From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

Shroud of Darkness

E.C.R. Lorac

Start date: October 1, 2023

Finish date: October 31, 2023

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: The next in our Classic Scenes of Crime Challenge
[close] The next in our Classic Scenes of Crime Challenge

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 166 topics — 7,784 comments total

Group Challenges

* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie
By Susan · 14 posts · 16 views

last updated Sep 02, 2025 12:08AM

* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) - SPOILER Thread
By Susan · 4 posts · 12 views

last updated Sep 01, 2025 04:16PM

showing 1 of 1 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Apr 24, 2022 Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore added it · review of another edition

Shelves: british, series, mystery, murder, ecr-lorac

Shroud of Darkness, the fortieth book in the Robert Macdonald series of books by British author Edith Caroline Rivett, writing as E. C. R. Lorac was my third pick for Karen and Simon’s #1954Club.

With some elements that one typically encounters in quite a few Golden Age mysteries—the London Fog and a train journey—the book presents us with an engrossing and fairly complicated mystery and a well-drawn out and interesting set of characters put together with very good writing, which kept me reading ...more

12 likes · Like · see review

Sep 23, 2023 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Published in 1954 this is the fortieth book in the long-running Robert Macdonald series. Sadly, they are not all in print, but I have enjoyed all of those I have read so far and am hopeful that more of this author's books is republished. Edith Caroline Rivett died at the end of the fifties, and wrote under the pseudonym's of both E.C.R. Lorac and Carol Carnac.

A train is slowly meandering into Paddington station during a fog - one of the London Peculiars that settled over the City in that era. I ...more

10 likes · Like · see review

Sep 17, 2023 Susan in NC rated it really liked it

Shelves: detectives-23challenge

4.5 stars for this complex traditional police procedural starring my favorite Scotland Yard man, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, and his long-serving team, Reeves and Jenkins. This author has become a golden age favorite, prolific in her lifetime but largely overlooked for too long; her books are slowly becoming available again - I hope they keep being reissued.

The book opens on a fog-bound train crawling toward London; a young woman has been chatting amiably with a young man sharing the cabin 4.5 stars for this complex traditional police procedural starring my favorite Scotland Yard man, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, and his long-serving team, Reeves and Jenkins. This author has become a golden age favorite, prolific in her lifetime but largely overlooked for too long; her books are slowly becoming available again - I hope they keep being reissued.

The book opens on a fog-bound train crawling toward London; a young woman has been chatting amiably with a young man sharing the cabin with her and a woman busily writing. As the fog thickens, the girl notices the boy becoming more and more quiet, uneasy and troubled. When two men, one middle-aged and professional, the other a younger “bad ‘un”, enter the cabin at Reading, the atmosphere becomes more tense as the fog thickens, so the young woman walks to the restroom to freshen up, and smoke a cigarette or two - anything to escape the young man’s once friendly, now anxious face…the nightmarish trip happens to coincide with a London “particular”, a heavy, noxious fog.

It takes hours to get to Paddington station, and when they finally arrive, the young man dashes out of the car after the other two men, appearing to speak to one of them. Shortly after, he is found unconscious in a dark part of the station in the dense fog by a constable. His head has been battered and he’s badly injured, but alive. His pockets and haversack are empty of any identification.

When Macdonald is assigned the case, he has to first identify the unconscious young man, and all he’s got to go on is the testimony of the very observant young woman who has come forward after police asked the public for assistance. The dogged police work it takes to figure out where the young victim came from was very well portrayed as always. There are interesting red herrings rooted in the young man’s family situation, and a fascinating story reaching back to the blitz bombing of Plymouth during World War II. There are also subplots involving the underbelly of the dog racing world, the budding and sometimes criticized use of psychology in investigating and treating juvenile criminals, and espionage.

A lot going on, but an interesting look at life in 1950s Britain, when new methods and institutions were replacing the old, society was rapidly changing, and the war still casts a long shadow. ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Mar 07, 2011 Bev rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, mystery, vintage-mystery

E. C. R. Lorac was one of two pseudonymns used by Edith Caroline Rivett. She also wrote under the name Carol Carnac. A British crime writer and member of the Detection Club, she was a very prolific writer--with 48 mysteries written as Lorac and 23 as Carnac. Her Lorac mysteries feature Chief Inspector Robert MacDonald who often is assisted by Detective Inspector Reeves among others.

