For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress... 0712354727 Interesting story - I guessed the murderer pretty early on but it was fun to see how it developed and how the detective worked it out. 0712354727 See my review here:
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2023... 0712354727 This is the best of the three Francis McNab novels I have read recently.
Dating from 1937, it has a more modern feel to it than Murder on the Marsh and Death Comes to Perigord, both of which, in style and in plotting, were redolent of an earlier period.
It is real bibliomystery as it deals with the murder of a bookseller, Mr Dodsley, in a bookshop, and one of the suspects has just published a detective novel, Death at the Desk, which features the murder of a bookmaker. The plot of this fictional book has features with parallels to the Dodsley case.
Scotland Yard Inspector Mallet soon fixes on his chief suspects but finds difficulties in fully substantiating his case. McNab is employed by Margery Grafton, a novelist, to prove the innocence of her fiance, the murdered man's nephew.
The plot has much of interest and there is some nifty characterisation. It is rounded off at a gathering in the bookshop where a couple of good late surprises are sprung.
Most enjoyable. Recommended to lovers of well-written GAD fiction. 0712354727 Very enjoyable 😊 0712354727
'A bookshop is a first-rate place for unobtrusive observation,' he continued. 'One can remain in it an indefinite time, dipping into one book after another, all over the place.'
Mr Richard Dodsley, owner of a fine second-hand bookshop on Charing Cross Road, has been found murdered in the cold hours of the morning. Shot in his own office, few clues remain besides three cigarette ends, two spent matches and a few books on the shelves which have been rearranged.
In an investigation spanning the second-hand bookshops of London and the Houses of Parliament (since an MP’s new crime novel Death at the Desk appears to have some bearing on the case), Ferguson’s series sleuth MacNab is at hand to assist Scotland Yard in an atmospheric and ingenious fair-play bibliomystery, first published in 1937. Death of Mr. Dodsley (British Library Crime Classics 111)
