London particular

The 125th entry in the British Library Crime Classics series starts with an excerpt from Bleak House about impenetrable fog. It's this kind of fog, known as a "London Particular" at the time of this mystery's original publication in 1952, that turns an assault into a murder. The man, a Belgian visitor to an upper-class London home, makes a phone call to the off ice of the households' family doctor crying out that he's been bludgeoned with a mallet. By the time the doctor arrives, the home's foyer is filled with the visitor's blood, a surgical instrument abandoned next to his body. Brand informs the reader that seven possible murderers are within one mile of the house. Brand's recurring detective Inspector Cockrill takes on the case, searching through motives and whereabouts until the satisfyingly shocking last line of the book. While the puzzle behind the mallet murder and Cockrill's assembly of the pieces works well, far too much time is spent in dilatory dialog and description. For fans of the series.

As fog enshrouds London, a murder in Maida Vale makes it even harder to see what's what in this stellar whodunit, first published in 1952 and known in the U.S. asFog of Doubt. Raoul Vernet has traveled from Belgium to meet with Louisa Jane Evans, the grandmother of Dr. Thomas Evans and his sister, Rosie. As she sits in the car of Thomas' partner, Tedward, né Edwin Robert Edwards, who's struggling to find his way through the pea-souper, Rosie confesses that Raoul had seduced and impregnated her, and that she's not inclined to bring the baby to birth. By the time Tedward brings her home, Raoul is dead, bashed to death with a mastoid mallet that seems to indicate he was killed by a doctor. So DI Charlesworth arrests Thomas, whose loyalty to his sister certainly has a strong motive. The trial goes off the rails when Tedward produces evidence of Thomas' innocence that implicates Tedward, who promptly replaces his partner in the dock until franchise hero Inspector Cockrill finally lays the mystery to rest with help from still another confession. As Martin Edwards notes in his introduction, Brand (1907--88) loved this best of all her novels, and it's easy to see why. The plotting is ingenious, the multiple revelations perfectly paced; the means to conceal the real killer well-nigh unguessable and thoroughly logical; the repeated dipping into the thoughts of the seven suspects deftly deceptive; and the conversation among those suspects unfailingly entertaining, even as their number is reduced to six. Proof that the Golden Age of Detection extended well past the war. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.