Martin Fone's Blog, page 103

Hendrick’s Neptunia Gin

Sticking to your knitting can be a tad boring. Hendrick’s Gin is a brand of gin launched in 1999 by William Grant & Sons from their distillery in Girvan and its distinctive cucumber and rose infused spirit has long established itself as a market leader in contemporary style gins. However, in recent years they have become a bit more adventurous, perhaps in reaction to the pressures of the ginaissance, launching a series of limited-edition gins, of which Hendrick’s Neptunia Gin is this year’s (2022) offering. I picked up a bottle at my local Waitrose store.

Hendrick’s used a blend of spirits produced in two different ways. Using a small pot still called a Bennett still which is filled with neutral spirit, the botanicals, and water, it is left to seep for 24 hours. The still is then heated and as it boils, vapours move up the column to the condenser, where they are collected. Once all the alcohol is collected the result is an oily, juniper-heavy spirit.

The other still used, a Carter-Head Still, one of few left in the world, deploys a different method. The botanicals are placed in flavour baskets at the very top of the still through which alcohol vapours pass and extract the requisite flavours and pass them into the condenser. Only lighter, sweeter, floral flavours can be extracted this way. The two different spirits are blended and cucumber essence and rose petal essence is added.

I have always been a little underwhelmed by Hendrick’s, the juniper being a little underpowered for my taste, and Neptunia uses the base botanicals of the original gin, distilled, presumably in the same way, but adds a little twist to justify its existence. The twist is that it is master distiller, Lesley Gracie’s take on a spirit inspired by the tumultuous waves of the Ayrshire coast. Producing a saline gin seems very much on trend in 2022 and there are lots of intriguing, outré botanicals to be found on the coastline, enough to whet the imagination of any self-respecting distiller.

Having made a big thing about the coastline botanicals, Hendrick’s are remarkably reticent about disclosing what they are. A shame as that is their marketing USP for this variant of their familiar gin. Given that it is based on the original we can assume that juniper, cucumber, rose, elderflower, cubeb pepper, angelica, caraway, chamomile, coriander, elderflower, orris roost, and a full complement of citrus elements are in the mix. The littoral flavour, it seems, is introduced by kelp and coastal thyme, but there may be others. There seem to be so many competing flavour profiles that only the most accomplished distiller can hope to tame them to produce a palatable drink.

And Lesley Gracie almost pulls it off. The aroma is complex, a melange of salinity, citrus, herbaceous and floral notes with a hint of earthiness of the juniper. In the glass the spirit is crystal clear and citrus heavy, the dominant citric notes only grudgingly allowing the juniper, the cucumber and rose, and later the floral elements to join the party. The aftertaste is dry and slightly salty, but also quite warm and spicy. It was a rollercoaster of tastes and sensations, more like being on a boat in a stormy sea than watching the waves crashing on to the rocks from the safety of the coastline.

With an ABV of 43.4% it is stronger than their original gin, but it is housed in the same distinctive apothecary’s bottle. The labelling has a maritime light blue as a background and features a picture of a mermaid in case you had not got the message. One from their “cabinet of curiosities” it is an acquired taste, one which will linger on my gin shelf.

Until the next time, cheers!

The Daughter Of Time

A review of The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

Richard III has had a bad press through the centuries, characterised as a hunchback, suffering the indignity of being buried under a Leicester car park, although the car park came after the burial, and accused of the murder of the two princes in the Tower of London. Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, the fifth in her Alan Grant series, originally published in 1951, is an ingenious attempt to rehabilitate his reputation. It is a book that was ranked number one in the Crime Writers’ Association’s top one hundred crime novels of all time. Some accolade.

Grant of the Yard is condemned to a long stay in hospital, recovering from leg and back injuries. To prevent him from growing too bored, an actress friend presents him with a series of portraits of historical characters, each of whom is associated with a mystery. His sleuthing instincts aroused, Grant decides to investigate the story of Richard III and whether he really did murder the princes in the Tower. He is helped in his endeavours by an American amateur researcher, Brett Carradine, who does the legwork, combing through historical records to find vital clues that might have a bearing on the case.

For some unaccountable reason the history of the Tudors is a well-travelled literary path, but Tey cleverly shines the spotlight on an event that trashed the reputation of the Plantagenets and made Henry VII’s undoubted usurpation of the throne more palatable to the English.

