A review by hannahstohelit
This Is MR Fortune by H.C. Bailey

4.5

Great Reggie Fortune collection- not the best, but pretty high up there. I will never know exactly what it is that I love about these stories so much, but one thing is that while the stories don't shy away from human evil they also don't shy away from, if it makes sense, HOW evil it is. Mr Fortune is one of the detectives who, despite his blustery and occasionally kvetchy mannerisms, shows a lot of empathy and takes the pain of vulnerable people seriously. Some other writers do this but do it through character development for the detective, which is well and good but Bailey doesn't need that to do it. I don't know, I think it makes sense... or maybe it's that he really has a sense of priorities. This book has at two stories where there's ultimately not really an actionable crime, but we can tell from their various treatments that while one is treated as ultimately silly, the other is truly horrifying.