Death at Breakfast

by John Rhode

Synopsis:

Victor Harleston awoke with uncharacteristic optimism. Today he would be rich at last. Half an hour later, he gulped down his breakfast coffee and pitched to the floor, gasping and twitching. When the doctor arrived, he recognised instantly that it was a fatal case of poisoning and called in Scotland Yard.

Despite an almost complete absence of clues, the circumstances were so suspicious that Inspector Hanslet soon referred the evidence to his friend and mentor, Dr Lancelot Priestley, whose deductions revealed a diabolically ingenious murder that would require equally fiendish ingenuity to solve.

John Rhode’s Death at Breakfast has very much the usual feel of a solid, unsurprising classic mystery where the detectives painstakingly follow clues, there’s fairly little emotional engagement, and everything turns out pretty much okay in the end. If that’s what you’re here for, then you’ll be fairly happy.

That said, I did have a quibble with this one, having enjoyed it most of the way, which is a bit of a spoiler (so don’t read on if you don’t want to know, though I’ll try not to give the really important stuff away). The solution of the crime basically requires that someone who was previously really clever, even ingenious, get sloppy and fail to know three things: that the police can tell the difference between human blood and cat blood, that the police can tell when a bullet has actually been fired (vs just mechanically removed from the casing), and that the police can trace bank notes.

It feels like not knowing one of those things — and having that crack open the case — would feel pretty OK. I’d probably plump for “not knowing that the police can tell the difference between human and cat blood”, since as a crime reader I have the impression that it was fairly general knowledge that bank notes could be traced and bullets get unique marks when fired, but honestly any small gap in the culprit’s knowledge could make sense. But it seems weird for him to have such a gaping hole in one side of the plan, after being really clever elsewhere.

I also got a bit annoyed with Hanslet jumping to conclusions (Jimmy is a bit more careful, though sometimes does the same). I know it’s all part of the magic of having Priestley solve everything, but still. More annoying than usual, I’d say; if you’re going to consult your expert, then listen to them and don’t conclude they must be losing their touch until you’ve at least tried to look into it…

So not a favourite, but still a fairly solid classic crime experience for the kind of soothingness I look for when reading classic crime.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

Invisible Weapons

by John Rhode

Synopsis:

A classic crime novel by one of the most highly regarded exponents of the genre.

The murder of old Mr Fransham while washing his hands in his niece's cloakroom was one of the most astounding problems that ever confronted Scotland Yard. Not only was there a policeman in the house at the time, but there was an ugly wound in the victim's forehead and nothing in the locked room that could have inflicted it.

The combined efforts of Superintendent Hanslet and Inspector Waghorn brought no answer and the case was dropped. It was only after another equally baffling murder had been committed that Dr Lancelot Priestley's orderly and imaginative deductions began to make the connections that would solve this extraordinary case.

John Rhode’s Invisible Weapons is a fairly passionless mystery story, and I don’t actually mean that in a bad way. It’s a conventional classic crime story, with fairly low stakes (there’s no real suspense element, aside from the suspicion of murder, no straight-up serial killer stuff, etc) and the traditional ending in which order is restored and the culprits arrested. It’s more of a puzzle than anything, calmly putting piece by piece of the evidence in front of the reader.

I found it to be a pretty fair-play mystery, substantially helped by Dr Priestley’s hints and line of inquiry; by the time the story got there and nailed the criminal, so had I — not because it was too easy, either, but in a satisfying sort of way. As ever, it’s a bit overly engineered, but sometimes that’s the joy of it.

It made me remember I want to read more of Rhode’s work, and have some on hand for reading slumps, because I think there’s nothing quite like these chill classic mysteries. You get what you expect, and sometimes that’s excellent.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)