Using a combination of Grant’s deductive training and Carradine’s in-depth trawl through the records, the sleuth quickly determines that the allegations against Richard are based on hearsay, rumour and later accounts written by supporters of the Tudors to justify their ascension to the throne. Grant also believes, looking at the portrait, that Richard’s face is not one of a murderer but rather that of a kind, compassionate man.

Tey builds up a compelling case in favour of the last Plantagenet king, arguing that he had nothing to gain from the princes’ deaths unlike Henry VII who needed all potential claimants to throne out of the way, that Thomas More was little more than a Tudor apologist, that no contemporary capital was made of the allegations against Richard III who was forgiven by the boys’ mother and that there were no contemporary reports of the boys’ deaths. Historians with a detailed knowledge of the period might profoundly disagree with her thesis and some arguments seem stronger than others, but as well as being an intriguing analysis of a notorious historical event, Tey’s book played a not insignificant part in the movement to rehabilitate Richard III’s reputation.

It is a deceptively simple story but one which sucks the reader in, forces them to think and reconsider their pre-existing prejudices. The sense of disappointment at the end when Carradine reports that he has found later histories detailing the events which exonerate Richard is genuinely moving. They are not the trailblazers they perhaps they thought they were but, nonetheless, the intellectual exercise was perfect therapy for a detective of the Yard lying on his back with nothing else to do.

I enjoyed it immensely and it deserves its reputation as one of the great detective stories.

The China Governess

A review of The China Governess by Margery Allingham

The seventeenth in Allingham’s long-running Albert Campion series, The China Governess was originally published in 1962, four years before her death, and is frankly not a patch on her earlier works. She is a fine writer, but her problems stem from a rather thin plot which would not be out of place in a Trollope or Patricia Wentworth novel, a young man’s search for his true identity, the revelation of which might or might not scupper his plans to marry his fiancé

The man in question is Tim Kinnit, a bright young thing who has done well at Oxford, and now wants to marry the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, Julia, but her father wants to know more about his background. It turns out that he has been adopted, having been rescued from the roughest slum in London, Turk Street Mile, during the evacuation in anticipation of the Blitz. He was either separated from or abandoned by his mother and taken under the wings of the Kinnits, and specifically the larger-than-life character, Nanny Broome, the only character who really comes to life in this saga.

The Kinnits have a record of brushing uncomfortable truths under the carpet, starting with a famous murderess, Miss Thyrza, the eponymous China governess who a century earlier was convicted of a murder. A governess in the Kinnit household, she was immortalised in a china model, one of a series of famous murderers, and her biography was bought up by the leader of the Kinnit clan. It emerges, though, that the story behind the murder is more complicated than it seems and puts another dark stain on the family.

Relics from the past, the Kinnits struggle to come to terms with the new order following the end of the Second World War. Without their accustomed domestic help, they have to fend for themselves and solve the problem of feeding themselves by ordering meals from the local pub.

What is noticeable in this later Allingham novel is that there is a greater sense of realism than I have encountered hitherto. This is evident in the opening chapter which introduces to the hell hole that was Turk Mile Street. It has been razed to the ground, thanks to a combination of the Luftwaffe and London developers, and some shiny “luxury” apartment blocks have sprung up, thanks in no small measure to Councillor Cornish who was horrified by the conditions in the slums. One of the new flats occupied by a harmless old couple has been trashed in what seems a senseless act of vandalism and the shock of the attack results in the wife suffering a fatal stroke.

The couple had a mysterious tenant, who turns out to be one of the Stalkey brothers, a firm of private detectives who have been employed by the Kinnits to establish the truth behind Tim’s origins and adoption. The vandal bears an uncanny resemblance to Tim and as he continues his trail of destruction, Tim finds himself in hot water with the authorities. Julia, who for some reason is still determined to win her beau, employs the services of Campion and Inspector Charlie Luke to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Campion’s role is minor and subdued with Luke making most of the running in resolving a mystery involving a tangled web of error, deceit, greed, and ambition. It is as though Allingham has got bored with him and his crew, Lugg only makes a cameo appearance, and that the forthright cockney copper makes for a livelier hero, more in tune with the times. The most amazing transformation in the story is that of Councillor Cornish who starts off as a bumptious, arrogant man but has become a complex, tragic, sympathetic character by the end.

If you have not read Allingham’s Campion stories before, this is not the one to begin with. Sadly, Campion’s and Allingham’s time is almost up.

