Bruce, Leo - Dead for a Ducat (1956)

B

Bruce isn’t a first-class writer: too predictable and lacking originality—rehashes other people’s plots.  The solution is a combination of Hull’s Murder of My Aunt, Crispin’s Swan Song, and Allingham’s Police at the Funeral, but competently done—well-clued and constructed on the Carr / Christie model.  Too many of the characters are cartoons with vocal tics (Capitalisation, Gurgi-like rhymings and linings).

Nicholas Fuller.