Posted November 7, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Death of Mr Dodsley
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 256
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: Mr Richard Dodsley, owner of a fine second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road, has been found murdered in the cold hours of the morning. Shot in his own office, few clues remain besides three cigarette ends, two spent matches and a few books on the shelves which have been rearranged.
In an investigation spanning the second-hand bookshops of London and the Houses of Parliament (since an MP’s daughter's new crime novel Death at the Desk appears to have some bearing on the case), Ferguson’s series sleuth MacNab is at hand to assist Scotland Yard in this atmospheric and ingenious fair-play bibliomystery, first published in 1937.
I found that Death of Mr Dodsley was a bit too slow for my tastes — or at least, too slow in bringing together the strands of the plot and making it clear as to why the book opens in the Houses of Parliament! Much of the novel seems to have little to do with that, and though it’s obvious it will tie in somehow… it never quite did so properly, to be honest. The red herring is only very slightly tinged, and I never believed in it.
All in all, that made it a little frustrating, as the evidence-gathering is rather slow, and it also vacillates about which detective, precisely, it wants to follow (starting with the police and later moving on to MacNab).
It wasn’t a bad read by any measure, but not one of my favourites, despite being focused around a book written by one of the suspects, and set mostly in a bookshop, no less! But alas, that didn’t add enough charm to keep up sparkling.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Ferguson, mystery
Posted November 2, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Paddington Mystery
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 187
Rating: Synopsis: When Harold Merefield returns home from a nightclub in the early hours, he is startled by the gruesome discovery of a corpse - on his own bed! Who is he, and how did he get there?
Unconvinced by the inquest's verdict of 'death from natural causes', Harold determines to investigate the matter for himself and seeks the help of Professor Priestly, an academic with a reputation for solving curious affairs by the simple but unusual method of logical reasoning...
Apparently this is one of the first of John Rhode’s mysteries, so I was pretty intrigued: I’ve enjoyed his work, especially as Miles Burton, in a very classic mystery sort of way — perhaps not too enlightening about characters or even places, but a fun puzzle, and a satisfying sense of the world being put more or less to rights.
This book has those things, with actually a reasonable amount of character: Harold’s a bit of a mess, but cleaning his act up, and the Professor comes across quite sympathetically given that his daughter is tangentially involved in the mystery. I remember I’ve read one of the others starring Priestly, but couldn’t remember a single detail about him: this is a bit more memorable.
The mystery wasn’t too surprising, and I figured out some chunks of it quite quickly, but it was still satisfying to unravel and to see how Priestly gets things straightened out. I enjoyed it.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, John Rhode, mystery
Posted October 30, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Post After Post-Mortem
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 300
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: The Surrays and their five children form a prolific writing machine, with scores of treatises, reviews and crime thrillers published under their family name. Following a rare convergence of the whole household at their Oxfordshire home, Ruth – middle sister who writes ‘books which are just books’ – decides to spend some weeks there recovering from the pressures of the writing life while the rest of the brood scatter to the winds again. Their next return is heralded by the tragic news that Ruth has taken her life after an evening at the Surrays’ hosting a set of publishers and writers, one of whom is named as Ruth’s literary executor in the will she left behind.
Despite some suspicions from the family, the verdict at the inquest is suicide – but when Ruth’s brother Richard receives a letter from the deceased which was delayed in the post, he enlists the help of CID Robert Macdonald to investigate what could only be an ingeniously planned murder.
I normally love E.C.R. Lorac’s books, and I think this was a very fine example of her work… without being one that I, strictly speaking, enjoyed. She has a way of describing characters and places that can make you love them and feel their goodness — and in this book, the nastiness of murder feels particularly prominent. It’s less “good people overcome” and more “good people are overcome”, and it just hit wrong for my current mood, despite being well handled.
Those who read it should be warned that the setup has the murder being taken to be suicide at first, and that the family react accordingly, with shock and horror and the sense that the world is upended. And that isn’t the end to their sorrows.
It’s a good thing that Lorac writes such a sensitive, humane detective in MacDonald, because his sympathy also helped to make this book as powerful as it is.
