Fri 9 Aug 2013
Archived Review: MILES BURTON – The Man with the Tattooed Face.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
MILES BURTON – The Man with the Tattooed Face. Doubleday Crime Club,US, hardcover, 1937. First published in the UK as Murder in Crown Passage, Collins, hardcover, 1937.
Immediately preceding the first page of The Man with the Tattooed Face you’ll find a map of the “downtown” section of the village of Faston Bishop, including all the salient details that describe the locale where the dead man is found, and believe me, it — the map, that is — gets a full workout.
The victim is — not too surprisingly — a man with a tattooed face. While he had earned his living as a common laborer on several of the farms surrounding Faston Bishop, he also seems to have been working very much below his true station in life. Rumors are also that he was not averse to carrying on an affair or two with some of the wives in the local area.
The detective on hand is Inspector Arnold of the C.I.D., and within the first 100 pages he has a theory that fits all the facts. Obviously it doesn’t, though — “obviously,” that is, if you’ve read as many mysteries as everyone else has who’s reading this review — and on page 173 is a timetable that leads soon to the discovery of the fatal flaw in his hypothesis.
Arnold’s good friend Desmond Merrion insists that the solution to the crime must come from the dead man’s unknown past. Arnold’s stubborn obstinacy to this plan of thought is quite inexplicable. And other than these two divergent approaches to the investi gation of the murder, the two amicable crime-solvers leave little to distinguish themselves, one from the other — or from countless other featureless detectives from the “Golden Age.
But the seductive lure and the leisurely pace of the classical mystery novel, told in simplest terms here as a puzzle in pure detection, these are what you’ll find in abundance, on every page.
Rating: B.
Vol. 4, No. 4, July-August 1980 (slightly revised).
August 11th, 2013 at 3:03 pm
I love mysteries with maps & timetables, though. Sounds good. I’ll have to look for it.
August 11th, 2013 at 5:58 pm
I hate to say it, Terry, but you may be hunting for quite a while, and if/when you come across one, be prepared for some sticker shock. There are presently no copies offered for sale on the Internet, anywhere, either the US edition or the British one.
On the other hand, let me not discourage you. You may come across one tomorrow, in jacket, from a dealer who doesn’t know how scarce the book is. Good luck!
August 11th, 2013 at 6:03 pm
PS to Terry: Maps and timetables are always great.
February 5th, 2015 at 11:18 pm
Just read a review by Will Cuppy in a New York Herald Tribune Book Review from 1936. Sounded good. Guess the search is on….
May 10th, 2021 at 12:00 am
[…] book once before, and I wrote a review of it back in 1980. It was posted here on this blog in 2013. Here’s the link. I deliberately did not look at this earlier review before writing this later one. I am surprised […]