Village Mystery

#1467: At Death’s Door (1955) by Leo Bruce

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“There were moments when the police felt like giving up their attempt to find among the scores who hated or feared Emily Purvice the one who had killed her”. That sums up At Death’s Door (1955), the first novel to feature crime-solving History teacher Carolus Deene by Leo Bruce, pretty well: Mrs. Purvice has her claws into the finer business of more than a few people in Newminster, and when she’s found beaten over the head in the back room of her shop late one evening, no-one is surprised or especially grieved. But whodunnit? The parson? Her wastrel son? The recently-released borstal boy? The two women running the pet shop next door? The list goes on and on.

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#1455: Enemy Unseen (1945) by Freeman Wills Crofts

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The twenty-fifth long form case for Inspector Joseph French, Enemy Unseen (1945) does not cover its detective or its author Freeman Wills Crofts in glory. While, given the era in which it was written and published, there’s an understandable desire to provide a positive impression of the work of the Home Guard, and for the workings of the country as a whole to appear reassuringly competent, the book seems to have no purpose beyond this, feeling to this FWC fan as if, for only the second time in the author’s long and storied career, he was perhaps putting something out to fulfil an obligation. And yet, its inexorable, dull plodding towards the finish line would be comforting to many — E.C.R. Lorac fans would lap this up, I feel.

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#1452: Furious Old Women (1960) by Leo Bruce

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“Milly may have been mean and sanctimonious but she was my sister. To club her to death on her way to church was quite damnable.” So speaks Mrs. Bobbin, the elderly widow who has approached History master Carolus Deene to investigate the murder of her elder sister, Millicent Griggs having been found beaten over the head and hidden in an open grave in the churchyard in the small village of Gladhurst. Since all the police have done in the intervening week is ask “a series of questions even more moronic than [Deene’s],” Mrs. Bobbin wants something more achieved: “I’m livid. So don’t take too long in solving the thing.”

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#1330: “We’ll all come under suspicion sooner or later, mark my words.” – Not to be Taken, a.k.a. A Puzzle in Poison (1938) by Anthony Berkeley

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I first read Not to be Taken, a.k.a. A Puzzle in Poison (1938), my debut experience of the work of Anthony Berkeley, after happening across a Black Dagger Crime edition in about 2005. And I bloody hated it. Over the years, however, I’ve come to love Berkeley’s work, so the recent reissue of the title in the British Library Crime Classics range was a (welcome…?) chance to reappraise it.

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#1305: Casual Slaughters (1935) by James Quince

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I’m not entirely sure where Casual Slaughters (1935) by James Quince first came to my attention, but it might have been this list of 150 largely very good detective novels, compiled by Curtis Evans back in 2010. And since Curtis and I recently agreed about The Dead Man’s Knock (1958) by John Dickson Carr, and since Oreon Books recently reprinted Casual Slaughters and I bought a copy while visiting at the excellent Bodies in the Bookshop in Cambridge, well, the time seemed ripe to pull it out of my TBR to see how I fare. And, as if I needed more convincing, Quince’s title is from Hamlet, this blog takes its name from Hamlet…seriously, could the universe be aligning more?

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#1290: Silence After Dinner (1953) by Clifford Witting

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With an intriguing title taken from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) (“Murder is always a mistake. One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.”), Silence After Dinner (1953) is the eleventh Clifford Witting novel republished by Galileo Publishers. And since they were kind enough to send me a review copy, I can tell you about it fairly close to its release for a change. Opening with a startling, anonymous diary entry set in late-Communist Revolution China, we jump forward four years to the more bucolic South Downs where various people all seem to have spent time in that country and so might be the person responsible for the acts relayed in that opening. So, whodunnit?

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#1288: “I thought they only happened in books.” – The Body in the Library (1942) by Agatha Christie

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When we talk about examples of the classic novel of detection being treated as a knowing parody of itself, titles oft-mentioned include The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) or Jumping Jenny (1933) by Anthony Berkeley. But I’ve just read The Body in the Library (1942) by Agatha Christie for the first time in 25 years, and, like, her tongue is positively bulging through her cheek at times, no?

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#1182: Midsummer Murder (1956) by Cecil M. Wills

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Midsummer Murder Galileo

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I’d previously read just one book by Cecil M. Wills, the Ramble House edition of Fatal Accident (1936), about which I remember nothing — though the fact that I didn’t review it might be telling. So when Galileo Publishers sent me an advance copy of Midsummer Murder (1956), I was intrigued to see how it stacked up: one (possibly) poor book does not a bad author make, and Galileo have shown some good taste in their unusual selections to date. And, well, I don’t know quite what to make of this, to be honest — Wills writes charmingly, and the enjoyable plot is communicated in easily-digested prose that flies by…but, equally, there’s a massive flaw at the core of this which can’t have passed by everyone else who’s read it…right?

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