Two crime yarns

 I am, of course, waaaay behind with book reviews, three books to be honest, so I'll try (hoho) to be brief and deal with the two crime novels first. 

 First up, An Act of Foul Play by T.E. Kinsey, this is book 9 in the author's 'Lady Hardcastle and Flo' series.

Lady Hardcastle, amateur sleuth and sometime spy, and her sidekick and maid/companion, Flo, are celebrating Lady Hardcastle's birthday with an evening out in Bristol. They're attending a comedy play and have thoroughly enjoyed the first half. Everyone but Flo take themselves off during the intermission and she can't help but notice a lot of noise coming from behind the curtain. Sure enough, when the curtain rises for act two, the actors strolling onto the stage to engage with the actor who should be there to meet them, find him dead in a chair. Of course, the two women can't help but get involved but find themselves having to work with a new, rather clueless, detective. There's nothing for it but for the two to go undercover and join the acting troupe. This is another fun instalment of an excellent comedy crime series. By comedy, I don't mean it's a laugh a minute, the comedy is in the relationship between Lady Hardcastle and Flo and the banter they engage in. If I'm honest, theatre set scenarios are never my favourite: I don't know why... but we all have our foibles. But this was good, and fun, and never less than enjoyable but not my favourite in the series.  I gather for the next couple of books the two go into 'spy' mode rather than whodunnit, that too is not my favourite genre but I own them so will read them to see how I get on. Although this series is on the lighter side, I would not refer to them as 'cosies', the humour and the writing take them out of that category in my opinion. 

Next, Not to Be Taken: A Puzzle in Poison by Anthony Berkeley, one of the excellent, now very long, series of vintage crime novels reissued by the British Library. 

So this is one of those very English forms of vintage mysteries (published in 1938) set in a quintessential country village, Annypenny in Dorset. (That county is full of these villages still.) It concerns a group of six individuals, all friends and very much involved in each other's lives. The narrator is Douglas, a fruit farmer and he lives with his wife, Frances. Just up the lane from them is John Waterhouse and his wife, Angela. He's a retired engineer of sorts who has worked all around the world. Angela is frail in the manner of one who enjoys her illnesses. And then there's the doctor, Glen Brougham who lives with his sister, Rona, she's as clever as he is but without the qualifactions. What happens when John Waterhouse dies is the business of this story. The doctor treats him for indigestion type problems when he complains of pains and feeling unwell. When he dies 'natural causes' goes on the death certificate but an almost estranged brother isn't happy and demands a proper autopsy. It turns out John's been poisoned and it's clear it must be one of the five people closest to him, but why would any of them want him dead? So Anthony Berkeley is not one of my favourite rediscovered authors. I find him clinical and always looking on the unpleasant side of people's natures. And this book is like that too 'but' I liked it a lot more than the previous two books I've read by him. I enjoyed the village setting and the closed circle theme, the slow reveal of secrets is something I enjoy too, no one is quite what they seem in this type of book. The doctor's analysis of Angela and the reason for her mystery health issues I found quite fascinating. Berkeley does human nature very well, despite his tendency to always think the worst of people. This book was apparently part of a competiton... it was published in a newspaper in instalments and at a certain spot the book stopped and people had to send in their solutions. I gather no one got it quite right. Berkeley is still not my favourite Golden Age crime writer but am glad I gave this one a go as it really was excellent.