LIONEL BLACK – The Penny Murders. Kate and Henry Theobald #5. Collins, UK, hardcover, 1979. Avon, US, 1st US printing, February 1980.

   As if we didn’t already know, the age of electronics is upon us. When a wealthy numismatist is found shot to death in an inner sanctorum of his home, completely guarded by the most sophisticated of perimeter circuits and alarms, suicide is the only logical possibility. The dead man had the only keys, and they were found on his body.

   Kate Theobald, unstoppable lady journalist, is persuaded by the manservant of the deceased, however, that there is more to the story. Not surprisingly, there is. Some information about the impossibly rare 1933 and 1954 English pennies, which supposedly never left the mint, comes to light, and so do some decidedly noxious wart s that had blighted the dead man’s personality.

   Kate’s husband, Henry, is a barrister, the son of England’s most famous criminal lawyer, and a coin collector of sorts as well. Together, Kate and Henry make a pretty good team, although it is she who does most of the detecting, and he who (so reminiscent of the many pitfalls stumbled into by a certain Mrs. North) stupidly falls into a trap while trying to give her a hand.

   The dialogue, as seems common in a goodly amount of British crime fiction, is blunt, terse, and flat. Black has an engaging writing style, and he uses it well to conceal the lack of depth exhibited by his characters. The solution is as up to date as today’s hardware store, and (surprisingly) it is as easily explained and as obvious ex post facto (an exciting phrase from the Latin which means here that, no, I didn’t figure it out but either) as most locked-room mysteries usually are.

Rating: C plus.