Reviews

#1198: The Nameless Crime (1932) by Walter S. Masterman

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Nameless Crime

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I’ve read a lot of middle-of-the-road books lately, so thought I’d take away the pressure of expecting something to be good and read an author who is, at the very least, usually entertaining if nothing else.  And so The Nameless Crime (1932), the next Walter S. Masterman title on my TBR, comes into its own. Masterman’s Victorian tendencies — you can imagine his novels filmed in flickery black and white, with title cards for dialogue — prove oddly comforting, despite his plot structure at time leaning into the more infuriating end of the spectrum, and any preconceptions going in tending to get lost in the melee.  So how do we fare this time around? Not well.

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#1195: The Birthday Murder (1945) by Lange Lewis

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Birthday Murder

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Having researched and written a book in which a woman poisons several people, Victoria Hime inevitably ends up as the prime suspect when someone close to her is poisoned by the same means. The fact that several people came and went from the Himes’ house on the day of the poisoning is the only light offered to Los Angeles detective Lieutenant Richard Tuck, but while the method remains clear there’s the small matter of opportunity and motive…all of which keeps swinging back to Victoria, the case against her “signed, sealed, and delivered” at almost every turn. Except we, the reader, know she didn’t do it…so what really happened?

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#1192: Case with Ropes and Rings (1940) by Leo Bruce

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Case with Ropes and RIngs

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Following the revelation at the end of my recent review of Case for Three Detectives (1936) by Leo Bruce that I had not read three of sometime-Sergeant William Beef’s later cases, a friend has staged an intervention and leant me Case with Ropes and Rings (1940), Neck and Neck (1951), and Cold Blood (1952). So let’s mop these three up, and then I can turn my eye upon rereading the earlier titles which have not yet made it onto The Invisible Event. Today, the death by hanging of a popular boy at Penshurt public school raises Beef’s suspicion of murder and, figuring that the boy’s wealthy father might be remuneratively grateful, Beef and his chronicler Lionel Townsend descend on Penshurt and begin to investigate.

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#1189: Give ‘Em the Ax, a.k.a. An Axe to Grind (1944) by A.A. Fair

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Give Em the Axe

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On the day when the United States of America celebrates its independence, let’s turn our eye upon American author Erle Stanley Gardner, here publishing the ninth novel to feature Bertha Cool and (the triumphant return of) Donald Lam, Give ‘Em the Ax, a.k.a. An Axe to Grind (1944). Having been invalided out of the Navy with tropical fever, Donald is back in America and straight back to work: initially asked to rustle up some dirt on the suspected gold-digging new wife of a businessman, it’s not long before things become unsurprisingly more complex, and the small matter of murder rears its head. How, though, does a car accident which Bertha witnesses play into proceedings?

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#1186: A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering (2024) by Andrew Hunter Murray

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Beginners Guide to Breaking and Entering

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Shirley Ballas. Richard Coles. Susie Dent. Richard Osman. Robert Rinder.  These days, if you want to publish a crime novel, it clearly helps to be a UK media personality.  And why not?  Publishing’s an uncertain business, and an existing following should hopefully convert into sales — good luck to them, I say. Add to the above journalist, podcaster, TV-version-of-his-podcaster Andrew Hunter Murray, whose third novel, A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering (2024), finds him crossing into the sort of genre territory that captures my attention. And while not perhaps leaning as hard into logical reasoning as I’d prefer, there’s much here to enjoy.

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#1184: The Castleford Conundrum (1932) by J.J. Connington

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Castleford Conundrum CW

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It is a truth universally accepted that an author with a sizeable output will probably vary their approach from time to time. And so, in his twelfth mystery novel to be published under his J.J. Connington nom de plume, Alfred Walter Stewart clearly decided that what his increasingly accomplished criminous schemes needed was more character — a little more personality on the part of the people affected. And thus The Castleford Conundrum (1932) positively overflows with delightful character beats which really bring the situation to life…except that they come at the expense of the criminous element, which feels lucky to come in second place where the book’s priorities are concerned.

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#1183: “I have little faith in the analytical powers of the feminine brain…” – The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime [ss] (2011) ed. Michael Sims

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Serendipity brought the superb Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime [ss] (2009) edited by Michael Sims to my awareness, and highlighted Sims’ erudition and excellent coverage of Victorian crime fiction, an era of the genre which is holding an increasing fascination for me. And so the opportunity to read another Sims-edited collection was to be seized with alacrity.

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