Some Short Crime Fiction Reviews

Money from Holme – Michael Innes (1964)

The premise of this book is excellent – an art critic and sometime painter turns up at the posthumous exhibition of the work of Sebastian Holme, a talented young artist killed in a revolution in Africa, and is startled to find Holme amongst those present. He is certain it is Holme – despite his having grown a beard and the fact even his estranged wife believes him dead – because of an injury to Holme’s hand inflicted by Cheel years earlier.

An injury inflicted when Sebastian Holme came to the aid of a young woman Cheel still kids himself wanted the thrill of a ‘faux rape’ despite the fact that the 'silly little girl' (Cheel's thoughts again) screamed. 

Because Cheel is, unmistakably, a nasty piece of work, and although his self-justifications are amusing up to a point, they do drift past that point more than once. For example his internal dialogue about Sebastian Holme, once he persuades Holme to tell him why he is in hiding, quickly shifts from cavalier and advantage-taking to actually sinister. 

Which wouldn't trouble me – I don't have to like the main protagonist to enjoy a book - except on top of Cheel we have the casual racism of almost everyone else who describes the events of the revolution, a more general atmosphere of sexism (which was not present in other books I've read by the same author) and the fact that the foreign proprietor of the gallery can’t open his mouth without a couple of malapropisms per sentence. 

It’s a shame because the story itself, and Cheel’s unpleasant but amusing internal dialogue, are so well done, and there's a farcical element that is genuinely funny. I didn't hate the book, but it did make me wince.

 

Dead Lion – John and Emery Bonett (1949)

Another predatory male (and critic) is the corpse in this book – Cyprian Duse, who is initially thought to be the victim of an accident when a broken sash window crashes down on him while he’s leaning out. However his nephew, who has just arrived from America to stay with him, first picks up a suspicious phone call and then discovers someone has tried to get into Cyprian’s desk. Not just that, but he knows his uncle's reputation as a critic, and finds himself considering all the reasons he might be unpopular.

Then when he does get into the desk there are six records Duse has had made of women who loved him, and which at least two of the women are desperate to get back..

I’m afraid I didn’t quite believe in those records – one or two women might be daft and besotted enough to do such a thing, but six, I felt, was pushing it. That and the nephew falling in love with one of the recordings was the weakest part of the whole book.  Also what made him so sure the records were anything to do with anything?

It picked up again though, despite a few unlikely coincidences, and there’s an unexpected and rather satisfying end.

 

Murder by Matchlight – E C R Lorac – (1945)

Still in the world of rationing (our young hero above comments at one point that being from the States he hadn’t realised that being given some chocolate biscuits for an evening party practically amounted to a declaration of love). This time earlier on (half a pint of milk between two, as one woman says, and lucky if you get that. At another point the inspector and someone he was putting out incendiaries with drink cold leftover tea before leaving a building that might be about to collapse).

The story begins with a young man, sitting in Regents Park in the dark (the railings having been removed and the park therefore open at night) where he witnesses a murder on the bridge just as the victim has struck a match to light a cigarette. 

But no footsteps were heard by him or by a man hiding beneath the bridge, and while Inspector Macdonald is poking around he finds out the dead man isn’t who he was pretending to be.

Again, he’s not a character you can grieve over much. I should note some mild anti-Irish prejudice here, not because the dead man was involved in trouble in Ireland (Macdonald finds out that he also tried very hard to join up, despite not being fit, and ties the two things together as ‘wanting a scrap’ and therefore, from the point of view of a country at war, admirable) but the Irish waster who has charm and almost no morals is a cliché – there is another, living off his wife and worse in Dead Lion in fact.

Under the circumstances, with bombs dropping and sons in the armed forces, people might be excused for politely asking why the police care about the death of this one, fairly useless, individual, and in fact the question is asked even by the police themselves. All the time they investigate there are flattened streets and people with horrible injuries and a sense that although they want to get to the bottom of it, even Macdonald knows that there are bigger things than their investigation, and the living are more important than the dead. 

I was certainly more concerned that my favourite people would all survive than who actually dunnit, but that’s a tribute to the author’s ability to take a snapshot of the time, not a criticism of the mystery. (Also E C R Lorac wrote Fire in the Thatch and she killed off my favourite character early on, so I had reason to be suspicious).