A Slice Of Pork Pie

A staple of the picnic hamper, a satisfying meal on its own, portable, and a perfect accompaniment to a salad, the pork pie is firmly established as one of Britain’s favourite pies. We spend more than £165 million a year on them, according to Kantar Worldpanel. Familiar fare it might be, but the pork pie had a long, fascinating and, at times, contentious history.

An early version of the pork pie appears in De Re Coquinaria, a collection of recipes attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmand living in the first century AD. The ham was boiled with dried figs and three bay leaves. After removing the skin, making diagonal incisions into the meat, and pouring honey over it, it was wrapped in a dough made from oil and flour and served when the dough was cooked (Book VII, IX).

Our forefathers in the Middle Ages were pie enthusiasts. Ominously, pies were known as “cofyns”, a term probably derived from the coffin-like casement of pastry complete with lid, but also, surely, a knowing acknowledgement that what was inside was not always of the finest quality. The Forme of Cury (1390) contains a recipe for mylates of pork (XX.VII.XV), a quasi-pork pie with elements of a quiche. The pork was ground, “hewe pork al to pecys”, and mixed with cheese and eggs and seasoned with spices and saffron, cheese and eggs, and then cooked in a pastry shell.

It took such a long time to cook the dish that the pastry crusts were rock hard, leading some to wonder whether they were discarded rather than eaten. So integral, though, were they to the recipe that it would seem strange to throw them away. Hannah Glasse’s influential The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), a compendium of 942 recipes, included one for the Cheshire pork pie, a rich and slightly sickly concoction of layers of pork loin and apple, sweetened with sugar and mixed with half a pint of white wine.

Whether this pork pie was a delicacy particular to Cheshire is not clear, but the Melton Mowbray pork pie is incontrovertibly associated with the Leicestershire town. Indeed, on April 4, 2008, it was awarded “protected designation of origin” (PDO) status by the European Commission, since converted, post Brexit, to “Designated Origin UK Protected” or “GI, Geographical Interest” mark. What this means is that only pies made within a designated zone around Melton, roughly ten miles in radius, and in accordance with the town’s traditional recipe can carry the Melton Mowbray name on their packaging.

Grey meat seasoned with salt and pepper, succulent jelly, and bowed walls are the hallmark of a Melton Mowbray pork pie. The meat used is fresh and uncured, which gives it its distinctive grey colouration, in contrast to pork pies made from cured pork, where the meat is pink. The hot water crust pastry is hand-raised which means that the warm dough is kneaded slightly until it is soft and smooth, then fitted around a bottle or wooden dolly, and “raised” by hand, starting from the base, and drawing it upwards to form the walls.

The course chopped pork, seasoned with a little salt and pepper, would then be put into the casing, sealed, and baked in the oven. Made originally without the use of baking hoops, the unsupported pie would sink and bow in the oven, giving it its distinctive shape. Whilst still hot, bone stock jelly was piped in to fill the airspaces within the pie to preserve the meat inside longer, sterilise the contents and give it more solidity, thus reducing the risk of it crumbling when carried.

Reward Of The Week

Should you expect a show of gratitude if you do the right thing or is sufficient, as it says in Matthew 5:12, to realise that great is your reward in heaven? Should there be a sliding scale between the value of the item lost and the amount the finder receives for returning to its rightful owner?

Someone who clearly believes that a reward should bear some relation to what is found is Anouar G from Frankfurt. He spotted a cheque on the railway platform made out in the favour of the sweet makers, Haribo, from the supermarket group, Rewe. The bank order was for the mouth-watering sum of €4,631,538.80.

Anouar reported his find to Haribo who advised him to destroy the cheque and to send photographic evidence that he had done so. These instructions Anouar duly carried out and a few days later, the grateful Haribo saw fit to reward him for his find, by sending him six packets of their sweets. Anouar was not impressed, but Haribo pointed out that this was their standard package that they send out as a thank you.

A moral conundrum, for sure.

Leak Of The Week (2)

Meanwhile in the real world of football, the game has been hit by a second urinegate scandal of the season. In early September Blackfield and Langley’s keeper, Connor Maseko, was sent off having been spotted by the referee leaving the field to take a leak in the hedge behind his goal, an incident thought to be a first in the FA Cup’s long history.

