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annieb123's review against another edition
4.0
Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.
Somebody at the Door is a re-release of a 1943 mystery by golden age classic author Raymond Postgate. Published in the new reformatted edition by Poisoned Pen press 5th December, 2017, it's available in ebook and paperback formats.
I've really enjoyed all of the British Library Crime Classics I've read, and this one is no exception. The characters are well written and though the dialogue does show its age somewhat (it's almost 75 years old), it suits its period perfectly well. The plotting is a bit uneven in places and I found my interest wandering a little bit occasionally. There was copious backstory provided for each of the suspects and I was never entirely sure it was necessary. On the other hand, there's a lot of pleasure in golden age mystery which develops slowly to a satisfying denouement.
I read this book immediately after Postgate's earlier book also in the crime classics series, Verdict of Twelve, and for me, at least, it suffers technically by comparison to the earlier work. The writing in Somebody at the Door is good, but Verdict of Twelve was masterful.
There is light cursing ('damn' and a few 'bloody' type curses), but nothing to dismay or offend the average reader. There is also one scene with a description of a female breast, but nothing to scandalize there, either.
Worth a read. I really enjoyed it. It's rare to find a good solid standalone these days, and that's a shame. I'm finding it more and more necessary to go back to the classics for standalone mystery entertainment.
Four and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Somebody at the Door is a re-release of a 1943 mystery by golden age classic author Raymond Postgate. Published in the new reformatted edition by Poisoned Pen press 5th December, 2017, it's available in ebook and paperback formats.
I've really enjoyed all of the British Library Crime Classics I've read, and this one is no exception. The characters are well written and though the dialogue does show its age somewhat (it's almost 75 years old), it suits its period perfectly well. The plotting is a bit uneven in places and I found my interest wandering a little bit occasionally. There was copious backstory provided for each of the suspects and I was never entirely sure it was necessary. On the other hand, there's a lot of pleasure in golden age mystery which develops slowly to a satisfying denouement.
I read this book immediately after Postgate's earlier book also in the crime classics series, Verdict of Twelve, and for me, at least, it suffers technically by comparison to the earlier work. The writing in Somebody at the Door is good, but Verdict of Twelve was masterful.
There is light cursing ('damn' and a few 'bloody' type curses), but nothing to dismay or offend the average reader. There is also one scene with a description of a female breast, but nothing to scandalize there, either.
Worth a read. I really enjoyed it. It's rare to find a good solid standalone these days, and that's a shame. I'm finding it more and more necessary to go back to the classics for standalone mystery entertainment.
Four and a half stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
tombomp's review against another edition
4.0
Unusual mystery in that the mystery is often in the background as we go through the life stories of the people who travelled with him on the train, who all turn out to be connected to him in some way. I can understand people who find that distracting but I enjoyed it. The characters are written pretty well and the stories are interesting - and you can tell pretty clearly the author was a socialist. The mystery itself is interesting although not particularly substantial and the way it's handled is pretty clever I think. Lots of misdirection.
fictionfan's review against another edition
5.0
Murder on the Home Front...
Councillor Grayling is an unpleasant man, meaning that plenty of people would be quite happy to see him got out of the way. One evening he turns up at his own door seriously ill and later that night he dies. When the autopsy is carried out, it becomes clear he was poisoned by mustard gas. Suspicion falls on the people he most recently spent time with – his fellow travellers in the carriage of the train he took home from work, each of whom may have had a motive to do away with him. It’s up to Inspector Holly to discover which of them did it, and how...
In Verdict of Twelve, Postgate told the stories of the various jurors who were to serve on a murder trial, showing how their own lives and experiences impacted on the decision they would finally reach. In this one, he adopts a similar approach by telling each of the stories of the train travellers, showing how their lives crossed with Councillor Grayling’s. The result is that the book reads almost like a collection of linked short stories and some of them are excellent in their own right.
First published in 1943, the book is set in the winter of 1942, when WW2 was at its height and Britain was shrouded in the darkness of the blackout. A couple of the stories relate directly to wartime experiences, not to mention the mustard gas being used as the weapon. The others are less directly connected but still give a fascinating picture of life on the Home Front. Postgate’s descriptive writing is first-class, with the ability to conjure an atmosphere or a scene or a character so that they feel entirely real. Some of the characterisation is brilliant, creating people we feel sorry for, or hate, or despise.
