Blurbs for James Hilton Mysteries

(Note: Books are listed alphabetically.)

Was It Murder? (1931)

(a. k. a. Murder at School)

by James Hilton (as by Glen Trevor)

Dover Books (1979)

Cover price: $5.95

"England expects," replied Revell, lightly purloining some one else's epigram, "that every young man some day will write a novel." -- from Was It Murder?

'Just as young T. H. White wrote one forgotten detective novel before achieving fame as a writer, James Hilton, prior to Lost Horizon and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, pseudonymously authored a finely crafted but critically neglected detective mystery, which remained obscure even at the apex of Hilton's renown. Many Hilton readers are unaware of the existence of Was It Murder?; most have never seen the long out-of-print edition published under the pen-name Glen Trevor.

'Was It Murder? (English title Murder at School), like Goodbye, Mr. Chips, takes place in that most traditional and confounding of English settings, the public school. Colin Revell, impudent Oxonian and sometime sleuth, returns to his alma mater Oakington to puzzle over a schoolboy's "accidental" death. The accidents multiply in frequency and horror as Colin idly pokes about the Gothic quads, and the tightly modulated suspense ripens with a generous foretaste of Hilton's later acclaimed talent: finely perceived, individual characters (Dr. Roseveare, the School Head; Lambourne, the neurasthenic master; the flirtatious Mrs. Ellington and Scotland Yard's imperturbable Detective Guthrie); overwhelming atmosphere, and full complement of adventure and romance.

'As with T. H. White, Hilton's sole exercise in the detective genre stands out in style and authentic background. But while Hilton went on to the dazzling peaks of Shangri-la, Was It Murder? lay buried under the indifference accorded to most youthful efforts. Only now, in this first edition in many decades, can James Hilton's distinctive touch be enjoyed in a thoroughly English thriller.'