Last weekend in the FA Trophy tie between Warrington Town and Guiseley, the Wire’s goalkeeper, Tony Thompson, saw red after an opposition “fan” allegedly urinated in his water bottle, something he only discovered when he took a swig from it. Unsurprisingly, Thompson reacted adversely, throwing the bottle away into the crowd in disgust and, with some of his teammates, confronting the away team’s followers. After the kerfuffle, Thompson was shown red and reported that he had fallen out of love with the game. Warrington eventually lost 1-0.

Clearly there is a sponsorship opportunity for Lucozade who have recently pulled their sponsorship of bottles at the World Cup. Seriously, though, incidents like this leave a nasty taste in the mouth and are not welcome in the world of non-league football. Let’s hope Thompson recovers his love for the game.

Update: Guiseley have since announced that they have banned an individual. Anything less would be taking the piss..

Murder Abroad

A review of Murder Abroad by E R Punshon

Originally published in 1939 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, the thirteenth in Punshon’s enjoyable Bobby Owen series, Murder Abroad is unusual in several respects. As its rather prosaic title suggests the story is set abroad, in the quiet French village of Citry-sur-l’eau in the Massif Centralto be precise, and Bobby is flying solo, operating with no official authority. Still engaged to Olive Farrar but with her millinery business struggling and he still a lowly Detective Sergeant, his prospects of tying the knot and making an honest woman of her seems as distant as ever.

Olive, though, comes up with an intriguing proposition. One of her customers, one that actually pays, Lady Markham mentions that the family of Miss Polthwaite are concerned about the manner of her death in France and the whereabouts of the uncut diamonds into which she converted her wealth. Lady Markham would like the Yard’s up-and-coming detective to investigate. She can swing a month’s leave, extended to six weeks subsequently, and will finesse a transfer to a better paid job and organise a reward if he reclaims the diamonds. This seems the answer to all of Bobby’s problems.

One curious aspect of this arrangement is that, hitherto, Bobby who is aristocratic by birth and Oxford educated, albeit with a third, has always been prickly over suggestions that his path up the greasy pole has been eased by his connections. Here, though, he is willing to ditch his principles. Love conquers all, and so to France he goes.

The Miss Polthwaite saga, as the illuminating introduction reveals, is based on a true story ten years earlier, featuring a distant relative of Richard Branson’s whose killer, despite strong suspicions, was never apprehended. Miss Polthwaite’s body had been found down a well and although rumours were circulating that she had been murdered by Charles Camion with whom she is said to have had a fling, the authorities declared it was suicide. There was no trace of her diamonds. Bobby, on inspecting the well with its heavy lid, concludes that suicide it was not.

Punshon writes about the French countryside with affection and avoids any hint of the little Englander. Life in England and France is compared and contrasted, but Punshon recognises that each have their own strengths and there is no attempt to claim cultural superiority. I particularly enjoyed his comments about the theatre of the French restaurant turning feeding into dining.

Bobby is a stranger abroad and although he speaks the language, Punshon occasionally emphasises his sleuth’s familiarity with the more idiomatic aspects of the language, Bobby is less comfortable in understanding the psychology of the French villagers. He also misses the opportunity to discuss his discoveries, progress, and frustrations with his superiors and for the first time has to make his own decisions as to how to proceed, always conscious that he has no authority to act.

There are several villagers, including Camion and the village priest, whose dreams and ambitions would be fulfilled with the money that the old spinster’s diamonds would bring in and, naturally, they are prime suspects. Then there are the English couple who have rented the mill with the well where Miss Polthwaite met her death, an artist who hangs a curious picture with little artistic merit, and the picaresque beggar, Père Trouché, whose acute sense of hearing compensates for his blindness. Bobby’s uncertainty as to whether the beggar, who is both omniscient and ubiquitous, is really blind is a leitmotif of the book, with the beggar assuming the role of Owen’s amanuensis, helping to unlock the secrets of the village.

The solution to the mystery, which is both dramatic and full of pathos, lies in an ingenious reworking of a familiar tale from Greek mythology and completes an enthralling and enjoyable book. We will see whether Bobby’s rewards will be enough to let him marry Olive.

Tobermory Hebridean Gin

Famous for its brightly painted houses that line the main street up to the pier, with a backdrop of tree-lined hills that look across the Sound of Mull, Tobermory is the principal town on the Hebridean island of Mull and the starting point for a trip to Iona. If you stay the night in the town, as I did some years ago, the whisky distillery, originally known as Ledaig Distillery when it was founded in 1798 but known more prosaically as Tobermory Distillery, and its products are worth searching out.

