CLASSIC CRIME BARRY TURNER
EVERY TRICK IN THE BOOK by Bernard O’Keeffe
(Muswell Press €14.49, 354pp) CRIME writing proves fatal for a first-time author who bases his characters on friends and colleagues. When his body is recovered from a watery grave, much of what follows resembles events in his novel. It falls to Inspector Garibaldi, a literary-minded detective with a talent for solving puzzles, to follow up on clues that the dead writer, a retired school teacher, left behind in his book.
It soon emerges that several of the staff at the private school where he taught for 30 years have reason to fear the connection between fiction and fact. But is a shady past a strong enough motive for murder?
This question hovers tantalisingly over a first class mystery that threatens to blow apart the arrogance of a tight-knit social set. With this, his third novel, O’Keeffe is on a roll to the big time.
IMPACT OF EVIDENCE by Carol Carnac
(British Library Crime Classics €14.49, 224pp) HILL farming is a hard way to make a living but, in freezing mid-winter, it is a perverse twist to add a murder mystery that defies explanation.
An elderly doctor, known to be a menace on the roads, is involved in a fatal car crash. Two questions are posed: why did the driver risk his life in treacherous conditions and why was he carrying a passenger who’d been killed before the accident?
Scotland Yard sends the dogged Chief Inspector Rivers to win the confidence of a self-sufficient community suspicious of outsiders. Carnac, better known by her other pen name ECR Lorac, is unmatched in her skill at weaving an ingenious plot into a realistic setting. Previously long out of print, Impact Of Evidence well deserves its place among the Golden Age classics.
THE QUEEN OF POISONS by Robert Thorogood (HQ €21, 352pp)
WHEN the life of a popular local politician ends abruptly at a council meeting, there are no obvious suspects. Three amateur crime enthusiasts, with a track record of detection, take up the challenge.
The commanding voice is that of the abrasive Judith, noted for stripping off for a morning dip. She also compiles crossword puzzles. With her two friends doing the leg work, Judith brings her analytical brain to test the alibis of those with the motive and means to commit murder.
A delightfully convoluted plot offers clues galore to put the indomitable trio off the scent. They win in the end but only because Judith sacrifices something she holds dear. And, no, it is not the skinny dipping.