Forgotten Book - Murder Isn't Easy

Is it a typo? you may wonder. Is he thinking of Murder is Easy, the far from forgotten title by Agatha Christie? Well, the answer to both questions is no. My Forgotten Book today is a very interesting but neglected gem, written by Richard Hull. Murder Isn't Easy was first published in 1936, a couple of years before Christie's book appeared. He really was ahead of his time!

The book has two distinctive strengths. First, it's wittily written, and the humour has by no means dated badly. I found the story entertaining from start to finish, making some allowances for the passage of time. Second, it is a book with an unusual and very clever structure. Hull's debut, Murder of My Aunt, had a sort of unreliable narrator. Here, we have a great deal of unreliable narration, with the story told from four different viewpoints.

The setting is an advertising business - shades of Sayers' Murder Must Advertise. Hull's account of the business suggests some personal knowledge, though he was an accountant. Perhaps he'd audited such a firm. This one has three equal shareholders, all of whom are rather unattractive men. Latimer, who relates the first section of the story, is in some ways reminiscent of Edward, main protagonist of Murder of My Aunt. The unlovely trio also employ an artist and a secretary, and one remarkable social insight is the easy way that employers used to debate the merits of sacking a woman once she got married. You don't have to be an employment lawyer like me to find this extraordinary.

I don't want to say too much about the story-line, because after a slowish start, it develops in a very effective way. I'm not sure I've read a book quite like this one. And it offers a good example of Hull's particular and enviable gift, to conjure up highly original situations. Sometimes he struggled to execute them in a way that held reader interest to the end, but this little-known story is definitely one of his best.

Forgotten Book - The Case of the Chinese Gong

My choice for today’s Forgotten Book is Christopher Bush’s 1935 novel, The Case of the Chinese Gong. This is one of a long series of books featuring Bush’s amateur sleuth Ludovic Travers ( I believe he later became a private detective), who here aids and abets the Chief Constable in solving a domestic mystery.

This is one of those books in which the victim is an elderly and wealthy old chap with remarkably few redeeming features. Hubert Greeve is as mean and unpleasant as his name suggests, and there is no shortage of suspects when he is shot to death in his own home.

The suspects include four cousins who have fallen on hard times, as well as the family solicitor. Another question for Travers is whether the butler did it – this character certainly seems to be hiding a few secrets. The plot is quite elaborate, and a rough plan of the crime scene is provided. The real question is "howdunit?"

This is a competent story that begins well. The second chapter is called “Murder is Easy”. Did Agatha Christie borrow the phrase for her book of that name? Did Richard Hull turn it around when he wrote Murder isn’t Easy? We may never know. I did feel that the writing became flat in the middle of the book in particular and Travers is not a particularly memorable sleuth. Writing a compelling "howdunit" novel is a tough task: the danger is that interest focuses on the central trick and the pace drags. Bush was a decent writer, but very prolific, and it might just be that he slowed down the production rate and worked more on character and atmosphere, his fame would have lasted better than it has done.