Sadly, when I was there, they had not started distilling gin, but this omission was rectified in April 2019 when they launched Tobermory Hebridean Gin, joining the ever-growing band of whisky distillers who see an opportunity to cash in on the ginaissance by using their expertise to produce spirits that take less time to produce and offer a boost to cashflow. Ironically, I had to go down to Cornwall, on a recent visit to the headquarters of Drinkfinder UK, to pick up my bottle.  

The story goes that their foray into the world of gin came about when they had the opportunity, as you do, to buy a 60-litre 1950s copper still from South Africa, which they shipped over to Mull. After refurbishing and fitting it, it was christened Wee Betty, joining The Botanists’s still in Islay, Ugly Betty, as a still bearing the name of Betty. Perhaps it is a Scottish thing. Anyway, the gin has gone so well that they are upgrading to a larger still.

Unsurprisingly, the bottle, clear and circular with a domed shoulder, medium sized neck with a turquoise foil, and wooden cap with cork stopper, makes great play of their distilling heritage and Hebridean origin. Embossed on the front of the bottle above the label is “Est 1798” and below “Isle of Mull”. The white label, two thin strips, one at the front and one at the back, is busy, telling me that it is “Hebridean small batch gin distilled on the Isle of Mull with rich spirit from our whisky stills”.

It names elderflower, tea, and wild heather on the front while the wording on the rear label below a charming illustration of the painted houses of Tobermory adds juniper, sweet orange peel to line up. However, there are another eight botanicals used to make the gin, whose identities are kept under wraps. A shame. What particularly intrigued me about this gin is that it uses a grain neutral spirit as the base but adds a dash of Tobermory new-make spirit as a quasi-botanical rather than the base itself, gin with whisky overtones, an interesting twist to ageing gin in whisky barrels.   

On the nose the juniper seemed a little undercooked, making way for more floral and herbaceous aromas and the maltiness of the whisky. In the glass it is slightly cloudy as it louches with a tonic and surprisingly sharp, a melange of spices, herbs, and citrus with a creamy feel in the mouth and the lurking presence of the whisky before signing off with a smooth malty and herbal aftertaste.

It is certainly different and on initial tasting I was not too sure, the juniper seemed to have got lost and the maltiness of the whisky was perhaps a little too evident. It also seemed stronger than its advertised 43.3% ABV, again perhaps a legacy of the whisky. After returning to the bottle several days later, the impact was not as great, and it proved a pleasant and interesting tipple. This is definitely one for those who like their gins on the more herbal side of the taste spectrum.

Until the next time, cheers!

Till Death Us Do Part

A review of Till Death Us Do Part by John Dickson Carr

This is the fifteenth in Carr’s Dr Gideon Fell series, originally published in 1944 and now reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics collection. Carr made his name in the world of Golden Age detective fiction as the master of locked room mysteries, and it will come as no surprise to the reader that he treats them with several locked room deaths as well as a shoal of red herrings in what is an entertaining and enthralling story.

Two of the leading protagonists are a femme fatale, Lesley Grant, who moved into the village of Six Ashes some six months earlier, and a mildly successful playwright, Richard (Dick) Markham, who inevitably falls head over heels in love with her, so much so that they are engaged to be married. Much of the story is seen from Dick’s perspective and his reaction to the suggestion that his fiancée may not be all that she seems to be.

At the village fete Lesley is anxious to have her fortune told and clearly receives bad news from the clairvoyant. Although shrugging off her temporary alarm, Lesley accidentally discharges a rifle, the bullet entering the fortune teller’s tent and injuring the clairvoyant, who purports to be the famous Home Office pathologist, Sir Harvey Gilman. Lesley is led to believe that Gilman is unlikely to survive his injuries.

When Sir Harvey is alone with Dick he tells him of Lesley’s past and how her two former husbands had apparently committed suicide, injecting themselves with prussic acid in locked rooms, as had a subsequent boyfriend. The deaths were passed off as suicides, but the police had thought that they were murders, although they could not prove their suspicions. The key to discovering how Lesley had committed the crimes, according to Sir Harvey Gilman, was to lay a trap for Lesley by Dick inviting her to a meal à deux.

