John Rhode is one of those prolific writers of detective fiction from the so-called Golden Age whose work I have dipped into occasionally in the past few decades. I’ve found his books to be, at their best, entertaining enough, but at their worst more of those irritating endeavours in which the author attempts to show how fiendishly clever they are. Dorothy Sayers, who one often thinks ought to have known better, but clearly didn’t, said that “One always embarks on a John Rhode book with a great sense of security. One knows that there will be a sound plot, well-knit process of reasoning, and a solidly satisfying solution with no loose ends or careless errors of fact.” Actually, on re-reading that quote there is a possibility of damnation by faint praise, isn’t there? She might as well have said that Rhodes is ‘workmanlike’ or ‘sound enough if you care for that kind of thing’. ‘Burn’, as I believe younger people have said in recent years.

Well, I admit that occasionally I have rather cared for that kind of thing, but Rhode’s effort ‘Murder At Lilac Cottage’ which I read last week isn’t something I could recommend. It feels like something written much earlier than its 1940 publication date, and there is something of the mass-production line about it as the story unfolds with weary predictability. One of Rhode’s particular fancies is in utilising ridiculously convoluted means of committing murder. He does like his contraptions (one of his books is titled ‘Invisible Weapons’) and this one certainly ticks that box with a suitably Heath Robinson murder machine being rigged up to pull of the crime and give the murderer an alibi. Sorry, does that seem like a spoiler? Well, perhaps so, but I dare say that one would tumble to the ‘mystery’ pretty quickly even if one was not previously aware of Rhodes’ predilections. I am rather useless at working out the puzzles in detective fiction but even I had the general notion nailed pretty early in the book. Even as a 99p Kindle punt I came away thinking I’d been swindled.

Better by far is the latest entry in the British Library Crime Classics series. ‘Murder As A Fine Art’ is another book in the expanding collection of reissued books penned by Edith Caroline Rivett. This effort is one of her titles under the Carol Carnac incarnation, and it has her serial detectives Julian Rivers and Inspector Lansing delving into the obfuscated world of the Civil Service and attempting to navigate the no-less muddy waters of Contemporary Modern Art. Set in the fictional Ministry Of Fine Arts in London, Carnac (or Rivett) does a fairly convincing job of weaving something of the real Arts Council of Great Britain’s history into the narrative. There is more than a hint of suggestion that the fictional first chairman of the Ministry of Fine Arts, one Joyce-Lawrence, is meant to be John Maynard Keynes, whilst the second (“old Higginson”) arguably bears more than a passing resemblance to Sir Ernest Pooley, who held the position of chairman until 1953, the year that ‘Murder As A Fine Art’ was published. It was too the year in which Sir Kenneth Clark ascended to the chair of the entire Arts Council (having previously headed up the Art Panel) and on whom surely the character of Humphry David is based, at least notionally. This playful weaving of the fictional and the real must have felt deliciously wicked at the time and there is certainly an argument to be made for ‘Murder As A Fine Art’ as a tremendous piece of contemporary political and cultural satire.

In many of Rivett’s (or E.C.R. Lorac’s, if you prefer) Inspector MacDonald books there is a great sense of place, and the writer typically uses the early pages of those books to elegantly sketch the landscape with a care to attention that is light yet remarkably evocative. She does the same thing here, only rather than landscape it is the complex structures of the Ministries of Government that are captured with swift , confident lines. It could be easy to get mired in such complications, but the book races along at a fine pace with well drawn characters and a marvellous balance struck between humour and the necessary sowing of clues to solve puzzles of the how, the who and the why of the crime. This is, after all, a murder mystery.

The air of humour is important though, and if one can never quite escape the image of Tony Hancock’s ‘The Rebel’ inhabiting some of the pages that is all to the good. Certainly the satirical quality works well, even at the distance of some seventy years. Some things never change, after all, and the convoluted workings of government ministries and contemporary Art scenes might just be amongst the most intractably difficult to unravel.

Perhaps what sets ‘Murder As A Fine Art’ apart from 21st Century sensibilities, however, is the manner in which partisanship never quite results in polarisation. At one point Inspector Rivers asks his superior officer, Henry Fearon, if he thinks it’s “possible that these contemporary paintings are potent enough to arouse murderous passions?” Fearon replies: “No. I don’t. I hate them as much as anybody does, but I would neither commit murder nor lift a finger nor spend a sixpence for any of them.” One wonders if a senior police officer might have quite so forgiving an attitude in 2025.

Indeed, there is a shift in Rivers’ appreciation of the paintings as the book progresses, eventually suggesting that “by the time I’m through with this job we’re on, I shall want to buy an Abstract. Ben Nicholson for preference.” One rather hopes that he did, for it would certainly have provided an excellent investment to supplement the police pension if nothing else!

In terms of the mechanics of the murder mystery, things are executed in typically fine Rivett style. Suspects are wheeled in front of our eyes with possible motives and potential solutions extrapolated for our convenience. As in ‘Murder at Lilac Cottage’ there is something a little Heath Robinson about the murder method, but the solution of how a massive sculpture might have been manoeuvred in order to fall onto the unfortunate victim’s head is dealt with altogether more elegantly here than in Rhode’s hands, as indeed are all the other necessary components of the murder mystery. In Rivett’s hand these are always entertainingly managed, and if there is a small degree of clumsiness as the book necessarily pivots into its conclusion, it is nevertheless as a Caravaggio compared to the Cecilia Giménez ‘Ecce Homo’ of Rhodes.

One to add to the collection, then, and another to drop in the charity shop box.