Sarah Hawkswood's 'A Shroud of Snow' 2026

 

Allison and Busby first edition paperback - 2026

Now that Susanna Gregory's Matthew Bartholomew (2020), C.J. Sansom's Matthew Shardlake (2019) have well and truly ended; Scott Mariani's Will Bowman is stopping this December, after a mere four books; and I am keeping the eleven volumes of Edward Marston's The Domesday Series for a rainy fortnight; I am having to rely on an annual 'fix' of Sarah Hawkswood's Bradcote and Catchpoll tales for my medieval/early modern historical novels. A Shroud of Snow is her fourteenth outing and we are still in the middle of the Stephen/Matilda Anarchy years. It is December 1145 and we are back in Worcester.

It is bitterly cold, and Hamelin Isenmongere has just visited the local priest, Father Anselm. The Gloucester merchant is a regular giver of money for the poor. On his return to his riverside warehouse, he crosses the path of Godhild, a young prostitute. Initially, she steps in front of him for the obvious reason; but, instead, she receives two silver pennies - to keep indoors and keep fed these next couple o'days. Hamelin is never seen alive again. The following morning, a local fisherman Walter stares at a snowy heap that resolved itself into the body of a man, lying at the water's edge, one arm dangling down so that the hand dipped into the water, except that for two feet out into the river, the surface was frozen, and held the hand in its vice-like grip. For the next 270 pages, the reader follows the usual trio - Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote, Sergeant Catchpoll and Under Sergeant Walkelin - as they doggedly search out the culprit.

By now, after thirteen previous tales stretching back authorially to 2014 (but only to June 1143 with the first story, Servant of Death), I have got to know their quirks of behaviour, their strengths and weaknesses. This is due to Hawkswood's natural story-telling skills, both of character and place. She conjures up the Worcester of the mid-twelfth century compellingly - no artificial cod-medieval speech or silly archaisms - and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the narrow streets, musty and gloomy warehouses, downbeat houses and brooding castle buildings is well done.

Catchpoll, rarely bested, is outmanoeuvred by Hamelin's riverman, Ragnaill of Duiblinn. The crafty bastard (Catchpoll's words, not mine) invited him on board his boat, to question the crew, and then casts off. So Catchpoll finds himself on his way down river to Gloucester. Meanwhile, Walkelin, assuming unusual authority due to Catchpoll's absence, rides over to Bradecote Manor for Hugh. The forbidding lord Sheriff of Worcester, William de Beauchamp, is absent, so Simon Furnaux, his castellan, is left in command of the castle. Our intrepid trio dislike, in fact loath, Simon. On this occasion, with increasing reason, as it soon becomes apparent that there was a link between the castellan and the dead ironmonger. When Bradecote and Walkelin visit Hamelin's home, not only do they find this evidence but also the body of the latter's widowed housekeeper, Agnes, raped before being murdered.

Catchpoll is not impressed when he meets the newly-widowed Mistress Sybilla Isenmongere - she maybe shocked at his news, but not grief-stricken. She is cold and haughty and wishes to go to Worcester - for her husbands body but, more importantly, to search for any money and artefacts belonging to him. Not only do Catchpoll, Ragnaill and Sybilla (it is soon clear that they are more than just servant and mistress) turn up in Worcester, but so does a bad-tempered William de Beauchamp, demanding an immediate resolution of the murders.

There are other realistic touches - Walkelin is on tenterhooks throughout, as his wife is expecting their first child; the scribes at the castle are definite individuals, not just caricatures; as are the warehouse figures, such as Tostig Thoraldsson and Samson One-Eye. I liked the tetchy relationships and dialogues between de Beauchamp and Furnaux, and Sybilla and Ragnaill; and the increasing telepathic communication between Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin. The overall political scenario was not forgotten, either. Robert of Gloucester's machinations in Worcester were revealed and placed in the context of the conflict between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda. All in all, a very pleasant two-evenings' read.

Tim Sullivan's 'The Bookseller' 2025

Head of Zeus paperback edition - 2025

I read this over several sittings, as I couldn't quite get 'gripped' by the story. This is the seventh novel to feature the socially awkward, neurodivergent detective DS George Cross, and, perhaps, I may have enjoyed it more if I had read at least some of the other six. Thus, I came fresh to any character developments - of his family, his colleagues and his priest friend - which would have been charted in the previous books. The eighth book, The Tailor, was published last month. Cross has autism, and I find it hard to relate to that; my failing, not the author's - or the detective's! I did feel, however, that the frequent commentary on social interaction became a little tiresome.

Cross works with Joyce Ottey, who has recently been promoted to Detective Inspector; part of the dynamic in the story is how both colleagues adapt to this. Their superior,  DCI Carson, typifies the individual promoted beyond his skill level - incompetent in policing and social acumen. These three represent officialdom and the case they have to tackle this time relates to the antiquarian and second-hand book trade; a subject dear to my heart and really why I got the book (cheap from a charity stall!). 

Ed Squire runs a bookshop in Berkeley Square, Bristol. In his mid-fifties, he has followed his father, Torquil, into the antiquarian books trade. He, however, is in it as a businessman, not as an afficionado  like his dad. One evening, DCI Ottey and DS Cross are called to the bookshop - Ed has been murdered, the body lay to the side of the desk. The surrounding rug and bare floorboards were stained dark red with blood. There were several narrow puncture wounds to the bookseller's chest. (Spoiler alert - they turn out to have been made by a letter opener. Talk about the Last Post.) So, off the detectives and the reader set on a whodunit. Not Torquil, who had deep disagreements with his son over his management of the bookshop, as he had been in London at the time, but on his return had found his dead son. Was it Persephone Hartwell, Ed's niece? - who had seemingly taken refuge in the bedsit at the top of the building - in her late twenties, early thirties...clearly terrified. She was pale as a ghost and shaking involuntarily. She had long, dark curly hair and was dressed mostly in black with red tights. It would later emerge that, as a teenager, she had been impregnated by Ed and had had an abortion. Was it, therefore her angry mother or father Ian, just back from Spain, or Percy herself? Or, could it be Victoria Squire, Ed's shamed wife?  Or Sam Taylor, in his late thirties, early forties, with his goatee beard, there was something of Hergé's Professor Calculus about him, who had worked for Squire's for 15 years as an assistant and was disgruntled with Ed's lack of interest in the real antiquarian books? 

