B
The author’s only detective story. Highly topical—the plot involves a Fascist organisation in an English country town, and the quarrel between the Fascist Colonel (well-meaning and sympathetic, unlike Captain Antrobus) and the Canon over a statue of Claudius (the Italian Mussolini-like conqueror of the British, rather than Derek Jacobi’s sympathetic stutterer) and Cynobeline (pre-Roman British civilisation). The murder doesn’t happen until p. 120 odd (of 192 pp.), but Casson keeps the reader’s interest with lots of witty and observant reflections on English society. There’s little mystery that the Colonel is the murderer; the crime is similar to Chesterton’s “Curse of the Golden Cross”—archaeological hoax as booby-trap, fanaticism as motive—but the method is highly ingenious and simple (salting dig to ensure victim will be in right spot for trench wall to collapse on him). Amateur detection convincing, because experts bring knowledge of disciplines (archaeology; architecture) to bear on problem, co-operate to construct case to take to police, who then take over.
Similar idea to Blake’s The Smiler with the Knife: threat to Britain comes not from the left, but from the right—land-owners, army-men, etc.
Nick Fuller.
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