This was published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1939 at 7/6 (37½p.) with a print run of 6400 copies. There is no American edition listed in the Library of Congress catalogue. It was included in the Heinemann Uniform Edition in 1974, but has never been in paperback and remains quite rare.
It is a mixture of simple love story and detective story. The social observation and love story elements are rather good. The crime and detection are totally implausible. The reviewer in The Times of 20 May 1939 characterises this as a "reluctance to cause pain".
Fountain Inn, somewhere among the Inns of Court, houses several enterprises, including a group of architects for which George Crane works, the Society for Progresive Rehabilitation run by the sinister Mr. Tomms, General Factotums run by Ben and Helen Brown, and W. Rage who employs Grace Kirkstall as typist. When the story opens, W. Rage has just disappeared leaving a bankrupt business and Grace is out of a job. The Browns take her on as a secretary in their shaky business which is partly a form of Universal Aunts and partly a detective agency. They are asked to investigate their downstairs neighbours, The Society for Progresive Rehabilitation, which has been willed a large inheritance and may have used unfair means to get it. Meanwhile Grace is falling for the architect George Crane who, incidentally, is designing buildings for the same wicked Society. Grace's mother is being wooed by the local butcher, but will not marry him until Grace is married. Some obstacles in the way of true love are overcome, and the evil head of the Society survives a murderous fight with an associate, but finds he has escaped with a briefcase full of worthless paper instead of the fortune he had embezzled, which is duly returned to the rightful owners.
As is common in early Canning, there is an episode of skinny-dipping.
I was told by Mike Cherry that Fountain Inn is based on the real Staple Inn, which is located in central London just beside Chancery Lane tube station.
 Gate to Staple Inn |
 Staple Inn |
 The fountain at Staple Inn |
 Heinemann uniform edition 1974 |
Index of characters, scenes and themes (in preparation) |
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