Bats in the Belfry

March 19, 2018
This entry in the British Library Crime Classics series, originally published in 1937 and part of Lorac’s Chief Inspector Macdonald series, effectively builds on its opening scene’s gallows humor to a satisfying fair-play resolution. After the funeral of Anthony Fell, an Australian gentleman who died in a car accident, Fell’s cousin Bruce Attleton discusses with other mourners the best way to conceal a murder. Attleton’s ward, Elizabeth Leigh, belongs to a London club that meets monthly to discuss an intellectual exercise, and she shares with its members this challenge—to devise a method for disposing of a corpse that’s “not only ingenious, but possesses the elements of practical common sense.” The parlor game becomes more serious when Attleton disappears, and the mystery deepens after a headless corpse turns up in a creepy London studio known as the Morgue. Macdonald, a nicely sardonic and plausible lead, investigates. Fans of golden age mysteries will look forward to seeing more of Lorac, a pseudonym of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894–1958).

February 1, 2018
A mysterious disappearance that's just got to be a case of murder is at the center of Poisoned Pen's latest British reprint, first published in 1937.Shortly after waving away a telephone request from a persistent caller named Debrette, Bruce Attleton, a novelist with a promising past, leaves his home in Regent's Park for Paris. He never arrives, but his suitcase turns up in a sculptor's studio slated for renovation. After Attleton's friend Neil Rockingham, a considerably more successful dramatist, takes his concerns to DCI Macdonald, Macdonald soon discovers a corpse secreted in the studio. Unfortunately, the absence of a head or hands makes it hard to tell whether Debrette killed Attleton, Attleton killed Debrette, or some unrelated parties got involved. Since actress Sybille Attleton had long lost any feelings for her philandering husband, journalist Robert Grenville was frustrated by Attleton's refusal to grant him the hand of his ward, Elizabeth Leigh, and everyone agrees that wealthy stockbroker Thomas Burroughs is a generally unpleasant person, the possibilities seem endless, and that's just if the body is really Attleton's. Lorac, in the manner of her contemporaries A.A. Milne and Georgette Heyer, manages the cascade of ever increasing complications with a sure hand even though the solution, when it finally arrives, lacks the power of Agatha Christie's high-concept endings.The mystery is so complex, in fact, that Lorac, the pseudonym of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894-1958), requires the services of some aggressively facetious suspects, a low-key lead detective who's a welcome change of pace, and an army of nondescript and interchangeable satellite police officers. Ah, those were the days.

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March 15, 2018
The subtitle of this British Library Crime Classics reissue (first published in 1937) is A London Mystery, and the story wonderfully conveys the London atmosphere, especially in the spooky, decrepit Victorian house, the Belfry in Notting Hill, at the novel's heart. The novel also brings to life 1930s high society; reading it is like watching a fizzy, cocktail-filled movie of the era. It starts in a London drawing room in the home of a glittering but unhappy couple, the Attletons. Sybilla Attleton is a successful actress, while Bruce is facing failure as a novelist. The conversation turns to an upcoming competition that awards a prize for best idea for disposing of a body. Shortly thereafter, Bruce travels to Paris but never arrives. His briefcase and passport are found in a cellar at the Belfry. The conversation about body disposal finds its eerie embodiment shortly thereafter when a headless and handless corpse is discovered. The intricacies of the characters' relationships and the trove of secrets Scotland Yard Inspector Macdonald uncovers make for riveting reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)