CLASSIC CRIME
BARRY TURNER THE CHRISTMAS CARD CRIME Edited by Martin Edwards (British Library £8.99, 288 pp)
An OLD hand at compiling anthologies of classic crime, Martin Edwards provides a treat with this selection of Christmas short stories.
By trawling magazine and newspaper archives, he struck on a rich vein of golden-age gems, with neglected tales from writers such as Carter Dickson, Cyril Hare and Julian Symons.
There are, inevitably, a few duffers. The opener, by Baroness Orczy, creator of The Scarlet Pimpernel, is irritatingly soppy. But patience is rewarded.
The title story, by the once famous Donald Stuart, is spot on — a spooky mystery with an isolated inn, flickering candles, creaking doors and screams in the night.
If this book is not quite a joy from beginning to end, it comes pretty close. MAIGRET AND THE TRAMP (Penguin £7.99, 160 pp)
IT DOESn’T come easily to the chief inspector to admit failure — but, here, Maigret finds himself in an almost inescapable quandary.
A vagrant with a head wound is pulled out of the Seine. But why would anyone want to drown a harmless denizen of the streets?
It is not a case a senior policeman would normally take on, but Maigret is intrigued when it emerges that the victim is from a well-to-do family.
Living in poverty by choice, he is also tight-lipped, refusing to help find his attacker. With no other leads, Maigret seeks answers from the bargee who raised the alarm. Could the rescuer also be the assailant?
Beautifully translated, this goes down a treat with a Cognac and coffee. THE SHOP WINDOW MURDERS (Collins Crime £9.99, 240 pp) AS If to prove there is nothing new under the sun, this murder mystery from 1930 picks up on the idea of shops using lightweight gyrocopters for speedy deliveries. But this early version of store-to-door fails to take off when the bodies of the innovator and his mistress are revealed in a window display mounted by his own emporium.
Inspector Devenish is hard put to distinguish between genuine leads and those planted to set him on a false trail.
He soon discovers that the would-be retail king was a financial charlatan preparing to skip the country — but which of his closest associates was aware of his villainy and prepared to administer rough justice?