Reviews

#1202: The Piccadilly Murder (1929) by Anthony Berkeley

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Piccadilly Murder Penguin

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As has recently been remarked elsewhere, the superb modern raft of Golden Age reprints has been very kind to Anthony Berkeley. The form’s arch Innovator-in-Chief has seen some excellent titles brought back to public availability — The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), Murder in the Basement (1932), Jumping Jenny (1933) — and one, in The Wintringham Mystery, a.k.a. Cicely Disappears (1927), rescued from the sort of obscurity that had reduced its existence almost to rumour. Still yet to see the light of day, however, is The Piccadilly Murder (1929), so a reread seemed due to see if it really was as good as I remember. And, yes, it very nearly is — except in one key regard, in which it’s even better.

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#1199: “There was undoubtedly method in the old boy’s madness…” – The Punch and Judy Murders, a.k.a. The Magic Lantern Murders (1936) by Carter Dickson

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I have in the past referred to The Punch and Judy Murders, a.k.a. The Magic Lantern Murders (1936) — the fifth book to feature Sir Henry ‘H.M.’ Merrivale under John Dickson Carr’s Carter Dickson nom de plume — as an underacknowledged masterpiece in the oeuvre of an author who produced more than his fair share of masterpieces in the genre. So let’s examine that, eh? That sort of claim can’t possibly backfire.

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#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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