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
Posted January 31, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Fear Stalks The Village
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 304
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: Ambling along the lanes of a sleepy village in the Downs, passing cosy Tudor cottages rustling with wisteria, a novelist imagines the sordid truth hidden behind the quaint, rustic facade. Her musings are confirmed when a spate of anonymous poison pen letters shocks the community, turning neighbour against neighbour and embroiling everyone from the rector and the ‘queen of the village’ Decima Asprey to the high-born Scudamores. With venom in the air, the perpetrator a mystery and dark secrets threatening to come to light, a shadow of shame and scandal stretches over the parish, with death and disaster following in its wake.
Revelling in the wickedness that lies beneath the idyllic veneer of village life, White’s 1932 mystery is an inventive interwar classic and remains one of the foundation stones of the village mystery sub-genre of crime fiction.
Ethel Lina White is great at creating a tense atmosphere and then drawing every possible ounce of drama out of it, and she’s very successful here. It gets a little melodramatic at times, but it makes sense given the febrile atmosphere of the story. It opens in an idyllic village, where everyone knows one another — and where everyone is suddenly a suspect after poison pen letters begin to be received.
I found the resolution of the mystery fairly obvious, though I hadn’t anticipated some of the dramatic twists and red herrings along the way, so it took a while to figure out why it worked out that way and how the mystery gets unravelled.
White also does some interesting things with the characters, making them feel surprisingly real for a crime novel of this period. There’s some genuine psychological depth to the doctor in particular, and they aren’t all straightforward stereotypes. I actually felt sad about some of these scenes, and much more involved than I usually do with classic crime — there’s three in particular that really struck home.
As a note, anyone with triggers concerning suicide should read this book with care. There are two successful suicides, with varying degrees of description, and an additional almost-suicide that’s quite closely described.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Ethel Lina White, mystery
Posted January 22, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Till Death Do Us Part
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 245
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: "Who can I trust?"
Love-sick Dick Markham is reeling. He's set to marry Lesley Grant -- a woman whom he learns is not who she appears to be. She seems to have been associated with three poisonings, all of which were in locked rooms. Another crime has been committed and we will watch the great Dr. Fell investigate through Markham's watchful eyes.
That night the enigmatic fortune teller-and chief accuser-is found dead in an impossible locked-room setup, casting suspicion onto Grant and striking doubt into the heart of her lover. Lured by the scent of the impossible case, Dr. Gideon Fell arrives from London to examine the perplexing evidence and match wits with a meticulous killer at large.
I should preface this by saying (for anyone just tuning into my reviews now) that I really didn’t like the first couple of books by John Dickson Carr that I tried. After I read He Who Whispers, though, something clicked, and I determined to give him a little more time. Now that I’ve finished this one, I’m feeling a bit more complicated about it.
First, his female characters often leave something to be desired. There’s a certain almost femme fatale character type that he uses a few times (including here and in He Who Whispers) that I really don’t enjoy, though it can be difficult to explain exactly why not. Something about the overwrought helplessness of them, I think: the highly emotionally charged scenes where I favour a practical character who just steps up and takes control for herself. Which… not everyone or every character has to be like that, but when an author leans into the overwrought female stereotype multiple times, you really start to notice.
And of course, there’s his locked room mysteries, and his detectives. He tries so hard to come up with ingenious mysteries where you need to notice the tiniest clues and draw inferences from them if you want to treat it as a fair-play mystery — and to me, it feels sometimes like a rabbit just gets pulled out of the hat.
This one does get explained well, but there was a while where it was just too frustrating for words (I made a lot of cranky noises at it; my wife was definitely laughing at me). I don’t know quite what I’d want to make it hang together better for me: maybe just a bit more sense of the detective (and those around him) as humans. I’m not sure what drives Gideon Fell, beyond the love of a puzzle, yet on several occasions he shows a very human and humane side. I think a little more of that would do wonders for me.
Anyway, my newfound faith in John Dickson Carr isn’t quite shaken, but I hope the next book of his that I read takes a slightly different tack.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Dickson Carr, mystery
Posted January 8, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Twilight Falls
Genres: Crime,
Fantasy,
Mystery Pages: 240
Series: Shady Hollow #4 Rating: Synopsis: It’s spring in Shady Hollow, and romance is in the air. Even reporter Vera Vixen is caught up in the season as her relationship with new police chief Orville Braun blossoms. But true love is not always smooth sailing, as two of the hollow’s young residents come to find. Jonah Atwater and Stasia von Beaverpelt find themselves battling their families in order to be together. And when Jonah’s father, Shelby, goes over the top of Twilight Falls, all signs point to Stasia being the murderer.
The evidence against Stasia appears overwhelming, and Orville arrests her. It looks like the case is closed, but Vera isn’t so sure. There are almost too many clues indicating Stasia is the killer, leading her to suspect someone is setting Stasia up. Besides, what about the mysterious ghostly creature skulking around town at night? Maybe he or she was involved? As Vera investigates further, her sleuthing puts her in direct opposition to Orville, and soon she’s stirred up a hornet’s nest of trouble.
