This was bizarre. I can't say I'm keen on sporting stories, especially ones about bare-knuckle fighting, and I was constantly worried about poor PC Jago. Sgt. Cribb takes Jowett's admiration of the French method seriously and sends a new, relatively unknown constable under cover as a bare-knuckle boxer. Jago is at least familiar with boxing and athletic, but he's a privately educated, university man who for some reason decided to be a copper. He has a colonel's daughter for a girlfriend. He has everything to live for, and he's sent into one of the strangest situations imaginable because the headless body of a pugilist was found in the river. He's being trained in secret and vamped by a widow obsessed with boxing (or perhaps just boxers). On the one hand, the investigation follows a naturally rocky road, but the confrontation and unmasking of the murderer comes off as ... odd. And the squick character of the boxing cost the book points. But I still love Sgt. Cribb.
Do You like book The Detective Wore Silk Drawers (1980)?