Shroud of Darkness is one of my lucky finds at our local library's used/discarded bookstore. I love finding these E. C. R. Lorac was one of two pseudonymns used by Edith Caroline Rivett. She also wrote under the name Carol Carnac. A British crime writer and member of the Detection Club, she was a very prolific writer--with 48 mysteries written as Lorac and 23 as Carnac. Her Lorac mysteries feature Chief Inspector Robert MacDonald who often is assisted by Detective Inspector Reeves among others.

Shroud of Darkness is one of my lucky finds at our local library's used/discarded bookstore. I love finding these vintage mysteries that have long been on my TBO (To Be Owned) List sitting innocently on the shelf, just waiting for me to pounce on them. Yes, I did say pounce. Literally. I realize that I might have more of these Golden Age gems in my possession if I went looking online for them a little more often. But there is nothing like the thrill of wandering into a used bookstore, scanning the shelves, and coming across a book that you've been lusting after for what seems like for ever. Punching in the title in a little box on the computer and finding out that it's available from The X Mystery Bookshop on ABE books, just doesn't produce the same excitement--at least not for me.

This particular gem (and, gem, it is in every sense of the word) begins with a train ride through one of the worst fog's that England, and particularly London, has seen in "half a century." Riding in the same train car we have an upset young man, a psychiatrist's secrtary, a large female writer with a deep voice, a businessman who looks very stockbrokerish, and an "eel-like," unsavoury young man who looks a bit like a racing tout. At journey's end the agitated young man is left for dead in the black, "monster of a fog" and the police have one monster of a mystery on their hands. After being beaten sensless, the victim's pockets are rifled and his haversack stolen and the police find themselves faced with a nameless injured man on an evening of near solid blackout when nobody could be expected to notice anybody or anything.

Fortunately for them, the secretary and the businessman both prove to be very observant witnesses and Chief Inspector MacDonald identifies the young man fairly quickly. This seems to do nothing towards clearing up the mystery, though. For it seems that the young man is a bit of a mystery himself. During the choas of the early war years, he (at age 7-8) was found wandering on his own, injured and an amnesiac, after the bombing of a port town. A kindly farmer by the name of Greville and his wife took him in and, after no one claimed him, adopted him. Just prior to his near-fatal train journey, Richard Greville begins to regain his memory in flashes. And then he seems to recognize one of his fellow passengers.

MacDonald has to wonder where he will find the roots of the attack on Greville. Does it lie somewhere in his past and have anything to do with the memories that were surfacing. Is it tied to the man Greville recognized? There are many avenues that MacDonald has to follow and he and Detective Inspector Reeves do so in very methodical, very believable, and yet highly entertaining manner. The twists and turns of the plot follow one another logically even though I didn't see some of them coming. And I have to admit that I was just as much in the dark as those fog-bound train passengers right until the very end. I was certain I had figured it all out...only to find that I missed one final twist. Brilliantly plotted and well written, I sank into this book like a comfortable chair and didn't want to get up for a minute (unfortunately, there's this thing called work--and sleep). Five full stars. ...more

5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 17, 2023 Jill rated it really liked it

Shelves: e-c-r-lorac

I liked this a lot. The beginning on the train seemed very lifelike, with people keeping themselves to themselves, and only very light conversations, until the fog invading their journey and slowing everything down. The passengers felt very typical of those we have all encounted at some time. The new passengers taken on, put paid to the earlier feeling of comfort, and forced one of the main characters to leave the carriage. I also liked that the intelligence service was incorporated into the sto ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 02, 2023 Sandy rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery-classic, mystery-detective-grp, z2023-scenes-classic-crime, rread-2023

Lorac and her detective have become favorites. The plots are interesting, and MacDonald is invariably kind and considerate to both the people he interviews and those he works with. This book is wonderfully atmospheric, using London's dense fog as a cover for both the happenings in the train station and the young man's lost memory. A good read. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 25, 2023 Frances rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery-series

This is a great mystery/thriller set in the post WW II years. It concerns a young man on a fog-bound train to London who is bashed over the head and left for dead shortly after departing the train at Paddington Station, during one of the thick fog/smog wreathed nights so common at the time. Sarah Dillon, a young woman in the same carriage as the victim gets drawn into the case, overseen by D.I. MacDonald of the CID. Lorac very skillfully weaves together the possibilities-caught up in the wrong g ...more

1 like · Like · see review