RICHARD HULL My Own Murderer. Julian Messner, US, hardcover, 1940. Penguin, US, paperback, [date?]. Also published as Murder by Invitation, Mystery Novel of the Month, paperback, 1941. First published by Collins, UK, hardcover, 1940.

   I’ve said this before but I like the sound of it, so I’ll say it again: We read mysteries to see clues come together; we read crime novels to watch plans fall apart. In My Own Murderer, things fall apart very nicely indeed.

   Narrator Richard Sampson is a London solicitor whose evening is disrupted when an old friend and client drops by his flat and confesses to murder. Alan Renwick is brash, domineering and somewhat of a boor, but Sampson decides to hide him out and help him escape — for reasons of his own.

   What follows is the sort of thing you might expect if Georges Simenon wrote The Odd Couple. Richard and Alan bicker, make plans, cook, clean, cover their tracks, quarrel over domestic duties, and finally arrange a dash for freedom. Or so it would seem.

   Along the way, Sampson learns more and more about his old chum, none of it very nice, but he doesn’t tell us much about himself until Renwick’s escape plan is launched, and things start coming apart. When he does it’s with an engaging and very readable candor that moves the story nicely along.

   I have to say none of it surprised me much, but it’s done with charm and a sense of pace that had me sitting up and turning the pages long, long after my bedtime.