Bruce, Leo - Neck and Neck (1951)

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

For the first Bruce I’ve read in three years, this is a pleasant surprise. Of course it features Sgt. Beef rather than the plodding Carolus Deene, so we expect (and get) a good-natured parody of the detective story, lively detection by the coarse but very likeable ex-policeman (common, but out of the common) and plenty of amusing characters. The poisoning of Townsend’s aunt and the hanging of a hated publisher are good problems but it will not take a hyper-intelligent reader to guess that the two murders are connected, and how. As usual, Bruce’s innovations are in the construction rather than in the solution (which was most famously used by the Coles in Counterpoint Murder and probably invented by Baroness Orczy).