When a woman’s body was found naked and hacked to death by an axe, she is soon identified as Geraldine Foster. Seven more corpses are found – of pigeons, all of whom seem to have drunk from a brook that Geraldine’s blood had drained into. But how was that possible when she had been dead for a mere two days and the pigeons died a fortnight ago?

Enter Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt and his sidekick/Watson Anthony Abbot. It soon becomes clear that one man, Geraldine’s employer, had the means and opportunity to commit the crime. But what was his motive? And why commit the crime the way he did? Or is another hand orchestrating everything?

This is my third read in the Thatcher Colt series and the first book chronologically. I enjoyed About The Murder Of The Clergyman’s Mistress aka The Crime Of The Century but being less impressed by About The Murder Of A Startled Lady. I’m reliably informed that ABTMOT Circus Queen and ABTMOT Night Club Lady are much better, which is good, as I’ve recently acquired copies of both of those. But, for completeness, I thought I’d better take a look at the first one.

So the basic idea is that the Police Commissioner occasionally gets bored and sticks his nose into a police investigation and although this is a case without a talented amateur sleuth helping out, they don’t need one as Colt has all the characteristics of such a person, stuck inside a tough policeman whose not averse to threatening witnesses with getting the faeces kicked out of them until they confess if necessary.

And Anthony Abbot has clearly been reading his Big Book Of Interrogation Techniques as we also see Colt trying a lie detector (in the days before the whole point of using them in fiction was to find a way to get around them) and truth serum, both of which apparently work perfectly – luckily Colt decides to allow his prey not to answer some questions in order to prolong one aspect of the mystery.

All in all, it’s a well-constructed mystery and while the cluing to the actual killer is pretty spartan, I think it is there and the overall plot does make sense (as much as any Golden Age mystery does).

All in all, an enjoyable read if you can find a copy of it – not sure how easy that is. There was a Collins White Circle edition but no recent reprints that I’m aware of. Maybe the American Mystery Classics range might consider it?