RICHARD MARR – The Smith Slayer. Big Ben #4, UK, paperback, August 1940. First published: Gardner, UK, 1939, under the pseudonym “Burmar.”

   Occasionally I read a book which is utterly preposterous but great fun. The Smith Slayer is such a book. This is a multiple-murder detective novel, which begins with a newspaper advertisement: “God help all whom it may concern: The Smith Slayer commences his campaign.”

   Soon people with the surname “Smith” begin to he murdered in the face of the rather incompetent efforts of Scotland Yard to protect them. Still, it’s hard to blame the police force when even a doctor blithely attributes a death to “probably one.of those little known Eastern drugs.”

   The book is filled with marvelous assumptions: “Now, if you wanted to hire an assassin where would you go?” “Chicago, I suppose.”

   After a series of thriller-like episodes, the book concludes as the Smith Slayer reveals himself and his ridiculous motivation. You won’t believe much of the story, but I’m not sure that you’re supposed to.

Bibliographic Note:   Richard Marr has one other entry in Hubin’s Revised Crime Fiction IV, that being Death at Salterton Court (Everybody’s, UK, paperback, 1945).