Forester is more famous for writing the 'Hornblower' novels, about an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars, and for writing the novel that inspired the film The African Queen.
Less well-known is his exploits as a crime novelist.
This book isn't a whodunnit. There is no mystery about who committed the murder. Rather, it is a psychological portrait of the murderer. His victim is a work colleague. The murder itself is easy, the problems start in its aftermath as he struggles to keep himself safe from detection. It's a delightfully unusual take on the genre and is well-written and full of psychological insight. I also liked the way it was set in a very ordinary world and told of the mundane and sometimes joyless existences of those who worked in a small advertising agency and the domestic life of the murderer. It felt very real.
It was easy to read and kept me turning the pages: I read it in three sittings during the same day.
Selected quotes:
- "Morris with his scowling brow, his woolly hair horrid with grease, his eyelid drooping and his mouth pulled to one side to keep the cigarette smoke out of his eyes." (Ch 1)
- "Morris had that disproportionate sense of the importance of his own well-being as compared with other people's which is one-half of the equipment of the deliberate murderer." (Ch 1)
- "Morris devising a murder was in the same lofty. superhuman state of mind as is a poet in the full current of composition. Thoughts poured through his brain in clear. rushing streams." (Ch 1) A very early description of the psychological state later known as 'Flow'.
- "We've got no more chance of getting it than - than we have of getting hell's advertising when hell sets up as a winter resort." (Ch 6)
- "The main characteristic of the crime of which Morris was guilty is its tendency to reproduce itself. A second murder will occur no additional penalty if the first is to be discovered, so that fear of punishment does not act as a deterrent. Fear of discovery is very largely overridden by the knowledge of previous success, and any natural repugnance the criminal may feel towards the taking of human life is largely blunted by the time he begins to consider the repetition of the crime." (Ch 13)
- "She was too busy looking about her for all the actresses - and worse - who are notoriously accustomed to living in Maidenhead." (Ch 20)
A well-structured, beautifully written and entertaining crime novel written from an unusual angle. Well worth reading
March 2024; 188 pages
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