Face Value (1983) by Roger Ormerod

Last time, I discussed Anthony Lejeune's Key Without a Door (1988), second and last novel in the short-lived James Glowrey series, which began promising enough with the disappearance of a man in pajamas from the doorstep of his London home and an intriguingly-posed puzzle – concerning the titular key and absentee door. Regrettably, the book regresses from a bright detective story into an uninspired crime/thriller novel closing this two-book series with an open ending. Key Without a Door had nothing to recommend in the end and guaranteed to make an appearance on the annual round-up of the years best and worst detective novels and short stories under the latter. So needed something really good as a palette cleanser, of sorts, which brings me to a long-standing recommendation.

John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, was sufficiently tempted by my 2021 run of Roger Ormerod reviews to pick up the Ormerod's first Richard Patton novel, Face Value (1983). The book was published in the United States under the lurid title The Hanging Doll Murders in 1984.

Face Value blew John away like a shotgun blast, "rarely am I as thoroughly surprised by everything in a story as I was by this book," presenting "an excellent example of a modern mystery that honors the traditions of the Golden Age and still incorporates modern police technique, modern behavior and a motive that will never go out of style." John was not wrong. Face Value is the best of Ormerod's detective novels to date and perhaps one of the ten best pure detective stories from the last twenty-five years of the previous century! A mystery that not only upholds the values and traditions of John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, but delivered something that can stand right alongside their best works.

Detective-Inspector Richard Patton, a widower of three years, is mere days away from retirement and dreaded a big case would present itself at the last minute, because it would be handed over to his successor, Inspector Donaldson – an idea he finds appalling. Patton whittled away his last two months on the force keeping a low profile and "dicker around with a couple of minor issues." So on the first of his last three days, Patton appears on the scene of an abandoned, burnt out car wreck and meets a young, imaginative police constable, Brason. A character who would not have been out of place in an E.R. Punshon novel and would go on to play an important part in the unfolding story as Patton got his first inkling something was brewing. A second problem is the return to the district of a notorious character, Clive Kendall, who received a life sentence for the rape and murder of 9-year-old Coral Clayton. Prisoners' Aid Association turned Kendall into a pet project and got him released after only eight years. Carol's father committed suicide and her mother moved away, but she has two uncles, Ted and Foster, who threatened to outright murder Kendell, if he dared to show his face in town. Patton finds a message on the window of Kendall's old bungalow, "THIS FOR YOU—BASTARD—>." The arrow pointing to a child's doll hanging by the neck from a tree branch. A report of a shotgun gone missing from a nearby farm only adds to the impending doom, but the most important of these minor matters is a missing person's report.

You may, or may not, remember from previous reviews, I referred to this series as the Richard and Amelia Patton series. Face Value introduces Amelia as Amelia Trowbridge and, two weeks before, she reported her husband has gone missing without a trace ("no suggestion of a crime involved—no foul play hinted"). So nothing to act on for the police, but now there appears to be connection between her missing husband and the burnt out car wreck. Amelia is the counsellor in the Prisoners' Aid Association who was instrumental in getting Kendall released from prison ("he's been my own special case"). These little threads get pulled together to form a dense, intricately-woven web when a man's body is found in a cottage on a farm called Swallow's End.

A body was found in the living room of the deserted cottage, head and shoulders against the cold grate, whose face was on the receiving end of a double barreled shotgun blast ("very little of the skull was left, just enough for the bit of hair to hang on"). The victim had his hands up to his face and "blast had shattered both hands on the way through, leaving little more of them than tatters of flesh clinging to the hones," which poses a problem in 1983 when it comes to identification. And then there's the locked nature of the cottage. I say locked nature as Face Value offers one of the oddest and original impossible crimes from the post-WWII era.

Firstly, the cottage is surrounded by tripwire, strings and old electric wire "looped over the trees, with rusty cans tied to the ends," to rig up "some sort of a warning system." Secondly, the rear door and windows are locked on the inside, while the cold weather wedged the unfastened front door solidly in its frame. Thirdly, there's a new, fist-sized hole in the living room window, but why are the broken pieces of glass scattered outside in the snow a patch about a foot square? Did the victim fire the first shot with the shotgun that was found leaning next to him against the wall? But why casually put it away like after emptying a barrel at an intruder without even reloading it? And the murderer could not have returned fire through the hole in the window. The victim was shot from no greater range than three feet, but he was found nearly ten feet from the window. This description barely does any justice to the simplistic complexity of the situation. It's like Schrödinger's cat, but with an unidentified body, who could be one of two men, inside "a locked and fastened cottage" that's not as locked or fastened as it looks. Or is it? A locked room mystery you should not read just for how the murderer entered, or exited, the locked cottage – only for that very same locked room-trick to take you by complete surprise. Not on account of that small detail of entrance, or exit, but how it dovetailed everything together with several twists and false-solutions before the truth is finally revealed. What an ending! Something truly worthy of Carr or Christie.

I can't tell much more without running the risk of spoiling the game, but, to give some you an idea, Face Value is the kind of detective story that at the time was just beginning to take shape in Japan and Western equivalents would not really appear until James Scott Byrnside picked up the gauntlet in 2018. Ormerod dashed one off from scratch in 1983 to start a new series. However, the irresistible comparison between Face Value and the Japanese shin honkaku movement is perhaps not so strange as they share the same quality: a clear and sound understanding of what makes a proper detective story tick and getting the people who devour them. That understanding mercilessly efficient used against poor, unsuspecting readers like John and I.

So while I can't tell much more about the plot, there's something else I can ramble and rattle on about.

Hercule Poirot pointed out in The ABC Murders (1936) how terribly revealing crime can be, "try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions." A reason why the Golden Age detective story is so varied is that they all approached the problem of the detective story in their own individual way. So you get Detection Club members like Agatha Christie and Gladys Mitchell who both wrote detective fiction, but in such a radical different way that they might as well take place in completely different realities. Not to mention Christie's preference for administrating poison or Mitchell's never explained obsession with drownings and water in general. I've now read a dozen of Ormerod's novels from which a fascinating, multi-varied kaleidoscope of personalized tropes and plot-patterns emerged.

I noted in a previous review how Ormerod utilized cars, moving or standing still, to drive the plot with a preference for firearms rarely discharged in traditionally-styled detective stories (shotguns, rifles and target pistols), but Ormerod had another unusual fixation – which turns up time, and time, again. Namely broken windows and shattered glass. For example, A Shot at Nothing (1993) also concerns a shotgun murder inside a locked room with a hole blasted through one of the windows from which Ormerod spun a great deal of complexity and two completely different solutions. When the Old Man Died (1991) is another locked room mystery with a broken window and, most originally, the shattered glass from a grandfather clock is all over the floor where the door opened. So nobody could have opened the door and left without creating a wide arc in the carpet of glass. An Open Window (1988) is another example of broken glass playing a part in the solution to an impossible murder. The Key to the Case (1992) has a variation on the broken window as the smashed front door provided the story with an excellent false-solution. There are other things that turn up every other novel like (ex) policemen too personally involved and toying around with clocks. Never with the same answers and results. So they're never repetitive. And the more you read, the more you notice there's a sort of rhyming quality to Ormerod's overall body of work.

