JOHN R. L. ANDERSON – Death in the Channel

Stein & Day, hardcover, 1976. Reprint paperback: Stein & Day 88112, 1985. Detective Book Club [3-in-1 edition], hardcover, Jan-Feb, 1977. First published in England as Redundancy Pay,by J. R. L. Anderson: Victor Gollancz, hardcover,1976.

Death in the Channel

   A young London accountant loses his job in a takeover by a larger firm, loses his wife to the joys and pleasures that only wealth can bring, and sick and tired of the continual chase for paper money, he heads back to his boyhood home to see whether or not livings can still be made from the sea.

   In Finmouth he gets a job with lobster pots, is suspected for a while of stealing a priceless chalice left unguarded in a church vestry, but then discovers the connection between the crime and some divers searching for sunken treasure out in the English Channel.

   It doesn’t take a mathematician to put together the correct equations and solve them, but it is exactly that sort of old-fashioned story that’s put together in just so precise a manner. The pacing bothered me a little, and there is a surprisingly large flaw in the logic at one point, but overall Anderson will strike you, I’m sure, as a writer who is reliably competent and solid. And decent.    (C plus)

– From The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 3, No. 2, Mar-Apr 1979.




[UPDATE] 07-20-07. I’ve not been able to come up with a cover image for either US edition of this book. According to my records, I may no longer even own a copy. If I do, it’s nowhere it can be easily located. Thanks to British bookseller Jamie Sturgeon, though, what you see is the cover of Gollancz edition. Not as interesting as it might have been, but it’s still good to have.

   In Crime Fiction IV, Allen Hubin indicates that Major Peter Blair, one of Anderson’s two major series characters is in this book, but Jamie has reassured me that he does not. Until I received an email from Jamie this afternoon, I was surprised to think that Blair was in the book and somehow I hadn’t managed to mention it in the review.

    I don’t remember ever reading one of Major Blair’s exploits, but I could be wrong. For the sake of completeness, Anderson’s other detective character was Inspector Piet Deventer, one of whose cases I remember not caring for as much as I did Death in the Channel, but which one it was, I can no longer recall.