I don’t want to say too much about the individual stories, since the joy is in seeing them develop, so I’ll try to give just a brief idea of them. The first tells of a young man who gets a girl pregnant – this at a time when such a thing was still scandalous and when abortion was illegal. He’s a deeply unpleasant character, but Postgate makes the study of his psychology compelling. This is a dark and disturbing story, and very well told. As is the next one, which tells the story of a Corporal in the Home Guard. Postgate takes us through his life story, and uses it to look bitterly at the class divisions of Britain between the wars. Postgate was himself a socialist, and his political leanings show through clearly here. It’s a story of a fall and a redemption, and paints a frightening picture of wartime London in the blackout, with the constant threat of bombing. I was totally involved in the Corporal’s story and so hoped it might have a happy ending...
Next we are taken into the world of Nazi Germany as we witness the attempt to smuggle a man out of Berlin. This is a great short story, utterly absorbing in its depiction of Berlin in 1938 as a place of growing fear and suspicion, followed by the extreme tension of the journey. It also provides a look at the way German refugees were treated in Britain during the war, often feared as being part of the Fifth Column, resulting in them being objects of suspicion and resentment and in strict curtailment of their liberties. Fabulous stuff that had me on the edge of my seat! I so hoped it might have a happy ending...
Unfortunately the final story isn’t up to the same standard. It tells at too great length of a somewhat mundane love affair between two people who each failed to get my sympathy. The man works for a publisher, so Postgate takes the chance to include a lot of self-indulgent stuff about writers and publishing – a subject that is endlessly fascinating to some writers but perhaps less so to many readers. However, even here Postgate lifts an unremarkable episode by taking our lovers to Paris just before the occupation, and shows his usual skill in drawing a fascinating picture of a place at a particular point in time.
This last section did undoubtedly pull the book down for me, and I intended to give it four stars. However, writing the review has reminded me just how good the other stories are, and they more than made up for my mild disappointment with the lovers. The main story is actually somewhat secondary to the suspects’ own stories, but Postgate wraps it up well. The overall effect is dark and rather bleak, and as a result suits its wartime setting perfectly. Postgate has been a real find for me through the British Library Crime Classics. I get the impression he didn’t write a huge number of crime novels, but I do hope they manage to find at least one or two more. And I highly recommend this one for the quality of the stories within the story.
NB This book was provided for review by the publishers.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Councillor Grayling is an unpleasant man, meaning that plenty of people would be quite happy to see him got out of the way. One evening he turns up at his own door seriously ill and later that night he dies. When the autopsy is carried out, it becomes clear he was poisoned by mustard gas. Suspicion falls on the people he most recently spent time with – his fellow travellers in the carriage of the train he took home from work, each of whom may have had a motive to do away with him. It’s up to Inspector Holly to discover which of them did it, and how...
In Verdict of Twelve, Postgate told the stories of the various jurors who were to serve on a murder trial, showing how their own lives and experiences impacted on the decision they would finally reach. In this one, he adopts a similar approach by telling each of the stories of the train travellers, showing how their lives crossed with Councillor Grayling’s. The result is that the book reads almost like a collection of linked short stories and some of them are excellent in their own right.
First published in 1943, the book is set in the winter of 1942, when WW2 was at its height and Britain was shrouded in the darkness of the blackout. A couple of the stories relate directly to wartime experiences, not to mention the mustard gas being used as the weapon. The others are less directly connected but still give a fascinating picture of life on the Home Front. Postgate’s descriptive writing is first-class, with the ability to conjure an atmosphere or a scene or a character so that they feel entirely real. Some of the characterisation is brilliant, creating people we feel sorry for, or hate, or despise.
I don’t want to say too much about the individual stories, since the joy is in seeing them develop, so I’ll try to give just a brief idea of them. The first tells of a young man who gets a girl pregnant – this at a time when such a thing was still scandalous and when abortion was illegal. He’s a deeply unpleasant character, but Postgate makes the study of his psychology compelling. This is a dark and disturbing story, and very well told. As is the next one, which tells the story of a Corporal in the Home Guard. Postgate takes us through his life story, and uses it to look bitterly at the class divisions of Britain between the wars. Postgate was himself a socialist, and his political leanings show through clearly here. It’s a story of a fall and a redemption, and paints a frightening picture of wartime London in the blackout, with the constant threat of bombing. I was totally involved in the Corporal’s story and so hoped it might have a happy ending...