Another on the suspect list is Denholm Simpson, who ran a much humbler, less grand, establishment. More of an emporium of second-hand books. Originally, both he and Torquil ran this place near the Bristol Royal Infirmary together. Then a wealthy, childless widow, Sumner, a frequent customer of the latter, died and left him the Berkeley Square building - much to Denholm's chagrin and continual resentment. The two men hadn't spoken for twenty years. 

Could it be the de Souceys? Freddie and Francesca had sold their late father's book collection to Ed, which had included, unbeknown to them, a first edition of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Ed had then sold it for a mammoth profit and refused to give them any of the proceeds. Or was it Patrick Gibb, bookseller at Carnegie Books in Bedford Square, London? He and his firm had had a massive dispute with Ed Squire over several issues, mainly over auction rings and author hoarding for monopoly price-fixing. Denholm Simpson's son, Nigel, had worked for Carnegie Books but had left in mysterious circumstances. Was it to do with the Ed Squire feud? Did he harbour a grudge against Ed? Muddying the waters is a Russian connection. One Oleg Dimitriev, who owns the expensive and ostentatious Ashleigh Manor in south Somerset (it has its own helipad), as well as a yacht in the Mediterranean. His henchmen have been staking out Berkeley Square, with menace. Why? Ed had been involved in the sale of a letter by Christopher Columbus, which turned out to have been stolen. Dimitriev had purchased it for £2 million, and Ed pocketed 250,000 commission. Did D wanted his money recouped - at any cost? So, was the murder the result of nefarious book dealing or jealousy of the Squires? Or was it due to familial anger? Thanks mainly to Cross, we find out.

A major subplot involves Cross's father Raymond who, after an operation for cancer, has a stroke and needs fulltime care. His mother Christine, estranged from both father and son, comes up trumps to become that carer. Several chapters, or parts of chapters, deal with this ongoing family crisis. Not having read the previous books, the relationship between Cross and his parents was not particularly interesting to me and I flicked through much of it. What with the autistic protagonist, I found the book mildly flawed. I don't think I'll be reading any more mysteries by Tim Sullivan on George Cross.

Andrew Soutar's 'Justice is Done' 1936 and Anthony Wynne's 'Murder in thin Air' 1936

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.58 - 1938/9?

This is the third Andrew Soutar thriller I have read in the Crime-Book Society series and the second to feature Kharduni (see my Blog for 6th January 2026). I wrote of that story then that it was very strange and highly improbable with the finale in the English Channel needing a large Scotch or G & T to hand. This, too, has its finale in the Channel and borders on the improbable. It might be worth quoting the blurb on the flyleaf of the dust wrapper:  "Kharduni is a wonderful character; there may be some who may regard him as a man with a super-brain. He is, at any rate, a person with a very vivid imagination backed with a weird facility for reading other people's thoughts, and perhaps inspiring them...in this mystery the coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide, but Kharduni knew, and was able to prove, that it was deliberate and brutal murder. Relentlessly he trailed each of the conspirators.   

The first paragraph certainly backs this image of Kharduni up: Very rich was Kharduni, of whom you shall read in this story; very mysterious, very unforgiving if a wrong were done. Tireless as the wolf in pursuit, cunning as a lynx in subtlety, relentless as the tiger when the chase was ended and pursued and pursuer came face to face. So, when we see that the first Chapter is headed Six Knaves Meet, we know they are doomed. These eminently respected men met in a room in a City office, in a block known as The Pyramids, in order to decide which one of them should murder Sebastian Melrose. Who are they? Amos Sneede, age fifty, slight of stature, partially bald, and alert like a London sparrow. Clever business man; Ernest Tannick, powerfully built man, forty-two or forty-three. Dark complexion; eyes deep-set and piercing...strong, virile hands, the backs of which were rather repulsively covered with hair (clearly needs watching, then); Oliver Brekkan, fifty-five. The least attractive of them all (was he totally covered in repulsive hair?)...he was notorious for his daring plunges in the City and elsewhere; Samuel Kadjer, a man reputed to have made nearly a million in one day by the amalgamation of two vast trusts...lean as Cassius...facial expression rather arrogant and impatient of delay; Dr. Wimpoll, medical man held in considerable esteem in the West End. Middle-aged and obviously vain. Known to be somewhat a philanderer; and Shivada, a slightly built, very dark-complexioned man, who suggested the Portuguese. Black, oily hair...vindictive of eye (N.B. it's the 1930s - all foreigners are suspect). Shivada was the Judas of the party, since he was the junior partner of Samuel Melrose. The six men had been trying to make a corner in Great Ores, buying all they could buy in order to force up the price. But the more they bought, the more Melrose flooded the market (he appeared to have an inexhaustible store), keeping the price down. Clearly, he had to go; but by whom?

It is decided by picking a card and Shivada is the fall guy. The group spread rumours that Melrose is depressed so, when he is found dead in his office with a bullet in his temple and his hand still holding his own revolver, it is clearly a case of suicide. The coroner's court upholds this verdict, particularly as the dead man had penned a letter to Shivada stating he intended to end it all. Case closed - not to Kharduni. He is the legal representative of Melrose's daughter, Maureen, and demands to asks some questions. The coroner was slightly flustered. And well he, and the naughty six, might be. Kharduni confides to his manservant, Bleacher, that I like to see justice done...I think I shall prove to you that there is not one law for the rich and one for the poor...you are going to see these people torture each other until life becomes unbearable...

And so begins an increasingly unlikely tale. Although Shivada is soon found hanging from The Pyramids' roof garden (having also 'written' a suicide note), the other five are somehow persuaded to join a Cruise in the Mediterranean. Luxurious yacht the 'Charon', equipped with every modern invention Peace, tranquillity, health restored by the sapphire seas; minds cleansed by the salt-laden wind....no passports required. Only very few passengers taken. The infamous five have no idea any of the others have booked. Surprise, surprise! Gradually, Kharduni works his way with them. The ship, in fact, never leaves the Channel and ends up anchored off his Devonshire coastal house (Yvonne the black panther also has a chilling part to play again). The psychological nightmare that he imposes on each man is well done. Newspapers report that the Charon had 'sunk with all hands', foundering off the Nor; and then obits on the rogues start appearing. All these are 'leaked' to them and they turn on each other. Tannick is the first to go - overboard. They find that the yacht's name has been changed to The Morning Sun. A screen on the yacht shows Shivada's murder. Dr. Wimpoll also goes overboard; Kadjer is found dead with a knife between his shoulder-blades. And so on. The two remaining realise that for the first time in thirty or forty years, perhaps, the fact had been beaten on their brains that they were defenceless. Money was of no avail to them now. Both are dead before the end of the tale.

