Death Likes It Hot - Gore Vidal as Edgar Box

 Mix Agatha Christie with the bitter wit of Gore Vidal and what do you get?  You get the young Vidal writing as Edgar Box and this, the third of his three genteel mysteries featuring PR man Peter Sargeant II.

Sargent is invited to spend a week at the Long Island mansion of wealthy widow Rose Veering.  It's a select group of guests: Rose's niece Mildred and her artist husband Paul Brexton; Allie Claypoole and her brother Fletcher, and later their nephew; and noted penwoman Mary Western Lung.  Tragedy strikes when poor Mildred, who has suffered mental health problems, drowns whilst swimming.  Is it an accident or perhaps suicide?  The police seem convinced that it's murder.  Then Fletcher Claypoole is most definitely murdered.  The police make a swift arrest but Sargeant, who has form as an amateur sleuth has other ideas.

It's charming, funny, clever and, obviously, beautifully written.  Great fun.

Blue Octavo - John Blackburn

Blue Octavo is a bibliographic whodunnit.  Book dealer Roach pays way over the odds for a copy of an obscure limited edition book on British mountaineering only to be found dead that evening, ostensibly by suicide.  He leaves his home and entire stock to a younger colleague, John Cain, who is more engrossed by the riddle of the book than the dubious suicide.  The course of his inquiries leads him, and us, to a familiar face from Dead Man Running.  Yes, it's J Moldon Mott, explorer and author.  Mott immediately plunges himself into the mystery with comic results.  As before, he falls slightly short in the end - but there's an interesting and amusing twist at the very end, which obviously I'm not going to reveal here.

Blue Octavo dates from 1963 by which time Blackburn was an established, confident author.  What's interesting is that he was also a second-hand book dealer, and so is able to go into much more detail about the trade than anyone else who has employed a similar mcguffin.  In fact it's much more involving than the main murder plot.  I guessed who was responsible the moment he appeared, though I kept going in the hope I was wrong.

I remember Blue Octavo being quite a seller in its day.  I have to say it hasn't worn as well as other Blackburn books.

Vengeance - Benjamin Black

Vengeance (2012) is the fifth of the Quirke Dublin novels, now rebranded Quirke Mysteries, presumably to tie in with the forthcoming TV series.  Banville-Black writes as beautifully as ever and his distillation of period is flawless - but he does tend to forget that these are supposed to be a) mysteries and b) thrillers.  There is no mystery here - I still have no idea why a suicide needs a witness - and zero thrills.  It's a sort of Agatha Christie, dirty-deeds amid the middleclass, without the plotting but with greatly enhanced literary ability.

I don't mind the lack of plot; Black could write a shopping list and I'd still read it.  The continuing characters are developed further, the one-off characters, by and large, are distinct and well-drawn, if a little devoid of purpose.  I do wish Black had avoided the twins trap.  The same cheap trick ruined Colin Dexter for me and Monsignor Knox was making a rule forbidding it.  It's just lazy.

None of these quibbles will prevent me reading more.  The sixth Quirke Mystery, out now in hardback, is Holy Orders.  Can't wait.