The Other Place
Jun. 27th, 2022 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: The Cambridge Murders, by Glyn Daniel
It seems that all National Trust properties these days have second-hand bookshops. While browsing one of them on my holiday a month ago, I came across a book entitled The Cambridge Murders and thought it looked interesting. It was, however, marked as a "first edition" and therefore had a price tag more than I was really prepared to spend. A certain Internet retailer sourced a reprint for a much more modest cost.
The Inspector is a bachelor, with an interest in classical music, which may sound familiar to some, but this title dates from 1945, and is set in 1939, and so belongs probably to the tail end of the "golden age" of crime fiction. However, unlike Colin Dexter, in this book Inspector Wyndham, though no fool, is not quite a match for the case; one of the dons of Fisher College, an archaeologist by the name of Sir Richard Cherrington, fancies his chances as a sleuth. (It is just coincidence that, professionally, the author was also a Cambridge archaeologist, surely?)
The story follows many tropes of the genre, but does give them interesting twists. Perhaps the most obvious setting is some quasi-aristocratic household where the extended family are all at each other's throats. In this case, this is amply replaced by the closed society of dons and undergraduates of a small Cambridge college. The first victim is unexpected, and although there were some elements I was able to predict, I was certainly kept guessing; there were false paths and contortions that provided some entertainment, but there were also other possibilities that were imaginable but not followed. Like all good crime fiction, the conclusion is perhaps a little convenient, and more than a little contrived, but I enjoyed it and would probably keep an eye out for the author's other novel.
It seems that all National Trust properties these days have second-hand bookshops. While browsing one of them on my holiday a month ago, I came across a book entitled The Cambridge Murders and thought it looked interesting. It was, however, marked as a "first edition" and therefore had a price tag more than I was really prepared to spend. A certain Internet retailer sourced a reprint for a much more modest cost.
The Inspector is a bachelor, with an interest in classical music, which may sound familiar to some, but this title dates from 1945, and is set in 1939, and so belongs probably to the tail end of the "golden age" of crime fiction. However, unlike Colin Dexter, in this book Inspector Wyndham, though no fool, is not quite a match for the case; one of the dons of Fisher College, an archaeologist by the name of Sir Richard Cherrington, fancies his chances as a sleuth. (It is just coincidence that, professionally, the author was also a Cambridge archaeologist, surely?)
The story follows many tropes of the genre, but does give them interesting twists. Perhaps the most obvious setting is some quasi-aristocratic household where the extended family are all at each other's throats. In this case, this is amply replaced by the closed society of dons and undergraduates of a small Cambridge college. The first victim is unexpected, and although there were some elements I was able to predict, I was certainly kept guessing; there were false paths and contortions that provided some entertainment, but there were also other possibilities that were imaginable but not followed. Like all good crime fiction, the conclusion is perhaps a little convenient, and more than a little contrived, but I enjoyed it and would probably keep an eye out for the author's other novel.