Forgotten Book - The Cambridge Murders

Adam Broome was one of the authors I highlighted at the Forgotten Authors panel at Crimefest, and so it seems appropriate to feature a book by him in Patti Abbott’s series of Forgotten Books.

I am not sure I’d ever heard of Broome until quite recently, and I have comments on this blog to thank. Philip drew my attention to the fact that Broome wrote an Oxford mystery which predated J.C. Masterman’s well-known An Oxford Tragedy. He also wrote a number of books set in Africa.

The Cambridge Murders is another of his academic mysteries. Two African students are found murdered and Chief Inspector Bramley of the Yard is called in to investigate. This book was first published in 1936. Happily, it has recently been reissued by Ostara Press.

I didn’t get much time on the panel to talk about Broome or his books, and I still have a lot to learn about him and them. But he was a notable figure of the Golden Age, even if mainly for historic reasons, and Ostara have done crime fans a service by making some of his work readily available again.

Academe in Mystery and Detective Fiction

When I wrote a while back that An Oxford Tragedy by J.C. Masterman was regarded as the first mystery set in the city’s academic environs, I was corrected by a comment from Philip, who pointed out that, in 1929, four years earlier, Adam Broome had published The Oxford Murders.

I realised that, instead of relying on my memory of the various reference books that acclaim Masterman’s book and ignore Broome’s, that I should have checked a voluminous book that I bought a few years ago called Academe in Mystery and Detective Fiction. Written by John B. Kramer, it is a real labour of love, commenting on no fewer than 486 academic mysteries from 1910 to 1999.

This is quite a bibliography, compiled with a great deal of discipline. The basic plan of the book is that each of the 486 annotations should comprise two paragraphs. The first describes the story (‘paying special attention to academic disciplines, academic ranks, and the location and nature of the academic institution’) while the second discusses the author.

Kramer’s book is the sort of project that will never appear on any best-seller list, but I admire the endeavour, and he has produced a valuable resource that I have dipped into infrequently in the past. I’ll consult it more diligently when writing about academic mysteries in future. Meanwhile, I’m pleased to say that The Oxford Murders, and Broome’s later book The Cambridge Murders, have both recently been republished in attractive editions by Ostara Publishing, whose enterprise really is commendable. We need more neglected books to reappear!