Customer Reviews

They Rang Up the Police

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book I really liked! I was so glad when I began to notice the Rue Morgue Vintage Mystery series because I have always liked the older mysteries best.

This story was first published in England in 1939 and fills the bill for a "nice" murder mystery. It has all the feel of the small English village. The characters are fully fleshed out and yet the author holds back secrets which are revealed over time and only when necessary. The detective is not flashy but very quiet and goes about his work of solving the crime in spite of the way his superior officers feel about him. Because of the time period in which the story takes place, the poor Inspector actually has to ride the local bus to some destinations. It seems that most policemen did not have access to automobiles. They did at least have telephones but the transportation factor must have been quite a handicap.

This was, for the most part, a slow moving, character driven mystery. I was not bored with it because it was always a given that something really had happened to Delia Cathcart. Anyone who solves this one before the reveal is certainly one up on me. I was surprised by the who and why!

Nicely written and an ok, not spectacular, example of the British cozy mysery. The detective is a good guy and plods along while people think he doesn't know what he's doing. The opening chapter introduces us to a houseful of women, mother and three spinster daughters, and they are so annoyingly sweet in their conversations that I understood the motive right away. But the majority of the book follows the police investigation and happily not too much more of the family is featured.