The Schoolgirl Murder Case - Colon Wilson

 When I was around 18 I loved Colin Wilson.   He seemed to be interested in everything I was, and even came from near where I lived (and still lived).   He was always on TV, the Common Man's polymath.   I read everything by him that I could find: The Occult, God of the Labyrinth, Ritual in the Dark.   A couple of years later I gave up on him completely.   His interest in murder seemed morbid, his interest in the occult slightly outdated.

Then for some reason, at the end of last year I became interested in him again.   Where once you could buy his books in any decent bookshop, now you can't find them for love nor money.   So I bought a whole bunch of them online.   I'm currently reading his 'reappraisal' of George Bernard Shaw, which I don't like at all but hoping to like better when he finally gets on to the plays, and just finished The Schoolgirl Murder Case, which I liked a whole lot more.

The title seems deliberately prurient.   It was probably a lot more so when the novel was written in 1974.   I should note that this was just before Wilson started publishing his true crime murder books.   In fact the victim is an adult woman who prostitutes herself to punters with a penchant for schoolgirls.   She is found in the front garden of a Hampstead house.   When Scotland Yard finally get permission to enter the house, they find the body of the owner's nephew, who was almost certainly the girl's client.

The dead man was a debauched dilletante with interests in the occult.  This leads Chief Inspector Saltfleet into an unfamiliar world of escoteric bookshops, occult artists and modern day witches.   Greg Saltfleet makes the book work by being resolutely normal, middleaged, happily married, good at his job and popular with his underlings.  The solution is perfectly reasonable and satisfactory.   I also liked the realism with which Wilson conveys the real nitty gritty of policing.   So many crime novelists find ways to get their cop out of the office and out of day-to-day policing.   Not Wilson; Saltfleet is a line manager with lots of cases to keep an eye on; Saltfleet also has higher-ups to inform and answer to.

Overall, very satisfactory.   I think I might try The Mind Parasites (not one of my recent purchases) next.   Either that or re-read Ritual in the Dark...