Tag: British Library Crime Classics

Review – Twice Round The Clock

Posted April 21, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Twice Round the Clock by Billie HoustonTwice Round the Clock, Billie Houston

Twice Round the Clock was pretty much what I expected of this series, which means it was pretty comforting. I knew nothing about the author, though she was somewhat famous in her time (for reasons other than being an author); I wonder how much that impacted the initial reception of the book.

As it goes, it’s a country house mystery with a somewhat closed circle of suspects (not a locked room mystery, and events make it clear that people can make it to the house, but most of the suspects are cooped up in the house due to an impressive thunderstorm). The victim is a rather awful man, and the author does well at making clear that he’s awful without ever doing anything that you can point to as being so very bad.

There’s quite a bit of melodrama, fainting ladies and spurious engagements and the like — not to mention poisons that can be smeared on a person or animal and kill them spontaneously at a pre-determined time later — but that’s pretty par for the course for a crime novel of the period, and enjoyable in its way.

One thing Houston did really well is the pacing: starting off with the discovery of the body, then winding the clock back to show us the preceding hours, and then ratcheting up the tension to the climax. With each chapter having a clock time, that does help to create the tension of the story.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Green for Danger

Posted March 31, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Green for Danger by Christianna BrandGreen for Danger, Christianna Brand

Green for Danger is one of those classic crime novels that definitely doesn’t feel cosy. That’s not just because it’s set during the Second World War — writers were perfectly capable of writing normality-restoring, comforting crime fiction then; in fact, it was a great time for it. The war setting doesn’t help, though, because the unease creeps around the story: consider the fact that all the doctors have morphine to take in case they should get buried alive during a bombing.

Mostly, though, it’s the mystery itself that’s unsettling. The potential culprits are all an inner circle, a limited group, and you watch their insecurities and their foibles playing out as you suspect each in turn. Could it be this one, or that one? Could it be because of a dark past, a horrible secret? Why is one’s voice recognised by various patients? Was there something suspicious about that previous event? And there’s the detective, putting pressure on them all to make them confess…

It all ends up being very uncomfortable, because it’s a group of friends, and nobody wants to believe anyone else has done it. There’s a web of jealousies and friendships between them that doesn’t stop them wanting the best for each other — but someone is a killer.

Brand’s a good writer, but it isn’t what I typically look for when I pick up a British Library Crime Classic.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Crook O’ Lune

Posted March 4, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Crook o Lune by E.C.R. LoracCrook O’ Lune, E.C.R. Lorac

Crook O’ Lune is very typical of E.C.R. Lorac’s books: maybe slower than some, but using a strong sense of place to give the story atmosphere, and to create a mystery that fits into the setting, the lie of the land, the kind of people. It’s perhaps even better at that because Lorac based it on a real place, and even on her own house: you can feel the love for the house, the land, the way of life, in all the characters.

Of course, it’s a little idealised, and rather anti-urban in sentiment — even people who come from outside are by and large calmed by the land, connected to it all of a sudden, in a way that doesn’t ring so true to me (or maybe it’s just the changing times, and everybody was closer to the land then, and more able to be absorbed back into a rural community).

The mystery in this one takes a long time to get going, but it’s all necessary set-dressing, and it’s all relevant. I didn’t ‘catch’ the killer ahead of time, this time: I suspected someone else, based on details that… I’m not sure whether they were intended as red herrings or just part of the set-dressing. But it all makes sense in execution, and despite some of the sordid deeds and the sense of increasing hurry about figuring out what happened, it was a very relaxing read — you can rely on Lorac for that!

Rating: 4/5

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Review – The Mysterious Mr. Badman

Posted February 16, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Mysterious Mr Badman by W.F. HarveyThe Mysterious Mr. Badman, W.F. Harvey

The Mysterious Mr. Badman is a bit unusual, featuring an amateur detective who is usually a carpet manufacturer (as the introduction from the series’ editor says, surely the only amateur detective to have that profession), and who is a kind older man, though backed up by a young nephew and a young woman who is involved in the case. Though it’s billed as a “bibliomystery”, honestly the book doesn’t play a huge part. It might as well be a second-hand suitcase or jacket, for all the book itself matters.

