Minute for murder Book

The war is over. What do we do now?

"Nicholas Blake" was Cecil Day-Lewis, who's called an "Irish Poet" even though he was raised in London and educated at Oxford. His critically acclaimed poetry wouldn't support a comfortable life-style. So he took a pen name and wrote 20 mysteries, all but four of which feature eccentric, erudite gentleman detective Nigel Strangeways. I've liked all that I've read, but this one is outstanding. Critics invariably call it "a literate mystery" in shocked tones as though they can hardly believe that such a thing exists.

The setting is London in the last days of WWII - a long, hard war for the English. For six horrific years, daily danger was the norm. The human is an amazingly adaptable creature and surviving Londoners coped the best they could with this "norm." Now the Germans are defeated and those who have thought of nothing but survival must re-learn how to plan for the future. People have fallen into jobs and living arrangements and even relationships without much examination of their suitability. What now?

The story rings true because the author worked at the Ministry of Information (propaganda, really) and knew this tight, incestuous, nervy situation first hand. He was a radical in his young days, but by this time he was completely an English upper-class gentleman and had adopted the outlook of that class and time. It's a WWII tale that could only come out of England. Where else would the returning hero be a soldier who captured a high-ranking Nazi by living in drag?

It's the story of two very different women - a cold, amusing, well-bred intellectual who lives through her writing and a passionate, conventional, working-class girl who wants only to be a traditional wife and mother. If a man HAS to choose, which one will he pick? It's also (at the end) a battle of wits between two brilliant, ruthless men one of whom must die. Strangeways' hunches solve the crime, but he has no power to bring about anything other than a tragic end and the destruction of a flawed, valuable man.

Given that others continued to identify him as Irish, it's also interesting to see how the author deals with the one Irish character in the book. This is a beautifully written book that will be enjoyed by anyone who loves a good novel.