Tag Archives: vintage crime

The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith – Readers Imbibing Peril XVII

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The Blunderer by Patricia Highsmith was first published in 1956. It’s full of suspense and atmosphere.

Walter Stackhouse is a young handsome and succesful lawyer, he seems to have it all, but he has been married to Clara who is an estate agent for two years and she’s very work driven, a family is not on her agenda, she is more attached to her dog Jeff than to her husband.

In fact Clara is very difficult and is really in need of a psychiatrist, but she refuses to see one. She doesn’t have a good word to say about Walter and constantly criticises him, she embarrasses him in front of friends and one by one his friends are deserting him, Clara is isolating him. They’ve previously talked about getting a divorce but decided to give the marriage another go.

Walter tells Clara that he loves her so often he actually believes it, but when he reads about the murder of a woman in a newspaper he becomes obsessed with the case, he thinks the husband did it, but the husband hasn’t been arrested. Walter feels the need to visit a bookshop which belongs to the murdered woman’s husband, and so begins a catalogue of poor decisions, downright stupidity and silly lies which lead to a lot of trouble. In fact at times I began to feel sorry for Clara for having been married to him!

I really enjoyed this one, despite it being quite a stressful read. There’s such an atmosphere of danger or should I say peril for a character that I originally had quite a lot of sympathy for.

There have been various film adaptations of this novel, most recently A Kind of Murder which was released in 2016.

I read this one for the Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge. RIP XVII

Swing, Brother, Swing by Ngaio Marsh

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Swing, Brother, Swing by Ngaio Marsh was first published in 1949. It’s an Inspector Alleyn mystery.

Lord Pastern is a well-known member of the English aristocracy, notorious for his outrageous behaviour, which all seems to be aimed at embarrassing his long-suffering wife. He lurches from one obsession to the next and in this tale it’s jazz that has grabbed his attention. He fancies himself as a jazz drummer and is part of a band called Breezy Bellairs and his Boys.

The band members seem to have been chosen for their eccentricities, they all like to make a big noise but the music isn’t enough for them. They plan to put on a bit of a show with a gun firing blanks being
used as part of the entertainment, of course, nothing goes to plan.

One of ‘the boys’ is Carlos Rivera and he has his eyes on Felicite de Suze, Lord Pastern’s step-daughter. She’s quite keen on him, but it’s not going to go down well with the family. Rivera is obviously not the sort that they expect to marry into the family.

This was an enjoyable read which kept me guessing.

Scarweather by Anthony Rolls – 20 Books of Summer 2022

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Scarweather by Anthony Rolls (Colwyn Edward Vulliamy) was first published in 1934 but it has been reprinted by British Library. This is the book which I took with me on holiday to Orkney recently, not knowing anything about it so it felt a wee bit spooky when it turned out that archaeology and an ancient burial mound featured in the plot, as I was visiting neolithic burial sites in Orkney. It’s amazing how often I inadvertently take books with me on holiday that relate to my destination in some way.

Unusually the story takes place over 15 years or so, beginning just before the First World War. John Farringdale accompanied by his cousin Eric Foster goes to visit Tolgen Reisby, a famous archaeologist at his remote home Scarweather in the north of England. Reisby’s wife is years younger than him and they seem rather mismatched. Eric is obviously attracted to her, she’s described as having ‘a magnificent figure and stately carriage’ and that description is part of the problem for me with this book. I just didn’t enjoy the author’s writing style which seemed very stilted to me, perhaps it was supposed to be. I also found the whole thing to be very predictable. I don’t think I will bother reading any others by this author.

Luckily my holiday in Orkney was much mmore enjoyable!

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

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In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes was first published in 1947 but as you can see it has been reprinted by Penguin. From the cover the book was obviously made into a film, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. If I ever saw it it must have been back in the year dot.

Dix Steele had been in the American Air Force during World War 2, he was based in England but civilian life is difficult for him, he has serious mental problems, can’t stand any sort of noise and has been living off the hand-outs from a wealthy uncle. But now he has moved to Los Angeles and is staying in the apartment of Mel Terriss an old wartime acquaintance. Dix is supposedly writing a book and Terriss has moved to Rio for a while, leaving Dix with the use of everything of his, including his car and clothes!

