Not long ago, I acquired a copy of Andrew Garve's Home to Roost (1976) and it was working its way up the to-read pile ever so slowly until Jamie Sturgeon happened to recommend it to me. I was conscious that it was Garve's penultimate novel, written when he was coming to the end of a long career, and this made me wonder if it might be a bit lacklustre. Not a bit of it. The story is interesting and definitely 'different'.
The narrator is Walter Haines, who starts with a straightforward but rather enticing opening sentence: 'This is an account of how Max Ryland got himself murdered, and what happened afterwards.' As Haines says rather disarmingly, the build-up seems a little slow - and this may be what prompted Collins Crime Club, not for the only time, to tell a good deal of the story (too much, I'd say) on the dustwrapper blurb. But Garve writes readably and moves things along at a decent pace, so the extended build-up wasn't a problem for me.
Haines, like his creator, is a journalist who becomes a crime novelist and enjoys success. His work is filmed, as Garve's was. And when he meets the lovely Laura, who becomes his wife, all seems set fair. The snag is that Haines isn't as likeable as one might wish. Laura understandably becomes frustrated and when the couple are befriended by a famous actor, Max Ryland, one thing leads to another, and she becomes Max's lover. And then, as we've expected from that first line, Max winds up dead. But - Walter has an alibi. So he's in the clear. Or is he?
The plot is unusual and the ending of the story is subtle. One of the online reviews of this book is by that voracious reader and thoughtful critic Kate Jackson. Her thoughts are here, and all I will say is that there is a coded interpretation of the ending which reflects my understanding of the final pages. I liked this book a lot. The sheer variety of Garve's stories was a great strength of his.
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