Fearn, John Russell - Except for One Thing (1947)

(published as by Hugo Blayn)

Inverted detective novel

A crime story reminiscent of the C.S. Forester or Francis Iles novels in which a murderer attempts to pull off a perfect crime.  Richard Harvey, a chemist, decides to kill his haughty actress fiancée when she refuses to accept his withdrawal of their marriage engagement.  He creates an alter ego (Rixton Williams) and manufactures an obsessive romance between this phony man and the actress by sending flowers and letters to the theatre where she works.  He then plans to make it appear that “Williams” killed the woman.  Interesting cat-and-mouse story between Harvey and Inspector Garth.  Fearn wrote several Inspector Garth novels under the Blayn pseudonym.  Some of them were impossible crime detective stories.  This is an interesting departure for a writer primarily known for his sci-fi tales.  Fearn had by this time perfected his writing skills in the crime/mystery genre (the late 1940s to early 1950s).  After a slightly excessive, dialogue-laden, expository chapter setting up the rocky relationship between Harvey and the actress, and excusing some stretches of melodramatic dialogue that seem lifted from bad movies of this era, the book holds the reader’s attention with several unexpected twists along the way.

J.F. Norris