Posted May 14, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Murder in Vienna
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 194
Rating: 
Synopsis: Superintendent Macdonald, C.I.D., studied his fellow-passengers on the Vienna plane simply because he couldn’t help it, because he hadn’t conditioned himself to being on holiday. The distinguished industrialist he recognised: the stout man he put down (quite mistakenly) as a traveller in whisky. The fair girl was going to a job (he was right there) and the aggressive young man in the camel coat might be something bookish. Macdonald turned away from his fellow-passengers deliberately; they weren’t his business, he was on holiday - or so he thought.
Against the background of beautiful Vienna, with its enchanting palaces and gardens, its disenchanted back-streets and derelicts of war, E. C. R. Lorac constructs another great detective story with all its complexities, an exciting and puzzling crime story.
I really love E.C.R. Lorac’s work, for a lot of reasons I’ve written about before, and it boils down to two gifts that she had. One, she was good at characters, and especially at creating likeable characters. Two, she has a great sense for place, and for showing how a place is lived in — I thought at one point she was mostly good at describing rural locations and small towns, but this book (and others set in London) show she just had a gift in general of making anywhere sound lovely in its way. In this case, post-WWII Vienna.
The other thing to bear in mind is that even a character you like a lot might turn out to be a murderer, and that someone who’s a bit of a slimeball needn’t be the one who killed someone. If you read only one or two of her books, it’s easy to think that she’ll always point the finger at a certain type of character, but it isn’t the case.
Murder in Vienna captures the unsettled feeling of a city uneasy with what some of its inhabitants have done. The collaborators walk free, and it’s unclear who collaborated because they felt that they had to and who collaborated willingly. That isn’t completely germane to this story, it’s just part of the feeling of everything. But Vienna itself is beautiful in Lorac’s words, and through the eyes of Macdonald, one of the most human of the detectives of classic fiction (in my view). I found it all really enjoyable, not so much the mystery itself, but how the mystery inhabited Vienna and the anxious minds of those trying to believe that the ordeal is over and normality has returned.
Poor Macdonald really should be allowed a proper holiday at some point, though. If he could please be returning from holiday at the start of a book or something, that’d be nice. No more busman’s holidays for him, please.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, E.C.R. Lorac, mystery
Posted May 7, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Ha-Ha Case
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 230
Rating: 
Synopsis: Johnnie Brandon is found dead while out shooting rabbits with his friends, and the problem is: Accident, Suicide, or Murder? It is all made very complicated by the financial entanglements in which his rapscallion of a father has tied up the estate, and by the fact that a gentlemanly lunatic with large gaps in his memory wanders on to the scene at the crucial moment. Time for the acumen of Chief Constable Sir Clinton Driffield to be brought to bear on the case.
J.J. Connington’s The Ha-Ha Case is a fairly run-of-the-mill mystery for the period, in many ways, but it relies on an interesting little quirk of inheritance law that I’d never seen before. “Borough English” is an inheritance law whereby the youngest child inherits, and it’s part of the mystery that the story revolves around, adding to the thicket of red herrings and complicating one’s intuitions. It sets up a neat little puzzle, and there’s a neat little trick to draw you astray as well.
It’s not really a fair-play mystery, in some ways, but I think that made it a better story… and I think a thoughtful reader can get there anyway. It’s more interesting as a puzzle than for any great insight into character, for all that the police detective is vividly evoked (with all his faults, including total self-absorption).
If you’re interested in mysteries of this period, then it’s a fun one; if you read mysteries of this period now and again for the soothing predictability, this one isn’t a stand-out in the bunch, but a solid choice. If you lack any special interest at all and are just a bit curious, it’s not where I’d start you out, but it wouldn’t be a terrible choice either. All in all, it’s pretty middle-of-the-road. Which sounds like damning with faint praise, but I won’t say no to trying a couple more by Connington.
By the way, it isn’t released by the British Library Crime Classics series. Someone just got clever with cover design.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, J.J. Connington, mystery
Posted April 30, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Religious Body
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 232
Series: The Calleshire Chronicles #1 Rating: Synopsis: The day begins like any other for Sister Mary St. Gertrude. When her alarm sounds at 5 a.m., Sister Mary begins rousting her convent sisters from their beds, starting with the Reverend Mother. Down the Order she goes with a knock and a warm blessing. But when the young nun reaches Sister Anne’s door, there is no answer. She assumes that Sister Anne got up early, and continues on her way.
But later, when a fellow nun leaves a bloody thumbprint on the sheet music for a hymn, and Sister Anne is nowhere to be found, it becomes apparent that something is very wrong. Then Sister Anne’s body is found at the bottom of a steep set of stairs, her veil askew and her head crushed.
