Sprigg was the pseudonym of Christopher Caudwell, a Marxist theorist and "activist." He wrote nine murder mysteries as Sprigg, but his real value to the world was his socialist activism, academic writing and his commitment to killing fascists while saving the lives of his comrades during the Spanish Civil War. He was killed in Jarama, Spain, when he was only 29 years old. E P Thompson said of Caudwell, "It is not difficult to see Caudwell as a phenomenon--as an extraordinary shooting-star crossing England's empiral night--as a premonitory sign of a more sophisticated Marxism whose true annunciation was delayed until the Sixties."
So Caudwell was a smarty-pants. But how good was he as a murder mystery writer? Annoyingly good, actually. Death of an Airman was published in 1934 when Caudwell was only 27 years old and there are a few things about it that are striking right from the get go:
(1) Most significantly, the murder victim, George, is an incredibly charming, likeable character: an intelligent, funny yet serious pilot who is trying to earn a living by doing air taxi and shipping work. And, he is the ONLY likeable character in the whole novel. The rest are scheming, stupid, or utterly selfish and unwilling to lift a finger to help anyone unless forced to at gunpoint. This is the first murder mystery by this publisher that I've read which really seems sad.
(2) Religious devotees are annoying and tend to hinder rather than help situations: Early on we meet a Bishop from Cootamundra Australia who is "on leave" (what exactly does that mean for a bishop?) and decides that he wants to learn how to fly a plane to fill his empty hours. Instead, what he does is fumble around, get in everyone's way, unwittingly withhold important evidence from the police, and almost manage to get himself killed because he's too stupid to realize that the character who keeps pushing drinks on him is the killer who has spiked the whiskey.
(3) Women are crueler and smarter than men, but they also work harder and are therefore better pilots, managers, witnesses and criminals. Here are three of note:
Sally: manages the airfield by keeping a bunch of loafing mechanics in line and by covering the booked air taxi requests at the drop of a hat--she is perpetually complaining because she really is the only employee at the airfield who earns her wage. She's there from 5 am until well after midnight and doesn't seem to have a private life.
Laura: is a stunt pilot who gets her blood pumped early in the morning by flying upside down so close to the ground that no one can see or hear her plane engine approach. "Better than coffee!" she explains to the befuddled Bishop. Students can hire her to teach them to fly, but they need to be prepared for her to get to ridiculous heights, put the plane into a tailspin and then let go of the controls to see if they can handle themselves in an emergency. Most barely survive and vomit impressively when they get their feet on the ground.
Lady Crumbles: a matronly Countess who spends her seemingly inexhaustible energy organizing people and parties to raise money for various charities (always paying herself first, though). No one wants to be alone in a room with her, not even her husband, because they'll get volunteered to do something really unpleasant. Her latest brainwave is that the air field is a mess and so she needs to raise money by organizing a charity air show. And to get people really excited, she is going to collect together a group of pre-teen girls who will be mascots of the Air Field, "like Brownies but in the air," she explains. Her initial name for the girl troup is Air Fairies but her husband convinces her that she needs to work harder. She's offended by his innuendo, but decides that Airies--because it's more like Brownies--is a better name anyway.
There are various male pilots and male mechanics, too many to go through in detail. Most of them drink and complain a lot.
The action starts right away when George decides to have an early flight and does his usual loop di loops and such forth, then ducks behind a wooded area out of sight and then....that's the last of him. People idly watching his stunts slowly start to wonder where the hell he could have gone, since the cleared area over there is too small to land a plane safely on. First one, then another, head over to see if he's all right and, no, he very much isn't all right: the plane is down, flipped onto its back and he's collapsed against the controls. Dead. No one can understand as he is way too good a pilot (and person) to have died so stupidly. And, anyway, the planes are designed to propel pilots out during crashes so they suffer a broken arm at most. But then the Bishop steps up (he's been waiting for George so they can begin his first lesson with him) and then announces that (a) he has extensive medical training and (b) George didn't die of a headwound but of a bullet to the brain and (c) notice that the seatbelt was tied around his waist and so he couldn't have been thrown from the plane AND (d) George has been dead for more than 12 hours!! (This is the last time the Bishop/Doctor says or does anything useful.)
Welp, in come the detectives. The guy in charge is Inspector Creighton, a no nonsense inspector who suspects everyone of everything, which is good because there is WAY more going on at this air field than meets the eye.
For starters, teaching students how to fly is the least of what these pilots get up to. A far more lucrative job is using their planes as "air taxis". The basic idea is that someone can call the air field and reserve a pilot and their plane to take them anywhere in Britain and pay per mile. And the crazy part, it isn't that expensive--just a few pence per mile! One guy (who is utterly irrelevant to our story but allows the Inspector to discover some of what is going on at this place) regularly has someone fly him to Scotland in the morning and back home before dinner that same day. But the big money comes from running shipments of newspapers from the printer to the news agent centers in various cities all around the UK. It works like this: suppose the air field is outside Exeter, which has a local newspaper, The Exeter Gazette. Each night it prints up tens of thousands of copies of the day's issue. But they need to get those papers to news agents all over the country--London particularly--before people wake up in the morning. So vanloads of the papers arrive at the air field and load up their service (LARGE) planes with stacks of papers tied up in big bundles. Then, the plane flies to various cities where a local van is waiting for them. They load up however many bundles the news agents of that city are committed to selling. Those vans, then, drive the bundles to the news agents and the plane heads off to the next city. All this goes on every day--sometimes twice a day if the paper has two runs, which the big ones do. That is a LOT of flying--with no customs agents checking the bundles because who would check thousands of bundles of newspapers in every plane every single day? If they did, no one would get their papers in time! Plus, these trips require the pilots to enter and leave such disreputable cities as Paris and Hamburg--drug capitals!--to bring German and French papers into the UK. Inspector Creighton marvels: Are there really that many people in England reading French and German papers? Hey, they only need enough to justify one flight to and from each of those cities once a week --a very nice set up for dope dealing, right? Yep, that's the real story here: George (too smart for his own good) discovered that a "newspaper" is running cocaine and heroin (the drugs of choice in England at the time--AGAIN with the drugs!!!) and it cost him his life. But how did he die from a bullet wound 12 hours BEFORE he flew his plane? And how can anyone prove that this air field is involved in drug smuggling and, even if they can, how can they prove which pilots are involved? So Creighton and his minions set up a very clever sting operation--working with counterparts in Paris--to catch them in the act. And then in steps the Bishop to muddle everything up, drink a cocktail loaded with enough sedative to kill a horse, get bundled into a single engine plane (like on the cover of the book above), which the pilot (but who is the pilot? Bishop is too sozzled to see clearly...) then flips over to dump the Bishop onto the ground which is, at that moment, 3000 feet down. Fortunately, Inspector Creighton has figured it all out and one other pilot is willing to help him save the day...They catch the Bishop, but do they catch the killer?
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