Customer Reviews

Minute for Murder

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I thoroughly enjoyed Minute for Murder (1947). War in Europe is over but continues in the Pacific. Nigel Strangeways is still working at the Ministry of Morale, a bureaucratic wartime agency in London. When a colleague is poisoned, Strangeways is again paired with his good friend Superintendent Blount of Scotland Yard. The abundant red herrings in Minute for Murder is likely to mislead even the astute reader of mystery stories.

Cecil Day-Lewis (Nicholas Blake was a pseudonym) authored sixteen Nigel Strangeways mysteries spanning three decades (1935-1966). Minute for Murder is perhaps more biographical than many of his stories; Day-Lewis actually worked in the wartime Ministry of Information from 1941-1946. I was especially intrigued with his description of daily life in wartime London.

Cecil Day-Lewis was professor of poetry at Oxford in 1951-56, and a lecturer in the 1960s at several universities. He was Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. The actor Daniel Day-Lewis is his son.

I highly recommend the Nigel Strangeways mysteries. Although I only recently encountered the stories of Nicholas Blake, I have now read five: Minute for Murder (1947), Head of a Traveler (1949), End of Chapter (1957), The Widow's Cruise (1959), and The Worm of Death (1961).

It may be necessary to buy used copies online. The Strangeways stories were reprinted as Perennial Library paperbacks by Harper Collins Publishers. Another source (The Nicholas Blake Treasury) is an inexpensive, four volume, hardcover, book club edition published by the Mystery Guild.