All the same, I found it fun: it was a quick read, and Athelstan Digby and Jim are rather sweet and careful in trying to sort things out and avoid scandal. Private justice, of course, but Digby in particular does his best not to cause lasting harm (padding a poker, for example, so as to knock someone out rather than crack their head open, even when he’s being imprisoned).

I wouldn’t say it particularly stands out among all the British Library Crime Classics, but it was exactly what I want from this series: a classic mystery, where all is resolved at the end, and the world goes back to normal.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Death of an Author

Posted February 12, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Death of an Author by E.C.R. LoracDeath of an Author, E.C.R. Lorac

Death of an Author is another really enjoyable mystery from E.C.R. Lorac — one slyly self-referential, given the stuff about it being impossible for a female author to write such a mystery, and an outlier as well, because it doesn’t feature her usual series detective. There’s also rather less of an “atmosphere”, though she does describe a couple of the locations very vividly.

The reason I’m losing my head and giving it five stars is that I found the mystery so genuinely intriguing to turn over in my mind. Often when I read mystery novels, I just wait for the author to lead me to the clues, pretty much ever since Sayers and that cheat of withholding the flake white clue (yes, I know, I do bang on about that). I don’t trust authors to give the clues, and also I cynically know how the twists and turns of a mystery novel go. But I didn’t anticipate every step of this one, and I didn’t spoiler myself for the end either: I wanted the full experience, and to give the puzzle a try myself.

In the end, I got there with the solution, though some things happened that I didn’t quite believe (and there was a bit that relied extremely heavily on luck), and I really enjoyed the process of getting there. Lorac was a good writer, and her wry wit in playing with the questions of authorship here offered some extra piquancy. (I wonder how people took it when they thought she was a guy, thanks to her pen-name?)

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Death on the Down Beat

Posted February 9, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Death on the Down Beat by Sebastian FarrDeath on the Down Beat, Sebastian Farr

Death on the Down Beat was a bit of a surprise to me, to be honest. I hadn’t fully clocked the format: it’s an epistolary novel, based on the detective writing letters (and sending dossiers) home to his wife. (Amusingly, it’s very careful to make this feel a little more plausible, by the husband noting multiple times that he shouldn’t be doing this, but commenting on how helpful it is and asking his wife to file things for him in the usual way.) I knew that some extracts of a musical score were included — and an important clue — but not about the letters, and I think it helped this book feel a little different, even if the detective could barely be told apart from a host of other classic mystery detectives.

The letter format does mean that the reader is held at a bit of a distance from any action, and doesn’t get to know the characters directly. The suspects thus rather blur into each other, which makes it difficult to have any real suspicions — I went off on a completely wrong track, though I wasn’t really wrong about the motive. So that’s my main critique here: there’s a lot of superfluous stuff and a lot of suspects, and the information we need is rather camouflaged by all of that.

Which makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy it, when I definitely did: I think this format is a neat idea, and I enjoyed the fact that the detection process was complemented by an understanding of the music. Not that I did understand the music, but it was explained well enough to get the point, and like Sayers’ tube of flake white in Five Red Herrings, I bet a little prior knowledge really illuminates things, and that’s kinda neat too. (Maybe it’s not quite as… obscuring as the flake white that Sayers wouldn’t name, though.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Crossed Skis

Posted February 12, 2022 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Crossed Skis by Carol CarnacCrossed Skis, Carol Carnac

Carol Carnac is perhaps better known (at least since the British Library Crime Classics started coming out) as E.C.R. Lorac — one of my preferred writers from that series of reissues. It’s not that her plots are particularly original or different, and in fact they’re usually easy to work out, but it’s the way she writes about people and places, bringing out the atmosphere of place and writing well about ordinary, decent people (for the most part — aside from the criminal).

All in all, her books epitomise the sense of things being set to rights that’s common to a lot of Golden Age crime fiction, and that can be rather comforting if that’s your thing. They’re a reasonable puzzle, and the detectives are generally likeable (unlike, say, John Dickson Carr’s); more Agatha Christie than Dorothy Sayers on the scale of literary pretension. This book is exactly what you’d expect, as a consequence: a decent sense of place, a series of thumbnail portraits about decent, pretty ordinary people in a pretty ordinary situation, and a couple of red herrings.