 Romance is provided by young Dawlish, who has travelled the world over with Kharduni, and with him passed through a hundred and one adventures. He had also bumped into Maureen and her late father when they had holidayed with Kharduni in Ceylon. Now he is back, and absolutely signed up to K's plan to deal with the dastardly five and succour Maureen. It is he who commands the motor-yacht.

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.60 - 1938/9?

Inevitably, when one is reading so many books by different authors in this series, one come across a tale that doesn't quite gel with you. Not necessarily an actual 'dud', but well below par. I am afraid this story was one of these. Anthony Wynne was the nom de plume for Captain Robert McNair Wilson (1882-1963), a Scottish surgeon, writer, journalist and Liberal party politician. Educated at Glasgow Academy and Glasgow University, he studied medicine and was House Surgeon at Glasgow Western Infirmary. He subsequently moved to London, where he opened a General Practice in 1903. He continued his medical studies and was known as a heart specialist 1920-33. He was Medical Correspondent of The Times 1914-1942. He wrote on European history and economics, but is best known for his detective stories - 27 novels between 1925 and 1950. Many of these feature Dr. Eustace Hailey, a snuff taking nerve specialist and amateur detective. Hailey is not a particularly interesting character and the novels have little or no humour. 

In front of spectators and experts from the Air Ministry at his private aerodrome by the sea in Ayrshire, Sir Malcolm Kintyre's aeroplane crashes. He was found in the wreckage with a bullet wound and a knife through his shoulder. He has clearly been murdered, but how and by whom? From the moment when he took off till the moment he crashed, every one of the five spectators was ready to swear that he or she had the machine in full view the whole time. There was no-one else in the plane (a two-seater). Dr. Hailey's expertise is summoned to the scene by Inspector McColl, who tells Hailey that Kintyre was one of the biggest buyers of wheat in Europe - in the world. Kintyre was known to be as hard as iron and seemingly indifferent to the plight of poor people perhaps starving. The pages dealing with wheat prices, short selling and communist designs on effecting changes left me rather cold. I didn't understand a lot of it either. Kintyre was also experimenting with developing an aeroplane which could hold heavier loads; he felt a major war was inevitable.

Essentially, the story is that of  Hailey tracking down the culprits behind the murder. We follow the doctor to Glasgow, then to a tiny island in the middle of a lake in the far north of Scotland. None of the characters felt sympathetic to this reader. There are Kintyre's daughter, Rose; her boyfriend Bob Cameron - who, being alone by the crashed plane for some time, gets accused of the murder (Kintyre had never thought him monied enough for his daughter); old Miss Mirabel Fortress, whose father had been a soldier in India and who she never stops talking about; Sarah Kennedy, Kintyre's rather anaemic niece; Kintyre's side-kick and Sarah's beau, Blades; and Mrs. Morier, a friend of Kintyre - she has a pilot's certificate too and is rather too 'crisp' with her answers to Hailey. One to watch, then. We also meet Ronald O'Flynn, a Glaswegian bookmaker, and a publican called McTugg, mine host of the Starling's Nest on Gavin Road, Glasgow. All these characters feed into the story, which turns out to be a communist plot after all. The tale plods along efficiently enough, but I simply wasn't gripped by it and I found the explanation of how the murder occurred unsatisfactory.

Hugh Clevely's 'Amateur Crook' 1936 and Sydney Horler's 'The Man who shook the Earth' 1933

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.54 - 1938?

I enjoyed this 'rattling good yarn' - mostly sympathetic and believable characters; several twists and car chases; and an excellent, atmospheric ending. Jane Gilman, slim, dark, good-looking is chuntering across the table at Rex Trent: you're reasonably good-looking, you've got heaps of money, and you know all the right people [but] what do you do except ride horses, shoot things, and drive noisy cars at dangerous speeds round Brooklands? It may be quite thrilling, but what good is it? I don't suppose you've ever done a useful day's work in your life. Ouch. However, this is all about to change. Roaring off in his super-charged sports Invicta, Rex is stopped by Chief Inspector Williams, who had once arrested him in mistake for a criminal named John Brownlie. The Inspector orders him to chase a big, grey car with three men on board racing past Hyde Park Corner. A car chase on the third page - Ethan Hunt and Jason Bourne, here we come. The rogues are finally stopped in a side street with a blank wall ahead. One of the three crooks had a gun; the other two were holding ugly looking knives. Rex, of course, is a match for them. He went forward with a rush, all the lean, active thirteen stone of him...with the speed of a leaping tiger...[his] hard fist, with all the weight of his body, and all the force of his rush scientifically behind it, landed squarely on the man's jaw, sending him spinning across the roadway to collapse in a heap in the far gutter. Rex then deals in a similar fashion with a second villain. They didn't stand a chance.  No wonder the Chief Inspector remarks, "You're some scrapper, Mr. Trent." 

The admiring copper asks Trent to call at Scotland Yard the following day; and so begins the Big Adventure, where Trent is able to prove to Miss Gilman that he can be useful. He is asked to impersonate his lookalike Brownlie, easily the cleverest safe-opener in the country, who is presently in prison. The aim? To unmask a Mr. Big, leader of criminal outfits such as the Spadoni gang and the  Hoxton Boys. As Trent later says to Jane: "I'm a changed man now. I've given up frivolous things, like motor-racing, and I'm going in seriously for a life of crime." He is successfully 'sprung' from prison (an aircraft drops smoke bombs on the prison farm where he is working), and escapes in a Hispano car, driven by Valerie Lane, young and very attractive...her light-brown silky hair fell in a low fringe over her forehead. Her nose was slightly tip-tilted, adding to her attractiveness. Her eyes, shaded by long lashes, were blue and clear, and perfectly self-possessed. Oh dear, what will Miss Gilman think?