Next we are taken into the world of Nazi Germany as we witness the attempt to smuggle a man out of Berlin. This is a great short story, utterly absorbing in its depiction of Berlin in 1938 as a place of growing fear and suspicion, followed by the extreme tension of the journey. It also provides a look at the way German refugees were treated in Britain during the war, often feared as being part of the Fifth Column, resulting in them being objects of suspicion and resentment and in strict curtailment of their liberties. Fabulous stuff that had me on the edge of my seat! I so hoped it might have a happy ending...
Unfortunately the final story isn’t up to the same standard. It tells at too great length of a somewhat mundane love affair between two people who each failed to get my sympathy. The man works for a publisher, so Postgate takes the chance to include a lot of self-indulgent stuff about writers and publishing – a subject that is endlessly fascinating to some writers but perhaps less so to many readers. However, even here Postgate lifts an unremarkable episode by taking our lovers to Paris just before the occupation, and shows his usual skill in drawing a fascinating picture of a place at a particular point in time.
This last section did undoubtedly pull the book down for me, and I intended to give it four stars. However, writing the review has reminded me just how good the other stories are, and they more than made up for my mild disappointment with the lovers. The main story is actually somewhat secondary to the suspects’ own stories, but Postgate wraps it up well. The overall effect is dark and rather bleak, and as a result suits its wartime setting perfectly. Postgate has been a real find for me through the British Library Crime Classics. I get the impression he didn’t write a huge number of crime novels, but I do hope they manage to find at least one or two more. And I highly recommend this one for the quality of the stories within the story.
NB This book was provided for review by the publishers.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
mazza57's review against another edition
2.0
this was the strangest murder mystery I have ever read. It made my head hurt. There were times when I wondered if Postgate had started a second novel without letting anyone know. Rather than an enjoyable crime solving foray it felt like hard work
magistratrium's review
3.0
While the back stories of the subjects were very interesting and added a lot of atmosphere and historical detail, the main mystery often got lost. I liked it, but would say it is mainly for serious classic mystery lovers, especially those interested in World War II era crime novels.
rachelish's review against another edition
4.0
I don't really know how I feel about this book. The murder mystery itself is sort of by-the-bye since most of the book is taken up with short stories about the suspects. These are all fairly compelling and range from melancholy to horrific.
vsbedford's review against another edition
3.0
A series of wartime vignettes crowded around the death of a petty and grasping middle manager of the worst sort - this is some BLEAK stuff of the kitchen sink kind. The mystery is resolved hastily and without much fanfare (and with a "for reals, tho?" on my part) but, honestly, that doesn't seem to be Mr. Postgate's game at all; he seems to be much more interested in exposing the seamy side of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" attitude of WWII England, and how it failed the average person, than in fingerprints and chemical analysis. Which, if you're prepared, is a fascinating read. A recommend.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
viciiwss's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
j_lbrbsblogs's review against another edition
3.0
With thanks to Poison Pen and NetGalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Previously published in WWII, 1943, it is of it's time and quite interesting for that. Set in Croxburn were Cllr Henry Grayling has taken the train home from his work in London, with wages for delivery the next day. He is not well and later dies. The money is missing. The police investigate and we read accounts of his fellow passengers, a somewhat laborious procedure, several of whom have possible reason to dispose of the Counsellor. These mini stories have some interest for the time it is set in, some background and some historical information. It is however not difficult to spot 'whodunnit'. In spite of all this it is not the worst book I've read and just about gets the 3* rating.
Previously published in WWII, 1943, it is of it's time and quite interesting for that. Set in Croxburn were Cllr Henry Grayling has taken the train home from his work in London, with wages for delivery the next day. He is not well and later dies. The money is missing. The police investigate and we read accounts of his fellow passengers, a somewhat laborious procedure, several of whom have possible reason to dispose of the Counsellor. These mini stories have some interest for the time it is set in, some background and some historical information. It is however not difficult to spot 'whodunnit'. In spite of all this it is not the worst book I've read and just about gets the 3* rating.
annarella's review
4.0
I always like British Library Crime Classics as they help me to discover hidden gems of the Golden Age of mystery.
This is a hidden gem that somehow reminds me of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express as there are both a train involved and the stories of the different suspects.
The grime atmosphere reflects the historical period and even if it is nearly 70 years old it aged well.
Recommended
Many thanks to Poison Pen Press and Netgalley
This is a hidden gem that somehow reminds me of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express as there are both a train involved and the stories of the different suspects.
The grime atmosphere reflects the historical period and even if it is nearly 70 years old it aged well.
Recommended
Many thanks to Poison Pen Press and Netgalley