Customer Reviews

WAS IT MURDER (Fifty classics of crime fiction, 1900-1950)

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From the Dover edition: "Was It Murder?" like "Goodbye Mr. Chips," takes place in that most traditional and confounding of English settings, the public school. Colin Revell, impudent Oxonian and sometime sleuth, returns to his alma mater Oakington to puzzle over a schoolboy's "accidental" death. The accidents multiply in frequency and horror as Colin idly pokes about the Gothic quads, and the tightly modulated suspense ripens with a generous foretaste of Hilton's later acclaimed talent: finely perceived, individual characters, overwhelming atmosphere, and full complement of adventure and romance.

From reviewer: I must admit it has been many years since I read this, picking it up because "Random Harvest" and "Lost Horizon" are favorites, and I enjoy mysteries. So, my rating is based mostly on not having a bad feeling about it, but not having a great one, either.

P.S. This book was originally released in 1931 under the title "Murder At School" under a pen name of Glen Trevor.

I enjoy the old Britishness of James Hilton's work and the psychological quirks of his characters. But this mystery was disappointing and boring. First of all, I guessed who done it, and why, very early on. Then the author explained everything in very long and boring conversation at the end between several characters. A summing-up like that shouldn't be necessary if the writing of the basic novel is good. The amateur detective's personality wasn't developed sufficiently to allow me to find him interesting. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't an interesting character in the book. The whole thing was exceeding formulaic and I find little to recommend it.

Colin Revell has published a novel, and he now works on an epic poem. When his articles come back rejected from various 1930s British periodicals, he decides they are "too good" for these venues. He has enough income to live on, although modestly, and an Oxford education. But he's bored. So when the headmaster of his old public school asks him to visit and quietly investigate the odd circumstances of a student's accidental death, he responds quite happily. He finds himself relishing the role of amateur detective all the more when a second odd death, that of the first boy's brother, occurs. Soon he is romancing a professor's put-upon young wife, and matching wits (or so he imagines) with a Scotland Yard detective.

This tale, first published in 1933, was written by a young author trying out a new genre. As anyone who has studied the later works of James Hilton knows, he did not become famous for his mysteries. This is the only mystery he authored, and while it is entirely readable - and delightful in its capture of time and place, too, for those of us who love depictions of between-the-wars England - it commits a sin I've committed myself as a writer. It plays out a key portion of the story's ending off stage, allowing characters to tell the reader about the events afterward instead of bringing the reader into them as they happen. I learned not to do that in later books, and so did Hilton.

Enjoyable just the same!

--Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of 2005 science fiction EPPIE winner "Regs"