A Golf Bag Full of Contemporary Golf Mysteries
By Bill Peschel
From “The Complete Annotated Murder on the Links”
Copyright 2020 by Bill Peschel
Agatha Christie wasn’t the first author to place a story on a golf course — if only indirectly. That honor belongs, appropriately to the history of golf, to a Scotsman, where the game originated.
Here’s a selection of 1920s and 1930s golf mysteries, many of them as rare as a hole in one.
The Haunted Major (1902) by Scottish playwright Robert Marshall (1863-1910) is a minor classic in the fantasy humor genre. P. G. Wodehouse admired it, and some critics speculate that it may have influenced his Jeeves and Wooster novels.
It’s also the earliest known example of the “two men using a golf match for a maiden” story. This trope gets such a workout in fiction over the next two decades that a 1927 Dorothy Parker book review skewered contemporary short stories with an example of it:
“The country club was a-hum, for the final match of the Fourth of July Golf Tournament was in full swing. Many a curious eye lingered on Janet DeLancey, rocking lazily, surrounded as usual by a circle of white-flanneled adorers, for the porch was a-whisper with the rumor that the winner of the match would also be the winner of the hitherto untouched heart of the blonde and devastating Janet.”
The Haunted Major is also a fine example of the era’s approach to the comic supernatural story exemplified by John Kendrick Bangs, who set several Holmesian parodies in Hades, and James Branch Cabell, whose Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919) was so risque for its time that it was the subject of an obscenity case.
The hero — if you can call him that — is John Gore, a pompous fop who believes he is “the finest sportsman living.” He desires an American millionairess, Katherine Gunter, and admits he desires her money as much as her company. But she is keen on golf and also on championship player Jim Lindsay. Gore, a golf novice, challenges Lindsay to a match at the ancient royal course of St. Magnus (a double for St. Andrews), with the winner getting to propose marriage to her first.
Since Gore has never played the game, and he has a week to master it, practicing goes as well as can be expected. His skill at manly games such as polo proves useless on the golf course (his Scottish caddy observing, “Ye’ll no hae a hoarse to help ye”).
Then the ghost of Cardinal Smeaton visits him. He bestows a set of magical clubs on Gore because Lindsay’s ancestor was a rival of Smeaton. The match’s outcome surprises everyone, even the ghost, with an ingenious triple surprise ending.
The book was republished in 1999 as The Enchanted Golf Clubs with an introduction by John Updike, who called it “a curious amalgam of religious history, Edwardian foppery, and golfing madness.”
If reading Links inspires in you a desire for vintage golf mysteries, here are some novels and stories in which the game plays a role published between 1914 and 1939:
Hubert Wales
The Brocklebank Riddle, 1914. A weird book in that the solution hinges on Theosophical ideas and the transfer of a personality from one body to another (“By the time we reached the first tee, the report that a supposed dead man was about to play golf had run through the entire Club House and its offices”).
Chester K. Steele
The Golf Course Mystery: Being A Somewhat Different Detective Story, 1919. Steele was the house name for a line of mysteries from the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the same company that brought you the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys. Very odd book with racist stereotypes and sexist remarks common at the time. A curiosity.
Mary Roberts Rinehart
Tish Plays the Game, 1921. Five novellas about comic spinster Letitia Carberry, who takes up golf in the first book. Beginning in 1911, the prolific Rinehart (1876-1958) wrote a long series of stories about Tish. Rinehart is also credited with coining the phrase “The butler did it.”
Charles Ross
The Haunted Seventh, 1922. Ross (1864-1930) was a British Army officer who served in the Boer War and World War I and retired at the rank of major-general. Late in life he wrote five mystery novels.
Herbert Adams
The Secret of Bogey House, 1924. Adams’ debut novel featured lawyer-detective Jimmie Haswell and pro golfer Tony Bridgman. Adams (1874-1958) returned to golf frequently, as evidenced by his other novels: The Body in the Bunker, The Golf House Mystery, Death Off the Fairway, and The Nineteenth Hole Mystery.
Ronald A. Knox
The Viaduct Murder, 1925. A group of golfers discover the dead body of the local atheist below a railway viaduct. Knox (1888-1957) was a prominent Catholic priest and member of the Detection Club alongside Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and G. K. Chesterton. He also created the humorous ten commandments of detective fiction that banned well-worn tropes such as secret rooms, supernatural agencies, twin brothers, and stupid Watsons.
Owen Fox Jerome
The Golf Club Murder, 1929. A combination cozy mystery, action story, and romance. The first of two murders is committed during a round of golf in an unusual way.
Marcus Dods
The Bunker at the Fifth, 1925. Copies of this one are expensive, although the 2000 edition from Golf Mystery Press can be found for about $50. First editions start at over a thousand dollars. Dods (d. 1935) was a Scottish sheriff and the son of a notable theologian and biblical scholar.
Ian Greig
Silver King Mystery, 1930. Published in Britain as The King’s Club Murder.
David Frome
The Strange Death of Martin Green, 1931. Published in Britain as The Murder on the Sixth Hole. Frome was the pen name of Zenith Jones Brown (1898-1983) who also wrote novels as Leslie Ford and Brenda Conrad. She was a war correspondent during World War II.
Gerard Fairlie
Mr. Malcolm Presents, 1932. Investigation of a murder committed during the British Amateur Golf Tournament. The story ends with a second golf match played for even higher stakes.
Herman Cyril McNeile (“Sapper”)
Uncle James’s Golf Match, 1932. A humorous short story whose joke anticipates powered exoskeletons by nearly half a century.
Miles Burton
Tragedy at the Thirteenth Hole, 1933. A golf ball strikes a man on the head on the golf course and dies. Inspector Arnold investigates and is puzzled to find three golf balls on the green. Does it mean anything? Good luck finding the book; the Collins Crime Club published one edition and it was never reprinted. Burton is a pen name for Cecil John Charles Street (1884-1964), a prolific writer who also wrote as John Rhode.
Rex Stout
Fer-de-Lance, 1934. A college president’s mysterious death on a golf course introduces us to the sedentary orchid-raising genius Nero Wolfe, his smart-mouthed assistant Archie Goodwin, and a long-running mystery series that’s worth reading and rereading.
E.C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen
Trent’s Own Case, 1936. Sequel to Trent’s Last Case, which was also a golf mystery.
The Sweet Shot, 1939. A man dies when his club explodes on a golf course.