It's amazing the difference a single, small match can make, especially when it is the only light anywhere nearby during the course of a wartime blackout in London. A young man named Bruce Mallaig is wandering through blacked-out Regent's Park on a moonless night. Not very far from where he is walking, he sees a man strike a match - and by the light of that solidary match, he sees another man coming up silently behind the first one. In a moment, murder is done and a murderer is revealed. When he hears the details, Chief Inspector Macdonald of Scotland Yard agrees it's a most unusual story: "murder isn't uncommon," he observes, "but murder in the presence of witnesses is quite uncommon." True enough - but it's not going to be easy to figure out who has done what and to whom. That's the problem at the heart of Murder by Matchlight, written in 1945 by E. C. R. Lorac. It's the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
"E C. R. Lorac" was one of the pen names used by Edith Caroline Rivett, another very good author of traditional mysteries whose work has all but disappeared from bookshelves. The British Library is bringing back some of her novels in their Crime Classics Series, and Murder by Matchlight will be published in March by Poisoned Pen Press, which provided me with a copy for this review. Many of her novels feature the detecting skills of Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald, a pleasant, likeable and intelligent protagonist. In Murder by Matchlight, he's confronted with a murder that seems, at first glance, to be pretty straightforward and simple. Macdonald isn't so sure:
“We’ve got remarkably little to work on. A man was knocked on the head in the blackout: no house and neighbourhood to study, no fingerprints, no properties save an unidentifiable coal hammer – and finally, no real identity of deceased. It’s a set of circumstances which may form a very difficult problem.”
Which, of course, is what happens. All of this takes place in wartime London, and the book really does give the reader a sense of how terrible the living conditions are – and how the huge majority of British citizens managed to live with the restrictions, the shortages, the rationing and coupon books, and the dangers of living and moving around every day in London during the nightly bombings that destroyed so many lives. There’s a lot of discussion about the wisdom – even the morality – of pursuing a single killer while surrounded by the vast carnage of war. Mystery historian Martin Edwards provides another thoughtful and informative introduction for this new edition. Murder by Matchlight is a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable mystery.
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