Book Review: "He Who Whispers" by J.D Carr

"...if you were to attend a dinner of the Murder Club you did not go in by the front door. Instead you went round the corner to the side entrance in Greek Street. Beyond a low door and up a thick-carpeted flight of stairs - according to popular legend, this was once royalty's discreet way of entering - you emerged into an upstairs passage with the doors of private rooms along one side..."

British Library's Crime Classics are more than often some of the best filler books I like to read. Between other, possibly longer and more complex books, classic crime is definitely one of the places I like to visit. Complete with unsolved murders, killers on the loose and every character in the entire book becoming a suspect almost automatically, I think that these books are a great way to spend an evening unwinding. It is also great that a lot of them can be read in one sitting at around an average of only 250 pages or so.

I have read quite a bit by JD Carr in my time with these books including but possibly not limited to: Till Death Do Us Part, It Walks by Night, The Black Spectacles, Castle Skull, The Waxworks Murder, The Lost Gallows and there are probably some more. A great writer of the crime classics, they have been reissued by the British Library and edited by Martin Edwards as a series. They make for a great way to explore the era of the Golden Age of Crime as there are books from history that may have been forgotten. But each time, they prove to be just brilliant. If you're looking for something gripping to read then I definitely recommend this series.

The book is set in the months following the end of World War 2 and Miles Hammond is attending a dinner hosted by the Murder Club. Nobody else shows up except a woman named Barbara and Professor Rigaud. The Professor begins to tell them the story of Fay Seton.

Fay Seton worked for a family and fell in love with with a member of that family named Harry Brooke - Harry's father did not approve of the engagement though. Agreeing to meet Fay in a tower of a burned out chateau, Harry's father was found stabbed to death in the minutes following when he had left the company of his son and Professor Rigaud. At first, it seemed obvious but with nobody having been in or out of the tower with nobody having climbed up fifteen feet to get to the only window off the ground, Harry's father's death was more than an open and shut case.

Miles becomes drawn to the affair involving Fay Seton because she seems to also be the person he has hired as his librarian. Not knowing whether she is a murderer or not, it will take the work of Dr Gideon Fell to find out what actually happened on that night when Harry's father died when he had supposedly gone to meet Fay Seton in a tower.

This book has been hailed as one of the better novels by JD Carr and I have to say, it is pretty much the best I have read of him so far. Seemingly impossible to solve and in the classic air of JD Carr of having nobody else to witness what happened, this crime novel brings us into the stranger world of classic crime. The weird and supernatural side that serves to haunt us long after we have finished the book.

It might be in his classic style, but the supernatural element was definitely different to some I've read. There is a constant air of distrust running through the book that means, by the time we get to the end, we have practically turned our accusing gaze on every single character we can think of, however impossible they might seem to be. The sheer impossiblity of the crime itself makes the reader agitated and paranoid, you really do feel like you cannot put your faith in anyone of these characters, not even the detective from time to time.

All in all, I think reading these books is why I have trust issues today. Be that as it may, I will continue to read them.