The Incredible Crime, Lois Austen-Leigh

The Incredible Crime takes place partly in the country and partly in Oxford, and mostly follows Prudence Pinsent, the daughter of the Master of Prince’s College. She’s a rather independent and strong-minded young women who takes care of her father and clearly has it in her to kick over the traces and do something truly scandalous one day. Meeting a friend by coincidence, he ends up confiding in her that there’s a drug problem — smuggling and sale of a really dangerous new drug, both in the estate of a relative of hers, and in Oxford itself. What follows are various red herrings, entwined somewhat questionably with a romance plot that came across as really outdated and unpleasant.

Suffice it to say that Prudence’s story is not solving the mystery, not figuring things out, not remaining the smart, strong-minded person who starts out the book — her character arc is to fall in love with someone who previously didn’t attract her, and to learn to “order herself meek and lowly” towards him, and understand him to be her superior and rightful master. No, seriously! There are aspects that are quite endearing — the guy in question is rather shy and unsure of how to court her, and gladly changes himself quite significantly in terms of personal grooming in order to attract her notice and to seem suitable for her. The changing for her is less cool, but the whole attitude he takes to it is rather sweet. But the way it plays out, with her learning to be humble because he’s so much greater than she is… Meh, meh, and meh again for good measure. Let’s skip it.

The mystery itself… you mostly worry about it resolving in a way that makes any of the nicer characters being at fault, rather than having much invested in the resolution of the mystery itself. The clues are fairly scarce and superficial; it doesn’t really work for me.

Rating: 2/5

The Hollow Man, John Dickson Carr

In The Hollow Man, some thinly characterised people try to work out a locked room mystery, probably less paper-thin than they seem for some readers since it’s actually the sixth or so entry in a long running series, but really not sufficient for someone just starting out. Various implausibilities are discussed, unlikely red herrings crop up, and in the end there’s a shocking reveal, the trick is explained, and no one of any consequence to the reader has changed or grown at all.

As a puzzle story, it’s not bad, but I don’t quite get the hype about John Dickson Carr if this is typical of his work. It feels like the story and characters are thin layers of papier-mâché covering what the author really wanted to do, which was just play with that puzzle. It’s not unusual for a Golden Age crime novel, but from the enthusiasm of other readers I assumed there would be more to it than this. I’ll probably try another book or so by Carr — series detectives like his Gideon Fell can be a difficult proposition, but other books not featuring this character might be okay (reader, I hate Poirot, but Agatha Christie is really not bad when you leave him out of it). This wasn’t bad, I just didn’t care.

Rating: 2/5

The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, Carola Dunn

In this book, Daisy gets involved in a whole new kind of case — one that involves her with the police in America, along with whispers of corruption in the local government, vast amounts of gun crime… and a babysitter arranged for her while Alec is away to try and stop her getting into trouble. (Spoiler: he doesn’t succeed.) This is a very different setting for Daisy and it feels much less cosy, because she’s in a lot more genuine danger at times.

At the same time, there’s a whole section of the book that finally picks up on Alec having been a pilot, featuring an air chase across the US. Pretty epic stuff.

I feel like the this book was somewhat lacking because it has so few familiar characters. Ms Genevieve/Eugene Cannon is pretty awesome, a now-retired former crime reporter who wrote under a male pseudonym for acceptance, but otherwise I missed Daisy’s friends and family, and Alec’s team at the Yard. I’m quite, quite ready for Daisy to be home now. I worried about this series getting too formulaic for me, but with more variation in the background, I missed some of the more routine characters.

I just wish Daisy would go ahead and become a PI, honestly. At least that would put a figleaf over the glaring fact that nobody accidentally finds so many corpses!

Rating: 3/5