The Long Arm of the Law: Classic Police Stories
Martin Edwards (editor)
Mystery
An anthology of mostly-forgotten stories, from the invaluable British Library Crime Classics series. The stories are of widely varying quality: some are purely of historical interest, but there are a couple of semi-precious gems in there. The star of the show is the clever "The Case of Jacob Heylyn", by Leonard R. Gribble--a writer whose name is quite new to me. (The best thing, from a reader's standpoint, is that The Long Arm of the Law gives a chap a promising list of author names for further investigation.)
I thought "The Case of Jacob Heylyn" was up and down. It didn't occur to me to wonder why the doctor's letter was in his wallet, which was clever, but it was dumb that the killer sat down at the victim's desk and wrote out the name of the hard case he owed money to, in such a way that the detective could read it. I mean, why not just sign your name, too?
ReplyDeleteFair points. I can only say that it didn't bother me while reading the story, which is all I can really ask for.
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