The Worm of Death (1961)
Blurb:
My review:
Nicholas Blake's last good book; a pity, for four more novels were to follow. Already one can see the beginning of the end, for Blake (like Carr, whose late books are filled with the sadistic voyeuristic bimbos he called "ginches" and "ginchlets") is becoming a dirty old man: while sending Strangeways sleuthing, he is nearly seduced by one of the suspects; he interrogates an elderly whore, "appreciatively eyeing her opulent surfaces" while she "slapped her bulging left breast, as if to admonish it not to leap out at Nigel, which it showed every sign of doing"; and he has a long conversation with a nude woman in an artist's studio. There is also more violence, as Strangeways indulges in two bouts of fisticuffs with one of the suspects, who has an unpleasant habit of attacking journalists on sight, a scene told in unpleasant detail. Such things are not desirable, and stem from a desire to be "modern" and "relevant," neglecting characterisation and detection in favour of cheap sensation.
The problem and its elucidation, however, are admirably contrived. In the Thames-side district of Greenwhich, Dr. Piers Loudron vanishes from his home, and is found, his wrists cut, in the Thames; murder clumsily disguised as suicide. Suspicion naturally falls on his family, all of whom stand to gain financially. Although we have met the various types before in Blake's books, the tyrant, the vamp, the lower-class fiancé, the siblings who hate each other, the siblings who protect each other, the characterisation is good. Strangeways, assisted by Chief Detective-Inspector Wright, pays his usual attention to psychology and to lit. crit. clues, rather than material clues. The solution is solid and well-clued, although the reader will quite easily spot the psychopathic murderer. Two larger flaws are that the book is modelled too closely on Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas (1938), and the amount of coincidence, bringing to mind the famous murder of Rasputin: A drugs him, B kills him, C removes the body.