana ”. However, Mont Pherson is none other than the secretary! But when he arrives and can be overwhelmed, he tells an even wilder story. In reality he was the son of the real Count of Orphington, who was probably killed in India around 1920. The current count is a deceiver who has replaced his father and placed him in the care of an emigrant family. Years later he returned from South America and crept incognito into the count's criminal organization. This had both shot the burglar and kept Humphrey prisoner in Orphington. He himself played in the role of JM in order to bring down the gang. Murton is sent as an envoy to the Home Secretary to explain the whole matter to the authorities.
While Scotland Yard is already sneaking around the castle, the false count writes his sins off his mind before shooting himself in proper style. He, the common soldier Joville Meanwhile ( JM ), was able to take on the role of his fallen regimental commander, the Earl of Orphington, due to sheer visual similarity during the war. He seems to have committed the crimes, without economic hardship, out of habit or boredom, although he probably continued to use the abbreviation JM because of his real name. Now, as a kind of deus ex machina , the king is allowed to save the hopelessly messed up situation by covering up the embarrassing matter about the false count and the secretary can take over his inheritance as a son who has returned from South Africa . At the King's request, Grinder and Humphrey are reinstated and promoted despite all arbitrariness, and the latter is of course allowed to marry his Daisy. Murton has also made his fortune as the uncrowned banana king, even the taxi driver gets a job with the police. The novel ends with a meeting of all protagonists in the sun-drenched park of Orphington Castle, God save the King!
Places and time
The novel is largely set in London and around 20 miles away, fictional Orphington Castle near Denham. A major subplot takes place in Dutch Guiana , but is only given in reports. Events that took place in the border region of what was then British India and Afghanistan are mentioned retrospectively.
There is no clear time. The First World War , the Great War , is mentioned as a youth experience. There are still some hints from the technical details described, for example a character in a novel drives an "about ten years old" car from the Moon Motor Car Company , which ceased operations in 1930. International conflicts or even the danger of war are not mentioned. All of this points to roughly the mid-1930s. An even more precise chronology may allow two mentioned in the book Messages of the police, whose numbers 468/ 37 and 479 of / 37 seem to indicate explicitly to 1937.
Narrative style
The book is written from the perspective of an authoritative narrator . It is largely told chronologically and in the present tense.
The basis of the plot and the tension build-up is the constant confusion of several, partly real, partly fictional people with the identical initials JM
useful information
The novel was first published just three years after the end of the war in Berlin , which was badly damaged . In this context, the pronounced anglophilia of the novel is surprising. The book's extraordinary success at the time, however, suggests that it was accepted by contemporary readers.
The Hunia publishing house was located in Berlin-Schmargendorf , in the British sector of the divided city. The print shop, on the other hand, was in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg , i.e. in the Soviet zone of occupation. It remains to be speculated whether the Berlin blockade (1948–1949) interrupted this business relationship and made further requirements in Berlin impossible.
The edition by Karl-Mayer-Verlag appeared as the first of a planned series of five novels by Ralph Black , of which only three were published.
expenditure
- 1948: “Hunt for JM”, Hunia-Verlag, Berlin-Schmargendorf
- Softcover, 200 p., Glue binding, cover design: Schwabe, cover photo: without source, printing: H. Schroeter, Berlin NO 55, Immanuelkirchstr. 6, IV. PI. PB. 1737 8 48
- Hardcover, 200 p., Cardboard cover with embossed printing and dust jacket, cover design: Schwabe, printing: H. Schroeter, Berlin NO 55, Immanuelkirchstr. 6, IV. PI. PB. 1737 9 48
- Dust jacket with color graphics, without blurb
- Dust jacket with photo: The sapphire girl : J. Arthur-Rank-Film, with blurb
- 1950: "Hunt for JM", Karl-Mayer-Verlag, Stuttgart
- Hardcover, 294 pages, all-linen cover with gold embossing and dust jacket, cover image: Real-Film Kipp, printing: Scharr, Wörner & Mayer, Stuttgart
Individual evidence
- ↑ According to the plot described later, the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919 is meant
- ↑ here come George V , Edward VIII or George VI. in question
- ↑ Denham, Buckinghamshire is a real place. The specified distances and train connections are verifiable.
- ↑ Hunia-Verlag: each p 122; Karl Mayer Verlag: p. 179
- ↑ For the Hunia-Verlag , Berlin-Schmargendorf, no publications are detectable after the 1950s. It was never included in the commercial register (District Court Berlin-Charlottenburg, Register Court)
- ^ The Karl-Mayer-Verlag , Stuttgart, Haußmannstrasse 198-200, was deleted from the commercial register in 2008 (HRA 4465, Stuttgart District Court, Central Register Court).
- ↑ published: “Hunt for JM”, “ The experiment of Dr. Delaware ”,“ Glowing Eyes ”; unpublished: "Horror in the Spessart", "Revenge of a dead"