Review: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Significantly better than the previous novel in the series ( The Murder on the Links ), and I'm not sure whether that's because of Hastings' absence or despite it.

What I mean is that Hastings was an actual impediment in Links, but here I felt Poirot was different without him, as if the Poirot-and-Hastings collaboration was itself almost a character. But Poirot finds a kind of substitute in the doctor who narrates this book, taking him with him while he investigates (like Hastings, and like the young doctors in Austin Freeman, he seems to have a lot of leisure time despite theoretically having a job), and bouncing ideas off him. Poirot remains, as always, inscrutable about his conclusions from the various clues, until the traditional gathering of the suspects for the dramatic reveal.

And it is dramatic. The twist in this particular book is famous, and I did know about it in advance, but even so, I found it hard to spot the clues. It all comes down to timing, like so many mystery stories.

The process, the incidental human stories that get revealed (as usual in this sort of cosy mystery, everyone has some sort of secret; Poirot explicitly says to a group of the suspects that he knows each of them is hiding something), and the clever solution are all at a high standard by classic mystery measures. The doctor's sister alone is worth the price of admission: the centre of the village gossip network, she's better than a newspaper at gathering, generating and disseminating rumour and speculation, which varies from highly accurate to highly inaccurate, but which she always delivers with the same level of confidence. The romance subplots are a little weak, particularly without Hastings and his susceptibility to redheads, and the police's main suspect is offstage for almost the entire novel and a near-nonentity once he does appear, but it still lands right at the top of the Silver tier of my annual recommendation list.

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Review: The Crimson Circle

The Crimson Circle by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A rip-roaring suspense thriller in which a blackmailer, extortionist and murderer is pursued by a stolid Scotland Yard detective and a private investigator who is more the policeman's colleague than his rival.

Wealthy men are receiving notes marked with a crimson circle, telling them to pay large amounts of money or be killed. Several are killed - to encourage the others - and much blame falls on the Scotland Yard man for not preventing the deaths, or making much progress on identifying the criminal. Because it is, mainly, a single criminal, who finds out people's guilty secrets and uses a carrot-and-stick approach to get them to do key elements of the crimes, without being able to recognize each other or him thanks to strict compartmentalization. It reminds me of a classic science fiction story about what's basically a prediction of Taskrabbit, which is used to get people to do acts, innocent in themselves, that add up to criminality or resistance to authority - though here the stooges are usually fully aware that their actions are criminal or contributing to a crime. (If anyone knows the story I'm thinking of - which could be by Simak or Heinlein or someone of that era, though it might be one of the cyberpunks, maybe even Cory Doctorow - please let me know in the comments.)

Weaving through the narrative is a young woman, who seems at various times to be a thief, one of the stooges, perhaps a murderer, maybe even the Crimson Circle. A young man is in love with her despite himself, which was the aspect of the story I found weakest. Wallace's romances are generally not well motivated or well developed, and this is no exception. The young man's father is one of the early victims, and seemingly the only one whose death is really regrettable, extremely wealthy or powerful men being what they are.

The stakes are raised when the Crimson Circle threatens a dozen cabinet ministers, and the policeman, who has just been basically fired for incompetence, is kept on in order to work alongside the private detective at the latter's insistence. The final reveal is a big twist, and makes sense of something that seemed a departure from the usual Wallace approach when it first appeared. All throughout, it seemed like people knew things they shouldn't, but the twist explains a lot (not all) of this.

There's plenty of tension and drama and action along the way, and all in all, it's a strong book of its type, namely highly-coloured pulp thriller. No wonder so many of Wallace's books were filmed.

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Review: The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar

The Glorious and Epic Tale of Lady Isovar by Dave Dobson
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

A fairly typical "funny" fantasy, in that it's trying much too hard to be funny and not succeeding nearly as well as it thinks it is (IMO). It alternates chapters between a warrior woman who has one of those egos so large that it bends reality around itself - at least for the owner of the ego - and her squire or, really, minder, whose job appears to be to prevent her causing bloody disasters through getting hold of the wrong end of the stick and refusing to be corrected, and also to keep her alive. This is fairly amusing, but it's just laid on much too thick (especially in the Isovar chapters), and the setting is the usual off-the-shelf sword-and-sorcery world. I stopped reading at 18%.

On the upside, it is much better edited than the other books I've read by the same author, though there are still a few issues.

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Review: Angel Esquire

Angel Esquire by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this at the recommendation of my wife, who had just listened to it on Librevox. She was right - it was amusing as well as action-packed. There are no shortage of villains; even the romantic male lead is a bit of a villain, though he despises himself for it.

The premise is one of those "wills with puzzles" that seem to have been such a popular trope for detective novelists. The former owner of a casino in Egypt has died, and left his giant fortune - or rather, the opportunity to access his giant fortune by solving a puzzle - to three people: two of his former confederates, and the daughter of a man whose ruin came about through gambling at the casino in question.

