“Women were adorable creatures half the time, but the very devil when they thought themselves wronged, even about little things. And when they thought themselves wronged over big things, they were remarkably good at murder, particularly with poison. Everyone knew that.”

Thus thought the extremely-single Detective Inspector Cheviot Burmann in his first case since several years shuffling paperwork around Scotland Yard when he considered the case of Margaret Toop, the secretary to Clement Dockey. Burmann is called to a dinner party for people who worked for Dockey – his wife lay dead upstairs, poisoned by her throat paint. Margaret is certainly keeping secrets, and Burmann is convinced that those secrets hide the reason that she killed Mrs Dockey…

OK, so back to Belton Cobb, the classic crime author that you’ve never read and based on some of my reviews, you probably never will. This one has a number of interesting points about it, but on the whole…

Well, let’s start with the interesting. As you might recall, Cheviot Burmann features in most of Cobb’s books and a number of others occur in the same universe, for want of a better word. Sergeant Ross, from Sergeant Ross In Disguise, later appears in a couple of Burmann mysteries, and the later books featuring Kitty and/or Brian Armitage also feature Burmann as their boss. But there was a break, from 1947 to 1950, when he wrote six books featuring Superintendent Manning and his team. After that, and a standalone, The Lunatic The Lover, he went back to Burmann with this one, and stuck with him and his friends until the end. No idea why, was there demand from rabid Burmaniacs? Whatever, let’s take a look at this comeback.

After kicking off with the explanation of why Burmann hasn’t been solving cases, he transfers to the “North West division” to get back into what he’s sort-of good at. Not entirely sure if the North West division is North West of London or of England. I’m guessing London, as there’s no sense of relocation.

The book kicks off with the murder scene… and then it goes downhill rapidly. You know how the interrogation section of mystery novels can drag at times. Well, almost all of this book is an interrogation section. It’s a common flaw with some of the Cobb novels, particularly the ones where he doesn’t have anything interesting to do with Burmann. Basically, he has a theory, talks to someone, re-evaluates his theory, repeat until he gets the truth.

One of the other problems with Cobb’s books is that despite having a closed circle of suspects, he only ever focus on at most three of them. He, despite talking with the other suspects, it only ever comes down to Margaret or the husband.

When we get to the end, the actual plot as to what is going on is actually really clever, but the reader will be too switched off to appreciate that there are some clues as to the truth. But the reason things are so dragged out – the reason that one character refuses to tell the truth for so long – is annoying for so many reasons, all of which reflect badly on Burmann. His claim at the end to be an excellent detective is basically saying you’re an excellent darts player if you eventually hit the bullseye after throwing a hundred darts at the board…

It’s such a shame – the scheme is actually pretty clever – but it’s such a slog getting to it.