Nigel Strangeways is working out the last few months of his war service in the Ministry of Morale when an ex-colleague returns from Germany with a poison capsule. While he is showing it round the office a secretary collapses and dies, and the capsule disappears.
It's a good start, but the rest of the book doesn't live up to it. The main suspect is so obvious that Blake has to do considerable sleight-of-hand to persuade us that it might be otherwise, including another crime which turns out to be unrelated and a neurotic artist who thinks he might have done it but can't remember. The explanation for the missing capsule is completely banal, and the book ends with a tedious dialogue between the two chief suspects during which they both explain at great length how the other could have done it, followed by a repetitive chapter in which Nigel explains which one did do it. The book is long (256 pages) and would benefit from cutting out most of the psychology and finding a more plausible explanation for the murderer's bizarre behaviour before the killing. (And is it really likely that a deadly poison capsule could suddenly drop out of sight in a small room full of people? I'm finding it increasingly hard to swallow these 'you-were-distracted-so-you-didn't-notice...' type explanations.)
Blake is obviously keen to record of some of the unique people he had worked with during the war; but the act of squeezing them into a detective story distorts them so that most of them come across as merely tiresome and misguided.
Disappointing.
Jon.
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