Murder in Piccadilly (British Library Crime Classics) - Tapa blanda

The plight of a young heir waiting for the much older possessor of a fortune to die forms the life's blood of many Victorian novels. And it extends all the way into 1936 in this reissued mystery from Britain's golden age of crime fiction. This very clever novel centers on a ne'er-do-well young man, Bobbie Cheldon, in thrall to a gold-digging Soho nightclub dancer. Bobbie is blocked in his desire to marry the dancer by his rich Uncle Massy. Bobbie hates Massy for frustrating his desires; Massy hates Bobbie for still having them. The plot is further thickened by two Soho scam artists using Bobbie for their own twisted ends. Massy is stabbed to death in the midst of a surging crowd in the Piccadilly Underground. The way Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Wake sorts through the evidence in this most public place is masterful. This is another entry in the attractive, period-style paperbacks in the British Library Crime Classics series. Pair Murder in Piccadilly with Freeman Wills Crofts' Antidote to Venom, also notable for its psychological acuity and also available in the same series.

Excellent. I'm really enjoying these re-released books that hark back to a classic age of British crime writing.

Set in London during the middle 1930's, this book is structured in a style which I found unusual in that the actual murder did not occur until about halfway through it's 320 pages. The first half of the story is centred around the story of Bobbie Cheldon who is aged 23 and does not have a job nor has he ever worked, instead he is living with his genteel mother who has raised him as a gentleman but expects wealth to come to him from the death of his uncle, miserly Massey Cheldon....This book was originally published in 1935 and it incorporates the values and snobbery that existed at that time which I found very interesting. The father of Bobbie died fighting in the First World War and as a consequence the second oldest son of Bobbie's grandparents inherited their valuable estate. So Massey receives the money, that had things been different, the parents of Bobbie might have had and that gives rise to the jealousy that Bobbie and his mother seem to have....Charles Kingston (1884 - 1944) wrote over twenty crime novels in the golden age of British crime fiction between the two world wars. Many of his books - including Poison in Kensington and The Highgate Mystery - are set in London. All have been unavailable for many decades, and Kingston's work has long been neglected by readers of classic crime fiction. Although the book was interesting example of the Golden Age of crime writing, there are, perhaps, better and more arresting examples by authors such as Anthony Berkeley, John Bude or Margery Allingham available. I would like to read other examples of this authors work in future to discover whether it is of a similar standard.

Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder

"This is another entry in the attractive, period-style paperbacks in the British Library Crime Classics series. Pair Murder in Piccadilly with Freeman Wills Crofts' Antidote to Venom, also notable for its psychological acuity and also available in the same series." —Booklist

'Scores of men and women died daily in London, but on this day of days one of them had died in the very midst of a crowd and the cause of his death was a dagger piercing his heart. Death had become something very real.'

When Bobbie Cheldon falls in love with a pretty young dancer at the Frozen Fang night club in Soho, he has every hope of an idyllic marriage. But Nancy has more worldly ideas about her future: she is attracted not so much to Bobbie as to the fortune he expects to inherit.

Bobbie's miserly uncle Massy stands between him and happiness: he will not relinquish the ten thousand a year on which Nancy's hopes rest. When Bobbie falls under the sway of the roguish Nosey Ruslin, the stage is set for murder in the heart of Piccadilly—and for Nancy's dreams to be realised.

When Chief Inspector Wake of Scotland Yard enters the scene, he uncovers a tangled web of love affairs, a cynical Soho underworld, and a motive for murder.

This good-natured vintage mystery novel is now republished for the first time since the 1930s, with an introduction by the award-winning crime writer Martin Edwards, the leading expert on inter-war detective fiction.