Initially, L. J. Hurst worked in the backrooms of the media industry. He now divides his time between work for an international scientific publisher and a rather more British independent bookseller. In years past he was a regular attendee at the Shots on the Page Festivals from whence Shots Mag sprung
John Bude was a prolific author once he got going. While his first novel was published in 1935, Death Makes a Prophet was his fifteenth when it appeared in 1947 (as remarked upon by Martin Edwards the Editor of this series). Since it does not have the finish of his other works I have a suspicion that this was a pre-war or a war-time manuscript that had some of its earlier references removed and was quickly put out when he had nothing else. Several authors and publishers had to do this post-war.
Significantly, though not noted by Martin Edwards, Death Makes a Prophet is a pastiche that extends George Orwell complaint about the people drawn to socialism, in the second part of The Road To Wigan Pier (1937): “One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” For this is a novel about the people who live in Welworth Garden City (sound familiar? Orwell lived near Letchworth Garden City), among whom are the Children Of Osiris, a movement founded by Eustace Mildmann, with no particularly bad intentions, but who is incapable of administering a growing congregation, and therefore being side-lined by other more dominant figures. None of the leadership is able to take absolute power so that resentments and petty hatreds grow. When the Cooists (they use the initials from Children of Osiris to name their belief) move south for a summer camp death follows.
G K Chesterton and Ronald Knox both wrote detectives stories about the villainies that could lurk within cults, and events at the Cooie camp, as characters are revealed, prove to be of the same streak. Blackmailers, drug-dealers and adulterers all pass through Inspector Meredith’s hands, though false alibis and time spent lurking in rhododendron bushes delay his investigations, distracting from the cult activities themselves.
Death Makes a Prophet could have been better. For some reason similar sorts of books set in America, regardless of the nationality of their author, are better. Examples are Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One (1948), written by an Englishman but set in California, and the all-American Gore Vidal’s Messiah (1954). On the other hand if you want more evidence of what it was that provoked George Orwell’s outburst in 1937 then Death Makes a Prophet is the book you want and on that ground alone it should be better known.
