“I don’t have to exhibit my wife in the nude in order to help my sale of rabbits!”

Woman Detective-Constable Kitty Palgrave isn’t the favourite officer in the Women’s Section of CID due to her impetuousness despite her abilities, so she is dispatched to make some basic enquiries in the reported disappearance of a 15 year old girl, Lydia. Apparently she has absconded with a deliveryman, Birkin, from the milliners where she works. Kitty soon finds they have gone to the seaside town of Pebbleden and heads there herself (without permission, obviously).

With only a basic description of Lydia and Birkin, Kitty decides that a couple in a guest house might well be who she is looking for. Things escalate, however, when a man, previously spotted ogling women on the beach, is found dead outside the guest house. Enter Cheviot Burmann and Kitty’s fiancé Bryan Armitage – but Kitty is the one who will be the key to catching the murderer.

Ah, Belton Cobb. For those new to the blog, he was going to be the next Brian Flynn. I read a few decent mysteries by him, and before I knew it, I’d bought a whole load more with the intent of getting him republished. And then I discovered just how inconsistent he could be. His early books, bar a few standalones, feature Cheviot Burmann but as time progresses, he introduces Bryan Armitage and Kitty Palgrave – all part of the Burmannverse, but varying which character is effectively taking the lead.

So here we have a sixty year old man writing from the point of view of a twenty-five year old woman. Just so you know, by the way, a woman can’t go out to meet her boyfried without spending an hour doing her make-up. And the best way for two women who don’t get on is to smoke cigarettes together. There’s also the repeated image of Kitty wearing a revealing bathing costume underneath a raincoat to go to the beach, like some bizarre flasher. The adjective “cripple” is used quite a bit for one character too, even when they describe themselves…

I could go on – the sexual politics here are all over the shop. The notion of a fifteen year old girl being away with an older man is treated as a bad thing, thank goodness, but it never seems a priority once the murder happens. The less said about Kitty’s date with Birkin, the better. You can possible excuse Birkin’s attitude towards women, as he’s supposed to be a predator, but when Burmann starts spouting about the proper place for women not being the police but being at home with babies…

Cobb can write women well – the trilogy where Burmann meets, marries and honeymoons with his wife (The Willing Witness, Drink Alone And Die, Corpse At Casablanca), written in her voice are really good – but the later books, where “modern attitudes” are on display, such as Food For Felony, The Horrible Man In Heron’s Wood and Suspicion In Triplicate, are quite excruciating.

Those three, unlike this one, have fairly dull plots, whereas what is rather annoying about this one is that it’s one of Cobb’s better mysteries. He’s moved on from his early pattern of six suspects, only two of which are credible and it’s one of them, and here, the thing that the mystery hinges on, which Kitty spots, is a clever one. It’s one of those simple questions that if you ask it, it turns the whole thing on its head – almost (dare I say it) Christie-esque (although to be clear, not in the same league at all).

So a mixed bag – some aspects are so wrong, even for the time of writing, it makes difficult reading, but there’s actually a decent mystery hidden underneath it all. But it’s very hard to recommend…