This is my second post for the 1936 Club hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings. There are so many good books published in 1936, it is hard to choose just one or two. This one was reprinted by the British Library, and available in the US from Poisoned Pen Press. The cover illustration is gorgeous.
Murder in Piccadilly tells the story of a young man, Bobbie Cheldon, who has expectations of inheriting the family estate and a large income when his uncle dies. The hitch is that his uncle, Massy Cheldon, is healthy and and could easily live another 20 years.
Bobbie has been spoiled by his mother, Ruby, so he is not interested in working and not prepared for a job. He daydreams about his uncle dying (sooner than expected) so that he can get his inheritance while he is still young.
Bobbie's desire for more money becomes more important when he falls in love with a nightclub performer in a London nightclub. She has made it clear that she will not marry a man without money. Some of her friends start plotting the uncle's death, hoping to gain from it.
My thoughts...
This was a good picture of London in the 1930s. I liked the big city setting, especially the depiction of the less well-to-do London environments. The contrast between Uncle Massy's luxurious lifestyle and the extremely reduced circumstances that Bobbie and his mother live in is interesting.
This story is a variation on the inverted mystery, even though the death doesn't take place until midway into the story. We don't know who did it, but we know who is planning the crime. That is not unique, but I liked that the structure of the story is a bit different.
For most of this book I was on the fence about whether I liked it or not. The characters were portrayed well, but the majority of them were unsympathetic, and there was no one character that I liked or cared about. Even so, I did enjoy a lot of the conversations and scheming of the characters. When there finally is a murder, Chief Inspector Wake of Scotland Yard takes on the challenging case. However, he is not a major player in the story.
Ruby's machinations to convince her brother-in-law to help Bobbie out are both humorous and painful. Massy, though miserly, is not a mean person. He just doesn't approve of Bobbie wanting others to support his lifestyle and he points out that if Bobbie had a job, he and his mother could afford better lodgings, etc.
The story moves fairly slowly at times, but the slower pace is to be expected in vintage mysteries. And I often enjoy that. In this case I wanted the story to pick up and move on.
Yet in the end there was a marvelous twist, delivered in a very realistic and entertaining way, which made up for any quibbles. At least for me.
After reading this book, I would like to read more of Charles Kingston's books, especially more in the Chief Inspector Wake series. I am interested in whether Wake has a larger role in later books.
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Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2015 (orig. pub. 1936)
Length: 305 pages
Format: Trade paperback
Series: Chief Inspector Wake #1
Setting: London
Genre: Mystery
Source: On my TBR piles since 2015.
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