#451: The Smokers of Hashish (1934) by Norman Berrow

/ JJ / 11 Comments

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Aaaah, Norman Berrow.  Such highs, such lows, so much middle ground.  I can’t think of anyone else who leaves me on such a knife-edge: with a few adjustments here and there Berrow could well have written some genre classics, and it’s often an agonising fascination waiting to see which way the book falls.  So now we’re back at the very beginning with his first novel The Smokers of Hashish (1934), decidedly more adventure than detection, where he applies his chameleonic tendencies to some (ahem) intrigue in Tangier.  As you may expect from a book of this era with this title, the result is pulpy fun, though with two neat moments to distinguish it.

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#448: The Hanging Captain (1933) by Henry Wade

/ JJ / 25 Comments

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When The Murder Room, the ebook-only arm of publishing house Orion, announced a couple of years ago that they’d be releasing a bunch of Henry Wade’s novels I got quite excited and then proceeded to buy none of them.  Instead, I eventually acquired three hard-to-find Wade novels in paperback — The Duke of York’s Steps (1929), The Hanging Captain (1933), and the apparent classic Heir Presumptive (1935) — and proceeded to read none of them, too.  So, as I v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y make my way through these, I’m pleased to report that here it certainly seems Wade has learned a lot from that earlier book and grown significantly as an author in four short years.

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#447: The Criminous Alphabet – A is for…Alibi [Part 2 of 2]

/ JJ / 3 Comments

A is for

Last week I talked — at great length — about the alibi in crime and detective fiction as utilised by the criminal working alone.  This week, I’ll hopefully find as much (or, depending on your feelings about last week’s post, maybe less) to say where more than one criminal is involved, and then if there’s time I’ll diverge into crimes where there is no alibi.

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#445: The Rumble Murders (1932) by Henry Ware Eliot, Jr. [a.p.a. by Mason Deal]

/ JJ / 22 Comments

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For this blog alone — that is, discounting books I manage to fit in which do not feature on here — my reading has in recent weeks seen a degree of decade-hopping it doesn’t normally achieve: 1971, 1948, 2011, 1938, 2018, 1940, 1939, 2018 and now 1932.  The upshot of this time travel is a reassurance that I’m still more of a fan of the legitimate 1930s style of murder mystery than I am its more modern second cousin.  Even the flaws in this type of story are more enjoyable, partly I suppose because (and it bears repeating) of just how damn difficult a well-clewed puzzle plot is to write.  As here, the first swing often makes up in enthusiasm for what it lacks in finesse.

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