With a Bare Bodkin

Rating:
Summary: Review
Review: This is a rather dull entry in Cyril Hare's usually excellent series of detective stories. Francis Pettigrew makes his second appearance, as Legal Advisor to the Pin Control, an obscure government department lodged in a former mansion belonging to the late Lord Eglwyswrw, who "chose this really lovely, but confoundedly breezy, site overlooking the sea, to plant this monstrous structure. How anybody can have seriously proposed to live in such bloated magnificence, I can't imagine. Perhaps nobody really could-at least, his lordship died within a couple of months of making the attempt, since when it stood empty until some genius realised that the marble halls were simply ideal for accommodating platoons of typists and that the endless marble corridors were just made for female messengers to run clattering down with files, or more often teapots, in their hands." It is teapots which are at the heart of the mystery, for the victim is a former lunatic, murdered while preparing tea. Ironically, the victim was the proposed murderess in a fictional murder plotted by the suspects-"now in some nightmare fashion the plot had come alive, the silly farce turned itself into grim tragedy." A similar plot exists in Ngaio Marsh's ARTISTS IN CRIME. Unfortunately, as in Ngaio Marsh's detective stories, the mystery is dull beyond belief, the detection consisting entirely of serial interviewing in the worst Ngaio Marsh style-even the policeman feels `that we're not going to make an arrest in this case by sitting here and talking about it!' The most probable suspect is the murderer, and there is no ingenuity.

The civil service aspect of the story is well-depicted, with several amusing caricatures, bearing out the Pin Controller's statement that `the temporary civil servant is the bane of government in war-time.' There is "a very pretty little Black Market affair which affects the Control", dealing in pins, and run by some of the suspects.

There is some good characterisation--Miss Brown who wishes to marry a surrogate father, and who ends up marrying Pettigrew, the unwilling detective, who feels of murder that "this was precisely the set of circumstances that he would instinctively seek to avoid, with which he felt utterly incompetent to deal. All his working life had been spent in resolving other people's problems, but they had been the problems of strangers, dealt with at arm's length through the medium of a solicitor, and considered in the quiet, dust-laden atmosphere of the Temple, where matters of life and death, fortune and bankruptcy resolved themselves into carefully phrased opinions and the comparison of reported cases. ... He felt deeply aggrieved that fate should have set such a burden on his shoulders, but he saw now that he could no longer simply pretend that the burden wasn't there.'

The burden in the book, however, is mainly on the reader's shoulders, for the book is so utterly dull that it is impossible to sustain any interest in the plot.

Rating:
Summary: Review
Review: This is a rather dull entry in Cyril Hare's usually excellent series of detective stories. Francis Pettigrew makes his second appearance, as Legal Advisor to the Pin Control, an obscure government department lodged in a former mansion belonging to the late Lord Eglwyswrw, who "chose this really lovely, but confoundedly breezy, site overlooking the sea, to plant this monstrous structure. How anybody can have seriously proposed to live in such bloated magnificence, I can't imagine. Perhaps nobody really could-at least, his lordship died within a couple of months of making the attempt, since when it stood empty until some genius realised that the marble halls were simply ideal for accommodating platoons of typists and that the endless marble corridors were just made for female messengers to run clattering down with files, or more often teapots, in their hands." It is teapots which are at the heart of the mystery, for the victim is a former lunatic, murdered while preparing tea. Ironically, the victim was the proposed murderess in a fictional murder plotted by the suspects-"now in some nightmare fashion the plot had come alive, the silly farce turned itself into grim tragedy." A similar plot exists in Ngaio Marsh's ARTISTS IN CRIME. Unfortunately, as in Ngaio Marsh's detective stories, the mystery is dull beyond belief, the detection consisting entirely of serial interviewing in the worst Ngaio Marsh style-even the policeman feels 'that we're not going to make an arrest in this case by sitting here and talking about it!' The most probable suspect is the murderer, and there is no ingenuity.

The civil service aspect of the story is well-depicted, with several amusing caricatures, bearing out the Pin Controller's statement that 'the temporary civil servant is the bane of government in war-time.' There is "a very pretty little Black Market affair which affects the Control", dealing in pins, and run by some of the suspects.

There is some good characterisation--Miss Brown who wishes to marry a surrogate father, and who ends up marrying Pettigrew, the unwilling detective, who feels of murder that "this was precisely the set of circumstances that he would instinctively seek to avoid, with which he felt utterly incompetent to deal. All his working life had been spent in resolving other people's problems, but they had been the problems of strangers, dealt with at arm's length through the medium of a solicitor, and considered in the quiet, dust-laden atmosphere of the Temple, where matters of life and death, fortune and bankruptcy resolved themselves into carefully phrased opinions and the comparison of reported cases. ... He felt deeply aggrieved that fate should have set such a burden on his shoulders, but he saw now that he could no longer simply pretend that the burden wasn't there.'

The burden in the book, however, is mainly on the reader's shoulders, for the book is so utterly dull that it is impossible to sustain any interest in the plot.

Rating:
Summary: A classic by neglected author
Review: U.K. lawyer Cyril Hare wrote some of the best golden age style British Mysteries going, most with attorney Pettigrew. Here Pettigrew is doing war duty at a huge special bureaucratic ministry which has commandeered a large remotish mansion. When murder occurs among the files, it's Pettigrew who must keep order and track down the cause. Great atmosphere, great characters and great fun.

Rating:
Summary: A classic by neglected author
Review: U.K. lawyer Cyril Hare wrote some of the best golden age style British Mysteries going, most with attorney Pettigrew. Here Pettigrew is doing war duty at a huge special bureaucratic ministry which has commandeered a large remotish mansion. When murder occurs among the files, it's Pettigrew who must keep order and track down the cause. Great atmosphere, great characters and great fun.