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The Perfect Murder Case

Page history last edited by J F Norris 13 years, 2 months ago

Bush, Christopher - The Perfect Murder Case (1929)

 

B

 

Solidly constructed, with a well worked out plot, and good detection: clever deductions from a soiled letter, and, in what amounts to a Carrian locked room murder, a window (the murderer leaves the room fastened on the inside and escapes through the window, closing it behind him).  It’s the most heavily Croftsian of all Bush’s books: the victim’s four nephews all have cast-iron alibis; trailing of suspects; trips to France (Provence), one by Superintendent Wharton and one by Franklin, following the main suspect.  The murder and method are both revealed well before the end, and the final third is the search for proof—all very engrossing.  I guessed the main trick fifty pages before it was revealed.  The idea is the same as The Case of the Amateur Actor, and anticipates Christie’s Lord Edgware Dies by four years, which means it may be original here—unless Crofts used it?

 

Note that Franklin plays a much bigger part than Travers—F. is the hero.

·        In-depth police investigation at murder scene—fixes time (4 minutes)

·        Stonewalled—investigation peters out in Ch. 13—police are baffled

·        Villain lays false trail incriminating imaginary South African cousin

·        Trip to France—c.f. trip to Italy in Dead Man’s Music

·        P. 91: Bush admires Gaboriau’s Lecoq, ‘the most human and credible of the storybook detectives’

·        P. 194: Chesterton’s preface to detective story about murderer introduced towards end

 

Nick Fuller

 

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