The “tension technique” is the next big thing in mountain climbing, enabling previously unscalable peaks to be conquered, by the most skilled mountaineers, at least. Sir Abercrombie Lewker is keen to see it in action, so he takes a break from his theatre and heads to his old stomping ground of Snowdownia for a demonstration.

When he arrives, with some new friends in tow, he encounters a man called David Astaroth being driven from the climbing lodge with a bloody nose. Nobody seems to want to talk about him, even though most seem to know who he is. But the next time that Lewker sees Astaroth, he has a noose around his neck, hanging from a ledge halfway up Dinas Cromlech. Plenty of the party who were climbing all over the peak had the opportunity to get to Astaroth, but who knew that he was there? And surely it would have been much easier to just push him off the mountain, rather than to hang him…

The ninth Glyn Carr Lewker mystery – yes, I’ve been back to the Bodleian again – and this time it was to read this book with a very odd title. “Swing Away, Climber” is a line from a climbing song, according to the book. I say according to the book because apparently it’s a song that Lewker himself wrote! Very odd – I figure Styles aka Carr wanted a title that involved climbing and swinging and that’s the best he could do.

Sometimes it’s easy to miss how well written a book is. There is excellent character work on display throughout this one, both in the suspects and in Lewker, as he begins to realise that he’s a bit too old to be climbing all but the easiest mountains. The only character who seems to be short-changed is the victim, as we discover that, in the past, he’s been guilty of almost everything short of actual murder, including… um… interfering with young boys. Not seen that in a GA-style mystery before…

Anyway, the other characters are an interesting lot – well, most of them – and there’s at least one very good least-likely suspect who didn’t do it!

There is one problem, one that I’ve had with a couple of the Lewker mysteries and that’s geography. Sometimes it’s hard enough to remember who’s in which room in a house when the scream was heard, but I struggle even more when the map looks like this.

It’s a lovely map – it’s even drawn by “A Lewker” which is cute – but I’ll be honest, I end up relying on Lewker telling me who had or didn’t have the opportunity. Even then, I’m not entirely sure how the murderer managed to get to the scene of the crime and back undetected, but the answer to “why hang him?” is a pretty good one.

All in all, this is a really good read. I’ve got two more on my shelf that I’m rationing – the Rue Morgue Death Under Snowdon and a lucky find copy of Fat Man’s Agony – just wish that someone would reprint the whole range… HINT! HINT! HINT!