Sat 25 Feb 2017
Archived Mystery Review: LEO BRUCE – Death in Albert Park.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
LEO BRUCE – Death in Albert Park. Charles Scribner’s Sons, hardcover; 1st US printing, 1979. Academy Chicago, US, paperback, 1983. First published in the UK by W. H. Allen, hardcover, 1964.
Independently wealthy and increasingly discontent with a humdrum life as a senior history master at a snooty boys’ school in Newminster, Carolus Deene’s real passion in life is solving murders. If it weren’t such a contradiction in terms, he is what you might call an amateur private investigator.
His style and/or approach as a detective consists largely of asking questions, followed by the working out of hunches that slowly become vaguely filled-in theories. In short, he reconstructs the murders in his mind very much as he would a crossword puzzle.
This particular 15-year old British import involves a Ripper-like killer who has slain three women at random, each death with no apparent motive. Quite naturally, Deane wonders about this.
The pace is slow, but until the end, remarkably even. The clues are fair, but the sense of urgency displayed by the suddenly philosophical Carolus Deene, as the killer readies his final blow, does not nearly match that of the reader’s.
Bibliographic Notes: Rupert Croft-Cooke, writing as Leo Bruce, produced a total of 23 detective novels featuring Carolus Deene, and another eight in which Sgt. Beef was the leading character. Even though the Deene books continued to appear until 1974, all of Bruce’s books were definitely products of the Golden Age of Detection. (The Beef novels began in 1936 and ended in 1952; the first Deene book appeared in 1955.)
February 25th, 2017 at 1:22 pm
Just so you know, I changed one word in the last paragraph. I described Deene as being “peripatetic,” but having no idea what I had in mind with that, I changed it to one of its possible meanings, that being “philosophical.”
It could also mean “itinerant, traveling from place to place on foot,” but how that might apply to Deene at the end of a mystery novel, I do not know.
If I remembered more of the book itself, I wouldn’t be second-guessing my younger self, as I am now. Serves me right for using a big word when a simpler one would have done just fine.
PERIPATETIC:
1. Walking about or from place to place; traveling on foot.
2. Of or relating to the philosophy or teaching methods of Aristotle, who conducted discussions while walking about in the Lyceum of ancient Athens.
February 25th, 2017 at 9:05 pm
I enjoyed the Deene novels for what they are. The pace isn’t always slow as you forgot to mention Deene is also an ex commando.
February 25th, 2017 at 9:13 pm
It’s not so much that I forgot, but more that I didn’t know that. Most of Bruce’s detective novels are easily available in paperback. I have quite a few of them, but I’ve only read this and one other, and I regret it. I’m going to try one of the Sgt. Beef ones next, if I can.