Monday, June 30, 2025

Men of subtle craft

I do love a Collins Crime Club story from the 1970s and 1980s me. Often they featured amateur detectives who has quite mundane day jobs, but who seemed to get involved in investigating murder or other serious crimes quite a bit.

Men of subtle craft by Roy Lewis (1987) is about a council planner turned amateur historian called Arthur Landon who is asked to help out in a rather obscure academic argument over a medieval mason. While Landon is travelling around the rural north on both council and historical business, he becomes involved in a bitter local dispute over inheritance and broken marriages. This eventually results in a murder with a rather unusual MO, though the murder does not occur until quite late in the story.

The story takes a while to get going though does help build the characters nicely. The historical sub-plot can be a bit impenetrable at times and doesn't really have anything to do with the crime but does provide a setting and a few red herrings. The final act ups the pace considerably. A fine read.

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