The prerogative of the reviewer is to include long-published books that have been neglected. A.P. Herbert’s The House by the River (1920 Methuen, 2nd edn, 1924, new edn, Status Books, St. Looe, 2001) is a ‘What Will Happen?’, as the accidental killing that because he will not stop becomes a murder is told from the perspective of the killer, and occurs on pages 28-9. The protagonist, Stephen Byrne, a 27-year-old poet, of ability and charm but a lack of morality, makes an unrequited pass at the maid which leads to her screaming and his unintentionally strangling her to get her to stop. A manipulator, Stephen ropes in his friend John to help sink the corpse in the Thames, and its surfacing kicks forward the plot. A good story with instructive passages about the misery of commuting on the District Line and the complacencies of respectable life. Much wit, for example about fashionable dancing – ‘a semi-gladatorial display to which one went to perform a purely physical operation’. Some of the characters are anatomised with glee including the barrister Dimple: ‘his judgments were a tangle of parentheses; and people said that if he were ever raised to the Bench his delivery of the death sentence would generate in the condemned person a positive glow of righteousness and content.’ Good on the psychological problems of being a writer, not least ‘the mournful disillusion of achievement.’

There is much wit in the novel, focused on the British abroad, tour groups, and the chaotic and violent corruption of the island

The British Library Crime Classics continues to deliver hits, the reprinted novels interspersed with collected short stories edited by Martin Edwards, most recently Lessons in Crime. Academic Mysteries (2024, £10.99) which covers universities and schools. The introduction is able and the collection a good one, heavier on schools than universities, but I question the need to reprint Conan Doyle’s very readily available ‘the Adventure of the Priory School,’ not least as it is far from short. The tone varies greatly, from Michael Gilbert’s very light and somewhat slight ‘Ranulph Hall’ and Dorothy Sayers’ undemanding ‘Murder at Pentecost,’ to Henry Wade’s Gothic ‘The Missing Undergraduate’ and H.C. Bailey’s unravelling of many sinister levels of in and around a major girls’ school in ‘The Greek Play’. E.W. Hornung’s ‘The Field of Philippi’ is a weak Raffles, Malcom Gair’s ‘When the Deaf Can Hear’ and Edmund Crispin’s ‘Dog in the Night-Time’ are slight, but Michael Innes’ ‘Lesson in Anatomy,’ with its substitute of victim for cadaver, is clever and worth reading, although the resolution is ridiculous. Joyce Porter’s ‘Dover Goes to School,’ has fun with her shitty but shrewd Inspector Dover: ‘Naturally he preferred pushing widows and orphans around but, failing them, Professor Ross would do.’ Set in Skelmers Hall College, an Adult Education Centre holding a weekend course on icons, the plot introduces a range of uniques including the goat-breeding Betsy Gallop wearing a trouser suit woven from the hair of her goats. Herbert Harris’ ‘Low Marks for Murder’ sees a well-laid plan to murder the Head fail to sustain initial success, Colin Watson’s ‘The Harrowing of Henry Pygole’ is impressive if predictable, Miriam Sharman’s ‘Battle of Wits’ an effective piece of human chess ending in a killing, and Jacqueline Wilson’s ‘The Boy Who Couldn’t Read’ ably takes you into the mind of a teacher on the edge.

Also in British Crime Classics, the fourth by her in the series, Christianna Brand’s Tour de Force (1955; 2024, £9.99), not, as on the cover and titlepage of the new edition Tour De Force, takes Inspector Cockrill to the fictional republic of San Juan el Pirata, a Spanish culture on an island roughly where is Elba, ruled by an autocratic Hereditary Grand Duke, a brutal aesthete who happens to be a Wykehamist. Cockrill goes with a classically dysfunctional tour group and murder soon ensues. There is much wit in the novel, focused on the British abroad, tour groups, and the chaotic and violent corruption of the island, which is a smuggling hub. The implausible plot works well, and the resolve is a surprise. Well deserves reading.

Rachel Abbott’s The Last Time I Saw Him (Wildfire, 2024, £9.99) gives much of the plot away on the back page. At any rate, Ellis Cobain, a wealthy philanthropist who manipulates and mistreats women, is murdered instead of being blackmailed, as his wife, mistress and ex-mistress had intended. The story is told from the perspective of all three, the husband of the mistress, and of Detective Sergeant Stephanie King who has already appeared in a number of Abbott’s stories. The dubious pleasures of a luxurious Cornish resort in the October murder season is the backdrop for a story that sees the three blackmailers come to distrust each other, while Stephanie and her lover/boss have to disentangle a mass of clues. A success of a plot with the differing perspectives working well.