According to When the Old Man Died, Richard Patton was on his first, unrecorded case around the same time David Mallin and George Coe were on their last recorded investigation (One Deathless Hour, 1981). Both stories deal with murders committed with a target pistol, smashed clocks and shooting clubs as alibis. Yet, they're nothing alike. Same goes for Face Value and A Shot at Nothing.

So to cut another long, senseless rambling short, Face Value toppled The Key to the Case and A Shot at Nothing as the best of Ormerod's (locked room) mystery novels and a haunting glimpse of what could have been had the Golden Age detective story persisted pass the 1950s. Highly recommended. Particularly to those who were less than impressed with previous recommendations.

Time to Kill (1974) by Roger Ormerod

Last year, I delved a little deeper into the work of a reprehensively overlooked mystery novelist, Roger Ormerod, whose writing career stretched from 1974 to 1999 during which he tried to balance the classic, traditionally-plotted detective story with the contemporary, character-driven crime novel – culminating in the creation of what can only be described as retro Golden Age mysteries. You can traces of Ormerod's ties to the classical detective story running through his earliest novels (e.g. More Dead Than Alive, 1980), but the dark, gloomy grit of the police procedural and private eye fiction appeared to dominate those earlier works. I assumed from my limited reading it was a difficult, fifteen-year-long process to arrive at those perfectly balanced, finely-polished 1990s retro Golden Age mysteries like The Key to the Case (1992), A Shot at Nothing (1993) and And Hope to Die (1995). 

So the plan was to continue to root around that period, but then Isaac Stump, of Solving the Mystery of Murder, began praising Time to Kill (1974) as "it perfectly sets up Ormerod's thorough and educated understanding of Golden Age-style alibi trickery almost in the style of Christopher Bush." That caught my attention even more than Isaac labeling Time to Kill as an impossible alibi with one of his favorite explanation to that particular problem. Christopher Bush died less than a year before Time to Kill was published and, suddenly, the prospect of Ormerod's classically-styled alibi-smasher appeared like a passing of the torch moment. Ormerod taking over the torch from Bush as he bowed out of actively being alive. And so it got moved up the pile. 

Time to Kill marked Ormerod's debut and introduced his first series-character,st Sergeant David Mallin, who demonstrates here why he's destined to abandon his career with the police to become a private investigator.

Several years ago, a then still Detective Constable Mallin assisted his mentor and later friend, Inspector Geoffrey Forbes, to catch a particular nasty piece of work. Eldon Kyle is a vicious drug pusher who moonlights as a championship snooker player and spends all his time around billiard halls, which is where he meets and ensnares, "like wretched hooked fish," his clients – picking them clean to "the last ounce of suffering cash." And "if the odd suicide depleted his clientele," there was always "the next initiate waiting in the agony line." Forbes really wanted to take Kyle down and eventually succeeded when Mallin had a flash of inspiration where he had hidden two pounds of heroin. Kyle is not the sporting type and immediately started uttering threats upon his arrest, which he repeated right up until he was sentenced. Eldon Kyle has now served his sentence and it doesn't take very long for Mallin to cotton on to the fact that he's out of prison.

The first chapter opens with Mallin being thrown around like rag doll by a big, bulky goon with "a face like an angel carved out of granite" and "huge, solid hands that swung just above his knees." A surprisingly good-humored, intelligent goon who later on in the story politely introduces himself as Odin Breeze and tails Mallin throughout the story while his massive frame is magically folded into a bright, orange Mini. Odin Breeze left behind one of Kyle's visiting card ("with the compliments of...") which is followed by a telephone call to invite Mallin to play snooker. Mallin accepts the invitation and the evening becomes an intense game with a growing crowd of spectators gathering around the snooker table. Needless to say, Mallin didn't emerge from the game smelling like roses, but the evening becomes even stranger when the night porter brings him a message. Mallin had no idea the retired Forbes had an apartment above the billiard hall and he had asked the night porter to tell Mallin to come up and see him. But what he found was murder. Forbes had been stabbed in the guts with a long, thin blade and left to die.

A murder with "all the hallmarks of Kyle's personality, the viciousness of the wound, lethal but not immediately," but Mallin had unwittingly handed Kyle a gift-wrapped alibi. Mallin is determined "to bust his alibi wide open," but only succeeds "in tightening his alibi" and digging a hole for himself. Kyle might have an unimpeachable alibi, but Mallin has a gap in his and, as it turns out, a pretty sweet motive to boot as he has been in love with Elsa Forbes for years – which eventually places him in direct opposition with his own superior. Only way to dig himself out of that hole is smashing Kyle's alibi to pieces. 

Time to Kill is a very short, snappy detective story that immediately comes to the point and handily uses the trappings of the character-driven police procedural of the time to simultaneously setup the series and the plot. There are no unnecessary, extraneous plot-threads dangling around the background as everything's linked together and the result is a very trim, crisply told detective story with a cleverly contrived plot carefully balanced on a daring a alibi-trick. The trick really is something on par with a top-tier Christopher Bush novel! I had a pretty good idea how Kyle could have done it, but there was a huge, gaping hole in the theory that warranted second thoughts. But then the solution turned the entire situation around (ROT13: “V jnfa’g gurer va beqre gb tvir uvz na nyvov”) to neatly plug that hole. A possibility I had not considered, while it seems rather obvious in hindsight. So you can say Ormerod delivered the kind of goods you expect (or hope) to find in a detective novel penned in that fine, time-honored tradition of the genre's golden period!

However, I've to disagree with Isaac's qualification of Time to Kill as an example of the impossible alibi. I know it's not a widely accepted definition of the impossible alibi, but I can only accept an alibi as an impossible crime when the murderer appears to have been physically impossible to have carried out the crime. So no tampering with clocks, manipulating witnesses or so-called paper trails. It must appear as a physical impossibility for the murderer to have done it, because of a physical limitation or under going surgery at the time of the murder. Time to Kill is an excellent alibi-smasher, but, alas, not an impossible one. But feel free to disagree. Everyone else does around here. :)

So, on a whole, Time to Kill is a short, but sweet, detective novel that played the inverted mystery as a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between Mallin and Kyle with an annoyingly sturdy alibi as the linchpin of the plot. And it worked marvelously! Ormerod understood what makes a plot tick and gave his readers a glimpse what could have been had the Golden Age detective story been allowed to evolve naturally pass the 1950s. Highly recommended as Ormerod deserves to be acknowledged for keeping the home fires burning during the final decades of the previous century. A period that was not exactly kind to the traditional detective story.

