"Crime at Guildford" by Freeman Wills Croft

 This was a beautifully written police procedural from the days when constables on the beat noticed men walking late at night, and when the police weren't allowed to pay for information! The days when there were butlers and maids and when even policeman were fearful of unemployment.

A jewellery firm is facing going stony (sorry!) broke. Some of the directors arrange a weekend at the chairman's country house near Guildford. On the Sunday morning the company accountant, who was ill the night before, is discovered dead in his bed. The next Monday morning, all the jewels that represent the working stock of the company have vanished from the safe. Are the crimes linked? Whodunnit? And how?

Inspector French plods through the evidence. One by one the suspects are eliminated. Even, after an ingenious twist (I got it!), the truth is revealed, there is still the need for evidence resulting in a chase into Europe. 

Selected quotes:

• "A girl like that has the ear of the boss ... and so she doesn't know her own size." (Ch 11)
• "When you've no job you get into the way of spending as much time everywhere as you can. There's always too much of it." (Ch 18)

Classic crime fun. June 2024; 252 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Thursday Murder Club" by Richard Osman

Shortlisted for the crime/thiller prize in the 2021 British Book Awards. 

A group of old folk living in a retirement village set up a club to solve old murders ... then a murder takes place on their doorstep. Using the skills they have developed over a variety of interesting careers, they team up with a pair of unlikely detectives (police procedural this isn't) to find out whodunnit. 

Although I found the solution somewhat confusing and less than convincing, I adored the characters and the dialogues. Osman has a real gift for writing scenes in which the interruptions to the story are as much fun as the story itself: a sort of Tristram Shandy or Road Kill but much more controlled so that the diversions don't actually take over the story.

The chapters are extremely short, on average less than three pages each, which enhances the readability.

It's written from the third person perspective of a number of characters (I counted eleven plus at least one chapter of omniscient narration), in the present tense (and from Joyce's diary in the past tense) so there is a carefully controlled head-hopping. I have argued in the past that having so many characters makes it difficult to create complex three-dimensional characters and Osman doesn't really try to do this. Perhaps the most interesting characters are Joyce who uses her diary to address the reader directly (using 'you' and asking questions) and Chris, the policeman with a weight problem. The other characters are 'Mary Sue's', too-good-to-be-true, such as Bogdan, a builder who can turn his hand at anything (and plays brilliant chess), and Elizabeth, the ex-spy who can use her contacts to find out anything at any time. Even Joyce whose only superpowers are negotiating skills and being underestimated, has a daughter who is a financial genius. I live in a retirement complex and, believe me, the other inmates are very ordinary. 

Classic murder mysteries of the old school are very clear about right and wrong. Classic spy stories such as those by le Carre have an overwhelming atmosphere of moral ambiguity. This book treads a middle line. From the start , the reader is enlisted on the side of the (amateur and professional) detectives; this distinction is reinforced by making the baddies very bad indeed. So bad that they deserve to die; so bad that their killers are portrayed as having done something that is fundamentally decent. Meanwhile the goodies employ a lot of shortcuts to get at the truth ... but presumably the end is held to justify the means. Furthermore, a surprising number of the more minor characters perform actions that are both criminal and immoral but they get away with it because they are lovable rogues. It's an interesting message.

Characterisation is achieved by plucking at stereotypes. Ibrahim is an ex-psychiatrist quite a long way down the autistic spectrum, precise and pernickety and into IT (one wonders how he empathised with many of his ex-patients). Ron is the combative ex-trades union leader. Ian Ventham is an utterly despicable businessman. These are neo-Dickensian caricatures, as flat as they come. And, like Dickens, Osman mostly gets away with it using humour. There are some genuinely funny moments and it is because the reader is enjoying themselves that they are prepared to suspend their disbelief for the duration of the ride.

But fundamentally this is an utterly implausible whimsy. 

There are moments when Osman snatches at verisimilitude, such as the description of the location of the retirement village which is very precise and Joyce's repeated references, in her diary, to real TV shows, whereby Osman taps into the shared present-day British cultural heritage.

But the Guardian hits the nail on the head when it describes the book as 'pure escapism'.

Nevertheless, it is enjoyable, structured as well as the best murder mysteries, and very easy to read.

