The Hammersmith Maggot - William Mole

William Mole was the pseudonym of Bill Younger, Dennis Wheatley's stepson and wartime MI5 agent, working for Max Knight and involved with the internment of members of the Right Club.  Stricken with polio as a child, Younger's growth was stunted but he apparently made up in aggression what he lacked in physical force. A well-reviewed poet before the war, he took to writing novels in the forties and fifties, and seems to have completed five before dying young, in 1962, aged only 45.

The Hammersmith Maggot is from 1955, so more or less the middle of his fiction-writing career.  The hero, Casson, is a Mayfair wine merchant with the time and the money to pursue his interest in unconventional criminality, wherein he is aided by Strutt of the Yard.  The criminal in this case, the titular maggot, is far from ordinary.  He blackmails well-off citizens over something they haven't done but the public would believe them guilty of if the allegation ever became public.  Lockyer, the elderly banker who draws Casson into the case, is a confirmed bachelor who admits he has no interest in women, but he's not gay, although the blackmailer suggests he could be.  He pays up because, obviously, he can't prove otherwise.  Besides, the amount demanded is substantial but nothing he cannot easily afford.  It's as if the extortion has been tailor-made for Lockyer and the other victims who come to light.  The Maggot has another trick up his sleeve.  He promises his victims that the payment will be a one-off - he will not be back for more.  Thus far he has kept his promise.  The threat of a return or, if captured, the allegation getting into the public domain, keeps the victims quiet.

This fabulous Penguin greenback, with a tremendous cover illustration by Romek Marber, is clever, well-written, very old-fashioned and highly amusing.  It could so easily have been formulaic but is kept on a higher level by Younger's gift for characterisation. I'm on the lookout for more.