In the end, the solution was also a sad one, and the whole thing just left me with a sense of melancholy. Beautifully written, perhaps among Lorac’s best — but perhaps not one that I’ll visit again.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, E.C.R. Lorac, mystery
Posted October 26, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Crocodile on the Sandbank
Genres: Mystery,
Romance Pages: 296
Series: Amelia Peabody #1 Rating: Synopsis: Amelia Peabody is Elizabeth Peters' most brilliant and best-loved creation, a thoroughly Victorian feminist who takes the stuffy world of archaeology by storm with her shocking men's pants and no-nonsense attitude!
In this first adventure, our headstrong heroine decides to use her substantial inheritance to see the world. On her travels, she rescues a gentlewoman in distress - Evelyn Barton-Forbes - and the two become friends. The two companions continue to Egypt where they face mysteries, mummies and the redoubtable Radcliffe Emerson, an outspoken archaeologist, who doesn't need women to help him solve mysteries -- at least, that's what he thinks.
The main problem with The Crocodile on the Sandbank is that it’s impossible to tell whether Peters was trying to write about period-appropriate attitudes, or whether the racism is ingrained. Either way, it doesn’t sit comfortably for a modern reader, at least without some sense that it’s on purpose: Amelia Peabody is so close to modern in some ways that it feels jarring when she’s a typical colonialist Brit of the period. At the same time, the fact that other details strive for period accuracy suggests it may be (at least in part) for the sake of verisimilitude.
As it is, I ended up trying to read it with my “enthusiast of classic crime” hat on, since it comes out of that mould. And in that light, it’s pretty enjoyable; I thought the mystery a little obvious, but it also makes sense that the headstrong characters don’t communicate and put things together because they’re too busy being headstrong.
I do love books set in and around Egypt, so it also fits into that craving for me, which made it extra enjoyable.
I’ll give the next book a try, though whether I keep up somewhat depends on where we’re going next (in terms of plot: I gather Egypt remains our location, based on the next couple of titles).
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Elizabeth Peters, mystery, romance
Posted October 23, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
He Who Whispers
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 270
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: 'It almost seemed that the murder, if it was a murder, must have been committed by someone who could rise up unsupported in the air…'
When Miles Hammond is invited to a meeting of the Murder Club in London, he is met instead with just two other guests and is treated to a strange tale of an impossible crime in France from years before; the murder of a man on a tower with only one staircase, under watch at the time at which the murder took place. With theories of levitating vampires abounding, the story comes home to Miles when he realises that the librarian he has just hired for his home is none other than Fay Seton, a woman whose name still echoes from the heart of this bizarre and unsolved murder of the past.
I don’t normally get along with John Dickson Carr’s work. In fact, I don’t even buy the British Library Crime Classic editions — it’s one of only three gaps in my collection (a few of the short story collections, which I’m slowly picking up, and the Sergeant Cluff books are the others), because I just haven’t got along with the others.
It’s hard to say why this was an exception. I think in part it’s that it’s a fair-play mystery. Though there is a Great Detective (Gideon Fell), the POV character isn’t treated too much as his side-kick, and there’s some interesting attempts at psychological realism (even if it’s unfortunately in part about a “nymphomaniac” girl). I was able to form theories about it, and feel like I had the clues that fell into place at the right moments, and I didn’t universally hate the characters. There’s nothing so straightforward as some of Carr’s other female characters and snap romances.
It’s enough to give me hope for some of the Carr books I haven’t picked up yet: maybe some of those will equally have some joys for me. I was glad I gave this a shot thanks to my British Library Crime Classics subscription!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, John Dickson Carr, mystery
Posted October 20, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
The Mummy Case Mystery
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 230
Rating: Synopsis: The Commemoration Night ball at Beaufort College, Oxford, is disturbed first by a strange prank with a professor's mummy, then by a tragic fire that kills the professor-or did it? If he died in the fire, what happened to the mummy? Professors Sargent and Considine take it upon themselves to investigate when the coroner rules accidental death, leaving them with unanswered questions.
I read about this book in Martin Edwards’ book on classic crime, and thought it sounded pretty awesome, so I tracked down a copy. In the UK they’re stupidly expensive, but AbeBooks solved that problem.