Religious Body introduces the sophisticated Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan along with his eager and trustworthy sidekick, Detective Constable Crosby, and the acerbic Superintendent Leeyes in a mystery of holy proportions that will have readers guessing until the last page.
I think I picked up The Religious Body by Catherine Aird as a result of its inclusion in The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (by Martin Edwards), if I recall correctly — it’s been a while since I added it to my wishlist, even though I read it surprisingly quickly after snagging a copy (I’m such a mood reader). Anyway, it’s a fairly standard-feeling mystery, partly from the point of view of the police, and partly from the point of view of the nuns who find one of their number dead in the cellar.
To me, the best parts are actually about the routine of the nunnery: the details of their lives, their interactions, their thoughts, all have something a bit different to offer, while the careful investigation by the police is all routine, and familiar from dozens of other books. I’m sure some of the details are inaccurate, but it’s a good stab at imagining (from an outsider’s point of view, as I presume Catherine Aird was not a nun) what it might be like to be part of such a community.
I didn’t guess the murderer right away, but possibly I should have — it didn’t seem too surprising once we got there, and I definitely realised who he was after his reaction to the joke the police repeat.
In the end, it’s a reasonably solid mystery that doesn’t particularly stand out except by virtue of the setting. I liked it well enough, without feeling a burning urge to read more by Aird.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Catherine Aird, crime, mystery
Posted April 18, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Corpse in the Waxworks
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 288
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: "The purpose, the illusion, the spirit of a waxworks. It is an atmosphere of death. It is soundless and motionless... Do you see?"
Last night Mademoiselle Duchêne was seen heading into the Gallery of Horrors at the Musée Augustin waxworks, alive. Today she was found in the Seine, murdered. The museum's proprietor, long perturbed by the unnatural vitality of his figures, claims that he saw one of them following the victim into the dark—a lead that Henri Bencolin, head of the Paris police and expert of 'impossible' crimes, cannot possibly resist.
Surrounded by the eerie noises of the night, Bencolin prepares to enter the ill-fated waxworks, his associate Jeff Marle and the victim's fiancé in tow. Waiting within, beneath the glass-eyed gaze of a leering waxen satyr, is a gruesome discovery and the first clues of a twisted and ingenious mystery.
John Dickson Carr’s The Corpse in the Waxworks was surprisingly in the middle for me — usually I quite dislike John Dickson Carr’s earlier work and books involving Henri Bencolin, though I’ve later come to enjoy some of his Gideon Fell stories.
This one’s not one of his more famous, and isn’t a locked room mystery, meaning it actually felt less contrived than some of them. And Bencolin wasn’t quite as annoying as I usually find him, though I wasn’t a huge fan either; his sidekick (Marle) is just kind of vanilla, really, though he gets his own little action sequence (predictable as it is).
In the end, it felt relatively straightforward as Carr’s mysteries go, and without any femmes being too fatale, and it did have an intriguing sense of atmosphere around the masked club and the waxworks — a little bit creepy, a little bit high-strung.
Not a new favourite by any means, but more enjoyable than I expected.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Dickson Carr, mystery
Posted March 31, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Eye of Osiris
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 286
Series: Dr Thorndyke #3 Rating: Synopsis: John Bellingham is a world-renowned archaeologist who goes missing mysteriously after returning from a voyage to Egypt where fabulous treasures have been uncovered. Bellingham seems to have disappeared leaving clues, which lead all those hunting down blind alleys. But when the piercing perception of the brilliant Dr Thorndyke is brought to bear on the mystery, the search begins for a man tattooed with the Eye of Osiris in this strange, tantalisingly enigmatic tale.
I haven’t read anything by R. Austin Freeman before (unless there’s a short story or two amongst the British Library Crime Classic collections), but The Eye of Osiris turned out to be an unexpected pleasure. Sometimes with classic crime fiction, it’s just kind of cosy and predictable, and that’s very enjoyable but not surprising. In many ways this was a typical mystery of the period, but The Eye of Osiris did make me think: I felt like this was a fair-play mystery, and that I had the clues I needed to figure out the end result. I got there before the main character (who is very much in the John Watson vein, including by being a doctor), but there were some aspects I wasn’t sure of.
And of course, there’s the fact that it’s related to Egyptian archaeology. It’s set in London, but the missing man whose absence is the object of investigation is an archaeologist, and his brother (Godfrey Bellingham) and niece (Ruth) are also fascinated by the subject. Ruth quickly becomes close to our protagonist, as he manufactures an excuse to help her with her work (a commission to write notes on Egyptian history to help someone who doesn’t have the time to research), and becomes fascinated with the case of her missing uncle, drawing in an old teacher of his (Thorndyke) to help.
