I know I mentioned a BLCC book in last week’s Quick Reviews so it’s two in a week, but I didn’t realise at that point that I was going to read another really good one so soon! Anyway, it is what it is – there were some fun books last week but a lot of rereads or authors I’ve already written about recently, so I’m just going with it…
It’s a cold evening in the winter of 1942. The blackout is in effect and passengers are stumbling their way towards the commuter trains home from London at Euston station. One of the passengers is Councillor Grayling, carrying £120 in cash that will be used to pay staff the next day. But after he gets off the train the cash goes missing and he ends up dead. But who did it? When the police start to investigate they discover that there are dark secrets among the passengers who he shared a train compartment with and that more than one of his fellow passengers might have wanted Grayling out of the way.
This is a really interesting mystery but it’s also a really atmospheric look at life on the Home Front during World War 2. First published in 1943 it’s another one of those war time books where the writers didn’t know who was going to win the war – and you can definitely feel that in the writing. There are lots of books set in the Second World War, but not that many of them (or not that many that I’ve read) where you really feel the uncertainty and fear of the population – that they really didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. There’s no hindsight or picking events because they foreshadow something else or because something is going to happen there (all the authors who send people to the Cafe de Paris I’m looking at you) – it’s just how things happened or felt at the time. The only other one I can think of that does this – although it’s not a murder mystery is Jocelyn Playfair’s A House in the Country – which also has a feeling of uncertainty going through it even more than this because at the end people are going back to the fronts and you don’t know if they’ll make it.
Anyway, that aside there are plenty of people who wanted Grayling dead as he’s not a particularly likeable sort of person and the book takes you around the carriage as Inspector Holly investigates the case and tells you the backstories behind each of them. I found myself having quite strong opinions on who I didn’t want to have done it which is always good I think. Raymond W Postgate didn’t write a lot of mysteries – in the forward to this it suggests that may be his first one, Verdict of Twelve, was so well received that it was hard to follow. I haven’t read Verdict of Twelve (yet) but if this is the less good second novel it must be really blooming good!
I read Somebody at the Door via Kindle Unlimited (which also includes Verdict of Twelve at the moment, so I think you know I’ll be reading that soon!) but as with all the British Library Crime Classics they cycle in and out of KU and when they’re not in they’re also available on Kobo. And they’re all in paperback, which you can buy direct from the British Library’s own online bookshop here. They do often have offers on the BLCC books (like 3 for 2), although they don’t seem to at the moment.
Happy Reading!