Mon 22 Jun 2009
TMF Review: MICHAEL UNDERWOOD – Crooked Wood.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Characters , Reviews1 Comment
MICHAEL UNDERWOOD – Crooked Wood.
St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1978. Hardcover reprint: Detective Book Club, 3-in-1 edition, July 1978. Previously published in the UK by Macmillan, hc, 1978.
Mystery stories usually end where this one begins, with the murderer safely behind bars and about to stand trial. Underwood’s forte is the courtroom drama, British style, and here the problem is twofold: who hired the contract killer who actually did the job, and, who’s trying to buy off one of the jurors?
Sergeant Atwell’s work is clearly not done, and it requires the timely assistance of his ex-policewoman wife Clare and the gathering of an overabundant supply of red herrings before a surprise Mr. X is named. A deftly woven detective tale it is, and an interesting variation from the norm.
Bibliographic data:
Michael Underwood was the pen name of John Michael Evelyn, 1916-1992, and the author of nearly 50 works of crime and detective fiction, many of them dealing with cases taking place in British courtrooms in one way or another.
His series characters include (often in overlapping cases) Inspector (later Superintendent) Simon Manton, Martin Ainsworth, Rosa Epton, Richard Monk and Sergeant Nick Atwell. One bookseller describes Rosa Epton as “England’s answer to Perry Mason.”
Richard Monk is also a lawyer, but the books with Martin Ainsworth appear to be spy fiction (e.g. The Unprofessional Spy, 1964). Many of the cases for Nick Atwell, a police sergeant at Scotland Yard, are shared with detective constable Clare Reynolds, although according to my review, she seems to have been off the force at the time Crooked Wood takes place.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:31 am
I confess the British courtroom mystery is appealing. Somehow civilized and savage at the same time. Underwood, John Mortimer, Michael Gilbert, Edward Grierson, Cyril Hare, Sara Woods … Perhaps it’s the wigs the robes and all the ‘Milording’ that goes on.
Other than Perry Mason or Doug Selby I’m not as fond of the American version. I suppose I prefer my American lawyer sleuths like Scott Jordan, David Danning, John J. Malone, and John Marshall Tanner to do most of their lawyering in the mean streets rather than the courtroom. There are exceptions; Anatomy of a Murder, A Covenant With Death, Presumed Innocent a few others, but they tend to be more mainstream than genre works.
Of course there are always exceptions, but overall I’m more in tune with the Old Bailey than the old Courthouse on the square. The few Underwood’s I’ve read were all good.