Unknown to Dix another old wartime friend is living in the neighbourhood and when he bumps into Brub Nicolais Dix is surprised to discover that he is a detective. Brub is under quite a lot of stress as it seems there’s a serial killer operating in the area!

I really liked this one, particularly as the plot took a few unexpected turns – for me anyway.

I imagined all of the characters as being quite a bit younger than the people who were cast in the film. Much as I love Bogart he wouldn’t have been my choice to play Dix, he would have been too old, but that was common in Hollywood at that time, the male actors seemed to have much longer careers than the women and so were given parts that they were about 15 years too old for – or maybe the guys just looked older in those days!

The Widow of Bath by Margot Bennett

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The Widow of Bath by the Scottish author Margot Bennett was first published in 1952.

The book begins with Hugh Everton having a meal in a hotel in Margate, he works for a travel agency and part of his job consists of going around hotels and trying them out, he’s very jaded by the whole thing with the same meals appearing at the different hotels.

When a group of people walk into the bar Everton realises that one of the women is Lucy, an old flame of his, and she’s with her new husband, Gregory Bath who is a retired judge. Everton agrees to go back to the judge’s house for drinks along with Lucy’s aunt and some others.

When murder ensues Everton finds himself in a difficult position as he has had a bit of a brush with the law in the past.

For me this was mainly a bedtime read, and that might have been the problem with it as I found it to be too convoluted for a tired brain, otherwise I wasn’t really enamoured with any of the characters and that’s always disappointing. However the writing is good and I appreciated the humour.

The cover design has been taken from a British Rail travel poster advertising Plymouth on the south coast of England. I had a look at modern photographs of the area on the internet and was very happy to see that all that art deco architecture has survived, which is quite surprising considering how comprehensively Plymouth was bombed during World War 2.

Thank you to British Library who sent me a copy of this book for review.

Plymouth

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

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Ballet Shoes cover

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett was first published in 1929. I loved this one although I must admit that I love the film even more, it’s the Humphrey Bogart aspect of course, he’s brilliant as Sam Spade. I suspect that everyone knows the tale.

Miss Wonderly (tall and pliantly slender without angularity anywhere) visits the office that Sam Spade shares with his partner Miles Archer. She wants Spade to track down Floyd Thursby, the man who has run off with her younger sister. Archer gets the job of tailing Thursby. It doesn’t end well for either of them.

I love Hammett’s writing style. He puts so much detail in, every movement is mapped. His books must have been a dream to adapt to film. You can see the original film trailer below.

Appleby’s Answer by Michael Innes – 20 Books of Summer 2021

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Appleby's Answer cover

Appleby’s Answer by the Scottish author Michael Innes was published by Gollancz in 1973 so I suppose that means it’s vintage crime now although that seems a bit strange to me, however in some ways the book seems even older than that. It begins with Miss Pringle sharing a railway compartment with a strange man. Miss Pringle is a crime writer with a penchant for ecclesiastical settings and she’s travelling to London to attend a dinner with a group of fellow crime writers.

Captain Bulkington is the other traveller and strangely he’s reading a copy of one of her books, when he recognises her from the photo on the dust jacket the two get into conversation. Bulkington has a private school, a crammer which coaches young men to pass the entrance exam for top drawer universities. It’s a business that he has taken up since retiring from the army, but he has a proposition for Miss Pringle. He wants to collaborate with her in writing a book and invites her to stay at his establishment, but Miss Pringle has her suspicions about him and just agrees to correspond with him instead.

However she decides to travel to Bulkington’s village to do a bit of detective work and discovers that there are only two students enrolled in the crammer, and neither of them seem to be university material. It seems that Bulkington has some sort of hold over them.

Appleby and his wife have travelled to the same Wiltshire village to visit friends and so become embroiled in the affair.

This isn’t a murder mystery but is an entertaining read with quite a lot of humour thrown in. My copy of the book is an old Gollancz one and I couldn’t help thinking of Diana Athill who would have been working as an editor there when this one was published, I don’t think she mentions Michael Innes in any of her books though. This was one of my 20 Books of Summer.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

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The Thin Man cover

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett was first published in 1932.

Nick Charles had retired from the sleuthing business to concentrate on managing his finances which seem to have prospered since his marriage to the wealthy Nora, but he gets drawn back into the detection business when Julia Wolf is found shot dead. She had been the ‘confidential secretary’ to Clyde Miller Wynant, an inventor and one time husband of Mimi, who just happened to find Julia’s body. Mimi is well known to Nick, as are her children, Dorothy and Tristan.