Christopher Angel, known as Angel Esquire, an odd sort of special inspector at Scotland Yard, takes an interest on behalf of the female heir, who is frankly a bit weaksauce, especially when compared with some of Wallace's intrepid heroines; she does almost nothing to influence the course of events, and is mostly there to be rescued and explained to, and to be fallen in love with by one of the former confederates of the casino owner. She is also, by a convenient coincidence that keeps the cast tight and puts her and her protectors in danger, the former secretary of a publisher who published a book that may hold the clue to the puzzle, and who gave a copy to her for no particular reason. By another convenient coincidence of the same kind, the author of the book is a close associate of the gang of ruffians who are after the puzzle solution, though that doesn't help them much, since he's suffering from dementia. The puzzle solution, in the end, is not that difficult and a bit of a let-down.

Apart from those two convenient coincidences and the weak female lead, though, it's enjoyable, funny, quirky, and full of well-described action.

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Review: The Duke of York's Steps

The Duke of York's Steps by Henry Wade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A twisty piece of classic detective fiction.

An elderly banker with a known health condition (an aneurism that could easily burst under stress) dies of exactly this cause after being jostled by someone hurrying down the steps of the title. It's treated as something between an accident and natural causes, until his daughter raises suspicions. Why has the person who jostled him not come forward, even in response to her advertisements, to apologize for any part he might have had in the death?

With this slim suspicion to go on, Inspector Poole begins to investigate. The dead man's son looks a likely suspect: he has motive (he badly needed money, and his father was about to cut him out of his will for his latest escapade with an unsuitable young woman), and his alibi is thin and implausible. But before the mystery is wrapped up, Poole will spread his net wide and encounter more than one shocking twist.

I did guess about halfway through both the motive for the murder and who was behind it, though there were a couple more twists I didn't see coming at all. One of them I wasn't a big fan of; serious spoiler in the tags. (view spoiler)[The dead man's friend and subordinate at the bank is a German Jew, and the more senior banker stood up for him during World War I, when anyone German was suspect, and won't hear any ill said of him or tolerate any prejudice on account of his Jewishness. And yet he plays a key role in the murder of his friend. The son also says something horribly antisemitic about him. (hide spoiler)]

It's cleverly done, though, and I would definitely read another by the same author, though at the moment this is the only one on Project Gutenberg.

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Review: Room 13

Room 13 by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm starting to have more respect for Edgar Wallace. In his own time, he was seen as a prolific hack, producing highly-coloured sensational literature to thrill the undiscerning public, but they aren't just written to a formula or full of easy pulp tropes. Each one I've read so far is distinctly different, and the plots are clever and gripping. The characters, while not having a great deal of depth, are also distinct, and behave in understandable human ways.

This is particularly true here. John Gray has just got out of prison, where he was serving time for swapping out a racehorse for a "ringer". While he's been away, his beloved, Marney, has got engaged to someone else, who she and her father (a retired criminal who has raised Marney "straight" and not told her where his money came from) think is an honest man, in contrast to Gray.

This is, unfortunately, not true. Gray arrives to find her married to someone he recognizes as a notorious forger and the son of Marney's father's former partner, who went to prison for shooting a policeman on their last job together, while Marney's father got away clean. He's resentful and wants vengeance (and money; he believes his old partner hasn't given him his fair share). So he's set up this marriage as part of his vengeance plot and to give himself more leverage.

In the course of the story, it looks pretty bad for Gray a few times; his rival gets shot while he is suspiciously nearby, and more violence, kidnapping, and murder ensue. Meanwhile, the name of J.G. Reeder keeps coming up, attached to a fussy older man who is thought to be some kind of bank detective.

It's suspenseful, fast-moving and full of period criminal slang - I suspect Wallace did some research, perhaps just in the form of talking to a criminal or ex-criminal and asking them about the slang, and wanted to make full use of it. But the slang is never confusing or obscure.

Overall, a solid suspense novel, and I'll be reading more from this author.

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Review: Room 13

Room 13 by Edgar Wallace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm starting to have more respect for Edgar Wallace. In his own time, he was seen as a prolific hack, producing highly-coloured sensational literature to thrill the undiscerning public, but they aren't just written to a formula or full of easy pulp tropes. Each one I've read so far is distinctly different, and the plots are clever and gripping. The characters, while not having a great deal of depth, are also distinct, and behave in understandable human ways.

This is particularly true here. John Gray has just got out of prison, where he was serving time for swapping out a racehorse for a "ringer". While he's been away, his beloved, Marney, has got engaged to someone else, who she and her father (a retired criminal who has raised Marney "straight" and not told her where his money came from) think is an honest man, in contrast to Gray.

This is, unfortunately, not true. Gray arrives to find her married to someone he recognizes as a notorious forger and the son of Marney's father's former partner, who went to prison for shooting a policeman on their last job together, while Marney's father got away clean. He's resentful and wants vengeance (and money; he believes his old partner hasn't given him his fair share). So he's set up this marriage as part of his vengeance plot and to give himself more leverage.

In the course of the story, it looks pretty bad for Gray a few times; his rival gets shot while he is suspiciously nearby, and more violence, kidnapping, and murder ensue. Meanwhile, the name of J.G. Reeder keeps coming up, attached to a fussy older man who is thought to be some kind of bank detective.

It's suspenseful, fast-moving and full of period criminal slang - I suspect Wallace did some research, perhaps just in the form of talking to a criminal or ex-criminal and asking them about the slang, and wanted to make full use of it. But the slang is never confusing or obscure.

Overall, a solid suspense novel, and I'll be reading more from this author.

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