Feltham Abbey, where a fancy dress party brings the case of a master blackmailer, “The Spider”, to a head when a guest is found face down in a pond, murdered…

Lunesdale, Lancashire, to where Chief Inspector MacDonald is lured by an intriguing, if minor, case of the theft of some strange items from an isolated farmhouse, only to discover the dead body of Gordon Ginner, the villain he was supposed to be investigating…

London during the Blitz and Agnes Kinghof discovers a corpse stashed in the bomb shelter. Things take a sinister turn, as the block of flats that she lives in are terrorized by the “Pig-sticker”, a sinister figure wearing a pig-mask…

Horniman, Birley and Craine, a legal firm in the centre of London, where Henry Bohun has just begun working. He wasn’t expecting, however, to find a corpse stashed inside a secure box in the middle of the office…

Four reprints from the British Library Crime Classics Range that made up my holiday reading over this bank holiday weekend. But which of them are worth your time?

Brief reviews, I’m afraid (I know, all my reviews are pretty brief) but I just don’t have time to write a full review for each of the titles, so let’s take them one at a time.

Death In Fancy Dress (1934) by Anthony Gilbert

I’ve read two books by Lucy Malleson aka Anthony Gilbert aka Anne Meredith, the disappointing Portrait Of A Murderer and the interesting but flawed Riddle Of A Lady. This is much better than either of these, with some interesting (if occasionally annoying) characters, and a well-hidden killer. It’s pacing is out of synch with the blurb, as the murder takes place after the halfway mark and there isn’t a vast amount of actual detection here. Still, it’s a fun read with at least one interesting outcome. It’s actually a shame it’s a standalone as I’d like to read more about the sleuths.

The Theft Of The Iron Dogs (1946) by ECR Lorac

The second of the Lunesdale books featuring Chief Inspector MacDonald following the enjoyable Fell Murder, and it paints a beautiful picture of post-war England outside of London – MacDonald relishing having a lot of food available to him, for example. The use of Giles Hoggett, a farmer, and his wife as MacDonald’s assistants/sounding boards is excellent, and MacDonald’s clear love for the region is infectious. It’s let down by a fairly guessable murderer and while there are clues, I doubt you’ll spot them.

Murder’s A Swine (1942) by Nap Lombard

Humour’s a tricky thing to make work in a crime novel and while I know a lot of people really enjoy this book, it was marred for me by the humour just not being on my wavelength. It feels like a Scooby Doo story, in more ways than one, and for me, it was the least successful of these four reads. There’s a lot of interesting war-time detail – this being written during the war when the outcome was unclear – which does add something special to the narrative.

Smallbone Deceased (1950) by Michael Gilbert

This one has quite a reputation, and I’m glad to say that it’s well earned. Put aside a little bit of dated dialogue, and there’s nothing here you can poke holes in. A well-constructed whodunit with a beautiful clue that you will overlook, along with parallel investigations from Inspector Hazelrigg and Henry Bohun that dovetail nicely. This is the third Gilbert that I’ve read following Death In Captivity and The Night Of The Twelfth and I’ve enjoyed them all, but this is the best of the lot – there’s even one or two meta jokes that are a few decades ahead of their time.

So, again, apologies for the brevity but all of these are worth a look, but if you haven’t read it, stick Smallbone Deceased at the top of your shopping list.