There’s a lot of boozing going on in this book, so it all feels authentically like the America of Prohibition era. I enjoyed the relationship between Nick and Nora although it is a bit bizarre, Nora is too easy going in my opinion, but maybe she was Dashiell Hammett’s idea of the ideal wife!

There are several ghastly characters to really enjoy disliking, and there’s plenty of snappy dialogue. So there’s a lot to like about this book. It’s the first one by Dashiell Hammett that I’ve read and I believe he was the first writer to develop this style, but I have to say that I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Raymond Chandler’s writing, but that may just have been because I found it just a wee bit too convoluted with a lot of characters to keep track of. Maybe our unusually hot spell was affecting my brain!

Another Little Christmas Murder by Lorna Nicholl Morgan

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Another Little Christmas Murder by Lorna Nicholl Morgan was first published in 1947 and then it was titled Another Little Murder. It’s a bit cheeky of the new publisher littlebrown to stick in the word ‘Christmas’ as the book has nothing to do with the Christmas season although it is set in a very snowy Swaledale, Yorkshire.

Dilys Hughes is an optimistic young woman, she would have to be given that she drives around in a very unreliable car. She’s a commercial traveller, dealing in ointments and rubbing oils to cure rheumatics and such. She also helps to develop the medicines.

On her journey through Yorkshire the wintry weather gets worse and worse and she ends up stuck in snow. Settling down to wait for a lift from a passing motorist, it isn’t long before one turns up. Inigo Brown is driving to visit his father after receiving a letter from him. His father had recently married Theresa, a much younger woman, and Inigo has yet to meet her.

Inigo invites Dilys to stay at his father’s large remote house, as her car is well and truly stuck in the snow. Almost as soon as they get there various other refugees from the weather turn up needing food and shelter, and Theresa seems happy to cater for them all, but strange things begin to happen and some of the other guests are very odd.

This was enjoyable although at times I had trouble keeping track of all the male characters as they arrived, that was probably my fault though.

I hadn’t heard of Lorna Nicholl Morgan before. Apparently she only wrote four books. She was born in England in 1913 but moved to America in 1954. All four of her books were published in the 1940s and she doesn’t seem to have published any more after emigrating, unless she used another name.

The Deadly Truth by Helen McCloy

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The Deadly Truth

The Deadly Truth by Helen McCloy was originally published in 1941 but was re-printed by Agora Books last month. It’s a Dr Basil Willing mystery, he’s a psychiatrist who works in New York. Unusually for him he’s spending the summer on Long Island, renting a cottage on an estate which belongs to Claudia Bethune. She’s a wealthy socialite, three times married and she loves throwing parties. It seems that she gets most of her joy from being cruel and nasty to her guests though.

Dr Roger Slater is a research scientist who is infatuated with Claudia, so when she visits him in his laboratory he can’t stop himself from boasting about a new truth serum that he has developed. But when Claudia leaves the lab he realises that she has stolen a small aluminium tube of the serum. He’s furious, he’ll get into a lot of trouble from his employers if they find out. It looks like Claudia intends to have fun with her guests by doctoring their drinks with the serum.

Things don’t go quite the way Claudia plans them to, she’s in for a very big surprise. Dr Basil Willing gets involved and his investigation uncovers blackmail and jewellery theft, it seems that just about everyone had something to hide.

I really enjoyed this one, not only for the mystery and investigation but I appreciated the author’s descriptive abilities. I like to know where I am when I’m taken into a room by an author and I think you can see from the description below that Helen McCloy was interested in painting the scene for the reader.

The curtains were satin brocade of buttercup yellow. The walls were washed a pale primrose, the ceiling a sour cream colour, and two mantelpieces of tawny ochre marble faced each other at opposite ends of the room. The parquet was blond, the woodwork ivory white, and the chairs were covered with petit point in the same faded buff and blue as the Chinese rug. There was a Chinese cabinet of brilliant black lacquer with a procession of mandarins eternally wending their diagonal way across its double doors picked out in tarnished gilt.

She has one character saying:
If I may be permitted to paraphrase Aaron Burr: Truth is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.

The politicians of the moment seem to have adhered to that one well!

I was sent a digital copy of this book by Agora Books via NetGalley. Thank you.