She is a member of Mr. Big's operation, which also includes Barfield, a small sandy-haired man with the sharp features of a rat or a ferret; Wilburton, tall, slim, dark man of about forty, very well dressed. His complexion was sallow, his features were clean-cut and aristocratic...with a set of very white, even teeth; and his voice was the low, well-modulated voice of a man who had been to a public school and a university. What on earth are he and Miss Lane doing mixed up in criminal activities? As the story develops, we find out. A pointer is surely that Valerie's surname is actually McLeod, and is the daughter of a director of Wessex Bank, which had failed disastrously two years' earlier. Her father, Robert McLeod, had been sentence to 14 years imprisonment and had died in jail. The other three directors were Leonard Morris and Marcus Silverstein and, guess what, Sir John Gilman, none other than Jane's father. There is also Murdoch, a big, broad-shouldered, swaggering fellow, dark-haired and dark-complexioned...with an air of truculence about him. An off-the-shelf Crime-Book baddie, then.

Trent/Brownlie's first job is to break into Sir John's home and crack the safe, where a pile of jewels are kept. He manages to forewarn the police and when he opens the safe, there is only a thin box with what turn out to be fake glass jewels. Clearly someone has tipped the authorities off. A second attempt is made - not by grabbing jewels but by kidnapping Jane Gilman. The author keeps the tension going all the while; there are some clever scenes of double-cross (where Jane is rescued by Trent); Jane and Valerie meet up, with the former intensely suspicious of where Trent's affections are going; and we find out who the Mr. Big is quite early on (on page 87, although I guessed it a few pages earlier) - Silverstein. He is known to both his gang and the police as The Angel, due to his drawing one at the bottom of his directives. The tale maintains a rattling pace. We meet Smannel, Silverstein's devoted manservant (all leading characters, whether good or bad, had their Jeeves figures in the 1930s); Murdoch is killed by a terrific right hook from Trent, a punch that would have felled a buffalo (all 1930s heroes knew how to box); Trent also recovers the real jewels in a tightly-written scene set in Harwich; and Dick Dastardly (alias Silverstein) pits his not inconsiderable wits against the forces of law and order. The latter's escape plans, once he realises all is lost, is suitably exciting - taking in cars, a motor launch, a private aeroplane and a small cargo boat off the North Wales coast. Spoiler alert: Silverstein dies in a splendid shoot-out; Miss McLeod marries Wilburton and departs to South Africa to start a fruit farm; and Miss Gilman marries the layabout Rex Trent. Far-fetched? Of course. A well-paced narrative? Absolutely. 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.55 - 1938?

The Man who shook the Earth is the first of the three short stories that make up the book. I am afraid I was not particularly impressed with any of them. One problem with the shorter novel is that there is less time to develop characters; the novelette is an art form and as often as not it doesn't come off. However, M.R. James and others have proved it deserves a place in the literary pantheon. Any interest in this first tale really lies in the focus on the atom (which apparently is the cause of a minor earthquake near Harrogate). Nuclear fission (splitting the atom) was not achieved until December1938 - by two German chemists who identified barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons, but physicists John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton first artificially split an atom in 1932 by bombarding lithium with protons. Hence, Sydney Horler was very quickly on the scene with his tale of the evil Oscar Schutt  (he's a mixture of many breeds - there's a bit of Dutch, a bit of German, and a whole heap of Mexican in him; knowing the author's racist views, that means Schutt is bound to be a wrong'un) and his plans to use this knowledge for wealth and power. The characters are so lightly sketched that it is difficult to feel much empathy/sympathy for them. There's Harry Dunstan, bred-in-the-bone and dyed-in-the-wool bachelor, a mining engineer on six months' leave from South Africa; Jim Mannering,  a very celebrated writer of fiction, but in the care-free days of the past, he had been almost equally famous as a newspaper special correspondent, and a pal Dunstan had known for ten years; and Julie Farrar, a cousin of Jim, who is her only living relative, who is a junior reporter and has come over from the USA.

Harry is summoned to Yorkshire by Jim, but also takes Julie with him.  The two men meet up with Schutt - whose eyes in the swarthy, sullen face were so malignant that Harry, had he been imaginative, would have construed it as a personal warning. When, later, part of the eerie landscape around the famous Brimham Rocks appears to explode, the two men realise Schutt is up to no good. This is confirmed when a letter is sent to the Prime Minister, which states: chance has placed in my hands a terrific weapon...in short, I can proclaim myself Master of the World...I hold the earth in thrall. Another missive, to the Manager of Barkins Bank, Harrogate contains a similar threat if he does not hand over £500,000 (£461/2 million today). Schutt captures Harry and Julie, but they are saved when another mini earthquake destroys the underground cavern they are being held in. They manage to escape, but Schutt cops it. This brief tale ends with the final Chapter entitled Julie Shows A Dimple. With Harry and Jim, she is feted by the London Commissioner of Police; gets a cable from America  saying she can have a contract of $15,000 a year for five years as a reporter due to her filing the story on Schutt; but decides to go to South Africa instead. Why? To be with Harry, of course.

The second story, Blood Money, starts off with the amateur golfer, John Roslyn, winning the British Open Championship in a fight to the death with the American professional, Worton. The scene switches to a  thatched, ivy-festooned cottage in West Dean, Sussex, where young Jessie Temple, she with the exquisitely shaped leg, is staying with her old nurse Polly Wiffen. Jessie's uncle, Richard Seidler, has just died; down to the cottage from London comes her late uncle's solicitor, Septimus Clive. Startling news - she has been left £200,000 in her uncle's will. Clive urges her to make her own; if she does not, the money will go to the unpleasant younger uncle, Aubrey Seidler. Well, we know what's coming; Aubrey will try and get his hands on the will first. Danger lurks, particularly as there is a suspicion uncle Richard's death might not have been hunky-dory. 