Knife Skills for Beginners (Bantam, 2024, £14.99) by the well-established cookbook writer Orlando Murrin is his first detective novel, and works well for me. There are useful recipes and cooking hints aplenty as the protagonist is teaching a general course at a London cookery school in difficulties, but this works as a mystery. Who killed Christian, the flamboyant cook and failed entrepreneur at the cookery school with a cleaver? Paul, the protagonist, a conscientious cook in difficulties, is a suspect but also an observer of a very well etched group of characters. Very well written with lots of fine observation on people and circumstances. A good fair-play resolve which I did not get. This is much better than the Cooking Club Detectives, the Dinner Lady Detectives, and other modern staples of the sub-genre. Deserves reading.

Anna Britton’s Close to the Edge (Canelo, 2024, £9.99) takes on at once from her previous Martin and Stern book, Shot in the Dark, already favourably reviewed. Works well. Gangsterism a key topic. There are also plentiful tensions within the police, while Southampton does not look particularly attractive. The resolve, as with Shot in the Dark, is clever, and maybe a bit forced and/or rushed, but a very good story by a promising writer.

A Dan Brown goes to Japan with dollops of Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean

Set in 1931, Hemlock Bay (Head of Zeus, 2024, £22.00), the latest of Martin Edwards’ impressive Rachel Savernake series, begins in the mind of Basil Palmer, a buttoned-up chartered accountant, as he sets out to track down a victim he feels deserves murder. We move to Hemlock Bay, a new resort on the Lancastrian coast (not the most encouraging of ideas), where potential murderer, destined victim, and the Savernake household converge with a lively cast including a dodgy fortune teller, an ex-housemaid married to wealth, and, eventually a corpse. Some of the writing is arresting – ‘The Roses were bending under the weight of water. They looked as miserable as bullied children … even a surrealist is presumably observant … No murderer wants to rely on the English climate…’– but it is the plot that carries us along. Jacob refers to the ‘high melodrama of places like Mortmain Hall and Blackstone Fell,’ places that gave their names to earlier novels in the series, and indeed their melodrama had become wearing. The change of tone in the new novel is very welcome.

There is a murder, but Between the Devil and the Dusk, Patrick Ireland’s debut novel (Book Guild, 2024, £8.99), is primarily a thriller, a Dan Brown goes to Japan with dollops of Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean. Instead of the cerebral Japanese-authored, carefully-plotted stories very much grounded, notably on rail timetables, I have been reviewing, this is a tale of the feckless Michael Brown, an English-language tutor who seeks to follow through an ancient mystery created by the Ainu and involving a mysterious treasure. Two untrustworthy companions and Japanese gangsters add to the mix. The writing is uneven, with too many as if copied in explanations as in: ‘Packinko is like vertical pinball crossed with a normal arcade machine’ and so on for two more sentences. And if you have three airport terminals, the third is the last, not the latter.

Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s The Wolf Hunt (Pushkin, 2024, £9.99) is more family novel than thriller, though it is presented in part as the latter. The vexed relationships of mother and son interact with those of Israelis in America, and against a backdrop of school feuds, victim-claiming, drugs and possible murder. Did not work well for me, as the paranoia and psychology too much to the fore.

Robert van Gulick’s The Chinese Gold Murders (1959; Penguin, 2024) is an apt choice for this exciting new Penguin series as it is the first story in terms of series setting (not first written) in the Dutch diplomat’s Judge Dee series, one that drew on his knowledge of Tang dynasty China and that were based on a character from a later Chinese detective novel based on the stories of a seventh century judge. The Chinese Gold Murders are fascinating both for plot and for context. Chinese society is presented as a complex interplay of lawlessness and order, with the judge also head of policing and able to threaten the use of physical violence. The surprising death of Dee’s predecessor and the appearance of occult figures, including the ghost of this magistrate as well as a weretiger give the plot plenty of energy and interest. An excellent read.

After his widely popular, but overrated and somewhat played out, Thursday Murder Club series, Richard Osman turns to another type of crime fantasy in Here Comes Trouble (Viking, 2024, £22). Introduces François Loubert, the world’s biggest money-smuggler, the somewhat autistic bodyguard for billionaires Amy Wheeler, her retired ex-copper widowed father-in-law, Steve Wheeler, Amy’s self-absorbed celebrity crime author Rosie D’Antonio, Jeff Nolan, the head of Maximum Impact Solutions, and his rival Henk van Veen. The settings range widely, including South Carolina, St Lucia, Dubai, and the New Forest, and one has to assume that the novel is a spoof. It certainly reads as such from cliché excitement beginning to sentimental end. The spoof extends to the minor characters: ‘Max, running a hand through his hair like a grizzled veteran who has seen too much war, rather than like a man who has just had breakfast at The Ivy.’