CLASSIC CRIME
The Drowning Pool
(Penguin Classics £9.99, 272pp)
(Penguin Classics £9.99, 272pp)
Trawling the back list for neglected treasures, Penguin has launched a welcome collection of crime and espionage classics for summer.
And who better to head the list than Ross Macdonald, with his cynical, world-weary hero, Lew Archer, matching his wits against the Californian oil-rich elite who tread both sides of the law.
Hired to trace the origin of a poison pen letter, Archer finds himself at odds with the matriarchal head of a family of misfits who can’t afford to cut the purse strings.
When the source of their largesse is found drowned in the swimming pool, our avid sleuth is drawn into an investigation that has him risking his own life in the cause of rough justice.
A surprise-a-minute plot is held together by dialogue as taut as a G-string, with wit and menace in equal measure. In the school of hard-boiled fiction, Macdonald scores the highest marks.
A Chateau Under Siege
(Quercus £14.99, 336pp)
(Quercus £14.99, 336pp)
French tourism should raise a glass to Walker. Fans of his Dordogne Mysteries featuring everybody’s favourite small town cop, Bruno Courrèges, must feel the magnetic pull of south-west France, where the good things in life start with delectable food and wine in a bucolic setting.
As a prominent foodie, Bruno must balance his sybaritic tendencies with his duty to protect his rural idyll from hostile elements. In A Chateau Under Siege, trouble starts with a popular re-enactment of a medieval battle. The celebratory mood turns sour, however, when one of the participants, a technical genius responsible for the latest generation of semi-conductors, suffers a near-fatal knife wound.
This then sets off a train of events in St Denis that has Bruno in the front line of forestalling a Russian attempt to sabotage the revolutionary technology. Hard pressed though he is, Bruno finds time to demonstrate his culinary skills. What more can we ask?
Death at the Terminus
(Allison & Busby £19.99, 384pp)
(Allison & Busby £19.99, 384pp)
When a guards’ van at York railway station explodes, killing an occupant, the call goes out for Inspector Robert Colbeck, who is Scotland Yard’s reigning expert on railway crime.
While the local police are quick to round up the usual suspects, Colbeck digs deeper to find that the victim led a double life, as a loyal family man, and as a lothario with a string of broken hearts to his discredit.
With conflicting theories to cope with, it takes a second murder, this time of a society lady with her own secret life, to give Colbeck the lead to solving the case.
With a convincing line-up of characters from both sides of the track, Edward Marston moves his story along at a brisk pace. While he may be light on Victorian detail, we are more than compensated by the twists and turns of a clever and contrived mystery.