Stone Cold Dead (1995) by Roger Ormerod

My previous reviews took a closer look at two of Roger Ormerod's detective novels, One Deathless Hour (1981) and When the Old Man Died (1991), which were published a decade apart and represented two distinctly different periods in his writing career – respectively his private eye and neo-traditional periods. Only thing that both novels have in common is Ormerod's creative and often original bend of mind when it comes to plot-construction. So I decided to go for the hat-trick and pick another one of his nineties mystery novels, but don't worry. I'll return to the Golden Age in my post. 

Stone Cold Dead (1995) is listed online as the final entry in the Richard and Amelia Patton series, but The Night She Died (1997) is the title that closes out the series. This is almost a pity as Stone Cold Dead is Ormerod's most traditionally-styled mystery from this period with a surprisingly uncomplicated plot.

There are no shattered clocks, fabricated alibis, apparent impossibilities or messing around with cars and target pistols. Just a deceivingly simple murder in a small, tightly-knit community "firmly and delightfully living in the past" in a (socially) isolated location. A place that resisted and shown the modern world the door for two centuries. 

Stone Cold Dead begins with the Pattons traveling to Flight House to visit Amelia's goddaughter, Amelia "Mellie" Ruby Fulton, who's celebrating both her eighteenth birthday and her engagement to a young police constable, Raymond "Ray" Torrance – who spend £800 pounds on an engagement ring. Mellie is the daughter of Amelia's old school friend, Ruby Fulton, who's married to an old-fashioned, old-world country lawyer, Gerald Fulton. But his household situation is a little out of the ordinary. Gerald Fulton pays his son, Colin Fulton, a nominal rent to live there. Flight House looks down on a canal basin with locks, pounds and an old toll booth with people living "all the year round in their houseboats" on the canals. So there has to be a permanent lock-keeper, Colin, who was preceded by his uncle and grandfather.

The canal is privately owned by "three old dears," Adolphus, Alexandra and Victoria, who buried themselves even deeper into the past than the people populating their farms, villages and canals. Nowadays, Flight House is presented rent free to the lock-keeper with no salary, but the tradition is to tip the lock-keeper for helping the boats through. So they lived and worked in "an environment established over 200 years before" with "the physical isolation" cutting "them off from the present pace of life." There's "no radio, no TV set, no CD player" at Flight House, which are deemed to modern, but the outside world sometimes seeps into this isolated community. And having values, modern or old-fashioned, doesn't automatically mean you always live up to them. Something the Pattons begin to find out before they even arrived at the house.

Richard and Amalia drive to Flight House during snowy weather and come across an abandoned, unlocked car with the engine still warm and the keys hanging from the ignition lock – fuel gauge indicated half a tankful. What happened to the driver? A question that will be answered later that night.

They receive a warm welcome when they arrive, but there are some undercurrents during the birthday/engagement party. Gerald is not exactly charmed by his future son-in-law as "the young foul" thinks it's humorous to take constant digs at Gerald with his "really very immature authority." Ray comes to the party in his uniform and a joke ready ("is this bar licensed, may I ask?"), but Richard notices he has been "drinking as one who sought oblivion." And he refused to show Mellie the ring. So the stage is set.

Later that evening, while taking a stroll around the promise to smoke his pipe, Richard sees a human hand sticking out of the water of the pound. However, I can't reveal anything about the victim, because the victim's identity is a genuine "Ooh, the plot thickens" moment. A very well done effect considering the victim is somewhat of an outsider who has not been mentioned, or named, until the body was discovered. Ormerod tried to repeat this trick when Richard finds someone in very poor condition on one of the houseboats along the canal, but not quite to the same effect as the murder. Although it definitely thickened the plot even further and it made me look in a completely different direction for an answer.

So, while the case appears to be relatively simple and straightforward on the surface, the local policeman in charge, Inspector Ted Slater, had "nothing of a routine nature that he could pursue" with means and opportunity being the same very everyone involved – numerous motives were "jealously guarded." Richard Patton is more than a little guilty of guarding all the motives and keeping evidence from the local authorities. This is both a strength and a weakness of the plot. As noted above, Stone Cold Dead has a very simple, uncomplicated crime without the problems of broken windows, smashed clocks, faked alibis, impossible crimes and toying around with firearms. So there's less physical evidence and clues to betray the murderer or obscure the trail, which is probably why Ormerod didn't dare to go all-in with the puzzle surrounding the missing murder weapon. A very clever idea that could have been on par with the brilliant, double-edged central clue from The Key to the Case (1992) had been properly clued. Now you can only make an educated guess, if you can spot the murderer, that is.

Technically, the plot is sound enough and Ormerod told a fascinating story with a very well realized setting, memorable set-pieces and some good pieces of reasoning, but, purely as fair play mystery, Stone Cold Dead lagged behind his other novels from the same period. The Key to the Case, A Shot at Nothing (1993) and even And Hope to Die (1995) are shimmering examples of what could have been had the Golden Age never ended in the 1960s and continued to develop. Stone Cold Dead started out as something resembling a throwback to the old-fashioned, traditional detective story, but rapidly began to change into a more character-driven, modern crime novel. And not a bad crime novel at all. But hoped to find another one of his sublimely plotted, neo-Golden Age mysteries in Stone Cold Dead. So only recommended to readers who are already a fan of Ormerod and the series. 

A note for the curious: there's a very small, unsolved slice-of-life mystery in Stone Cold Dead. During the second-half of the story, the police begin to drag the locks in the hope of finding the elusive murder weapon. The locks had not been pumped dry in one, or two, centuries and the police collected "piles of sundry junk," which included everything from pram wheels to "a complete chandelier." There were also two shopping trolleys. Patton wonders how they got there, because "no canal user would load a trolley on to his boat" as it would be a devil of a nuisance and no shopper too idle to return the trolley to the store "would have walked it at least two miles to reach these locks." I know this is not as big of a mystery as who killed the chauffeur in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939), but I'm Dutch. And this little waterway mystery fascinates me. My solution is that some holidaymakers or canal boat residents went to the village to stock up on supplies, but their car broke down on the way back. So they fetched two trolleys to get their supplies to the boat and then dumped the trolleys into the lock.

When the Old Man Died (1991) by Roger Ormerod

Previously, I reviewed Roger Ormerod's last novel in the David Mallin and George Coe series, One Deathless Hour (1981), which ended his run as an author of British private eye novels and ushered in a more traditional period – during which he refined and polished his plots to almost perfection. More importantly, Ormerod succeeded in updating the traditional, plot-oriented detective novel and finding a balance between the classic and modern style. The Key to the Case (1992) is a great example of combining a good, old-fashioned locked room mystery with the grit of today's crime novels. 