The romance isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but I did enjoy the interplay of the characters, and that Ruth is a fully realised woman who is fascinated with her own work, and that our otherwise rather nondescript main character is in turn fascinated with her work and eager to help her. In part that’s to get close to her, of course, but he’s clearly attracted not just by her prettiness, but by her eagerness for knowledge.
In the end it’s not groundbreaking, but it was enjoyable, and I’m planning to read more of R. Austin Freeman’s mysteries, especially as some are available on Project Gutenberg.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, mystery, R. Austin Freeman
Posted March 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Big Ben Strikes Eleven
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 333
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: The discovery of Sir Robert Boniface’s body on the floor of his blue limousine was made quite accidentally on a sultry Friday evening towards the end of June.
The industrial and financial tycoon, and former stalwart of the British Cabinet, had been shot in the head and left in the quiet Vale of Health alongside London’s Hampstead Heath. Nearby, a rejected portrait of Sir Robert is found riddled with bullets in the studio of the now- missing romantic artist Matt Caldwell. As it hurtles towards its feverish denouement under the bells of the capital’s most famous clock, this closely observed and stylish study of both character and motive transports the reader from the Stock Exchange to Scotland Yard. It asks the question of what it means to be crooked and how immense power corrupts.
I found David Magarshack’s Big Ben Strikes Eleven a bit disappointing vs the way it was described (as being for grownups, and apparently earning Dorothy L. Sayers’ praise). It sounded like it was maybe going to be a bit more literary, but it felt fairly by-the-numbers police procedural ish, with each clue and hint dragged out of the supporting cast.
It felt like the basic facts got recapitulated — along with needless baroque levels of speculation — every chapter or so, without getting much further forward, while there was a strangely laissez-faire attitude to getting the various witnesses to explain themselves. He won’t explain where he was? Oh well. She won’t give information because she says it’s a privacy thing? Fine, that’s fine. What?!
There are some interesting bits, like unpicking a certain alibi, though there’s a certain reliance on coincidence and a whole bizarre interlude with a love story that feels self-destructive and not at all appealing. Sure, one of the suspects is involved, but it added relatively little (just a slight potential explanation of a clue we already had), and just felt weird.
So… not what I hoped for, alas.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, David Magarshack, mystery
Posted February 21, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Impact of Evidence
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 221
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: Near St Brynneys in the Welsh border country, isolated by heavy snow and flooding from the thaw, a calamity has occurred. Old Dr Robinson, a known 'menace o the roads', has met his end in a collision with a jeep at a hazardous junction. But when police arrive at the scene, a burning question hints at something murkier than mere accident: why was there a second body - a man not recognised any locals - in the back of Robinson's car?
As the local inspectors dive into the muddy waters of this strange crime, Chief Inspector Julian Rivers and Inspector Lancing are summoned from Scotland Yard to the windswept wilds, where danger and deceit lie in wait.
Puzzling and atmospheric, this exceedingly rare mystery from one of the masters of crime fiction's Golden Age returns to print for the first time since its publication in 1954.
It’s always exciting when the British Library Crime Classics series bring out another of E.C.R. Lorac’s books, especially the rare and out of print ones. I’m slightly less fond of Lorac’s work under the Carol Carnac pseudonym, perhaps because I’m not as fond of the detective — though Lorac’s McDonald doesn’t show us a lot of his personal life, he does show a constant decency and patience, and that impression has been cumulative through the books in which he’s featured. Lancing and Rivers don’t really compare (and don’t really stand out to me, either, though nor did McDonald at first).
In any case, Impact of Evidence is the latest, a book which is out of print and almost unattainable until now. The setup is intriguing: details are drawn from Lorac’s own experience of Lunesdale, but transplanted to the Welsh borders, and she depicts farm life with her usual care for what’s needed and how those communities worked. As usual, she’s idealised the working farmer a little here, with her usual “salt of the earth” rock-solid decent characters — but having read more of her work, one’s always aware of the tension there, and when those people might do wrong.
I admit I was onto what happened fairly early on just because of certain details that were drawn to the reader’s attention multiple times, but it was still interesting to see how it worked out, and how some things were subverted (like the Derings matter-of-fact behaviour about the accusations of them).
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, E.C.R. Lorac, mystery
Posted February 14, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Someone from the Past
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 256
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: Sarah has been receiving threatening anonymous letters, seemingly from a former lover. Just one day after revealing this information to her co-worker Nancy, Sarah is found shot in her bedroom by one of her past flames, Donald. Hearing the news and desperate to clear any evidence of Donald’s presence at the scene due to her own infatuations, Nancy finds herself as the key suspect when she is discovered in the apartment.
