B
Like Crossword Mystery, this is an attack on fascism and totalitarianism, based (according to the prologue) on a topical event—which disproves the commonly held theory that English detective writers weren’t interested in politics or social commentary. (They tend not to focus on them in the way Rendell’s social tracts do, but they often included ironic asides about the changing face of London or the countryside, the government, the class system, big business, modern morality, law or the War.)
The story’s fast-paced (I read it in a day) with lots of excitement (car chases, Bobby gets kidnapped, excellent scenes at sea, and love scenes). It’s more of an adventure story with crime than a detective story, since there’s very little mystery: the first (expected) murderer confesses to Bobby two-thirds through, and is later murdered, very near the end; the second murderer is immediately obvious (ink on his finger, leaky pen)—the interest lies not in his guilt, but in the evil régime that makes him a murderer to save his family from the concentration camp.
This is also the book in which Bobby meets his future wife Olive—he suspects her of the murder, and she threatens to shoot him at gun-point. How to get off on the wrong foot! Bobby’s dilemma is whether to protect the girl, or to tell the police. Quite different from Bentley, Blake, Marsh or Sayers, in which the heroine is wrongfully accused and triumphantly cleared by the hero.
· Published by Gollancz—left-wing.
· Liberal detective writers: H.C. Bailey, Nicholas Blake, G.D.H. and M. Cole, Gladys Mitchell, E.R. Punshon; also Raymond Postgate, C. St. John Sprigg, and Ellen Mary Wilkinson. Possibly also Major Street (Masaryk), and Agatha Christie (One, Two, Buckle My Shoe).
Nick Fuller.
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