Murder by Degrees by Harriet Vane

Thanks to Outdooractive.com

Title: Murder by Degrees

Author: Harriet Vane

Publisher: Trufoot’s 

Source book: Have His Carcase by Dorothy L Sayers 

Harriet Vane has recently been tried and, importantly, acquitted of murder. Great publicity for a writer of detective fiction. She has signed lucrative publishing contracts “in both continents”; which I take it means in both the U.K. and the USA. Would there be a European market for detective novels in translation in the 1930s? I don’t know.

Anyway, richer than she ever imagined possible, and having recently finished Murder by Degrees, she is taking a solitary walking holiday along the south west coast of England before embarking in her next book. The new book already has a title; The Fountain Pen Mystery. It will no doubt feature her usual detective, Robert Templeton.

I have to tell you I am not very taken with Harriet’s description of her detective. He is a gentleman of extraordinary scientific skill, combined with almost fabulous muscular development. He has arms like an orang-outang [really? that sounds very creepy] and an ugly but attractive face. He is notorious for the sang-froid with which he examines dead bodies. Bodies reduced to boneless jelly by falling from aeroplanes; bodies charred into “unrecognisable lumps” by fire; bodies run over by heavy vehicles, and needing to be scraped from the road with shovels - Robert Templeton doesn’t turn a hair. 

Harriet finds a dead body on a rock and feels she has never properly appreciated the superb nonchalance of her literary offspring. At least she manages to take some photographs of the crime scene and doesn’t run away screaming.

It’s worth pointing out that the descriptions of bodies in Harriet’s previous books mentioned here don’t match the description of Death in the Pot from Strong Poison; that plot sounds desperately sad and not really the traditional kind of cosy crime novel we all enjoy. And also, it doesn’t seem to fit with the title. Perhaps Dorothy Sayers forgot Harriet’s style of writing from just two years before. Hey ho. I didn’t write these books. What do I know?

Thanks to AboutBritain.com