{review} out of print

H. A. Wrenn The Lady Prefers Murder (Hammond, Hammond & Co. (1954)

This a very worn ex-circulating library book, stamped Pioneer Delivery Library.  The wrapper has been cut up and glued to the boards. I love the inscription on the top of the first page: "PLEASE KEEP THIS BOOK CLEAN. FINE FOR TURNED DOWN PAGES 1D PER PAGE."

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You don't drink, and you don't like women, Mr. Proctor. Your trouble must be unusual.

The Lady Prefers Murder is unfortunately, albeit dramatically titled, giving away, as it does, the solution before one has opened the book. It has elements taken from the American gangster genre and incongruously transposed to a sleepy English village: the lawyer hero drinks copious amounts of spirits, he is frequently knocked on the head, and the villains are very hairy with far too many tattoos. Themes include SP bookmaking, unlicensed phone-lines, a lost fortune in diamonds, a golden hind, blackmail, beer mugs, patents for ladies' underwear and a tiger stinking of ammonia.

Although the shades were partly drawn, the combination of feminine tenacity and high room temperature was sapping Mitchell's resistance.

It is simply bursting with poorly repressed sexual tension - pneumatic blondes literally ooze across the room towards the unlucky hero: "She moved in a smooth ripple of self-compensating curves towards her table..." The other object of Mitchell's affections reminded me of the vagina dentata:

Norma bent over him. Her lips parted in a smile, revealing pearly rows of small, even teeth. Mitchell tilted his face blissfully, and the teeth took a shrewd nip at the lobe of his left ear.

Really this is the worst sort of rip-off of the Chandler-esque genre. It isn't even camp enough to be funny. The most interesting bit was the description of how the English market town was slowly being eroded by the modern world, represented by dance halls and so much traffic a woman daren't cross the road without the hero's assistance.

Apparently H. A. Wrenn had a previous hit with Tangle. Not sure I could face that. Like the hero, I "cursed savagely with the thwarted desperation of a housewife with six children."

Rating: 2/10.

If you liked this... read something better from the decade. Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver mysteries are always reliable if you want to see how murder in a small town ought to be done.