I very much enjoyed Anthony Armstrong’s contribution to the collaborative novel Double Death (1939), and so a friend kindly lent me the novel Ten Minute Alibi (1934), adapted — with help from Herbert Shaw — from Armstrong’s stage play of the same name, which was published the year before. I’ve not yet read the play, so have no idea how closely the two coincide, but I suspect that it was Shaw who did most of the writing of this novel if only because the rather functional prose lacks so much of the character that made me curious to check out more of Armstrong’s writing. I am, however, getting ahead of myself, so let’s (appropriately) back up a bit…