I seem to have fallen into a pattern of one post a week and I keep feeling this will not do but I have had another of "those weeks" with loads on and a few irritants. Next week is looking a bit dubious as well as I am having a boiler and hot water tank ripped out tomorrow and it is all going to be a bit chaotic.
So I am taking the chance now of sitting down with a cuppa and telling you of my latest crime reads. I can assure you that I read quite a lot of thrillers that are NOT published by the British Library, but this week the ones I have perused have all, coincidentally, been from their Classic Crime List.
Two were by E C R Lorac, who I really enjoy and so glad that the BritLib discovered this writer. However, this particular title left me feeling really disappointed. These Names Make Clues got me totally bogged down.
Chief Inspector Macdonald was invited to a treasure hunt party at the house of a publisher. He has misgivings but is persuaded to accept and joins in along with other guests who are all thriller writers disguised on the night under literary pseudonyms. Naturally, there is a murder and the victim, who was there under the name of 'Samuel Pepys' is found seemingly dead of a heart attack. Well we know it was not.
The blurb on the back of this title states 'amid the confusion of too many fake names, clues, ciphers,and convoluted alibis, Macdonald must unravel a truly tangled case'.
I can honestly say that at the end after another murder or two (and I still have no idea why they were killed) I felt totally discombobulated and, which is worse, bored. A shame. This is the first Lorac I have not enjoyed.
It was with some relief, therefore, that I turned to another by this author, Post after Post Mortem which was so much better and so much more interesting. "The Surrays and their five children form a prolific writing machine, with scores of treatises, reviews and crime thrillers published under their family name"
Ruth Surray is found dead after an evening at the Surray's house. A suicide note is left and it is clear that she was deeply unhappy and depressed and the coroner reaches a verdict that she took her own life. But then a few days after her death, her brother Richard receives a letter from his deceased sister which had been delayed in the post, and this casts doubt on the verdict.
Much more concisely written and held together and, though I guessed who the murderer was, it was not obvious and the reader was led astray on the way.
Death of a Bookseller by Bernard Farmer was the third I finished this week. This is the hundredth title in this series so it is fitting that a book about rare books is published by one of the great Libraries. I had never heard of the author, as with so many of these rediscoveries, and though some have left me cold, I rather enjoyed this one. The main reason is not the fact that it is about a bookseller and crammed with details of the internecine rivalry between booksellers and buyers, fascinating though that is, but the wonderful character of Sergeant Jack Wigan. The sergent strikes up a friendship with a bookman, Michael Fisk, who he escorts home when he meets him having had too much to drink. Fisk had been celebrating the acquisition of a rare book, Keat's own personally inscribed copy of Endymion. Wigan develops a keen interest in book collecting and later, when Fisk is found stabbed to death and the Keats book missing, he aids the CID in their investigation.
Wigan is a kindly, dogged and honest policeman who is convinced that the wrong man has been arrested for the murder and enlisting the help of others in the book trade sets out trying to save the accused from the hangman.
I found the book slightly fantastical in places, there is mention of the occult and raising demons, but on the whole it is well written and intriguing. But it is Wigan who makes this well worth reading. A character one can warm to. I gather there are other titles awaiting republication so I do hope the British Library will let us have these as well.
I was pleased to see that Martin Edwards who writes the introduction, had likened this well crafted book to those written by George Bellairs, another discovery for me. I had had exactly the same thought...
Honest.
