Another British Library Crime Classic...

A locked train compartment.

A mysterious red light in the Blackdown Tunnel.

A gun under the seat.

A missing ticket stub.

Sir Wilfred Saxonby found dead.

Was it suicide....or murder?

"If you find a man dead in a locked railway carriage, with the weapon which killed him within a couple of feet, the suggestion of suicide is bound to be pretty strong. But, all the same, there are certain objections to the suicide theory ....  We don't know enough about Saxonby and his affairs. We may find that he had a reasonable and sufficient motive for committing suicide. It is equally possible that we find that somebody had a reasonable and sufficient motive for killing him."

So begins Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard's investigation into Sir Wilfred's death. There are a lot of questions to answer, but each answer only leads Inspector Arnold to more questions. And more suspects. I'm glad it wasn't up to me to figure this mystery out; I had no clue as to who did what, or why. Arnold and his friend, Desmond Merrion, an amateur criminologist, did a very good job of ferreting out every last detail of the crime. I enjoyed the way this mystery unfolded piece by piece. I thought it was very reminiscent of those puzzling murders that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot seems to figure out so easily. Miles Burton's Death in the Tunnel is both well-written and entertaining. It's not exactly a suspenseful page-turner, but I liked it all the same. It was well worth the 25¢ I paid for it at the library's used book sale last year.

Happy Reading!

British Library Crime Classic

Title & Author:  Murder in the Museum by John Rowland
First published: 1938

How it begins: Beneath the high, gloomy dome, Henry Fairhurst looked around him. There was an air of deathly stillness in the place, and a silence broken only by the occasional rustle of pages and the subdued murmur of a borrower discussing books with an official. The British Museum Reading room is a strange place ...

A brief summary of the plot: Henry Fairhurst, who's short, wears pince-nez glasses, and lives with his older sister, Sarah, likes to play his own "Sherlock Holmes" game:  guessing the occupations of strangers. But his game takes a serious turn when he discovers the body of Julius Arnell, a professor of Elizabethan Literature, in the British Museum Reading Room, dead from cyanide poisoning. Inspector Shelley and Sergeant Cunningham are the detectives investigating the murder, but Henry is determined to help them solve the case, whether they want his help, or not. And it's he who discovers that another expert in Elizabethan Literature, Professor Wilkinson, also died in the British Museum Reading Room five months earlier. Coincidence? Henry thinks not. And neither do Inspector Shelley and Sergeant Cunningham.

My thoughts: Is it wrong to use the word delightful when describing a murder mystery? Because that's how I'd describe this book. I liked how each of the main characters had their own little quirks. Inspector Shelley and his colleague are pretty witty. And it was nice that Arnell's daughter, Violet, wasn't one of those shrinking/fainting women that are so often depicted in books from this time period. There's lots of dialogue, and I thought the mystery moved along from one suspect to the next at a pretty good clip. All in all, this old-fashioned mystery is a rollicking fun ride.

Happy Reading!

A British Crime Classic...

Title & Author:  Seven Dead by J. Jefferson Farjeon
Genre:  Classic British Mystery
First line:  This is not Ted Lyte's story. He merely had the excessive misfortune to come into it, and to remain in it longer than he wanted.

Plot summary:  When six men and one woman are found dead at Haven House, it appears to be a mass suicide. Only the shuttered room where they were found was locked from the outside. And there's a portrait of a young girl in the dining room that's been shot through the heart. Who are these seven strangers? And what happened to Mr. Fenner and Dora, his niece, the owners of Haven House? Detective-Inspector Kendall and freelance journalist, Thomas Hazeldean, suspect there's something much more sinister going on, and they're determined to find out the truth.

My thoughts:  I like how these classic British mysteries are more about piecing together a bunch of seemingly random clues than about shocking crime scenes or dark plot twists. It's refreshing. I also really liked Hazeldean's brash optimism and cheerful confidence. His over-protectivness of Dora, and her 'feminine' fearfulness was a bit of a cliche, but then this book was written in 1939. As the mystery proceeds, Detective-Inspector Kendall ends up doing a lot of explaining as to his theories of what really happened, but I loved his understated British humor so much I didn't mind. I hope he's in Farjeon's other books. And even though the mystery itself got a bit fantastical towards the end, I still thought this one was a lot of fun.

Happy Reading!

Another British Crime Classic to check out:

Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay

A Classic British Mystery...

"Publicity was Miss Cordell's bugbear. Respectable publicity was bad enough.... but shameful publicity! A death mystery! This was terrible!

Four Freshman at Persephone College--Sally Watson, Daphne Loveridge, Gwyneth Pane and Nina Harson--are intent upon forming their own secret society when they spot a canoe floating past them on the Cherwell with a dead body lying inside. It's their college bursar, Myra Denning. Now Sally and her friends are intent on protecting their college and figuring out how and why Myra Denning died. Of course, the local police and Scotland Yard have their own ideas.

"Undergraduates, especially those in their first year, are not, of course, quite sane or quite adult."

A British Library Crime Classic, Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay was first published in 1935 and recently reprinted in 2016. And I'm glad it was because it's an entertaining mystery. The four amateur sleuths reminded me a little of Nancy Drew and her friends. And I liked the 1930s references and the college setting a lot. And it's funny, too. The actual police, though, do the bulk of the mystery solving ... with a little help from the four girls.

While Death on the Cherwell isn't quite as good as an Agatha Christie, this lighthearted mystery is a lot of fun. I, for one, would love to read Hay's other two detective novels, especially if they're as enjoyable as this one.

Happy Reading!