The only element of the mystery about which everyone could agree was that it was clearly a case of murder - even if the question of how the murder could have been committed was anything but clear. According to the evidence, the man who operated the small seaside railway that carried passengers back and forth from the tall cliffs to the beaches of the Kentish sea resort town of Broadgate had locked the train carriage as usual in the evening. When he returned to his train in the morning, he discovered the dead body of a man inside the still-locked carriage - a man who had been stabbed in the back. Who was the victim? And how could the murder have been committed? Those are the key problems to be addressed in Calamity in Kent, a 1950 mystery by John Rowland. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
As Calamity in Kent opens, we meet Jimmy London, a newspaper reporter currently jobless and quite eager to re-establish his credentials as a tough, reliable crime reporter. He is out one morning for an early stroll along the waterfront when he sees a man behaving very strangely indeed, staggering a bit, apparently dazed and upset. Could he be drunk so early in the morning? Or was there something very wrong? As any good reporter might do, Jimmy approached the man and began talking to him. He discovered that the man - one Aloysius Bender - was upset all right, and with good reason. It seems that he was the operator of the little railway which ran up and down the cliffs in Broadgate, carrying passengers between the town and the seashore. Bender had just arrived at work that morning to find the body of a murdered man, lying in the empty – and locked – railway carriage. There didn’t seem to be any way that someone could have gotten into and out of that carriage to commit the murder.
It was a problem that appealed to Jimmy London as a reporter. And he was lucky enough to find that a friend of his, Inspector Shelley of Scotland Yard, was taking over the case. Shelley suggested that the two of them pool their information and work together on this case; Jimmy, he says, as a newspaper reporter, may find it easier to get some of the witnesses to open up and talk to him where they might be reluctant to talk to the police. And Jimmy, hoping to turn his “special correspondent” free-lance status into a permanent job at a major newspaper – is more than happy to oblige. But there will be more murder - and some real danger for Jimmy London - before the riddles are solved.
John Rowland's Calamity in Kent is another in the series of British Library Crime Classics published in the U. S. by the Poisoned Pen Press, which provided me with a copy for this review. When it is officially republished in the United States next week, on April 1, it will be the first republication since it first appeared in 1950. This edition has a new and informative introduction by British mystery author Martin Edwards, who calls Calamity in Kent "a light mystery with thrillerish elements, rather than a cerebral whodunit." That seems about right to me. It’s a light, pleasantly witty book, and I think it's well worth your time.
Kate Jackson, at her crossexaminingcrime blog, has another excellent review of Calamity in Kent, and I recommend you read it for her insights into the plot and characters! https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress.com/2016/03/25/murder-at-the-seaside-in-calamity-in-kent-1950-by-john-rowland/
Posted by: Les Blatt | March 25, 2016 at 04:12 PM