I swear, this book has one of the most amazing hooks I have ever read in a crime novel.I am going to kill a man. I don't know his name, I don't know where he lives, I have no idea what he looks like. But I am going to find him and kill him...(Yes, nowadays it sounds like something Liam Neeson would say, but bear in mind that this was written in the 1930s.) This genius hook begins a fleshed-out, sophisticated tale of revenge and how dwelling on terrible things and obsessing over vengeance can make monsters of us all.A famous detective novelist, Frank Cairns is a widower who adores his little son Martin. Unfortunately, the young boy is the victim of a hit and run whilst out buying sweets in the nearby village, sending Frank spiralling into a deep depression that causes some very dark thoughts to surface as he prepares to investigate what the police and coroner's office simply haven't bothered to do.His answer comes when he uses his crime novel pseudonym, Felix Lane, to infiltrate the inner circle of Lana, a film actress who a farmer recognised as being in the passenger seat of the car that ran down little Martin, and hurriedly made its way to the other end of the county. The man in the driver's seat was her brother-in-law George Rattery, a thoroughly unlikable man who beats and cheats on his wife Violet, leaving his sensitive young son Phil an emotional wreck with nobody to confide in, as grandma Ethel, the family matriarch, insists on propriety and family honour.As Felix ingratiates himself with the family as a friend, and Phil's tutor, he continues to write his diary about how he plans to kill George Rattery, who he is now somewhat certain was indeed Martin's killer. However, this all horribly backfires when George reveals to Felix that he has secretly read this diary, and has given it to his solicitor to hand to the police in the event of George's untimely death. And when George is found dead later that afternoon, but not by Felix's hand, everything goes a bit pear-shaped, and Blake's great investigator Nigel Strangeways is called to this quiet Gloucestershire town to unravel the mystery.Bear in mind, this is just a summation of the first one hundred or so pages, and I have no plan to go any further in explaining the plot, because I honestly believe it only gets more enjoyable from there onwards.I honestly, really believed in Frank as a character, and as time wears on, you want him to succeed. Blake is really good at subdued writing, particularly in the case of George Rattery. Rather than blatantly making him the worst father ever, he shows it through the man's despicable attitude, horrible social views and the way he speaks as if everyone else is dirt on the end of his shoe. It just builds and builds and builds until you want Frank to kill him, and your jaw drops just as much as Frank's did at the big reveal.While I haven't read any of the other Strangeways novels, I really enjoyed him as a character. Especially the way he plays off with Inspector Blount, and even his girlfriend Georgia. (In my university classes on this book, we learned that Nigel Strangeways was originally based on W.H. Auden, and if that really is the case then I would very much like to invite Auden to my dream dinner party along with Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker. Among others.)The one star I am knocking off this otherwise gripping detective novel comes purely from a personal viewpoint that's mostly to do with the ending of the book. I'm aware that everyone approaches crime fiction differently – some people pick up on every single red herring and keep a data bank of every piece of evidence, and others merely follow along until the detective explains away. I sit on the fence in that regard, and about 40-50 pages from the end, I had my own explanation for everything that had chronologically happened, only for there to be a reveal that oh no, it was actually this character. It works to explain the wonderful ruse, but I felt it also sucked all the intrigue out of the book. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I didn't enjoy the last act quite as much because of the sudden reveal and the turgid explanation that accompanied it.Nevertheless, I do recommend this book if you are looking for a genuinely fascinating crime novel. Frank's thoughts on revenge burn through the pages and may even get into your head, especially when George Rattery comes into the picture. Strangeways is fun to read – one can never tire of the good old eccentric, intellectual detective, and while I didn't appreciate the dénouement, I did appreciate the ride building up to it.4/5.(This review is also available on my blog: http://nessasky.wordpress.com/2013/12...)
This book was originally published in 1938 by Collins. It is part of the series that Blake wrote featuring Nigel Strangeways, an awesome private detective who gets results where the police cannot. This classic style of this murder mystery book is very different to my usual taste and it took me a while to get into it. However, once I was comfortable with the style, I found it to be really enjoyable. It was rather refreshing to read a book that was very far-from-noir and not at all gruesome and I was pleasantly surprised by its unexpected ending. It must also be added that, despite the classic style with its Poirot-esque limited number of suspects, I didn't manage to guess which one of them did it, nor was I entirely comfortable with the guilty party's ready acceptance of the fact that they would be hanged for their crimes. The newspaper clippings at the end were a very fine touch and the whole book was a pleasure from cover to cover.In brief, Franks Cairns, who writes crime fiction under the pseudonym of Felix Lane and is reasonably successful at it, has his life turned upside down by a hit and run accident that kills his only son. In his grief he decides to hunt down and murder the killer, and writes a diary detailing his thoughts and plans. Several remarkable coincidences, mixed with some smart ideas that come from his years of writing crime fiction, help him find somebody whom he believes is the guilty party and he must now plot the man's demise. Unfortunately, his plan fails but somebody else steps in and does the deed in his stead. Even more unfortunately, somebody also discovers his diary and he finds himself in the frame for a murder that he didn't commit. Help arrives in the form of Nigel Strangeways, and his wonderfully talented wife, who must now sift through all the evidence and identify the killer before Cairns, or Lane as he calls himself, is arrested.Review by Amanda C M Gillies, Scotland
Do You like book The Beast Must Die (1999)?
I read an out-of-print edition of this book and was amazed at how good it was. It's a genre mystery set (and written) in 1938 England. Part of the Nigel Strangeways mystery series, this was written by Cecil Day-Lewis under the pen name Nicholas Blake. Day-Lewis was a poet laureate of England and the father of Daniel Day-Lewis. The Beast Must Die (which, as a title, makes sense when you get to the end--it's from a bible passage--but otherwise makes you think the book is something else) concerns a distraught father whose young son is killed in a hit-and-run accident. The father (a writer of mysteries under a pseudonym) is obsessed with trying to discover the identity of the hit-and-run and driver and exact revenge. The first half of the book is his diary, and the second half is written in the third person and unravels the mystery of what really happened in the diary. Great book, but sadly out of print in the U.S. I'm going to look for the other Nigel Strangeways mysteries.
—Alex
"Voy a matar a un hombre. No sé cómo se llama, no sé dónde vive, no tengo idea de su aspecto. Pero voy a encontrarlo y lo mataré..."Frank Cairnes es un autor de novelas policiales que ha perdido a su hijo en un accidente, un hombre lo chocó yendo a alta velocidad y no se detuvo. Cairnes lleva un diario donde relata su investigación para hallar al sujeto y, luego, donde va escribiendo cómo realizará su venganza. Pero en el momento supremo, algo no sucede como debería y los planes de desbaratan y aquí, es donde aparece el detective Nigel Strangeways.La novela durante la primera parte, esta relatada en primera persona por Cairnes, donde el lector puede acceder a su diario, y a partir de la segunda parte, en tercera persona. El detective Nigel Strangeways, quien es el personaje principal, no aparece hasta casi la mitad del libro, y sólo lo tomo como personaje principal porque su investigación y deducciones son las que importan al final y porque durante el resto del libro ya casi no aparece Cairnes.Cuando llegamos a la cuarta parte del libro, todo tiene sentido, todo encaja perfectamente y nada es lo que parecía, enserio, más allá de que tengas tus dudas que te lleven a una determinada postura los dos o tres últimos capítulos de la tercera parte, todavía queda algo que debe ser explicado.En definitiva, me encanto, muy bien escrita, todos los detalles importan y nada queda al azar, y también, muy entretenida.
—Atilio Frasson