Twilight Falls is the last of the Shady Hollow books by Juneau Black — for now. I’m sad, because it turned out to be exactly what I needed right now: quick reads that are light and sweet at heart, with characters that come alive just enough to carry the stories. Sometimes the characters or their relationships feel a little shallow, but sometimes it’s just a relief that the differences between Orville and Vera don’t lead to big schisms, and that there’s something gently forming between them, something that might last.
Once more, I found the resolution of the mystery really obvious: the hints come thick and fast, and it’s really the only thing that makes good sense of the evidence. There’s an attempt at a red herring, but it doesn’t work out too well (at least for my tastes).
It’s been nice to follow these books and realise that the characters are slowly changing, rather than it being a cosy little snowglobe where everything settles down a while after being shaken up. Esme and Stasia von Beaverpelt both grow and change in their own time, and even Orville’s learning that the Big Book of Policing may not contain all the answers (even if sometimes he finds it hard to accept Vera’s input).
As with the others, highly enjoyable — and I’ll get the new one when it comes out, like a shot.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Juneau Black, mystery, SF/F
Posted January 2, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries
Genres: Crime,
Mystery,
Short Stories Pages: 304
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: A Postman murdered while delivering cards on Christmas morning. A Christmas pine growing over a forgotten homicide. A Yuletide heist gone horribly wrong. When there's as much murder as magic in the air and the facts seem to point to the impossible, it's up to the detective’s trained eye to unwrap the clues and neatly tie together an explanation (preferably with a bow on top).
Martin Edwards has once again gathered the best of these seasonal stories into a stellar anthology brimming with rare tales, fresh as fallen snow, and classics from the likes of Julian Symons, Margery Allingham, Anthony Gilbert and Cyril Hare. A most welcome surprise indeed, and perfect to be shared between super-sleuths by the fire on a cold winter's night.
A Surprise for Christmas is the 2020 collection of short crime/mystery stories based around Christmas-time from the British Library Crime Classics series, edited as always by Martin Edwards. It’s a surprisingly star-studded volume, including stories from Ngaio Marsh and Margery Allingham, along with other standbys that appear more often in the anthologies of this series (like Carter Dickson, AKA John Dickson Carr).
It’s a strong enough collection, much in the same vein as the others, without being surprising — after all, that’s somewhat part of the point in crime/mystery fiction of this general period. It usually isn’t too surprising, though here and there an author like Julian Symons is included (as in this one), someone who tends more toward a psychological story.
Oddly enough, the Symons story included here is a repeat with a different title, previously included in The Christmas Card Crime, from 2018. Weird that no one realised that. The other stories are all new to the series so far as I can tell, though I haven’t read Crimson Snow.
“The Turn-Again Bell”, the final story, has quite the atmosphere, and would’ve been my favourite of the book, except that it seems a little trite in how it all wraps up. It doesn’t feel quite at home with the other stories in this volume, to be honest, being less a crime/mystery, and more definitively a Christmas story. Maybe that’s just me.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Martin Edwards, mystery, short stories
Posted January 1, 2024 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Who Killed The Curate?
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 228
Rating: Synopsis: Meet Lady Lupin Lorimer Hastings, the young, lovely, scatterbrained and kind-hearted newlywed wife to Andrew, the vicar of St Marks parish in Glanville, Sussex. When it comes to matters clerical, she is rather at sea. Nevertheless, she is determined to make her husband proud of her.... or at least not to embarrass him too badly.
When, on Christmas Eve, Andrew's unpopular, blackmailing curate gets himself murdered, things all get a bit (hilariously) overwhelming for poor out-of-her-depth Lady Lupin:
"Who was in your sitting room during that interval? Say four-thirty on Tuesday, and ten or eleven yesterday morning?"
"If you had ever lived in a vicarage you wouldn't ask questions like that; people just walk in and out all day long. When Andrew asked me to marry him, he said he was afraid I should find it very quiet here, and what he meant I can't imagine! If I wanted quiet I'd rather retire to the Tower of Babel with a saxophone."
Lupin enlists old society pals Duds and Tommy Lethbridge, as well as Andrew's nephew, a British secret service agent, to get at the truth. Lupin refuses to believe that Diana Lloyd, 38-year-old author of the children's detective stories, could've done the deed and casts her net over the other parishioners. But all the suspects seem so nice - very much more so than the victim.
I was hoping to enjoy Who Killed The Curate?, which is a Christmas mystery by Joan Coggin reissued by Galileo Publishers. I’d hoped to find some more fun classic crime fiction by checking out the books reissued by them, but in this one at least I was pretty disappointed.
It starts out hopefully, with a witty playfulness about it, but it quickly becomes apparent that it’s all going to be that way — and that in part it’s going to be that way at the expense of the characters, particularly Lupin, the female lead. She’s quite silly, gets herself in ridiculous and unlikely tangles, and for someone with second-hand embarrassment issues, it was absolutely excruciating. Would you really get godfather and grandfather mixed up, so totally you don’t actually know the difference between them? And not just that, but also guys and guides? And just making totally inappropriate conversation everywhere —
Aaargh!
All of that made it decidedly unenjoyable to me, unfortunately. If you have a bit of a thicker skin you might make more of it, but I just couldn’t get myself past Lupin in order to enjoy anything else.
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Joan Coggin, mystery