So thought it would be a nice idea to skip a decade ahead and read one of his novels from the early nineties, which gave me about five titles to pick from. I randomly settled on When the Old Man Died (1991) and couldn't have picked a better title. John Dickson Carr would have found much to enjoy about this curious, almost out-of-time detective story! It has everything from antique clocks and quasi-impossible situations to a traveling fair. Step right up, step right up! 

When the Old Man Died is listed online as the eighth title in the Richard and Amelia Patton series, but several of Ormerod's series novels, like the previously mentioned The Key to the Case, are listed as standalone mysteries. So don't pin me down on the exact chronology of his books. 

When the Old Man Died begins with ex-Detective Inspector Richard Patton getting a visit from a former colleague, Chief Inspector Wainwright, who wants to speak with him about a ten year old murder case – which represented Patton's "first big case as an inspector." A decade ago, Patton was called to the town of Markham Prior where an old, dreary and unkempt farmhouse surrounded untended fences and outbuildings became the scene of a very peculiar murder. The owner of the home is the grouchy, anti-social Eric Prost, "suspected of writing scurrilous letters to all and sundry," but poison pen letters lost their power to "to bring about any shivers of apprehension" in modern times. Nonetheless, this didn't prevent Prost from writing abusive letters and had been writing one at the time of his death.

A milkman on his early morning rounds arrived at Winter Haven, as Prost called his house, to find no empty bottles on the steps. So he walked around the house to peek through to the windows and discovered Prost's body, head down on his desk, in his study, but the doors were locked and the windows, upstairs and downstairs, were latched. Some of the latches were "rusted solid." But was the house really locked up as tightly as it appeared? The "side door was so floppy in its frame" that Patton "could slip the latch easily" and two shots were fired through a small, but "critically important," hole in the corner of the pane of the study window – clearly done years before and never replaced. One bullet struck a small, vulnerable spot in the nape of Prost's neck. The second bullet had struck the face of an old, valuable grandfather clock, or long-case clock, standing by the side of the door. Apparently, the bullet stopped the clock at eight-ten and "the shattered glass from its face had been all over the floor" where the door opened. So "nobody could have entered or left the room" without disturbing the carpet of glass. The door had swept a wide arc in it when Patton entered the room.

Patton was hardly fooled by the smashed clock ("who's going to fall for that, these days?") and suspected a faked alibi, but the shots were precise and exact that required the practiced hand of a marksman. Enter the antique dealer and gun enthusiast, Mr. Julian Caine, who's name was on the license of the murder weapon. He had a motive of sorts and a laughable alibi. So he was arrested and received a life sentence on his day in court.

Chief Inspector Wainwright informs Patton one of his then underlings, Detective Constable Arthur Pierce, died last month following a car accident, but he made a statement before passing away. A statement that opened an old, timeworn can of worms. Arthur Pierce climbed to the rank of Chief Superintendent, but "one tiny error in his whole career" had haunted him. He had mishandled the murder weapon and, as a consequence, "the evidence, as presented to the court, wasn't safe." So the conviction was quashed and Julian Caine was released from prison. Four months later, Caine appears on the Pattons doorstep to ask the man responsible for putting him behind bars to now prove his innocence.

While the courts quashed the conviction, Caine is still guilty in the eyes of the town and he already had threats stuck through his letterbox and a brick through the window. Caine admits he was angry enough with Prost to have shot him, but not that precious, nearly 300-year-old Tompion long-case clock. And he could never have brought himself to harm it.

This is easier said than done, because ten years have passed and, every time Patton searched for a way out for him, Caine became "almost frantic to prove that nobody else but himself could have done it" – covering everything from his alibi and motive to access to his pistols. There are many more curious, almost impossible, aspects of the case revealed during this part of the story. Firstly, the pistols were kept in "a room almost as secure as a bank vault" with a cleverly hidden key, but Patton discovers the hiding place was to deceive burglars and crooks. Not friends or anyone else who came over to his home. Secondly, there was something weird and explainable that Patton didn't put into his report. Every clock in the house, "the whole collection," had stopped at eight-ten! This brings to mind old stories of "clocks stopping at the time of their owner's death," but even stranger is that the clocks were started up again after the house had been locked and sealed by the police. A particular bizarre aspect when you consider the bullet made "no more than a dent" in the brass face of the clock. Just a shame Ormerod didn't delve deeper into the lore surrounding old clocks.

Naturally, there are many more problems and side issues complicating Patton's investigation even further. Eric Prost lost his wife in a terrible car accident and the woman who caused the crash was seen fleeing the scene, but remained elusive unidentified. Arthur Pierce car crash very likely was murder and his deathbed statement resulted in an internal investigation, which is going to leave a reputation in tatters and Wainwright can only imagine what the media is going to do when the story gets out. So this means Patton has to lock horns with another ex-colleague, which is one of Ormerod's personalized tropes. Another one is his interest in cars and how they can be used by criminals and murderers in all kinds of different ways. Yes, there's a third victim of the four-wheeled menace when one of the characters is seriously wounded when he/she is rundown in the street. You can already see his interests and pet ideas being turned into personalized tropes in One Deathless Hour and An Alibi Too Soon (1987). Lastly, Eric Prost was related to the people of a traveling fair and Winter Haven was the nerve center where everything's organized and doubled as their winter quarters. When Patton returned, the fair had returned to their winter quarters to refurbish and repair their attractions and sideshows.

Admittedly, the story sags a little in the second-half, which is why think the clock-lore was underutilized, but the story and plot picked up again during the final quarter. A sudden change of pace that begins with one of the most unusual, but original, "courtroom" scene on the books. Patton has a stubborn, unbending sense of right and wrong, which forces him to interfere in "a kangaroo court" that took place in complete secrecy. Even though the accused was guilty of what he had been accused of (not murder), but without being able to defend himself. Patton elbows his way to the stage to do an improve impression of Perry Mason, but, during his improvised defense, he finally saw the complete truth that had eluded him for so long.

I pieced together most of the pieces except for two, not wholly unimportant, key-pieces of the puzzle. I had a pretty solid idea who had a hand in the (attempted) murders, but not quite as I imagined and therefore technically incorrect. Neither did I appreciate, or understand, how craftily and ingenious Ormerod combined the strands of the locked room mystery with old-fashioned alibi-trickery, which strongly reminded me of the short stories in Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Red Locked Room (2020) – which also used the tricks and techniques of one trope to create the other. Ormerod created a hybrid of the locked room and alibi with the murder in that puzzle box house with clocks that stop and start on their own volition. This is another personalized trope as Ormerod doesn't appear to have been interested in conventional alibis. My impression is that Ormerod was more interested in the difficulties of fabricating alibis and the problems that can arise from them, because they had unforeseen consequences or were misinterpreted.

