J. J. Connington was the alias of Albert Walter Stewart, a Scottish-born chemist, crime writer and one of the founding members of the Detection Club. Alongside a successful academic career, Connington published seventeen novels between 1923 and his death in 1947. T.S. Eliot was an admirer of Connington’s detective fiction.[1] Connington’s main ‘sleuth’ was Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield, who was accompanied by Wendover, a man of independent means, as a side-kick. These characters reveal Connington’s conservative political views; they have independent wealth and are no political radicals.
The Sweepstake Murders was Connington’s 13th published work, and coincidentally the concept of ‘bad luck’ (accidental or manufactured) is a key motif in the work. The book starts with Wendover, Sir Driffield’s companion, attending a bridge party at a house in the neighbourhood. The nine men in attendance agree to join into a syndicate and buy nine sweepstake tickets for the Epsom Derby. If any of the tickets win, they agree to divide the winnings equally between them.
When one of their number unexpectedly dies before the sweepstake results are announced, it occurs to Wendover that their signed agreement means that the fewer members of the syndicate remain, the more money each individual will receive, as they will have to split the winnings amongst fewer people. When the syndicate wins the second prize, or £241,920, members start getting bumped off with alarming speed. Sir Driffield comes to visit Wendover and helps the local police with their investigation, as he is concerned about his friend’s safety.
The tension in The Sweepstake Murders is two-fold: the reader does not know who the next member of the syndicate will be who will get murdered; but as the murders progress, fewer and fewer suspects remain, as it is assumed that one of the remaining syndicate members is the perpetrator. In this set-up, the murderer can only obtain the highest possible monetary return by revealing themselves as the last person standing. Connington avoids this problem by having some of the syndicate members sell on part of their stake to people not originally involved in the syndicate, thus widening the pool of potential beneficiaries. The set-up also allows Connington to include a range of murder methods and weapons in his story, as the murderer gets creative to make the deaths look like accidents.
The narrative of The Sweepstake Murders is liberally interspersed with letters sent between legal advisers and syndicate members; excerpts of Sir Driffield’s notebook; and various jottings-down of accounts and sums to allow the reader to stay on top of who is entitled to which sum at each stage of proceedings. Towards the end of the story, the behaviour of a roll of film in a photo camera becomes a crucial clue to the plot, and this is duly illustrated with some diagrams. These extra-textual elements add to the puzzle-like feel of the story and engage the reader in its resolution.
The Sweepstake Murders is a high-concept crime story, which incorporates many of the tropes of the genre including meticulous timing of alibis, use of technology to cover and uncover tracks, and a closed circle of potential suspects. Despite Connington’s professional success during the interwar period, he is now a mostly forgotten crime writer and his books are not as readily available as those of other authors of the period. Yet The Sweepstake Murders is a good quality murder mystery and is worth seeking out by readers with an interest in interwar crime literature.
[1] Martin Edwards, The Golden Age of Murder (London: Harper Collins, 2016), p. 186
Interwar London 