“Filthy” Lewker Takes on Assorted
Mountaineering Miscreants
Meet Sir Abercrombie Lewker (“Filthy” to his long-suffering, ex-Follies
girl/wife and a few special friends—the “Sir” came later): Shakespearian actor
and manager of his own highly regarded company, consulting detective
extraordinaire, former British secret-service operative during WWII, and, for all
his portly (not to say fat) physique, no slouch as a mountain climber.
With this lengthy verbal introduction inscribed, you must let me back up a
bit. There are 15 novels (1951-69) devoted to Lewker’s exploits, all published
by the London firm of Geoffrey Bles (at least two also appearing under a U.S.
imprint). Said exploits materialize in France, Switzerland, Austria, Majorca,
Norway, even the Himalayas, but a good half of them are set closer to home in
the author’s beloved Wales. Who might this author be? Well, something of a
cult figure among mountaineering aficionados, by name Showell Styles, wearing
one of his many hats, compiler of the ever popular Mountaineer's Week-End
Book (London: Seeley, [1950], rev. 1962), among another 20 or so accounts of
climbing and its craft. He also wrote children’s fare, some light poetry, assorted
articles, historical seafaring novels (he himself served in the British navy), and a
detective novel, Traitor's Mountain, set in Wales, introducing secret-service
agent Lewker (disguised as a tramp). One source gives the author credit for over
150 works, of which 15 (under the nom de plume Glyn Carr) are devoted to
Lewker, detective-actor-climber. Someone joked, a few years ago, that every
time Angela Lansbury, in her role as Jessica Fletcher, heroine of TV’s Murder
She Wrote, took a vacation, she bumped into a corpse. Lewker was allotted the
same fate.
What makes these stories such fine reads is multiple. Styles knew his
mountains, as well he should, having climbed in all the locales he employed in
his writing. His work reveals a literate style far beyond that of most detective
fiction writers, and he was a great story spinner. He had a good ear for native
dialects to help sell his often picturesque, invariably credible characters.
Descriptions of peak and vale, their rock, snow, or verdant covers, the creatures
they shelter all ring true. He has, in short, a great ekphrastic eye, one of the last
since the ubiquitous camera has usurped its skills. As an added bonus (as befits a
Shakespearean actor): Lewker quotes the Bard aptly, endlessly, given the
slightest excuse or none at all. Add a generous dollop of literary references, fine
literary style, stage lore and the like, and we must admit that here are 15
delightful offerings tailor-made for us literary types. If Lewker knows his
mountains, he is equally at home in Avon.
Lewker seemingly exhibits the author’s own preferences: honesty, morality,
decency—no hard-drinking, wenching, noir-film cynic here—his being most
thoroughly British aside, he could have played the role of patriarch of 1950