How to Live Dangerously

by Joan Fleming

First American edition. Martin Hill's landlady is found dead. Hill is bequethed the house and some porcelain has disappeared. Hill likes the house because of its proximetry to a bookshop where he bought books to fill the bookshelves he had in every room. vi , 185 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..

350 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Joan Margaret Fleming was a British writer of crime and thriller novels. She was educated at Lausanne University.

She married Norman Bell Beattie Fleming in 1932. The Turkish detective Nuri Bey Izkirlak features in two of her books, 'When I Grow Rich and 'Nothing is the Number When You Die'.

Her novel 'The Deeds of Dr Deadcert' was made into a film 'RX Murder'. She won the Gold Dagger award twice, for 'When I Grow Rich' in 1962 and for 'Young Man I Think You're Dying' in 1970.

She wrote 33 novels beginning with 'Two Lovers Too Many' in 1949 and ending with 'The Day of the Donkey Derby' in 1978.

Reviews

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Martin Pendle Hill is a retired Intelligence officer, living in the top flat of a Victorian house, the bottom half of which is occupied by his landlady, the reitiring Miss Smite. When Pendle Hill experiences a run of bad luck and personal losses, he seems to be shaken out of his complacent, orderly existence. This is London in the early 1970s, and change is in the air! Soon he is seriously considering subletting part of his flat to hippie girls in flowing dresses, or an unmarried mother, or even an American academic on sabbatical. In order to discuss these changes, he must initiate closer contact with Miss Smite, and to his surprise, he begins to like the old lady. He even listens politely to her stories about her collection of priceless china, which she is just about ready to sell. But then it appears that his run of bad luck is not yet over : Miss Smite is found murdered, and soon after her collection of china ornaments is stolen. Pendle Hill decides to investigate, and soon finds himself embroiled in an adventure involving high-class fences, an achondroplastic china-mender, houseboats and free-loving young women.

I liked most of the book, because I had a lot of sympathy for Mr. Pendle Hill. And there was something funny in this old fuddy-duddy suddenly beginning to wake up to the changes in the world around him. I mentally cheered him on as he limped, biked or drove in pursuit of the criminals, even though he had just undergone surgery for a broken hip (I am not even sure whether hip replacements existed in the early 1970s). There was something valiant in this old man trying to find out who killed and robbed his even more elderly landlady. The reason I give it two stars is that the ending was unsatisfactory, even shockingly so.

[Tytti · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think this is something people call a "cozy mystery": A retired officer investigating his elderly landlady's murder. The language wasn't quite PC by modern standards but there was some old-fashioned charm in the book. A decent mystery and a fast read.