This was like a pint of lager after a moderate walk on a sunny day. Satisfying, functional, and welcome in the moment, with almost no lingering impression. I finished it a few days ago and I’m already struggling to recall details. It’s a fairly tight whodunnit leavened by light-comic digressions and irrelevancies, none of which get too out of hand. The tone is light and even without being whimsical. There are some annoying tics to the writing, but mostly it sails along smoothly enough. It’s the kind of book which you’d be happy to pick up for three quid second-hand for the purpose of whiling away a long train journey.

None of this is criticism. Smooth reads that will nicely fill a few hours without taxing you too much are great things. I am slightly baffled, though, that such a book could possibly have been the best crime novel published in 1967. Perhaps the prize-givers wanted a relaxing year after having to deal with Davidson last time round.

A slightly mysterious extra-textual coda: my (second-hand) copy of the book is a horrible object, very cheaply made, apparently typeset in Word. It seems that the rights to the Lathen books may have been bought by an unscrupulous pseudo-publisher, who is producing both these disgusting editions of the originals and apparently appalling new books under the Lathen name (one is described in the front matter of my book. It does indeed sound dreadful). This here blog gives more sordid background.