Review by Booklist Review
That popular reviewer phrase fiendishly clever could have been coined to describe this 1934 mystery, reissued by the British Library as part of its Crime Classics series. It's narrated by Edward Powell, a young man who is tied to his tyrannical Aunt Mildred in the expectation that, should he still be living with her upon her death, he will inherit her money and estate. Powell keeps a diary. He's enormously funny about his dissatisfaction with life in the Welsh countryside, the dreary routine of the household, the beyond-boring neighbors. Most of all, his Aunt Mildred thwarts him constantly. The diary takes an increasingly dark turn, as Powell fights off and then commits to a scheme to end his misery by murdering Aunt Mildred. Gallows humor abounds as Powell's plots keep failing and then getting more elaborate. Toward the end of the tale, another diary-keeper emerges, leading readers to a spectacular turn at the end. Powell's movement toward the dark side will remind readers of Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train (and the Hitchcock film based on it). Fine psychological acuity, humor, and plotting throughout.--Connie Fletcher Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Originally published to wide acclaim in 1934, this entry in the British Library Crime Classics series from Hull (1896-1973) holds up well with its wry humor and delicious descriptions of people and places. Edward Powell, the effete but daftly amusing narrator (think Bertie Wooster with a mean streak), is financially dependent on his rich Aunt Mildred, with whom he's forced to live in her rambling house outside the small "and entirely frightful" town of Llwll, Wales. The novel opens with an amusing rant: "How can any reasonably minded person live in a place whose name no Christian person can pronounce?" Edward's only means of escaping his blighted existence is to do away with Aunt Mildred, his sole guardian and trustee. He confides his dissatisfaction and his various schemes for precipitating the old girl's demise to his diary, which makes for lively reading. The book fairly races along to its surprising resolution. Fans of vintage crime fiction will hope for more reissues of Hull's work. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The latest exhumation from the British Library of Crime Classics is the 1934 debut of the pseudonymous Richard Henry Sampson (1896-1973), a deliciously black comedy of murder most botched.Anticipating by more than 20 years the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers, Hull presents the salt-and-cyanide duo of Edward Powell, a smugly unemployed dilettante of refined literary tastes, supercilious dialogue, and overweening vanity, and Mildred Powell, his maiden aunt, guardian under his grandmother's will, and housemate in Brynmawr, outside the Welsh village of Llwll, a spot that's either perfectly lovely or suffocatingly parochial, depending whom you ask. Even the most routine conversations between the two as they discuss, for example, whether Edward will be obliged to walk all the way to the village to pick up the latest parcel of French novels he's ordered, are rife with such provocation on both sides as they scheme to secure the most minute psychic advantages over each other that even without the title, you'd know it would be only a matter of time before Edward decided that his life would be much richer, freer, and more untroubled without Aunt Mildred. Unfortunately, his initial attempt on her life, cleverly conceived as it is, doesn't quite go according to plan. Now Edward must deal not only with the suspicion that will naturally fall on him if he's successful and the fact that every soul in Llwll seems fully apprised of everyone else's business and obsessed with the possibility of learning even more, but with the likelihood that Aunt Mildred has the wind up and that, as she repeatedly warns him, any future such activities on his part will force her to "take action." A child could see where this is all heading.Even so, fans of acid domestic intrigue as only the British can serve it up will rejoice in the republication of this minor classic despite an overlong last chapter that reveals the murderous narrator as even more witless, and his target as even more resourceful, than readers already knew. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