Meanwhile, John Roslyn has put up at a very unsavoury Inn in the same village. His drink is drugged and he is relieved of £25 whilst he slept. On waking, he eavesdrops on a discussion downstairs - certain words emerged clearly: ...quite near...the old fool...two hundred thousand quid...the Temple girl. Well, any red-blooded Englishman, particularly one who had just won the British Open, would be bound to act. In quick succession, Septimus is hijacked outside the cottage; Rosslyn turns up, just in time to rescue Jessie from two thugs, who are then bound and locked in the cellar. The story moves briefly to London, where we first meet naughty Uncle Aubrey; but it is quickly made clear that he is not the real villain. Instead it is Vincent Chaddlerly, a monstrously fat man known to the cognoscenti as The Lurcher, who is owed money by Aubrey. Hearing of the potential £200,00, he decides to instigate the plan to capture Jessie and relieve her of her fortune. Although Roslyn is captured and imprisoned in with Septimus, it's not for long. Luckily Scotland Yard, as ever, get involved. The Lurcher is caught and so is Jessie - in Roslyn's arms.

The last story, The Death of Allan Mandeville, is the shortest, just 56 pages long. The author himself considered it the best piece of fiction he has yet delivered to any publisher. Hmm. Alumni from Oxford University are gathered in an old house near Tintagel in Cornwall. Rev. J.D. Healey, a modern cleric, with an international reputation as a preacher and marked down for a bishopric; Sir Charles Knightley, the most famous pathologist in the country. Home Office expert; Bernard Morton, with a world-wide reputation as a Professor of Physics, and perhaps the most-quoted authority on spiritualism. (It all sounds very Buchanesque - vide The Runagates Club). John Loraine, the host just back from a long spell in Africa, had extended the invitation to Mrs Isabel Mandeville, a woman of early middle age, and her younger sister, Phyllis Daneforth, a girl of twenty. Her philandering husband, Allan Mandeville is the last to arrive. It soon becomes clear that they all, ever since the Oxford days,  intensely dislike and despise him, not least the two women. Isabel Mandeville confides in John Loraine (they were once sweethearts) that for nearly three years, I've lived through hell...I found the man I had married was a beast. Her husband has also been propositioning her sister.

Something has to be done. In fact, it is planned. Mandeville is given the room through which a ghostly lady roams; she strangled her husband in that very room hundreds of years ago, but on the very date in question. Mandeville is found dead the next morning, strangled. The bedroom door had been locked from the inside. The killing is ingeniously effected. The story ends with everyone finding out how it was done, but with all agreeing to keep it from the authorities. So, it was "Death by misadventure" at the Coroner's court.

Frederic A. Kummer's 'Design for Murder' 1936 and Andrew Soutar's ' Sinister River' 1936

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.49 - 1938

This appears to be the only novel of Frederic Kummer's to be included in the 85 Crime-Book Society paperback series. Kummer (1873-1943) was an American writer, who produced novels, plays and material for the silver screen. Several of his works were, in fact, made into movies. He was born in Catonsville, Maryland and educated in public schools and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He became a life member of the American Society of Engineers and assistant editor of the Railroad Gazette. He married the playwright Clare Rodman Beecher in 1895 and they had two daughters. His son, who was given the same names as his father, with Jr. attached, was from a second marriage. Kummer died, at his home in Baltimore, in November 1943. Wikipedia lists 21 of his writings (some are novels, but Design for Murder is not included), four short stories and seven works under the heading 'Filmography'. Of some interest is that a Liberty Ship was named after him during the Second World War.

The novel is a mixture of a murder and the ensuing detection, and a slow-burning love story.  Mrs. Kirby is hosting a private luncheon party at her home, Halfway House. She is seemingly addicted to 'bling'. She laughed nervously, shaking her head; it made her jewellery rattle. Too much jewellery... priceless ear-rings, a pearl necklace, bracelets...Senator Tom Kirby, her husband is there, a tall, bony man who looks like a westerner. One of those invited is Stephen Ransom, a budding young playwright. The reader is introduced to others at the party: Count de Zara, a dark, immensely broad man; Judge Tyson, plump and smiling as a well-fed bishop...who looks like Santa Claus; Dr. Badouine, a slender, distinguished looking man, who is a psychoanalyst; Luke Reid, a lobbyist. Smart as a fox. Looks like one too. He is the legal man of all work to the Senator; Jean, the Senator and Mrs Kirby's daughter, who is a smouldering-eyed girl in black, who wants to marry de Zara, but her mother objects; finally, Lawrence Dane a tall good-looking actor presently starring in a local play.  So, as all good detective stories have it, there is an Agatha Christie type starter, with an array of potential murderers - all, as the story develops, revealing motives. 

Ransom links up with Ann Vickery, a slim, well-shaped girl with dark, shining hair and very direct grey-blue eyes...her knitted silk suit fitted her supple body like the skin of an apple. Well, we don't need to wait until page 252 to know what's going to happen. But, before that, there is the little problem of the murder. Mrs. Kirby is found later that night, stone dead slumped across her office desk. Unfortunately for Ransom and Vickery, they were overheard by a waiter at the party discussing a murder scenario which involved Mrs. Kirby and her jewels. Worse, they are first on the scene. Ann had been staying overnight, and came downstairs as a result of hearing a scream and a shout of two words: That nail. Although it takes over 200 pages, this outburst unmasks the murderer.

We now meet Inspector John Duveen, Assistant Superintendent in command of the Detective Bureau, Washington police. Initially, he focuses, quite naturally, on Ransom and Vickery as the likely culprits. Gradually, it becomes apparent to him that it must be someone else, partly because Ransom decides to pursue clues as well (it's his playwright nose). I found the manoeuvrings and red-herrings skilfully done by the author, as, one-by-one, the characters who had attended the luncheon were focused on, then discarded as suspects. I guessed the culprit about twenty pages before he/she was unmasked. The false clues the latter fed Ransom and the Inspector were quite believable. Of course, the novel ends with a kiss. And the nail proved to be the clincher.

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.50 - 1938

This is the fifth Andrew Soutar tale I have read in the Crime-Book Society's paperback series. I have another to read - Justice is Done (no. 58). Sinister River is typical of Soutar's style. Fast-flowing narrative, a few red-herrings, Scotland Yard (this time it is more the Thames River police) and, meandering through, a love story.  As the Catholic Herald of the time stated: The Thames shrouded in mystery, interspersed with bodies and smuggling, is the thread running through this tale by Andrew Soutar, written with his characteristic speed and relish, and with all the qualities of good drama and certain excitement.