While all this is going on, the local doctor has suspicions as to the true identity of Sir Harvey and brings in Carr’s regular amateur sleuth, Dr Gideon Fell, in to confirm his suspicions. Fell immediately recognises him as a notorious con man and thief, but before “Sir Harvey’s” real identity can be exposed, he too dies, in a locked room, having seemingly committed suicide by injecting prussic acid. However, as the modus operandi of the death was identical to those attributed to Lesley, was the con man another of her victims? By this time, Dick is suffering a dilemma; does he still believe in his fiancée or is she really a serial killer and, if so, is he next on her list?

Of course, what has really happened is more nuanced than that and Gideon Fell sets out to reveal the truth. The case against Lesley gets blacker as Fell starts digging. While professing to have no love for jewellery, Lesley insists on having a safe in her room. What is in it and why did she, allegedly, knock Cynthia Drew out with a hand mirror when she was enquiring about the safe’s contents? Is this where she kept her supply of prussic acid?

The key to unlocking the mystery is solving the howdunit aspect of the locked room death. The solution is ingenious and, for once, I missed a Freeman Wills Crofts style diagram which would have helped me visualise how it was done more clearly. Once Fell had solved that, the identity of the culprit and their motivation becomes clear. Fell, though, is not one to show his cards and much of his deductive process is kept from the reader. He is also a bit bumptious and is difficult to relate to.

That aside, Carr has constructed a tale which as well as demonstrating his talent for locked room mysteries takes time to explore the psychology of someone who is in love and who begins to have doubts about his intended and how the rumour mill, once its wheel starts turning, can soon run out of control.

Work For The Hangman

A review of Work for the Hangman by Bruce Graeme

Originally published in 1944 and reissued by the excellent Moonstone Press, Work for the Hangman is the fourth in Graeme’s Theodore Terhune series which ultimately ran to seven stories. Once again Graeme is prepared to bend the traditional and formulaic murder mystery genre and has produced an intriguing mix of straightforward detection and an almost inverted murder mystery with a substantial bit of alibi-busting thrown in.

Terhune, who has built himself a reputation for being somewhat of a successful amateur sleuth, much to his embarrassment, is a bookseller by trade and buys a substantial library which belonged to the recently deceased Robert Strudgewick, a wealthy Yorkshireman. Strudgewick, a man of firm and fixed habits, drowned when he fell off a bridge, taking a route back to his house which he never normally took, and while the coroner was satisfied that the death was accidental, some of the locals, including his butler, believe that there was foul play and point the finger at his nephew, Ronald. The butler, knowing of Terhune’s reputation, attempts to interest him in taking up the case.

Meanwhile, Terhune and his occasional female companion, Julia MacMunn, meet Robert Shilling at a party with a new wife in tow, different to the one that Julia had met Shilling with only a year or so ago on a cruise. It transpires that his first wife also met with an accidental death. To make matters more intriguing Shilling is able to provide Ronald Strudgewick with a seemingly cast-iron alibi that shows that he was seemingly thirty miles away in Thirsk at the time of James’ death. Even more coincidentally, Ronald seems to be able to give Shilling a cast-iron alibi for his whereabouts at the time of his first wife’s death.

Julia plays much more of a central role in the investigations than hitherto and, indeed, it is her discovery through a series of amazing coincidences that there is a link between Shilling and Strudgewick junior and impels Terhune to take up the challenge to solve the mysteries. An added bonus of Julia’s more central role is that it we see more of her mother, Alicia, and most of the comedic moments in a narrative that does not take itself too seriously involve her.

Having got to this point, the focus of the book switches to become an investigation of how Strudgewick and Shilling really committed their crimes, how they were able to create such watertight alibis for each other, and what their motivations were other than Ronald wanting to get his hands on Strudgewick’s wealth and Shilling to rid himself of a wife with whom he had grown tired to pursue pastures new. Strudgewick, sensibly, skips the country and the focus concentrates on Shilling whose alibi, little by little, becomes less secure.

In comparison with A Case for Solomon this book seems less inventive, and the pace is more pedestrian. There is too much reliance on coincidence for my taste, starting with the suspects’ initials, and the finale a little rushed and a tad underwhelming. Nevertheless, Graeme keeps the reader engaged, writes with no little humour and has an acute sense of time and place. It is well worth a read, but the curious might be well advised to read his books in chronological order as there are some spoilers of the previous three embedded in the text. I suppose it enhances the sense of a series but I am never certain why writers, particularly of crime fiction where the solution is its principal raison d’être, do it.