CLASSIC CRIME
MARPLE: TWELVE NEW STORIES by Agatha Christie (HarperCollins £20, 384pp)
One of the bestloved characters in crime fiction, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple has been freshened up for this delightful collection of original short stories.
Led by Val McDermid with a tongue-in- cheek contribution (The Second Murder At The Vicarage), the other writers, all women, are mostly of the generation who were not alive when Christie was active. But having studied form they succeed in recapturing the spirit of an age when good and evil were clearly delineated.
Miss Marple is not entirely unchanged. She gets around more for one thing. Defying the frailties of old age, she is to be found in various exotic locations, her home base of St Mary Mead presumably having exhausted its stock of murderers.
however, her incisive mind is as sharp as ever. We should applaud her longevity.
THE RAILWAY DETECTIVE’S CHRISTMAS CASE by Edward Marston (Allison & Busby £19.99, 352pp)
A WOrkS outing ends dramatically when the manager leading the excursion is shot dead. Few regret his passing.
This being Victorian england, the victim was a hard taskmaster who believed that workers should stick to the factory bench rather than take time off with their families to enjoy the countryside.
That he opposed the sentiments of a benevolent employer was known to all. yet it is scarcely credible that any of those on the day out would have
resorted to murder. With Christmas drawing near, inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are under pressure to make an early arrest. But first they have to untangle family rivalries, while coping with the hostility of the local gentry who resent the intrusion of the industrial masses into their rural idyll.
Steam railway buffs might feel short-changed on period detail but edward Marston compensates with a rattling good tale.
THE TATTOO MURDER by Akimitsu Takagi (Pushkin Vertigo £8.99, 384pp)
CALL me old fashioned, a head-totoe tattoo does not stand out as a thing of beauty. But in bombscarred post-war Tokyo, the practitioners of the pinprick art were held in highest regard. elaborate tattoos were so valued as to become collector’s items, to be preserved after the wearer’s death.
This macabre prospect comes prematurely to the carrier of a tattoo masterpiece whose full body snake embellishment leads to her murder and dismemberment. Tracking the killer falls to her lover, along with his policeman brother and a forensic scientist who doubles as a private detective.
Thereafter we are on familiar classic crime territory with a locked room mystery, mistaken identities and double dealing within a tight criminal fraternity. A tendency to over- dramatise with shock-horror revelations is balanced by coldly analytical deductions to produce an ingenious whodunnit.