So, while Ormerod had some favorite tropes and hobbyhorses, he also possessed a creative and imaginative mind capable of producing some original ideas, which prevented him from repeating himself. He simply found new ways to use or look at them. When the Old Man Died is no different with only a slower, less imaginative middle part of the story preventing me from ranking it alongside The Key to the Case and A Shot at Nothing (1993) as one of Ormerod's best retro Golden Age detective novels. But its not all that far behind. Just remember that the strength of the book is in its first-half and an ending as solid as it's satisfying.

A note for the curious: I only noticed this while working on my review and reading back what I wrote about One Deathless Hour, which made me realize how much synergy there really is between One Deathless Hour and When the Old Man Died. While Malling and Coe were on their last recorded case, Patton was solving his first unrecorded case around the same time. Both stories involve murders with a twenty-two target pistol, smashed clocks, apparent impossibilities and a flimsy alibi involving a shooting club. Yet, they're two very different detective stories. Ormerod was criminally forgotten and deserves to be rediscovered as showed what could have been, if the Golden Age never ended.

One Deathless Hour (1981) by Roger Ormerod

During the 1970s, Roger Ormerod crime-and detective fiction featured two different series-characters, David Mallin and George Coe, who had their respective first appearances in Time to Kill (1974) and A Spoonful of Luger (1975), but Ormerod decided to bring them together in Too Late for the Funeral (1977) – which has them "approaching the same case from entirely different directions." A crossover that marked the beginning of their partnership. Over the next five years, Mallin and Coe appeared side-to-side in novels like The Weight of Evidence (1978) and More Dead Than Alive (1980). 

I don't think unifying two series has ever been done before like this in the genre. There were occasionally crossovers (Stuart Palmer and Craig Rice) and sporadic cameos (H.C. Bailey's Reggie Fortune and Joshua Clunk), but never a merger to create a new series. So it's possible Ormerod actually delivered something new under the sun with Mallin and Coe's partnership.

I should have started with the earlier novels and worked my way through the crossover novel, but I'm chronologically challenged and the later titles lured me with their promise of locked room murders, impossible crimes and head scratching alibis – tropes that I find really hard to ignore and resist. And today is no different! 

One Deathless Hour (1981) is the last entry in the series and not merely marked the end of David Mallin and George Coe's recorded career, but the first-period in Ormerod's writing as he completely shed the traditional private eye format. During the next two decades, Ormerod's mystery novels gained an even more traditional slant with sharper writing, better characterization and finely-polished plots. The Hanging Doll Murders (1983), The Key to the Case (1992) and A Shot at Nothing (1993) are retro Golden Age mysteries with a new coat of paint, but the neo-classicist in Ormerod was already present in his private eye fiction. Subject of today's review is a perfect example of Ormerod's increasing devotion to good, old-fashionably plotted detective stories.

Victor Abbott is the personnel manager at one of the new factories on the industrial site of a budding town, Watling, who's a member of the Watling Small Arms Club. Abbott comes to Mallin and Coe to help him "provide an alibi for nine o'clock on Tuesday evening." Story he tells the two private eyes is either the flimsiest tissue of lies ever told or the plain, unbelievable truth.

One Tuesday evening, Abbott went to the clubhouse to try out his new pistol and parked his Triumph Dolomite with all the windows open on account of the hot, stifling weather. When he returned two hours later, Abbott found the body of man sitting in the passenger's seat with his face against the car's fascia clock and "a bullet hole in the back of his neck," which had blown half his face away and soaked everything in blood – preventing immediate identification. Abbott tells Mallin and Coe he suspects the victim could be Charles Colmore. Someone he has "always hated" as Colmore is the reason why his first marriage ended and he remarried his ex-wife, Dulcie. So, understandably, he desperately needs an alibi and hammers on a very specific time. One minute to nine. Mallin suspects the bullet wrecked the fascia clock and Abbott noticed the time, but the police is not showing the two detectives all of their cards. This is where Abbott's story becomes hard to swallow.

During those two hours of solitary target practice, Abbott only needs an alibi for those couple of minutes around nine o'clock evening. Miraculously, he had a very curious visitor shortly after the man outside was shot. A young, incoherent man who was "waving one of those stupid imitation plastic guns" and demanded guns. So he shot off the tip of the youths left earlobe! This happened barely two minutes pass nine and Abbott wants them to find this witness "to be produced... only if the police makes a charge." A very dodgy story, to say the least, but it gets stranger!

Mallin and Coe alternately narrate chapters as each tackle a different end of the case. Mallin begins with "roaming the pubs for a blond youth with one earlobe missing," which quickly brings him into contact with the local police. Meanwhile, Coe travels to Bentley Hall to interview Dulcie to discover whether she had now become a widow, but complicated the case even further when he finds the body of Colmore's mistress, Marilyn Trask – shot and killed with the same high-velocity twenty-two. The police were able to exactly pinpoint the time of the murder: eight minutes to nine on the evening Colmore was shot in the parking lot of the Watling Small Arms Club. This presents the investigators with a tricky problem described in the story as "a rank impossibility."

A problem that can be boiled down to "how two people could be shot by the same person, at roughly the same time, sixty miles apart," but, while it looks like an impossible crime, even I couldn't label it as one. This is an alibi-puzzle in the spirit of early period Christopher Bush with two closely-timed murders complicating the problem, but Ormerod completely inverted the concept of manufacturing alibis. The problem here is not destroying seemingly cast-iron alibis, but trying to figure out why they never materialized. Closing the time-gap between the two murders is the key to the solution. Naturally, the possibility of (ROT13) zhygvcyr zheqreref be na vaperqvoyr pbvapvqrapr have to be taken into consideration. Neither of which are used to explain the murders, but both have a role to play in the solution. Very playful. But there's something else about the solution I admired much more.

Ormerod refused to go with the obvious explanation for the two shootings "one hour's drive apart." The plot synopsis of One Deathless Hour suggested an impossible crime and already had an idea how it could have been done, which was mentioned and apparently confirmed in Chapter 5. Only to be shot to pieces as a false-solution when the police finally began to share information with Mallin and Coe. A piece of information that made Colmore's murder "almost unmovable from one minute to nine" and practically anchored to the crime scene. What worked against the story was the shoddy, sometimes unfair, clueing and that the ending needed a touch of suspense to punch it up a bit. 

That makes One Deathless Hour a typical, early period Ormerod mystery novel. A mystery novel with several solid or even innovative ideas, but very rough around the edged and sorely lacked the polish of his "90s mysteries. However, Ormerod began to drastically improve around the early-to mid 1980s and learned how to utilize his plot ideas to the fullest of their potential. Something he became so good at that it made And Hope to Die (1995) feel like a genuine, modernized GAD-style country house mystery and not a botched, cliche-ridden and unfunny send up. And he did it with a small, almost bone dry pool of suspects and a plot that hinged on a very old dodge. You can see this shift slowly beginning to take shape in his Mallin and Coe series with the previously mentioned More Dead Than Alive reading like precursor to Jonathan Creek.

