Cole, GDH and M - Burglars in Bucks / The Berkshire Mystery (1930)

Review by Nick Fuller

3/5

This tale of a country-house burglary, recounted, like Collins’s Moonstone and Sayers’s Documents in the Case (also 1930, and, according to the TLS, published within a month of Bucks), almost entirely through the characters’ letters and notes, is certainly above average for the authors in terms of plotting and detection. Unfortunately, when dealing with a bloodless crime (which, outside the short story, very few authors can handle successfully), the question “Who cares?” tends to come to mind. Still, there is enough drawing-room comedy to keep the reader entertained, even though not interested in the crime.

Review by R E Faust

For the eighth Supt. Wilson mystery, the Coles adopt the mechanism pioneered by Wilkie Collins in ‘The Moonstone’ and relate the story entirely through letters, notes, newspaper clippings and reports of conversations, apart from a short narrative section at the end when the detective explains the mechanism of the crime. Fortunately, this method doesn’t prevent the intricacy of the plotting being conveyed adequately to the reader. However, the central problem – a jewellery robbery at a country estate – lacks sufficient significance to sustain the readers interest in the same way that a well-constructed murder mystery would, despite one of the suspects falling victim to a brutal attack late on.

Everard Blatchington, that wayward sprig of nobility first encountered in ‘The Blatchington Tangle’, reappears on the scene and his relationship with Wilson – comprising equal parts distrust and respect – adds a frisson of confrontation which is welcome, if otherwise strangely lacking elsewhere, particularly given the remaining characters interactions. Generally the writing is of a good quality, with each individual voice believable, whether conveyed through a letter or conversation. However, ultimately this is rather a disappointment overall and one is left pondering how much better it could have been if there was a more gripping crime at the centre of the story. Well constructed and written, but lacking that essential element which would raise it closer to classic status.

R E Faust