Somebody at the Door (British Library Crime Classics)
‘The death was an odd one, it was true; but there was after all no very clear reason to assume it was anything but natural.’ In the winter of 1942, England lies cold and dark in the wartime blackout. One bleak evening, Councillor Grayling steps off the 6.12 from Euston, carrying GBP120 in cash, and
‘The death was an odd one, it was true; but there was after all no very clear reason to assume it was anything but natural.’ In the winter of 1942, England lies cold and dark in the wartime blackout. One bleak evening, Councillor Grayling steps off the 6.12 from Euston, carrying GBP120 in cash, and oblivious to the fate that awaits him in the snow-covered suburbs. Inspector Holly draws up a list of Grayling’s fellow passengers: his distrusted employee Charles Evetts, the charming Hugh Rolandson, and an unknown refugee from Nazi Germany, among others., Inspector Holly will soon discover that each passenger harbours their own dark secrets, and that the councillor had more than one enemy among them. First published in 1943, Raymond Postgate’s wartime murder mystery combines thrilling detection with rich characters and a fascinating depiction of life on the home front.
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A Superb Social History Postgate’s Somebody at the Door may be the finest novel published so far in the impressive series of British Library Crime Classics (and I’ve read most of them). The structure of the novel is a variation on the one Postgate employed, less successfully, in Verdict of Twelve: extended sketches of the suspects in stand-alone narratives that eloquently evoke the temper of the times (depression-era and wartime England). The stories recounted in chapters 4 and 7 are particularly engaging and…
One Star or Five – could be either depending on what you were expecting! This is NOT a simple murder mystery but a series of character studies of the history of various people leading up to the 2nd War. Very involved, some (for me) far too detailed. Much too often I was left thinking “get on with the plot!!”. Even accepting things were so different in 1942 the whole thing seems so laboured, detracting from many of the small but fascinating vignettes of life then. But I did read it through despite thinking of abandoning it several times – perhaps the fact I…
Surprisingly undisciplined story-telling It is unusual that I give up a book part-way through, but I found myself doing that with ‘Somebody at the door’.This was unexpected as ‘Verdict of Twelve’ was an outstanding story.But in this book Postgate seemed to lose his way in handling a multi-narrative story, something which he did so well in ‘Verdict’.Partly this was because of his soap-box Marxism poking through here and there. Partly it was the contempt he seemed to have for his characters (you don’t as a reader have…