Continuing my reviews of books I'd never heard of, can't find on the internet, and no one else is going to read, I present An Afternoon To Kill by Shelley Smith.
It's from the Crime Club series, printed in Britain in the 1950's with praise from the likes of the Daily Express ("She compels the reader by hypnotic skill".) The Crime Club logo of a gun-pointing villain always catches my eye.
Lancelot Jones was on his way to his first job as tutor to an Indian Rajah's son, when the ancient plane and incompetent pilot decant him in the middle of a desert; the Iranian Plateau perhaps. In the distance he sees a house and walled garden, and goes to wait out the repairs. The owner is Alva Hine, a curious old Englishwoman who entertains him with the story of how she arrived there, the story of a young girl in Essex, a story of love and hate and murder from fifty years ago.
Blanche Rose lived with her widowed father and other siblings quite happily until young and attractive Sophia catches her father's eye. They are soon married and she brings her handsome cousin Oliver to live nearby. Blanche dislikes Sophia and openly admits to an Oedipus complex (although being in love with her father she would have had an Electra complex). Soon Oliver has engaged and married himself to Blanche, and no one is aware that it is Oliver and Sophia who are the real couple.
There is a plot to kill off the father by the adulterous couple, a faked pregnancy, a miscarriage, the return of a long lost brother, and the police investigation when it is not the father, but young Sophia who is found murdered. The culmination of the story reveals that the possible culprit to the whole tale is Alva Hine herself - followed by an epilogue that offers a wild twist to the whole tale. It was a bit of a surprise - to which I exclaimed (cue the eye roll) "Oh, Brother."
One of the reasons I like reviewing these books is to offer some information about them to interested readers like myself, along with a clean scan of the hardcover (something I could not find). Crime Club offers several more from Smith including Man With A Calico Face, Woman In The Sea, He Died Of Murder, and in case you need directions This Is The House).
It's been called a tour de force and a brilliant masterpiece. For me it was just a pleasant diversion, not a gripping thriller. I read the whole novel in a day, and it did indeed kill the afternoon. Not a bad way to spend the day.
1953 / Hardcover / 192 pages
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