So One Deathless Hour comes recommend to either fans of Ormerod or mystery readers with a particular interest in picking apart, or putting together, tricky alibis. My next read is going to be another Ormerod from the late eighties or nineties.

An Alibi Too Soon (1987) by Roger Ormerod

Together with Kip Chase, Douglas Clark, Charles Forsyte and Jack Vance, Roger Ormerod belonged to the Lost Generation of detective novelists who attempted to conserve the genre's past as a foundation for a modern interpretation of the traditional, more plot-oriented, detective story – enjoying varying degrees of success and longevity. But they all arrived on the scene a good three, four decades too late. And they're practically forgotten today. 

Ormerod would never have appeared on my radar, if it weren't for Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) listing three of his impossible crime novels. Well, you know me. I dived down that rabbit hole head first and found not only a criminally forgotten, unexpectedly prolific writer of locked room mysteries, but a writer who perfected the modernization of the traditional, Golden Age period mystery with his best novels feeling like a natural continuation of that era. The Key to the Case (1992) and A Shot at Nothing (1993) are two great examples of Ormerod building on the past with a distinctly contemporary touch. That's not just me saying it.

John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, succumbed to the temptation of my previous reviews and tracked down a copy of Ormerod's The Hanging Doll Murder (1983), which he praised as "an engaging and devilish bit of detective fiction" and "a throwback to the heyday of detective fiction" – when plotting and storytelling superseded "character study and grim psychological probing." John has since joined me on an genre-archaeological expedition to unearth this too quickly forgotten, retro GAD author. So keep an eye out for his reviews.

I've previously read six of his nine, perhaps ten, confirmed locked room titles and wanted to keep the remaining three on the pile, for now, to see what else Ormerod did with the genre. Since I appreciate a good alibi-puzzle as much as a deviously-plotted impossible crime, An Alibi Too Soon (1987) was a logical place to start as I cherry pick my way through his work. 

An Alibi Too Soon is the third entry in the series about ex-Detective Inspector Richard Patton and his wife, Amelia, who are two highly reliable murder-magnets.

This story finds Richard and Amelia Patton in Welshpool, Wales, where they've come to view a converted water-mill with an option to buy it, but Richard remembered a former colleague, ex-Detective Chief Superintendent Llewellyn Hughes, retired to his beloved Wales to write his memoirs. And he decides to give him a call. Richard is surprised when he hears Llew Hughes has frantically been sending letters to his cottage on the south coast, while Richard was within a few miles of him "admiring a water-mill." Hughes has come across something in his memoirs about "a most important case" and believes they might have gotten it wrong, but he can't make any sense out of it.

So he promises to drop by with Amelia, but, when they arrive, the wooden barn house is ablaze and Richard only just managed to drag out a badly burned, dying Hughes clutching a manila envelope – name "EDWIN CARTER" printed cross its face. The envelope contained his notes on the Edwin Carter case. A case that was closed a decade ago and ended with a conviction, but Hughes spotted something in his notes that provides the story with its central puzzle. I think it's save to assume An Alibi Too Soon was intended to be Ormerod's take on the so-called "Humdrum" detective school of Freeman Wills Crofts and John Rhode.

Edwin Carter was a playwright who made a lot of money with his social-comment comedies, but flopped as a stage director and lost all of his money. Carter was an eccentric manic-depressive, "way up one minute, way down the next," who threw a party, "a kind of wake," to celebrate his failure and ruin. During the party, Carter announced he was going to drive out to get "a fresh supply of booze." Later that evening, Carter's body is found in one of the two closed garages, belted into the driving seat, with a crate of beer and bottles of spirits on the backseat. So everyone presumed he committed suicide upon his return, but the police figures it was murder. This is where a technical piece of the puzzle comes into play.

There are two garages on the estate with up-and-over doors that can be either opened, or closed, with a radio transmitter or manually with the two buttons between the two doors. One of these garages was Carter's and the belonged to his niece and secretary, Rosemary Trew. But, for the system to work, "they had to keep to the correct garage for the correct car." And that's where the suicide became a murder. Another car had been parked in his garage and he was found in his niece's garage. So he had to push the outside button to close the door, run back under the door as it came down and belt himself into the driving as he waited for the car fumes to overtake him – which comes on top of an ugly bump on his forehead. However, the local police doesn't have to look very far to find someone who fitted the role of murderer like a glove.

Only person at the party without one of those "positive alibis" and a hint of a motive was Carter's nephew, Duncan, who came out on parole a few months ago. Duncan served ten years and is keen on getting pardoned in order to claim damages.

Richard Patton first has to figure out what incongruity Hughes had found that placed the case in a new light and he does notice something in a crime scene photo, which would give Duncan an alibi while removing all the others. But would his late colleague be driven half-crazy by a reversal of those "blasted alibis" or is there something else in the evidence? A stone cold, long-closed case is not the only problem he has to overcome.

Detective Chief Inspector Grayson was one of the original investigators of the Edwin Carter case and has diligently worked on his inflexible career ("he succeeds, you see"), which he's determined to protect by presenting Hughes death as an accident and frustrating Richard's private investigation. So they lock horns a few times over the course of the story, but he also comes across another, murky death of a blue movie actress, Glenda Grace, who had falling from the balcony of Carter's London flat during a house party – apparently sozzled and high on drugs. Some people believe she had been pushed. Several blackmail attempts had been made on various party guests. Richard also come to respect one of his suspects, Rosemary, who still lives at her uncle's estate where she used her "paltry inheritance" to produce plays and hold dress rehearsals. The theatrical crowd who hangs out there hasn't changed all that much from the time of those two tragic deaths.

So how well does Ormerod's An Alibi Too Soon stack up as a modern interpretation of the Crofts and Rhode-style detective story? Well, that's a bit of a mixed back of tricks.

Firstly, the two past murders of Carter and Grace were easily the best aspect of the plot with all the clues in place to give the reader a fair opportunity to figure out who, why and (mostly) how, which admittedly is not too difficult to do. Just like with Crofts and Rhode, the tricky part is putting all the pieces in the right place to get a complete and correct picture of the case. Something that was nicely complicated by the technical monkeying with the garage doors, a single word on the side of a beer crate and the premature alibi that gave the story its title. Ormerod gave some much needed weight to this part of the plot and his reputation as a retro GAD writer with a double-reversal of how the alibi-trick was perceived. A double-reversal nicely tied together with these other past plot-threads.

Unfortunately, the two present-day murders (a second body is found in a millrace) felt inconsequential and unnecessary. I think this story would have worked as well, perhaps even better, had Hughes not died. Grayson told Richard that Hughes' brain was going and Richard gently probing Hughes failing memory would have allowed for more engaging storytelling. This would have introduced a vital clue much earlier into the story. Now we have a murder that came about by pure change that's quickly shoved aside as an side-plot and used only as a reason to have Richard cross swords with Grayson. Oh, the Pattons become the new owners of Hughes' dog and they rename her Cindy (short for Cinders). I don't know why the second murder was necessary except to add some darkness to the story, but you can put down to the rushed ending giving the impression that a lot was left unanswered. 