Selected quotes

• "For over a hundred years the convent was a hushed building, filled with the dry bustle of habits and the quiet certainty of prayers offered and answered." (Ch 3)
• "The residents like to use the chapel. This is where the ghosts are, where the habits still bustle and where the whispers have sunk into the stone." (Ch 3) I was interested to see that Osman chose to use the words 'bustle' and 'habits' together on two consecutive pages.
• "Reading police files in the certain knowledge that the police are lying to you is surprisingly effective." (Ch 4)
• "After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever you fancy. No one tells you off, except for your doctors and your children." (Ch 4)
• "I would never have therapy, because who wants to unravel all that knitting?" (Ch 4)
• "Many years ago, everybody here would wake early because there was a lot to do and only so many hours in the day. Now they wake early because there is a lot to do and only so many days left." (Ch 11)
• "Everyone calms down through me. Quiet, sensible, Joyce. There is no more shouting and the problem is fixed, more often than not in a way that advantages me. Which is something no one ever seems to notice." (Ch 20)
• "You always know when it's your first time, don't you? But you rarely know when it's your final time." (Ch 23) I have come across the same sentiment recently in another book.
• "In life you have to learn to count the good days. You have to tuck them in your pocket and carry them around with you." (Ch 23) 
• "No kneeling for him these days, arthritis and Catholicism being an uneasy mix." (Ch 30)
• "People without a sense of humour will never forgive you for being funny." (Ch 49)
• "She taps a page of her notepad with her pen, like a conductor giving notice to her orchestra." (Ch 58)
• "If he opened his window he could hear the sea, but couldn't see it. Didn't that just sum it up?" (Ch 78)
• "This house and me have grown old together. Roof coming off ... Things creak that didn't use to creak. Dodgy plumbing." (Ch 91)
• "I can keep my secrets to myself, right up until the time that someone asks me about them." (Ch 98)
• "You can have too much choice in this world. And when everyone has too much choice, it is also much harder to get chosen. And we all want to be chosen." (Ch 103)

March 2022, rewritten Nov 2023; 377 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"A Shetland Winter Mystery" by Marsali Taylor

 Another murder mystery involving sailor Cass Taylor and her policeman boyfriend Gavin. Cass is on shore  for once, preparing for Christmas with Gavin, Cat and Kitten, when mysterious footprints appear outside their remote cottage: 'Trows' (Shetland fairies) are traditionally active at this time of year. But is this a prank, and how is it linked to the controversial wind turbines being built? 

Then a young boy disappears, possibly one of the prankers ...

What makes this series of whodunnits exceptional is that Marsali Taylor is more and more able to take time with her stories. Much of it is about Shetland's preparations for Christmas and the momentary difficulties experienced by Cass and Gavin as they navigate the early waters of living together, and on land. This is allied to a careful exploration of the relevant characters who are so well-developed that I felt apprehensive about their possible fates. The depth and texture of the story is further enhanced by the (fully explained) use of Shetland vocabulary (eg "She was in a right ammerswak. The goddess poise was gone. She was wearing the pinnie she’d worn yesterday, but the buttons were done up squint."; Ch 8)  and by some superb pieces of description of the Shetland countryside:

• "There had been an intense frost during the night. The orange-brown kelp on the shore was crinkled white with ice, and there was a glaze of ice in the curve by the point where the burn ran down." (Ch 7)
• "It came on a serious shower of snow as we hit the main road. The windscreen wipers quickened to double speed, flack, flack, and still there was snow running down the window, as if we’d caught a foaming wave going over us. The tyres hissed through pools of water on the salted road, but the ditches at each side were white with snow lying on frozen water."  (Ch 18)

I want to go there (maybe not in winter).

In short, it is a good little murder mystery in the classic style, but books of this quality transcend the genre.

Selected quotes:

• "I woke to the rattle of the kitchen Rayburn being riddled, followed by the clank of an ashbucket and the crackling of flames in kindling." (Ch 2)
• "She was a tortoiseshell, with a coat the colours of several different spice jars shaken together over a worktop." (Ch 2)
• "It wasn’t much after two, I reckoned, yet already the air was beginning to thicken at the sides of buildings, and the sky was darkening." (Ch 5)
• "His voice softened to the gentle note of a drummie bee drowsing round flowers in summer." (Ch 6)
• "The downward-angled streetlights lit the frost hanging in the air like spotlights in a theatre" (Ch 12)
• "Motive: love, lucre, loathing." (Ch 18)
• "I have a cousin in Canada who’s so like me that we could use each other to shave by." (Ch 26)

This is a crime fiction series that gets better and better. The books, in order, are:

• Death on a Longship
• The Trowie Mound Murders
• A Handful of Ash
• The Body in the Bracken
• Ghosts of the Vikings
• Death in Shetland Waters
• Death on a Shetland Isle
• Death from a Shetland Cliff
• The Shetland Sea Murders

January 2022

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God