The book is very much an Oxford mystery: the first few chapters are just completely redolent of nostalgia and love for Oxford. It’s very similar in feel to Gaudy Night, and I’d be surprised if Dermot Morrah wasn’t an alumnus. (There’s a touch of romance here, but only the very lightest touch: no placet ne, magistra? here, and no chance of it either. It’s not anti-women but it’s not particularly positive about them either, though at least one character’s views on women in education are rather shown up.)
The mystery is entertaining enough, and I cottoned on to significant parts of it — not all, but most. Don’t be fooled by the title, in any case: the Egyptian stuff is mere trappings, though the mummy case is important in its way. Oxford is the real star.
I found it enjoyable, but a little slow and convoluted.
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Dermot Morrah, mystery
Posted September 15, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Death in Captivity, Michael Gilbert
Oof, I find talking about this one… complicated. Michael Gilbert was a prisoner of war during World War II, so in this story set in a prison camp in Italy, he knows exactly what he’s writing about. And that shows. It’s not like some war stories written nowadays where the gritty detail is intended to evoke a sense of hopelessness and despair: instead, it’s his matter-of-factness about the details and the shape of daily life that makes me feel a little crushed, reading it. Things often don’t seem so bad, kind of normal, and then atrocities casually happen.
As a result, it was a reading experience that I more appreciated than enjoyed, if that makes sense. It’s an inspired setting for a murder mystery, and Gilbert’s writing is… perhaps not the most descriptive, picture-painting stuff, but it makes things very clear, and for all that it’s matter of fact, the sense of life in the PoW camp really did come through.
As for the mystery… well. I don’t want to say too much, but I was disappointed by the solution — not because it didn’t make sense or anything, but just because it was more of that awful war-time mood. Not unexpected, not a bad twist to the story, nothing like that. Just… very WWII.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Michael Gilbert, mystery
Posted September 5, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Wheel Spins, Ethel Lina White
Reading Ethel Lina White’s short stories, they seemed very sensational. From what Edwards writes in his introductions, the “woman in danger” story like this seemed to be her forté, but the short stories didn’t quite work for me, so I wasn’t sure whether this would be enjoyable. I was pleasantly surprised: I did find it a bit challenging in a way to read a book where a woman’s reality gets so constantly questioned, but it’s not that the situation was uninteresting in any way.
In the end, it’s a pretty simple trick (which I won’t ruin by discussing it at length), and we have all the clues for a long time. What matters is the suspense, and Iris’ understanding of the situation — and her fear and discomfort as it proves impossible to convince other people of what she knows to be true.
All of that feels especially poignant set against the asides, with Miss Froy’s family awaiting her safe return. The detail there is loving and tender, and that little family feels very real despite appearing only in a couple of chapters.
The main sour note for me is that a certain character reaps his rewards despite working against Iris and treating her as a helpless, hysterical woman. Get a better man, Iris!
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Ethel Lina White, mystery
Posted August 28, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Measure of Malice, ed. Martin Edwards
As ever, this collection from the British Library Crime Classic series is, to me, more than the sum of its parts. The Measure of Malice collects stories that in some way lean more into the science of detection: nothing here is terribly complex (and some of it is bunk, like the idea that the human retina will hold an image of the last thing that person saw), but it’s all beginning to explore the idea that figuring out a criminal isn’t just a cerebral exercise, but one which involves practical, physical evidence that may not always be readily apparent.
I didn’t love all the stories for themselves, but I enjoyed the assembled selection and what it adds to my knowledge of the genre in that period. The obligatory Arthur Conan Doyle story is here, of course, but also a slightly more unexpected Dorothy L. Sayers story (though one I already knew from Wimsey collections).
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, mystery
Posted August 15, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment
The Long Arm of the Law, ed. Martin Edwards
Okay, okay, all cops are bastards, but in crime fiction they don’t have to be. Of course these stories are mostly in the idealised mode where police just want to help and a lone girl can pop into the police station for protection — the world I thought I was growing up in, in fact.
It’s not a stand-out for me in terms of the stories or the quality thereof, but I was pretty entertained by Christianna Brand’s story with the Great Detective, and with Inspector Cockrill butting in and dismantling the whole story.
As ever, an interesting survey of the genre on this particular topic. And it includes a short story from E.C.R. Lorac, a rarity (though that one didn’t especially stand out to me).
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, mystery
