Sat 1 Jun 2013
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: MURRAY THOMAS – Buzzards Pick the Bones.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[4] Comments
William F. Deeck
MURRAY THOMAS – Buzzards Pick the Bones. Longmans Green, UK, hardcover, 1932.
Five years earlier Tom Carr, on holiday in Wales and walking the Cader Idris range, had come upon a man apparently deranged. One year after that he had been told that a skeleton had been discovered at the point he had encountered the man. Now he has read that another skeleton has been found at the same spot. Neither of the skeletons has been identified.
With the hope of getting more information about the skeletons, Carr and his friend Stephen go to Wales. In so doing they are probably responsible for yet another corpse, this one freshly made.
A fairly interesting beginning, with some fine writing about the Welsh mountains, but the murderer, though not his motive, is evident early on and Carr’s falling in love slows down what was never a fast pace. The main saving grace to be found is Rumbold, Carr’s valet, who is not the detective in the novel but definitely could have been. As Rumbold puts it:
Stephen, who is a poet, theorizes that when historians seek England’s mentality in the early 20th century they will turn to Edgar Wallace and the “fourpenny bloods — the Sexton Blakes and the like.” While I would dispute that, there is something to another of his contentions: “Death is the preoccupation of great minds, a death its relaxation — when served up in stories of detection and mystery.”
The Inspector Wilkins series —
Buzzards Pick the Bones. Longmans, UK, 1932.
Inspector Wilkins Sees Red. Jenkins, UK, 1934.
Inspector Wilkins Reads the Proofs. Jenkins, UK, 1935.
June 1st, 2013 at 4:27 pm
Even though we’re only a short way into June, this is already my nomination for the most obscure mystery to be reviewed on this blog this month.
There is not a single copy for sale on abebooks, for example, nor even the other two Wilkins books, example (Wilkins seems to have made such an indifferent impression on Bill that he neglected to mention so much as his presence in this one.)
June 1st, 2013 at 8:41 pm
The 3rd title was recently sold on eBay for £17.50. As I once told a friend: eventually EVERYTHING comes up for sale on eBay. But you need the patience of a super-saint.
June 1st, 2013 at 9:04 pm
£17.50 is about $25, isn’t it? There was a time when I’d have paid that for a book so scarce, depending on condition, of course, but my days of haunting eBay for books like this are long over.
June 2nd, 2013 at 1:27 pm
The title alone sells the book.