The very first paragraph sets the scene and tone: In all the world there is no more alluring or beautiful river than the Thames, tracing from its source on the crest of the oolite escarpment of the Cotswold Hills, and holding in restraint the flow of admiring thoughts when the outlying suburbs of London are reached. From that point down-stream all that is sinister and mysterious blends with the flood. All that is dramatic lurks on the Embankment: all that is tragic lies hidden in the mud of the channel. It reminded me of Charles Kingsley's poem in The Water-Babies (1862), which we learned in those long-ago days at prep school:

Clear and cool, clear and cool,                                                                                                                 By laughing shallow and dreaming pool...                                                                                                  Undefiled, for the undefiled...                                                                                                                Dank and foul, dank and foul,                                                                                                                  By the smoky town in its murky cowl...                                                                                             Darker and darker the farther I go.   

When, the apparently successful businessman, James Grant, found himself face to face with disaster and chose suicide as the way out, he left four young adults behind, their mother having died some years previously. Janet, the eldest in her twenties, was small, delightfully vigorous, appreciative of life and all it had to offer...prudent without being a prude; broad-minded without encouraging liberties. Sounds like my kind of gal. Agnes, was the laughter-loving, care-free modern...she had her sports car, her hack, her friends; she went where she pleased; Muriel was the more demure one; lastly, Robert, was still at college, who could spend as carelessly as any of his friends; he could shake a good cocktail and he knew the difference between a racehorse "platter" and something with "blood" in it. The reader gets the picture: self-made wealth from the father, now all gone bar a splendid house Black Pines on the Thames bank, and four youngsters used to the good life, carefree but not entirely idle. Grant doesn't die until page 93 but, by then, we know there's more to it than a few mistakes by the old man. Janet is affianced to Hubert Braddock, a young man with no poetry in his soul, the son of Sir Claude Braddock, another seemingly wealthy financier in the city and, equally 'seemingly' a friend of James Grant. 

Out of the river by Black Pines come a series of strange events and persons. A half-drowned beautiful, foreign young woman (just like a Madonna), who disappears after being given a bed for the night and later turns up near Piccadilly Circus, apparently street-walking; a strange, uncanny little man, with a huge bald head (he was hatless), and a twisted nose.; and, most importantly, a strong-shouldered, virile, determined, and...poor man, but whom Janet could see in the darkness was clearly gentleman of yesterday. The four orphans band together to change their revered home into a good riverside house...a house run on the best of lines, perfect supervision, perfect entertainment, perfect everything, helped by the little bald-headed man, who turns out to be Gaspard, a historian writing a book about the Thames; and the strong-shouldered Adonis, one Travis, who quickly becomes a mainspring in the Grants' plan to market Black Pines as a top-class entertainment venue - Black Pine Casino! Finest site on the banks of the Thames. Thirty acres of lawn and woodland. Magnificent house. However, capital of around £10,000 is needed. Somewhat mysteriously, this is found (I didn't guess who was behind this largesse until the end).

All goes swimmingly on the surface; however, at the same time, a ruthless group are using the river to ferry barges full of drugs (under coal) and are also engaged in people-trafficking from abroad. We soon realise Travis is far from the respectful major domo he seems. He is clearly involved in finding out who are the rotters leading the drug/people trade. Quite early on, it is revealed that Sir Claude and Hubert are up to their necks in it. Towards the end of the tale, Travers cuts to the quick, addressing Sir Charles: It may be a little difficult for the simple-minded and honest who use the Thames as a pleasure resort and a waterway for traffic to believe that such fouling and polluting exists, but that is part of the subterfuge of scoundrels. And the scoundrels all meet sticky (in some cases, watery) ends. Meanwhile, Travers rows Janet up the Thames. She seductively says - "slide into that heavenly backwater, and we'll tie up and forget the musty part. The future is good enough for me" (even if, she has just found out his Christian name is Raymond). He replies? "And for me. Swing over the rudder, darling". Skulduggery and romance; what more does the 1930s reader want?

Anthony Trollope's 'The Last Chronicle of Barset' 1867

 

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Smith, Elder and Co. first edition - 1867

I have broken from my Crime-Book Society paperbacks for another Trollope. It's not that long ago that I read The Last Chronicle of Barset, but a recent purchase of the two-volume first edition (the only one I have of the author), meant I simply had to return to one of my favourite authors - that is, for his Barsetshire series. Trollope himself was never quite satisfied with the development of the plot, which consisted of the loss of a cheque, of a charge made against a clergyman for stealing it, and of absolute uncertainty on his part as to the manner in which the cheque had found its way into his hands. I cannot quite make myself believe that even such a man as Mr Crawley could have forgotten how he got it, nor would the generous friend who was anxious to supply his wants have supplied him by tendering the cheque of a third person. Be that as it may, I think the Last Chronicle is one of the most satisfying of all his novels; Trollope wrote, in his Autobiography, 'taking it as a whole I regard this as the best novel I have written'. 

The Athenaeum concluded its review of The Small House at Allington by saying, we demand of Mr Trollope that he tells us the further fortunes of its characters. Three years' later, the author commenced The Last Chronicle. It came out in weekly parts between December 1866 and July 1867 - Trollope did not give the plot away, which added to the suspense. One prominent clergyman, so affected, included 'Josiah Crawley' in the prayer for 'all those who are any ways afflicted, or distressed, in mind, body or estate'! A major reason for its success, and my enjoyment of it, was that The Last Chronicle brought back many of the main characters from the five earlier Barset novels: Bishop and Mrs Proudie; Archdeacon Grantly and his second son Henry; Dean Francis Arabin; Septimus Harding and his two daughters, Susan Grantly and Eleanor Arabin; Mark Robarts and his wife; old and young Lady Lufton (née Lucy Robarts); Adolphus Crosbie; Dr Thorne and his wife, the former Miss Dunstable; John Eames and his never-to-be wife, Lily Dale. And, of course, the whole Crawley family, including the delightful Grace.

Apart from the main story of the disputed origins of the infamous cheque, there are two main themes running through the novel. One, of course, is love, in all its forms. Not carnal but 'romantic'; pure and steadfast. There is the love of Mrs Crawley, Grace and Jane, for their near 'impossible' father. It may be a debilitating love, but it survives throughout the story. One might refer to it as 'dogged' love - the word that sustains Rev Crawley through all his travails. There is the wondrous love of Major Henry Grantly for Grace; the constant devotion of Johnny Eames for Lily Dale; the deep familial love between old Mr Harding and his two daughters; the almost spiritual, as well as practical, love of Rev Crawley for the bricklayers and other labourers at Hoggle End; even Miss Prettyman, Grace Crawley's school employer says, I love you as though you were my own.

