A Predicament

... You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

– Harry Callahan, Dirty Harry (1971)

After the success of The Floating Admiral, The Detection Club soon decided to do another round-robin novel entitled Ask a Policeman. The cast list was once again comprised of all-stars, but this time they were not quite as numerous. Six novelists combined their efforts into Ask a Policeman, namely Helen Simpson, Milward Kennedy, John Rhode, Anthony Berkeley, Gladys Mitchell, and Dorothy L. Sayers.

The plot is only a semi-serious one, although the parody elements never outweigh the detection elements. A rich, despised-by-all newspaper tycoon is shot dead at his house, with a plethora of suspects playing a complex game of ring-around-the-rosy around the scene of the crime. But, as luck would have it, these suspects happen to include an Archbishop, the Chief Whip of a political party, and an Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard. But for good measure, you can throw in the dead man’s secretary and a Mysterious Lady, as well as a suspicious butler and other members of the domestic staff.

The Return of Mrs. Croc

Simon and Keith Innes are two young boys who are supremely excited: the circus is coming to town! It’s true that the festivities will be taking place on a Good Friday, but it only comes once a year and it should be taken advantage of. And in honour of Good Friday, the only reasonable thing to do is to sneak into the circus without paying!

The action begins on Holy Thursday, when the boys sneak out of their house to prepare their route for the following night. But suddenly they see a sinister-looking figure clutching a knife—a knife that looks rather like the knife owned by their elder brother, with whom they live! The next day, a grisly discovery is made—one of the circus people, a tight-rope walker, is found murdered, slashed to death by a Jack-the-Ripper-like murderer… and the bad news is, this is only the beginning.

Opera can be murder...

The copy of Death at the Opera that I read is introduced by Clare Curzon, who makes an excellent point that there are two ways to react to Gladys Mitchell. The first is an exclamation of delight along the lines of “Ah, Mrs. Croc!”, and the second is the same exclamation, but with exasperation instead. Having finished my first novel by Gladys Mitchell, I think it’s safe to include me in the first group of readers.

From what I can discern, Mitchell’s books tend to have wildly imaginative plots, as her reptilian sleuth Mrs. Bradley investigates this-or-that, but the flaw everyone seems to point out is her tendency to go for poor, weak conclusions.