An Alibi Too Soon is not one of Ormerod's best or strongest detective novels, but the story has a solid, competently plotted core with a clever play on the always tricky problem of arranging an alibi which makes it a worthwhile read to fans of Crofts and Rhode. But perhaps even more important that that, An Alibi Too Soon is another confirmation that Ormerod may have been one of the most anomalous mystery writer to have ever appeared on the scene. Not only was he a mystery writer who was both out-of-time and with the times, but his plots became stronger and his storytelling clearer as he neared the end of his career with his earlier novels, like The Weight of Evidence (1978) and More Dead Than Alive (1980), coming across as clunky compared to the previously mentioned The Key to the Case and A Shot at Nothing – published during his last active decade. I know writers are supposed to improve over time and maintain a certain standard, but, more often than not, there's an inevitable drop in quality in the work of prolific mystery writers. Not so with Ormerod.

I know my reading of Ormerod has been very limited to date, but my impression is that he spend his whole career honing and sharpening his skills. Beginning to show drastic improvement in the mid-to late 1980s and reaching his zenith in the 1990s. That's why When the Old Man Died (1991), Third Time Fatal (1992), Mask of Innocence (1994) and Stone Cold Dead (1995) have moved up a few layers on the big pile. So, yeah, expect more Ormerod in the coming months!

The Key to the Case (1992) by Roger Ormerod

I reviewed two of Roger Ormerod's late-career novels in January, A Shot at Nothing (1993) and And Hope to Die (1995), which he wrote during his twilight years, but the writing and plotting were as clear and ingenious as ever – crafting some of his strongest, modern GAD-style novels. My ramblings tempted John Norris, of Pretty Sinister Books, to try one and raved about The Hanging Doll Murder (1983) as "an excellent example of the modern mystery that honors the traditions of the Golden Age" with "several amazing twists." Something that appears to have been a hallmark of Ormerod's detective fiction. 

From my limited reading and playing internet detective, Ormerod seems to have experimented a lot with ways to frame the traditional, plot-oriented detective story as a modern crime novel. An ambition to link the past with the present to create a new kind of detective story for the future. Some of Ormerod's earlier novels are less than perfect in this regard (e.g. The Weight of Evidence, 1978), but drastically improved during the '80s and became amazingly good at in the '90s. Ormerod could very well have been the best mystery writer of the nineties and today's subject did nothing to persuade me away from that premature conclusion. 

The Key to the Case (1992) is erroneous listed online as a standalone novel, but it's the ninth title in the Richard and Amelia Patton series. More importantly, The Key to the Case is a textbook example of how to consolidate the traditionalist and modernist approach to the detective story.

Richard Patton is an ex-Detective Inspector who continues to get involved in murder cases and "the recent affair of the clocks," presumably a reference to When the Old Man Died (1991), had received too much media coverage for his liking, which had given people the idea Patton sorted out personal problems – having already been approached about boundary disputes and lost dogs. The Key to the Case has a treble of much more serious and confrontational problems for Richard and Amelia to deal with.

Firstly, Richard is approached by a small-time, but expert, burglar, Ronnie Cope, who's out on bail and facing an aggravated burglary charge. Ronnie is not known to be violent and claims to have "an unprovable alibi," but Richard initially has no interest in getting involved. Secondly, a former crook and current owner of a gaming club, Milo Dettinger, asks Richard to prove that his son, Bryan, was murdered. A death that had been filed as a suicide on account of the whole house being a locked and bolted from the inside. Milo had to smash the front door and the bathroom door to find his son hanging by a length of rope, but Richard has to do a little detective work to find out why the place was "well-nigh impregnable to an outsider."

Every day, before going to his club, Milo ensured Bryan locked and bolted all the doors and windows behind him. Milo would also make a midnight call to ensure everything was alright and they agreed on a coded message with the doorbell. Milo fixed this "complicated system of security" to protect his son from an outraged community. Bryan had served two years of six-year prison sentence for raping three young women and he wasn't exactly welcomed back with open arms by the community, but a month after he got out, a woman was raped and murdered. So plenty of abuse and death threats started pouring in. Richard reluctantly gets pulled in, but, once he gets started, he can't stop and this places him at odds with his former colleague and friend, Chief Inspector Ken, who's in charge of a troublesome inspector, Les Durrell – who's "is not simply anti-rapist, but violently so." Meanwhile, Amelia has to face her own demons to help her husband and she's the one who talks with Bryan's victims.

So not exactly the frame you expect to find around a classically-staged locked room mystery, but the touches of the modern crime novel were expertly used here to further a very tricky, complicated and puzzle-oriented plot.

Richard's investigation revealed that the house was not only "completely sealed" with keys, bolts and double-glazed windows, but closely-tightened by a narrow, two-or three minute window of time. That's simply not enough time to have done the murder and vanish from a sealed house. Richard also considers two false-solutions based on the smashed front door with a dash of morbid psychology, which required either a particular hardhearted or cruel murderer. I can't say much about the actual solution and, purely as locked room mystery, the trick is not one for the ages. So don't expect anything in the grand manner of John Dickson Carr or Paul Halter, but it's quite clever and novel in its own unique way. A cheeky play on the cussedness of all things general with a dark undertone and severe consequences.

Where the plot really excels is the clever clueing, red herrings and the double-twisted ending. Ormerod played his cards brilliantly as it was not until the penultimate chapter that everything began to click inside my head, but was still unprepared for the shining radiance of the central, double-edged clue. A clue that was in plain sight, but ingeniously rendered invisible and the explanation how that was accomplished is worthy to be compared with the best from the Golden Age! Simply marvelous! 

The Key to the Case is, plot-wise, Ormerod's best detective novel to date with a great and trickily-done solution, which also succeeded in balancing the old-fashioned, puzzle-oriented locked room mystery with the darker elements of the modern character-driven crime novel – adding a new dimension to both styles. Not to mention an impressive feat of dovetailing making it a highlight of the 1990s (locked room) mystery novel. 

A note for the curious: the writing, characterization, dovetailing and balancing between the classic and modern style in The Key to the Case strongly reminded me of the detective novels by M.P.O. Books, a.k.a. "Anne van Doorn," who took a very similar direction as Ormerod in his stories. The Key to the Case especially reminded me of De laatste kans (The Last Chance, 2011; the dovetailing), Een afgesloten huis (A Sealed House, 2013; an impossible crime) and De man die zijn geweten ontlastte (The Man Who Relieved His Conscience, 2019; the surprise).