Secondly, there is stubbornness (doggedness not pig-headedness). Above all, there is Rev. Crawley, who is stubborn from beginning to the end. It is difficult to admire this when the effects on his family are so severe. As Mark Robarts thought, behind Mr Crawley's humility was a crushing pride...there was something radically wrong within him, which had put him in antagonism with all the world, and which produced these never-dying grievances. On the other hand, Archdeacon Grantly's stubbornness (with regard to his son's potential marriage to a 'poor' girl with a probable thief as a father) conceals a kind, paternal heart. His son, Henry, is equally, if not more inflexible. One could argue that Lily Dale's stubbornness (writing in her private book, 'Lilian Dale, - Old Maid') comes across too often as mere priggishness - her creator certainly levelled that charge against her. Even Grace Crawley stubbornly refuses to take money from Lily to buy a present for her mother. Dr Tempest, also refuses to do what Mrs Proudie wishes as regards Mr Crawley. "A most stubborn and ungentlemanlike man...he is worse than the archdeacon", she says.  As Mrs Susan Grantley says of her husband and her son, they are both guilty of cross-grainedness.  "It's dogged as does it" could well be the catch-phrase for the whole tale.

Trollope peoples his story with realistic, and often delightful, minor characters - the school mistresses, the Prettymans, where Grace works; Mr George Walker, the attorney of Silverbridge; Dr Tempest, the Rector of Silverbridge; the oh-so-weak Bishop Proudie; Mr John Toogood, of Gray's Inn, who lived in Tavistock Square, where once I boarded at the university Hall of Residence; Sir Raffle Buffle, who rarely gets the upper hand with his subordinate John Eames. Mr Thumble and Mr Quiverful, both under Mrs Proudie's massive thumb.

As for the two main young ladies in the story - they are so different.

Grace Crawley - 19-year's-old, in spite of her poverty, her shabby outward apparel, and a certain thin, unfledged, unrounded form of person, a want of fulness in the lines of her figure, she was the prettiest girl in that part of the world. Grace never gave up, even during the sorest of trials, and thoroughly deserves her happy ending. Lily Dale, for all her 'priggishness', may have been a favourite with readers, but she is a little bit more difficult to like. Her attachment to the memory of the one real 'bounder' in the tale simply feels perverse. No wonder, the Chapter describing her final meeting with John Eames in the book is entitled The Shattered Tree. 

Mrs. Proudie in full flow

The two deaths (there are, in fact, three, but the suicide of Dobbs Broughton is of no real account), that of Mrs Proudie and Mr Harding ensure the reader feels it is very much Last Chronicle. 

In his Autobiography, Trollope says it was with many misgivings that I killed my old friend Mrs Proudie... so great was my delight in writing about [her], so thorough was my knowledge of all the little shades of her character. It was not only that she was a tyrant, a bully, a would-be priestess, a very vulgar woman, and one who would send headlong to the nethermost pit all who disagreed with her; but that at the same time she was conscientious, by no means a hypocrite, really believing in the brimstone which she threatened and anxious to save the souls around her from its horrors. To her enemy, Archdeacon Grantly,  Mrs Proudie was a she-Beelzebub...a vulgar, interfering, brazen-faced virago. Mind you, Mrs P. thought he was an actual emanation from Satan. Just before he kills her off, the author writes: it cannot be said that she was a bad woman, though she had in her time done an indescribable amount of evil. In some ways it is an heroic death, as she expires standing up.

As for Septimus Harding - he was a poor old man who, in spite of good friends had never risen high in his profession, and had fallen even from the moderate altitude which he had attained. But he was a man whom all loved who knew him... and so they buried Mr. Septimus Harding, formerly Warden of Hiram's Hospital in the city of Barchester, of whom the chronicler may say that the city never knew a sweeter gentleman or a better Christian.

I am afraid I must agree with those critics who found the whole Dobbs Broughton, Conway Dalrymple, Mr. Musselboro, Lady and Miss Madalina Demolines, Mrs and Miss Clara Van Siever story rather a bore. It all takes place in London - South Kensington, far away from our beloved Barchester  and it feels like an 'add-on', almost to pad out the story. All these characters simply irritated me. Some critics have considered these sequences a grave flaw. The novel is one of the longest of Trollope's novels - only The Prime Minister is longer. If the author had cut out the chapters involving the above characters, I think it would have been improved.

And Aldolphus Crosbie? The less said the better. Now, somewhat bald, somewhat fat and financially impoverished, he deserves his fate.

Nos. 398-399 - 1924 

Trollope ends his story: to me, Barset has been a real county, and its city a real city, and the spires and towers have been before my eyes, and the voices of the people are known to my ears, and the pavement of the city ways are familiar to my footsteps. And so they are to this reader. 

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Why does The Daily Telegraph keep publishing Lists, the greatest or the best something or other? Just as I finished this Blog, I looked at yet another of the silly pieces. This time it is The 50 greatest books of all time. What nonsense. Jake Kerridge - the newspaper's Chief Obituary Writer since 2025, has compiled the list. Ten of the 50 are from this quarter-century - enough said. DEI rules.

Cecil F. Gregg's 'Inspector Higgins Hurries' 1934 and Eden Phillpotts' 'A Voice from the Dark' 1925

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.41 - 1938

Never having heard of the author before, I looked him up online. There is very little about him, except that he was a chartered secretary and accountant, who was more action-oriented and less cerebral than many Golden Age mystery writers, with strong overtones of the sensationalism from earlier in the [20th] century. He wrote over 40 crime-books, 35 of them with Inspector Higgins as the protagonist, starting with The Murdered Manservant (1928) and finishing with Professional Jealousy (1960). Other  novels in the series were The Three Daggers (1929) Murder on the Bus (1930), Inspector Higgins sees it through (1934). Clearly, both Gregg and Higgins enjoyed quite a Fan Club.

