Review of the novel The Lake District Murder by John Bude.
Published by The British Library in 2014.
Cost: £8.99
ISBN 978-0-7123-5716-6 (Paperback Edition - 286 pages)
This is a reprint of the novel originally published in 1935 by Skeffington & Son. It has an introduction by Martin Edwards, author and member of the Crime Writers Association. Edwards explains that John Bude is the pseudonym for Ernest Elmore (1901-1957), who wrote 30 crime novels and was the co-founder of the Crime Writer’s Association and worked in the theatre as a producer and director. The Lake District Murder was the follow-up to his debut novel The Cornish Coast Murder.
On the very first page of the book, there is a map of the area around Keswick in the Lake District, where the murder takes place.
“The story opens one March evening with a farmer finding a man’s body in a car outside the Derwent garage on an isolated road in the Northern Lakes. The macabre discovery is reported to Inspector Meredith, and at first glance, the evidence at the crime scene suggests that Jack Clayton has committed suicide.” (From the introduction by Martin Edwards)
Following the introduction by Martin Edwards, the story starts on page 11 with the body found on page 13; perhaps we might expect this given the chapter title of ‘The Body in the Car’. A local farmer finds the body in a garage where there is a car engine running, he removes a hooded oil-grimed mackintosh to from the body to uncover the face of Clayton and decides he ought to inform the local police, leaving the car’s engine running. It is only when the police arrive does anyone decide to turn the engine off. We discover that the engine may have been running for over two hours.
The detective Inspector Meredith, appears to find the death of Clayton too difficult to solve, but is certain that it is not a suicide he is investigating. His superior, the local Chief Constable, decides that as there is little to conclude from the investigation, so Meredith can pursue his enquiry, rather than call in a CID team from Scotland Yard.
We learn about little about the description of Meredith as the story progresses, even at the initial introduction in the story. It is Martin Edwards who gives us an insight to Meredith: “He is a tactful and a team player, an ordinary hard-working professional, with a long-suffering wife and an eager teenage son”. We soon find out that his mode of transport is a motorbike, sometimes referred to as a ‘motorcycle combination’, a ‘motorbike and sidecar’ and a ‘bike’. Not the sort of transport one might expect for an Inspector in the police force – at no time does he drive a car.
As it progresses, the tale is broken down into three distinct parts:
1. An investigation into the death of Clayton
2. An investigation into an illicit petrol delivery organisation
3. An investigation into an illegal whisky distillation set-up.
There are some strange aspects to the investigation, and it’s not clear if these reveal more about Inspector Meredith or the writing style of Bude. Meredith visits one of the local garages selling petrol and asks for ‘a gallon to be put in the tank. I hear it’s a good brand … I’ve never used it before’. The Nonock petrol brand plays a major part in the mystery aspects of the story, and the reader is given the impression that it is delivered widely in the surrounding area, but Meredith does not seem to have heard of the brand.
There are instances in the story that do not seem credible and lead the reader to question why Bude has introduced them. One example is when he asks his teenage son to stake out the local petrol distribution centre and take photographs of various employees from behind a convenient bush, as they move in and out of the premises. His son works at the local photographic shop and is keen to do a little job for his father, hoping it will get him a new cycle.
As the investigation progresses, Meredith visits a number of garages, and it seems quite common for staff to be smoking near the petrol pumps with no concern for safety. Health and safety may be a modern aspect, but I’m sure there would have been concerns in 2014.
I was left reflecting on one series of facts that did not fit together and returned to re-read the lines just in case I had misunderstood them. The story starts with Clayton being killed on the 24th March and we soon find out that he is engaged to Lily Reade, and at her interview she states:
“It was all fixed up. Jack was over only last Wednesday to see mother about the wedding. We were going to get married in early April. Then after our honeymoon we were going to stay here for a week before going to Canada. Clayton was going to wait until six weeks before our wedding before telling his partner”.
Lily does not give us the date of the intended wedding, but on searching Clayton’s belongings, Meredith discovers two tickets for a boat sailing to Canada were purchased on the 20th March for a sailing on the 7th April, a matter of 18 days later.
When interviewed on the 25th March, Higgins, Clayton’s partner states that he had not heard of the intended trip to Canada. However, Higgins had an argument with Clayton on the 20th March, perhaps after Clayton bought the tickets for Canada, which seems to trigger the murder.
So it is evident from these few lines that the date of the wedding, the trip to Canada and the purchase of the tickets do not fit together. A tragic mistake in the story.
As a story, it’s pleasant to read, but I had to overcome the desire to put the book down as it drifted away from the murder between pages 84 and 246. Bude states that the investigation continues over a month and it is the lack of an investigation into the murder where the story suffers. The other two investigations are not captivating as far as a murder mystery goes and do little to enhance Bude’s skill as a murder mystery writer.
Bude does not treat the story as a Travelogue, preferring to describe just the relevant area covered by the story. He captures the atmosphere well, and it took me back to holidays I had enjoyed in the lake district in my late teens; winding roads, hills and dales, remote villages, but there is too much conversation, as at 6.30 each evening Meredith has an update meeting with the Chief Constable and they discuss next steps for the progress of the investigations.
Does the book enhance the period defines as the Golden Age of Crime, I’m not sure it does, although it’s difficult to understand what the crime stories of the period did for the reader in the 1920s.
I enjoyed the story and would recommend it to others. Rating: 4 stars
Dr James Sheppard
26 January 2015
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