Cole, GDH and M - The Man from the River (1928)
Review by Nick Fuller
4/5
It is always a pleasure to discover that a book of which one has fond memories from five years ago is as good (if not better) as one remembers it. This has all the right ingredients of its period: a small Essex village setting, with solicitors, stockbrokers (one found in the river) and Bright Young Things; plenty of wit and style — an entertaining, cheerfully unfacetious read; and a leisurely summer holiday mood, which extends even to the great Wilson (poor man — every time he tries to “get away from it all,” he only succeeds in stumbling upon a corpse!). The mechanics of the murder are sound, as befits an adaptation — and even improvement — upon the rope trick employed in Chesterton’s “Miracle of Moon Crescent”. Particularly good is the fact that they take heed of the fact that the crime could have been seen; even better is the way in which the would-be blackmailer defeats his own schemes.
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