“Someone is manipulating evidence. Someone is being clever. And that, in my peevish way, I begin to resent.”

Mr Abercrombie Lewker, actor-manager, mountaineer, one-time spy and occasional sleuth has an invitation to Buckingham Palace, where he is going to be knighted for services to the British theatre [note to the reprint editors, if you’re reproducing a newspaper announcement from a British newspaper, don’t miscorrect the spelling of the word “theatre”. It just looks wrong – well, wronger than usual…]

Before the ceremony, he receives an invite to a get-together in Snowdonia from a fellow almost-knight, who wants Lewker’s opinion on threats to his life. The threats are clearly real, but when an explosion has fatal consequences, Lewker finds himself drawn into the investigation into a murderer unlike any he has met before…

Right, COVID has cleared off from the Puzzle Doctor household, so it’s back to reviewing the printed word, and it’s back to Glyn Carr aka Showell Styles and good old “Filthy” Lewker. This is my eleventh read from the fifteen detective mysteries featuring Lewker as the mountaineering sleuth (not counting the three Showell Styles novels) and chronologically, it’s the fifth title. Maybe because of this early placement, it’s also one of the cleverest of the mysteries. It’s also the third visit in the series to Snowdonia, so Lewker finds himself teamed up with his friend Inspector Grimmett (“Grimm”) once more.

It’s kind of an odd method of murder, basically booby-trapping a bridge over a crevice, and while perhaps a map might have helped – anyone know if there was one in the original – this has one of more straightforward geographies of the Lewker mysteries. There’s not that much mountaineering here either, apart from a night-time dash through a storm towards the end.

Carr gives life to the small group of suspects, and the book never seems to drag in the investigation. It’s a nicely complex plot and I figured out a good chunk of it but missed the crux of it – and it is definitely a clever solution. All in all, a really enjoyable read and, as I must say, more evidence that this is a series that needs reprinting in its entirety.

Death Under Snowdon was one of the five titles that were reprinted by Rue Morgue Press in 2007, so you can find copies of it, although if I was sniffy, it’s not the best edited reprint that I’ve seen. Anyone have any idea why whenever the word “air” appears, the space between it and the preceding word disappears? “Theair” for example? Every time… v annoying. Not enough to spoil the book though.

My Lewker Reviews:

Showell Styles – Thrillers

• Traitor’s Mountain (1945)
• Kidnap Castle (1946)
• Hammer Island (1947)

Glyn Carr – Mysteries

• Death on the Milestone Buttress (1951)
• Murder on the Matterhorn (1951)
• The Youth Hostel Murders (1952)
• The Corpse in the Crevasse (1952)
• Death Under Snowdon (1952)
• A Corpse at Camp Two (1954)
• Murder of an Owl (1956)
• The Ice Axe Murders (1958)
• Swing Away Climber (1959)
• Holiday with Murder (1960)
• Death Finds a Foothold (1961)
• Lewker in Norway (1963)
• Death of a Weirdy (1965)
• Lewker in Tirol (1967)
• Fat Man’s Agony (1969)