As the real killer uses the situation to their advantage, Bennett crafts a tense and nuanced story through flashbacks to Sarah’s life and loves in this Gold-Dagger-award-winning, Hitchcockian story of deceit and murder.
It’s rare that I give a British Library Crime Classic a really low rating, but Margot Bennett is one of those writers I don’t really get on with… and Someone from the Past got on my last nerve. The introduction is all about what a fine book it was thought and how amazing it is, but I found it really tiresome.
The main reason was that the main character does some completely daft stuff, lies badly, tries to be witty and fails, and then tries to run away to Ireland like the police don’t know all the tricks and all the ways you might try to skip the country. She has these long dialogues with people that Martin Edwards (the editor of the British Library Crime Classics series) thinks are great, and which to me just end up being set pieces for the sake of showing off how oh-so-wittily Bennett thinks she writes dialogue.
One or two scenes like that might be okay, but I just don’t believe this character has a braincell in her head, and I’m not interested in her sparring with people. And then the book goes and ends with a get together where the man in question literally spends the whole book manipulating her “for her own good”, and sometimes being physically threatening to the point of terror for her. And I’m supposed to believe that’s a happy end?
Maybe not: maybe the point is to look at Nancy getting back on the merry-go-round of stupid and think “oh boy”. But it felt more like an attempt to tidy up loose ends, to let the reader feel like things are going to be okay now — and either way, I just didn’t enjoy it.
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Margot Bennett, mystery
Posted February 12, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Memoria
Genres: Crime,
Graphic Novels,
Mystery Pages: 132
Rating: Synopsis: When an aged terminally ill detective and a young burnout are partnered up and saddled with an unsolvable case, they begin to unravel a sprawling conspiracy that points to one thing: The most prolific serial killer in american history. As they further investigate the case they make discoveries that will force them to question everything and everyone they know.
Memoria is a gritty crime story in graphic novel form, from a team of four. It’s pretty short, with a structure that makes it clear some dark stuff is coming later on, and it won’t be a terribly happy ending — it’s just not quite clear how unhappy the ending will be. It relies on a couple of coincidences, though to be honest it wasn’t clear to me how much those were engineered by a particular character in order to bring the truth out.
The story wasn’t too surprising to me: it felt like watching a cop show, like I was watching actors run through the usual stereotyped parts. Tough talk, roughing up a witness, the department’s gonna dump a case on the fuckups in order to have them take the fall, etc, etc.
In the end I was just curious enough to finish, and I think my rating reflects the fact that it just isn’t a genre I enjoy (I’m a fan of classic crime/mystery, which is usually a lot less gritty). The art suited it, even if I didn’t love it, and I did appreciate it being a standalone and crafted to work as such.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, crime, Curt Pires, Hassan Otsmane Elhaou, Mark Dale, mystery, Sunando C
Posted February 9, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Murder on Milverton Square
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 260
Series: The Milverton Mysteries #1 Rating: Synopsis: Addison Harper is abruptly summoned to Milverton at the behest of an abrasive lawyer. He plans to be in and out, back to the city lickety-split. Instead, he finds himself charmed by the small town with its delightful and eccentric residents, not to mention the rather easy-on-the-eye Sergeant Jake Murphy.
Despite the rocky start, Addison admits he’s had a pleasant day out. That is, until returning to find the prickly old lawyer on the floor, and very much dead. Worse, it looks like murder, and Addison’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene.
Murder on Milverton Square is the first in a wonderful new cosy mystery series set in an enchanting small town nestled amongst stunning New Zealand scenery. The Milverton Mysteries features a chaotic cast of local busybodies, delicious baked treats, a demanding and disdainful ginger cat, a very slow-burn romance with a rather appealing policeman, and of course, murder…
G.B. Ralph’s Murder on Milverton Square is a fairly short mystery story with a romance subplot. In some ways, the setup is classic: a death, an inheritance, the big city boy coming to a small town and getting enmeshed in trouble there, to the general suspicion of the populace. It’s set in New Zealand, though it’s relatively easy to forget that (though there are some scenes pointing out the wildlife, etc), and tries to give us an idyllic small-town life, etc, etc. Nothing particularly surprising there.
The same goes for the plot, as well, including the romance between Addison and the cop investigating the murder of his deceased relative’s lawyer, the gossipy older lady, the poking about, etc, etc. Nothing too surprising here.
It’s not bad, I just can’t say I got enthusiastic by it or surprised by it, and I don’t feel any particular urge to pick up another book in the series.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, G.B. Ralph, romance
