Case Without a Corpse was Leo Bruce's second book about Sergeant Beef, appearing in 1937 and following up the highly successful Case for Three Detectives. Again, the narrator is Beef's patronising writer friend Townsend. The story opens in a local pub, with Beef playing darts. A local rascal, young Rogers, bursts in and announces that he has murdered someone - and promptly takes poison and dies.
This is as dramatic an opening as you could wish for in a Golden Age novel, and overall the story lives up to its initial promise as Bruce surmounts the so-called 'second novel hurdle' with quite a degree of ease. There's also a lot of fun to be had. Bruce pokes fun at Golden Age tropes regularly, and he does so in a very entertaining way. I liked his disappointment at Beef's readiness to call in Scotland Yard, for instance, and the by-play between Inspector Stute of the Yard and Beef is a lot of fun, as is Stute's bafflement about the fact that one of the local constables is called Galsworthy (a joke that has not, perhaps, aged too well, but it pleased me!)
Even better is Townsend's comment when he's admitted to a police conference: 'my reading of detective stories...had taught me that an outsider, with no particular excuse, was often welcomed on these occasions, especially if he had the gift of native fatuity, and could ask ludicrous questions at the right moment...'
It's fair to say that things get a little bit bogged down in the middle section of the book, but I thought the final revelations made the wait worthwhile. At the end of the story, Beef hankers after a transfer to Scotland Yard, and says that if he doesn't get his just reward, he'll retire from the force and set up on his own as a private investigator. And Bruce's writing is so likeable that it will be a pleasure to see what happens next in Beef's career.
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