I found this one a tad obvious, because I very quickly narrowed the field down to two possibles, from all the descriptions and actions of the characters. The setting, though, is lovely — you get the sense of the crowded trains, the cold air, the bubbly enthusiasm of the group of Brits getting away on a skiing holiday together, slightly lacking in inhibitions because it’s not Britain and they don’t all know each other well. The characters are mostly sketched in because the group is so large (16 characters in the traveling party), so I didn’t find it quite as good at bringing characters to life, here.

It all sounds a bit like I’m damning Lorac’s books with faint praise, but I genuinely pounce upon each one that gets reissued, and enjoyed this one too — but it’s like enjoying food from the fish and chip shop rather than a fancy restaurant. Solid and satisfying, but usually not surprising.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Murder After Christmas

Posted December 31, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Murder After Christmas by Rupert LattimerMurder After Christmas, Rupert Lattimer

You know, I don’t really know what to make of this one. There is something energetic and compelling about it, and yet I also wanted it to just get to the point already! I think it makes itself feel more convoluted because of the various different comic turns various different characters do, and that makes it both lively and frustrating.

The plot hinges on who had a motive for an old man to die after Christmas, when everything seems to point to the fact that it would really have been more convenient for most suspects if he’d died before Christmas. Despite the inquest bringing in a verdict of accidental death, nobody’s quite satisfied because of all the weird coincidences and red herrings… and it takes an unconscionably long time to get everything sorted out because everyone’s flinging out more red herrings with every word.

I feel like the comic speeches lost their amusement value after a while; there are some really fun character sketches, but in the end it’s just too convoluted (and we spend too much time hearing from the detectives about how convoluted it is — scenes which seem to be intended to help the reader keep things straight, but which definitely kill the pace). So… fun, but outstayed its welcome.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – These Names Make Clues

Posted November 10, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of These Names Make Clues by E.C.R. LoracThese Names Make Clues, E.C.R. Lorac

In some ways, this doesn’t really feel like one of Lorac’s books. It’s not quite a John Dickson Carr, but there’s something overly convoluted about it, and a bit less of the good-heartedness I think of when I think about Lorac. Her characterisation of Macdonald feels slightly different — he’s still a solid, good man, but he feels more stereotypical as a Scotsman, and it just… feels very typically of that era.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because I enjoy books of that era — that’s how I even discovered E.C.R. Lorac in the first place, of course. But it feels like she hasn’t quite found her voice, maybe, in this one… and I’m not too surprised that this is one which seems to no longer be available anywhere, even second hand, as Martin Edwards says in the introduction.

It remains an enjoyable little puzzle, though it withholds some key information to make the puzzle difficult to solve. I do not have a mind for anagrams, but even if I did, I don’t think you get all the information you need about a particular character in order to figure out whodunnit and why.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Chianti Flask

Posted September 4, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The Chianti Flask by Marie Belloc LowndesThe Chianti Flask, Marie Belloc Lowndes

I basically sat down and devoured Marie Belloc Lowndes’ The Chianti Flask in two sittings (one before dinner, one after). It’s not very typical of the British Library Crime Classics, being deeply interested in character and motivation, and it felt rather… mournful. The main character’s despondence and depression is rather vivid, and the love affair too. It’s much less about the crime and more the aftermath of it. In some ways, it felt almost like a romance, albeit one scarred through the middle by the mystery which hangs around it.

Given the trial setting at the beginning, and the accusation of a woman of being a poisoner (and dealing with that even after having been acquitted), it has a couple of similarities to Sayers’ Strong Poison in theme, but it is not the usual comfortable, well-worn Golden Age mystery I tend to expect from the British Library Crime Classics. (That’s not a bad thing! I go to them because they’re mostly Golden Age or Golden Age-esque, and I can expect a mildly interesting mystery and the world being set to rights.)

I don’t know how much I liked it, actually: the depression of the main character is really compelling, and then the romance is rather intense (and sometimes wretched). But it almost doesn’t matter if I liked it: I rather admired it — despite not loving the writer’s style at first. I certainly don’t regret spending the time on it, which is an experience I’ve had with some of the other atypical British Library Crime Classics (The Spoilt Kill comes to mind).

Rating: 4/5

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