The greatest classic crime novels ever written…Barry Turner picks his three all time
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (Penguin Modern Classics £9.99, 304pp)
One of the great crime writers, Tey is set apart from her peers by her talent for ringing the changes on a formulaic mystery. In The Franchise Affair from 1949, she explores the power of herd instinct to override rational behaviour.
The plot is simplicity itself. A precocious teenager claims to have been held against her will by an outwardly respectable mother and daughter who had exploited her as a domestic slave, beating her when she resisted.
Her evidence is plausible. She describes in detail the house and even the attic where she claims to have been held prisoner. Ill-informed gossip, spurred on by a scurrilous journal, threatens violence until a mild-mannered solicitor takes up the case. It seems that virtue must triumph. But don’t be too sure.
Latter End by Patricia Wentworth (Hodder £10.99, 320pp)
Miss Marple and Miss Silver were near contemporaries, both having first appeared in print in the late 1920s. The two characters have much in common and are equally endearing. As it is, we have 12 full-length Miss Marple novels in print while the score for Miss Silver is over twice that number. Yet Miss Silver has been relegated to second fiddle, in my view unfairly.
Latter End proves the point. An ingenious plot centres on the insufferably selfish wife of a wealthy landowner who dies of an overdose of morphine. Inevitably, while there are several who might have wished her dead, suspicion falls on the husband.
It is only when Miss Silver, prim and correct, is called in that other lines of inquiry become clear. A triumph of ingenuity.
The Puzzles of the Parish Edited by Martin Edwards (British Library £10.99, 288pp)
With first-hand experience of the frailties of human nature, the clergy have long inspired writers of mystery. In this delightful collection of ecclesiastical tales, Edwards makes an excellent start with G. K. Chesterton’s sharp-witted Father Brown exposing a religious charlatan who is also a murderer.
The challenge for Edwards is to maintain the standard for the rest of the book. This he achieves magnificently with a rich assortment of astute priests including an amateur detective who recovers a church treasure and a rector who, having disposed of a blackmailer, takes advantage of an open grave made ready for another funeral.
While the masters of crime fiction such as Michael Gilbert and Edmund Crispin are well represented, there are rarer names of the genre here. And very good they are, too.