Two for the holidays

THE best way to relax over the Easter holidays is with a book or two to transport you away from the ordinary, every day murders in the tropics to murder in far-away exotic places like the Scilly Isles and the murkier streets of Victorian London.

WJ Burley wrote 28 “Wycliffe” murder mysteries before his death in 2002. Death in a Salubrious Place was first published in 1973 so that Superintendent Wycliffe and his back-up team of investigators solve the murder of a young woman and a retired pop star without the aid of computers, cell phones or DNA testing. A rusting iron bar found in a quarry, a few flakes of rust on sports jacket and trousers are enough to show “whodunit” although Wycliffe and his men have much to do before they find the telltale bar, jacket and pants.

This novel is set in one of the Scilly Isles, a scattering of small islands off Lands’ End, in South West England. A pop star retires there at the height of his fame (much to the annoyance of older people in the village). Salubrious Place is the name of his property, an old farmhouse complete with stable farm buildings. He converts the barn to use for concerts and dances, including all the latest electronic, noise-making gear, which, naturally, becomes a magnet for all the young people on the island. A young woman walking home from a session in the barn is murdered; the islanders suspect the pop star, the situation looks ugly and Wycliffe is sent to investigate.

I read this book at a sitting (well, almost, the cats demanded food and the telephone would ring at the most exciting parts) and enjoyed it. It’s not great reading but I like the descriptions of an island I’ve never visited and the inbred suspicions of people living in a closed community where strangers are distrusted, where a few scratch a living from the soil, or fish or, since all this takes place at the height of the tourist season, use their boats to ferry tourists on day trips to the out islands.

So far I’ve only read the first three chapters of Long Spoon Lane by Anne Perry, a writer who specialises in Victorian murder mysteries. First published last year, the book begins with a terrorist attack on a block of houses in a working class district in Victorian London. Thomas Pitt of Special Branch chases the bombers to Long Spoon Lane in one of the sleaziest parts of the capital. The siege ends when two of the bombers are arrested, a third, the son of an aristocrat, is found shot dead and a fourth bomber escapes.

The press raise a hullabaloo, the public bay for the police to be armed; against this public outcry Pitt uncovers a web of corruption in the Police . . . or so I’m informed by the back jacket.

I have a reservation or two about Mrs Pitt who, it appears, has married well beneath her and yet is not cast off by her family (one doubts that is conceivable in Victorian society - however, it all adds to the mystery for those who like a bit of class in their reading.)

You’ll find Wycliffe and Death in a Salubrious Place by WJ Burley and Long Spoon Lane by Anne Perry at Nigel Khan, Bookseller, PricePlaza, Ellerslie Plaza, Gulf City and The Falls, Westmall.