Preamble
If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here. Or you can take a look at my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Review
As someone who for a long time has read only nineteenth-century and “new” (1990s-onwards) fiction, I am slowly but surely trying to fill in my gaps of knowledge in the twentieth century. And yes, I know this is a particularly astonishing gap given that one of my major interests is detective fiction, which has a twentieth-century Golden Age!
While Death of the Reader is a fantastic guide to newer fiction (and occasionally Agatha Christies that they cover as a “tax”!), one of the best guides I’ve found to this whole new-to-me segment of literature is Caroline Crampton’s wonderful Shedunnit podcast. She has covered some ECR Lorac novels previously, so when I spotted this in the library, it was easy to pick up.
This was a middling read, and perhaps an example of why I have tended not to read the detective fiction of the ’30s very much, as the style and cast of characters don’t quite gel with me. I found it a little tricky to keep some of the characters apart, and I had to think back to their initial introductions to make sure I remembered which was which. The crime itself—a death initially ruled a suicide, then reopened after a delayed letter raises questions about the analysis of the deceased’s state of mind—is an interesting premise, although I found the deceased’s boastfully wonderful family a little grating. (There was a certain tone of the well-to-do that reminded me very strongly of old-fashioned children’s stories!)
With an interesting crime, then, this story first edged towards what I’ve called an ‘extraordinary sidekick’ plot, with the deceased’s psychiatrist brother potentially being drawn into the detective plot. There was also a shade of a potential mystery-writer-investigates plot, with the proliferation of authors in the plot, some of whom are explicitly contemplating writing ‘bloods’. All of these prospective co-detectives soon fade out of the main detective narrative, however, leaving the professionals firmly in charge.
Because I haven’t read any other ECR Lorac books, I came to the detective entirely cold, but this is Chief Inspector Macdonald’s eleventh outing, so for more diligently or orderly readers no doubt there were lots of call-backs and references that passed me by. He seemed to be competent and eminently capable, but not plagued by unreasonable leaps of deduction or spontaneous insight; rather, just good, thoughtful, patient policework! There was some drama on the detectives’ side—a wrongful imprisonment, a chase to Scotland—that was entertaining, tracing a series of apparently escalating attacks that (post-solution) didn’t seem strictly necessary. But, still, the point is that all murders are a little mad, or else they wouldn’t be murders.
I’d happily re-read this book after having read the preceding 10, if only to better understand what I’d missed.
Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Dominique Gracia 
Leave a comment