And Hope to Die (1995) by Roger Ormerod

Last week, I reviewed Roger Ormerod's A Shot at Nothing (1993), a splendid tribute to the great detective stories and locked room mysteries of yesteryear, which convinced me to explore this modern, but already forgotten, author further – who tried to marry the traditional detective story with the contemporary crime novel. Some attempts were more successful than others. But what matters is that he tried to keep the plot-driven detective story alive during a period when something else was expected from crime writers. More importantly, Ormerod had an undeniable fondness for locked room mysteries and impossible crimes! 

Robert Adey's Locked Room Murders (1991) listed three novels, A Spoonful of Luger (1975), The Weight of Evidence (1978) and An Open Window (1988), but have since then identified More Dead Than Alive (1980), One Deathless Hour (1981), A Shot at Nothing and And Hope to Die (1995) as impossible crimes. But there's more! I recently discovered Face Value (1983; published in the US as The Hanging Doll Murders) and The Key to the Case (1992) can be added to the list. Time to Kill (1974) has David Mallin handing the murderer a cast-iron alibi, which could possibly translate into a quasi-impossible situation.

So that makes about nine, or ten, of his fifty-odd novels impossible crimes and you can bet there are probably a few more that remain unidentified, which is very promising, because Ormerod had a magic touch when it came to fabricating miracles – making him one of the most important and prolific (British) contributors of the period. During the 1980s and '90s, the impossible crime story had become to domain of American and yet to be translated, non-English writers. These writers include Edward D. Hoch, Bill Pronzini, Herbert Resnicow, Paul Halter, Soji Shimada and his shin honkaku movement, but only a few Brits carried on the tradition during the 1970s, '80s and '90s. I can think of only three names, Douglas Clark, Paul Doherty and Roger Ormerod, who wrote impossible crime fiction in a significant quantity during those decades.

You would assume locked room readers would treasure a writer, like Ormerod, but he appears to have been forgotten the moment he stopped writing in 1999 and passing away, aged 85, in 2005. Not even Adey and Brian Skupin were aware how much he actually contributed to the locked room mystery. Fortunately, I've some experience tumbling down these rabbit holes of obscurities. 

And Hope to Die is listed online as a standalone mystery, but it's the fifth Philipa Lowe and Oliver Simpson novel with Third Time Fatal (1992) being the third title that's listed as a standalone. So the series counts six, not four, novels in total comprising of Hung in the Balance (1990), Bury Him Darkly (1991), Third Time Fatal, A Shot at Nothing, And Hope to Die and Landscape with Corpse (1996). I've read two novels from this series and think I can safely state that it likely represents Ormerod at his most traditional, slanting heavily towards the classics, but with the characterization having a distinctly modern flavor. And Hope to Die gave a much clearer picture of our dating detectives in its opening chapter.

Philipa Lowe is the daughter of Chief Superintendent Lowe and is the widow of Graham Tonkin, a well-known water colorist, who left with her modest income, but that becomes a bone of contention in her relationship with the ex-police inspector, Oliver Simpson – whose career "disappeared in one flash of shot" when he tried to wrestle a shotgun from a madman. A shower of shotgun pellets to his right arm ended his career and the opening chapter revealed it will "gradually going to deteriorate" over time, which proves to be an obstacle to getting married. Oliver doesn't want to live on Philipa's money. So he hasn't set eyes upon for weeks as he secretly got a job with a security firm.

Philipa is soon reunited with Oliver through a bit clever maneuvering by her solicitor and family friend, Harvey Remington, who asks her to go to an in situ auction to gauge the authenticity of a water color painting. A portrait reputedly painted by her late husband, but he had painted only one portrait and that one was sold to a collector. Oliver will be there as part of the security team. There reunion at Mallington Hall is only slightly dampened by discovering the painting is a partially nude portrait of her on a bath stool, but notices that a very distinctive birthmark is missing. Something her late husband would certainly have included, but this plot-thread is eventually brushed aside (technically, that's not a pun, please don't bludgeon me) when it served its purpose, as a clue, to the main problem of the plot.

Mallington Hall is the old, neglected home of the demure Mrs. Drew, her dark, saturnine son, Derek, and his younger sister, Pattie. There's also their "sort of cousin," Wilfred Lyle. Under the rule of Richard Drew, they lived a far from happy existence as old-world country gentry folks, but nine months ago, Drew shot himself in the library. The thick, solid door was locked on the inside, key still in the locked position, while the metal catches of the old bay window "had long ago rusted solid" with decades old layers of paint sealing the opening section – whole "now had to be considered as one solid window." So the police concluded it couldn't have been anything else except suicide, which spelled disaster for the family, because his life insurance had a suicide clause in it. Consequently, the family were forced to auction the content of the home and move to farmhouse to keep chickens.

Pattie has heard of Philipa's reputation as an amateur meddler in police cases and asks her to prove her father was murdered in exchange for a brass paraffin lamp. A beautiful piece of antique that would look great in her cottage, but the offer comes with a caveat. She wants her to prove it was "murder by somebody from outside the family." This is not easy when everything points towards suicide.

A noteworthy moment from her investigation is when she shows the old-fashioned library door key to an expert (i.e. a career criminal) to see if he can detect any traces of tempering, like scratches on the stem, which would indicate the key was turned from the outside with pliers. This was not the case and the story from here on out quickly turns into a much darker, character-driven crime novel with all the trappings of a 1920s whodunit. Solution to the problem is hidden in the actions and personalities of the characters, which comes with a packet of depressing and sordid back stories. And in particular of Derek and Pattie. However, the key to the case is the character and story of their late father.

Richard Drew was "all dignity and gentlemanly superiority" living "in a world that disappeared long, long ago," but he had his personal set of principles and, when an grim incident ten years ago broke his civility (to put it mildly), he locked himself away from the world in his personal library. A decade later another incident apparently resulted in him taking his own life, but Philipa slowly becomes convinced it was actually murder. 

So far, so good, but let the reader be warned: the answers to these questions don't show Ormerod's usual creative and original approach to the detective story and locked room mystery, but it speaks volumes that he still succeeded in dropping me off at the final page without really being disappointed.

Firstly, the small pool of suspects and a second murder makes the murderer stand out like a scarecrow and the locked room-trick is an old dodge that you shouldn't get away with today or in 1995, but Ormerod played it serious with a straight face – oddly enough it made it much more convincing. Usually, these modern send ups of the country house/locked room mysteries that trot out this particular trick feel like a novelty store item, but And Hope to Die (despite the contemporary touches) felt like the genuine article. It reminded me in that regard of Michael Innes' final novel, Appleby and the Ospreys (1986).

All in all, And Hope to Die was a little disappointing, because Ormerod has written much better and more ingenious detective stories, but it was rather interesting to see a modern, character-driven crime drama being played out as a Golden Age mystery – adapting to it (locked room-trick). But if you're new to Ormerod, I recommend you start with More Dead Than Alive or A Shot at Nothing.