CLASSIC CRIME  | Daily Mail Online

THE BODY ON THE TRAIN

by Frances Brody (Piatkus £8.99, 384 pp)

It’s 1929. A freight train arriving at Kings’ Cross carries rhubarb fresh from the West Riding. Not so fresh is the corpse found in one of the trucks.

Called in by Scotland Yard to probe a mystery with sensitive side issues, Private Detective Kate Shackleton deploys her Yorkshire upbringing to expose a financial scam.

It takes in the forced closure of a children’s home, two murders and a false accusation that has a young man on trial for his life.

Kate also has to face threats to her own life. What starts as a battle of wills ends as a fight for survival. Frances Brody has a remarkable talent for evoking time and place. With a realistic setting, her characters spring to life. This is crime writing of a high order.

CRIME IN LEPER’S HOLLOW

by George Bellairs (Agora £10.99, 298pp)

Of the recent revival of long-forgotten crime writers, George Bellairs is one to savour. Bellairs, who made his chief living as a bank manager, is an acute observer of the human condition with all its weaknesses. We start with the death of a judge. Shooting pheasants in the pouring rain brings on a fatal attack of pneumonia.

The question arises, could he have been saved? The gossip is of a notoriously unfaithful wife deliberately withholding proper care. But when she, too, meets an untimely death along with two of her lovers, a sinister tale begins to unfold. It falls to the unflappable Inspector Littlejohn to delve into a family saga that defies every norm of county set respectability.

His efforts are hampered by a cast of suspects variously in the grip of drugs, mental instability, jealousy and criminal intent.

MAIGRET AND MONSIEUR CHARLES 

by Georges Simenon (Penguin £7.99, 176 pp)

Georges Simenon was a fast worker in more ways than one.

He wrote at speed. But he was also a self-confessed sexual predator.

It is this that gives particular significance to the last in a cycle of 75 novels featuring the slow but sure chief inspector.

It’s often said that Maigret was the author’s self-portrait, but Simenon is closer to Monsieur Charles, a rich nightclub lounger who picks up girls for affairs, as his wife sinks into alcoholism. Could it be that Simenon turned away in self-disgust at the character he had created?

What is certain is that with 17 years of life ahead of him Simenon never wrote another Maigret book. Also beyond contention is that however unpleasant Simenon may have been, with Maigret he joined the company of truly great writers.

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