E.C.R. Lorac is one of the pen-names of Edith Caroline Rivett, who also wrote under the pseudonyms, Carol Carnac and Mary Le Bourne. She was a prolific writer who wrote more than seventy murder mysteries. She was well-known in literary circles and she was successful in her lifetime. Her novels were both popular and critically acclaimed, but unlike some of her better known contemporaries, her books were forgotten after her death.
For decades they were only rarely to be found. But her work, like that of many other crime writers of her time, has now been revived, and re-introduced to the public as a part of the British Library Crime Classics Series. I've read a few of her books so far, and I loved them all.
Lorac has a gift for writing clever dialogue and creating memorable characters. She draws them all so vividly, whether they are likeable, annoying, intriguing, dramatic or just plain bone-headed. Her plots are clever and intriguing and you almost never know how things are going to turn out.
She was writing in the 1930's 40's and 50's, and her books are very much of that time. This is historical fiction as well as crime fiction because she gives the reader a real sense of what life was like at the time, the changing role of women, the breaking down of classic distinctions and all the perils and privations of life in wartime.
Here's a look at three of her books:
This is one of the most unusual crime novels that I've ever read. It begins with a missing person report. The missing person is question is a celebrated crime novelist, Vivian Lestrange, who is famously, a recluse. His secretary shows up at the local police station to report that he's missing, and that his housekeeper has disappeared as well.
When, after a week of investigation, Inspector Bond cannot find a single person that has ever met Vivian Lestrange, he wonders if the secretary is herself the novelist and Lestrange never actually existed. But the police keep investigating, and they turn up a bunch of clues and connections that are both intriguing and confounding.
Like the detectives in the story, the reader is presented with a crazy set of facts that lend themselves to multiple explanations. The author keeps you guessing and you're never sure who to trust and where the story is going to go next.
Bats in the Belfry is another unusual mystery. It begins with a conversation one evening, at the home of Bruce and Sybilla Attleton where Bruce's ward, Elizabeth, asks everyone gathered how they would dispose off a dead body in such a way that it would never be found, if they ever felt inclined to murder someone.
It's a purely intellectual exercise on her part, but this conversation becomes relevant a couple of weeks later, when Bruce Attleton disappears without a trace. He was supposed to have left for Paris, but he never got there. Then his suitcase is discovered in an abandoned artist's studio, and his friends are puzzled. They can't shake the feeling that something terrible has happened.
They go to the police, but what are they supposed to investigate? Was Bruce kidnapped? Was he killed? Or did he choose to disappear for a while for his own purposes?
This book begins when Inspector MacDonald, the detective who appears most often in Lorac's books, is invited to a party at a publisher's home. Most of the other guests are writers who work with the publisher. The object of the gathering is a treasure hunt. Each of the guests will be given clues which they have to solve in order to find the treasure.
None of the guests at the party are (allegedly) known to each other. They are all writers who are famously reclusive. They show up at the party having adopted the name of a famous writer as their pseudonym for the night. So no one, other than the host knows who everyone is.
The treasure hunt is on in earnest when the power goes out. The guests gather in the parlour waiting for the repairman when they discover that one of the guests is unaccounted for. They go looking for him, and find him dead. It looks like it was a heart attack, but Inspector MacDonald is not so sure. He begins to dig and to ask questions and it starts to seem like everyone of the people involved is hiding something if not lying outright...
This is a fantastic read.