What of this tale? The subtitle, in brackets, is Being a day in his life; it takes place between 10.30 p.m. one evening and exactly 24 hours later. It is certainly a breakneck story: not the dreaded stream of consciousness beloved by some authors (whom I shan't name) but a breathless account of a rapid stream of events. Higgins is standing in for his boss at New Scotland Yard, Chief-Inspector Dryan, who has suffered a convenient attack of lumbago. He is to speak at the 21st annual dinner of the Society of Writers. Although nervous, Higgins does well and is congratulated by the secretary who gives him a lift home. Then he turned, opened the gate, and strode up the gravel path. On his front doorstep was a dead body. There is a dagger in his back. Another dagger then flies through the air, just missing him. So, we are off.

He chases a man who jumps in a car; Higgins leaps onto its back but falls off when struck in the face. Stopping another car, he finds it contains none other than his wife and the lumbago-martyr Dryan. They take off in pursuit of the baddies. That car ends up falling down a cliff; but, when searched, there is no-one in it. The trio discover a nearby darkened house on the cliff-edge. A sinister man lets them in but then locks them in a dark room. It is apparent there are at least four others in the house, with guns. Dryan manages to escape; eventually Higgins and his wife also get out, by a death-defying descent on a rotting metal ladder down the cliff face. Just in time; the house blows up. It is now 4.45 a.m. Leaving his wife behind, Higgins steals a dinghy to board a ship which had been waiting for the four crooks. He manages to get on board and hides away. A Royal Navy destroyer appears (alerted by Dryan to search for the crooks' boat) and Higgins swims over to it. The crooks' vessel is escorted up the Thames and Higgins is taken by a police launch to Westminster Steps and New Scotland Yard.

Very thick fog hampers everyone's movements; the bad guys as well as the police. When Higgins' wife returns home it is to find it ransacked; meanwhile, Dryan has been attacked and rendered unconscious in his own office. Papers have been stolen - relating to the 'Waters' case, which both officers had been working on for many months. A desperate (and breakneck) attempt is made to capture the miscreants; Higgins is attacked, drugged and thrown in the Thames; but through superhuman effort manages to get back ashore, confront his dastardly criminal and solve the case. The master-mind behind the whole criminal activity is revealed and has a spectacular end. It means there is another dead body on Higgins' front doorstep. 24 hours separated the two stiffs. Jerusalem! What a day! Certainly, and just within the realms of possibility.

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.36 - 1938

This is the third Phillpotts mystery I have read in the Crime-Book Society's series. I enjoyed reading the other two - Found Drowned (1930) (Blog 20 July 2025) and Bred in the Bone (1933) (Blog 31 January 2026) - and I enjoyed this one, the earliest of the three to be written. The author is particularly good on the psychology behind the characters' actions and motives; it meant the story was quite believable throughout. I was pleased that what appeared to be supernatural turned out to be entirely man (or woman) made.

55-year-old detetective John Ringrose has retired from New Scotland Yard and has come to stay at an old friend, Jacob Brent's, Old Manor House Hotel on the Dorset coast. Two long-stay ladies are the only other occupants: Mrs Bellars, an 84-year-old lady struck with paralysis, and her maid, Miss Susan Manley. Ringrose chats to the women and then goes off to bed. and soon slept and slept well. And then a voice in the room awakened him...a child cried out in pain and terror. "Please - please - I will be good, Mr Bitton! Don't let him see me - don't let him come - please - please!. Ringrose searches the room and the one next door. Nothing. But it happened again, four nights later. He confides in Mrs Bellars and Miss Manley. They tell him that a child died in the room more than a year ago. It is the story of little Ludovic Bewes, a frail and delicate 13-year-old lad. He was ill, with shot nerves. Arthur Bitton was the servant looking after him. Ludovic's father, Lord Brooke, had died in an accident in the Italian Alps, leaving two orphaned children - 'Ludo' and an older sister, Mildred. Ludo had regular nightmares, so, one day when Bitten was absent, Miss Manley searched the two rooms. She finds, on top of a wardrobe, a head, with stiff red hair springing up off it, and a face you might see in hell...great yellow eyes, and a hole for the nose, and a mouth set with long teeth like a dog's...it was shocking! It looked alive, for the eyes were glass, and evil properly stared out of them. Clearly, it had been used by Bitton to terrify Ludo. No wonder the child pined away and died.

Ringrose decides to investigate. The cold-blooded, calculated slaughter of a child awakes the heartiest passion for justice. Returning to London, he takes on the persona of one Alec West, a retired manservant (such as Bitton) and travels to Bridport where Bitton lived with his wife. He strikes up a friendship with the man, probing all the time about his past. Then he pounced. He invites Bitton to his rented apartment in Bridport; they chat over whisky in a darkened room. The clock had just struck eleven...the outline of a red, conspicuous object crept into the light at Ringrose's shoulder, and a thing lifted its head over the chair and looked steadily at Bitton. The creature's skull was the size of a large coconut, and from a low brow sprang scrub and scarlet hair. Nose it had none, but beneath two pits that took its place there gaped lips; and the mouth opened and shut silently, revealing dog-like fangs that glittered. Its yellow eyes also shone with life, and the head moved on an invisible neck. Not Salvator Rosa, nor Edgar Poe from his ghoul-haunted woodlands, ever conjured a monster more loathsome or compact of vileness. Well, it works. The head reappears behind a book in Ringrose's study; then outside Bitton's bedroom window whilst his wife is away. The Result? He commits suicide. Ringrose destroys the repulsive puppet.

But that was just the servant, even if he had murdered the little boy. The real culprit was the younger brother of Lord Brooke and uncle to Ludo. Both were dead, and he was now the new Lord Brooke. The rest of the story details how Ringrose has a battle of wits with a very clever and evil man. A man whose one passion in life was collecting ivory; who could rarely afford this without his elder brother's financing him, but who now had all the wealth he needed. Scenes include Ringrose staying at Lord Brooke's country house at Brooke-Nort under another alias; and northern Italy. The denouement is skilfully done, but not before Phillpotts takes us into the mind of Lord Brooke (having done so very well with Arthur Bitton). The sub-plot involving Ludo's sister Mildred, and a young doctor based in Italy is woven into the main story. Finally, back at The Old Manor House Hotel, Ringrose finds out about the original 'child's voice' in the night. The author is one of the more erudite contributors to the Crime-Book Society's series.