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Arthur Crook #28
Snake in the Grass
He tried to help a woman in need - but she's the prime suspect in her husband's murder...
Con Gardiner had no family; his work and his one-room flat filled most of his solitary existence, until one evening a strange girl in the street asked him to lend her a pound.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club
Con was attracted to Caro Graves, and puzzled too; he couldn't see what would become of this girl who had just left her husband after a bitter quarrel, and who had nowhere to go. But he was soon to have more to worry about: Caro's husband was dead . . . and Caro was the main suspect.
'Anthony Gilbert's novels show the unsensational type of detective story at its best' ~Daily Telegraph
Con Gardiner had no family; his work and his one-room flat filled most of his solitary existence, until one evening a strange girl in the street asked him to lend her a pound.
Classic crime from one of the greats of the Detection Club
Con was attracted to Caro Graves, and puzzled too; he couldn't see what would become of this girl who had just left her husband after a bitter quarrel, and who had nowhere to go. But he was soon to have more to worry about: Caro's husband was dead . . . and Caro was the main suspect.
'Anthony Gilbert's novels show the unsensational type of detective story at its best' ~Daily Telegraph
- GenresMystery
192 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1954
1 person is currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Gilbert
133 books38 followersAnthony Gilbert was the pen name of
Lucy Malleson
an English crime writer. She also wrote non-genre fiction as
Anne Meredith
, under which name she also published one crime novel. She also wrote an autobiography under the Meredith name, Three-a-Penny (1940).
Her parents wanted her to be a schoolteacher but she was determined to become a writer. Her first mystery novel followed a visit to the theatre when she saw The Cat and the Canary then, Tragedy at Freyne, featuring Scott Egerton who later appeared in 10 novels, was published in 1927.
She adopted the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert to publish detective novels which achieved great success and made her a name in British detective literature, although many of her readers had always believed that they were reading a male author. She went on to publish 69 crime novels, 51 of which featured her best known character, Arthur Crook. She also wrote more than 25 radio plays, which were broadcast in Great Britain and overseas.
Crook is a vulgar London lawyer totally (and deliberately) unlike the aristocratic detectives who dominated the mystery field when Gilbert introduced him, such as Lord Peter Wimsey.
Instead of dispassionately analyzing a case, he usually enters it after seemingly damning evidence has built up against his client, then conducts a no-holds-barred investigation of doubtful ethicality to clear him or her.
The first Crook novel, Murder by Experts, was published in 1936 and was immediately popular. The last Crook novel, A Nice Little Killing, was published in 1974.
Her thriller The Woman in Red (1941) was broadcast in the United States by CBS and made into a film in 1945 under the title My Name is Julia Ross. She never married, and evidence of her feminism is elegantly expressed in much of her work.
Her parents wanted her to be a schoolteacher but she was determined to become a writer. Her first mystery novel followed a visit to the theatre when she saw The Cat and the Canary then, Tragedy at Freyne, featuring Scott Egerton who later appeared in 10 novels, was published in 1927.
She adopted the pseudonym Anthony Gilbert to publish detective novels which achieved great success and made her a name in British detective literature, although many of her readers had always believed that they were reading a male author. She went on to publish 69 crime novels, 51 of which featured her best known character, Arthur Crook. She also wrote more than 25 radio plays, which were broadcast in Great Britain and overseas.
Crook is a vulgar London lawyer totally (and deliberately) unlike the aristocratic detectives who dominated the mystery field when Gilbert introduced him, such as Lord Peter Wimsey.
Instead of dispassionately analyzing a case, he usually enters it after seemingly damning evidence has built up against his client, then conducts a no-holds-barred investigation of doubtful ethicality to clear him or her.
The first Crook novel, Murder by Experts, was published in 1936 and was immediately popular. The last Crook novel, A Nice Little Killing, was published in 1974.
Her thriller The Woman in Red (1941) was broadcast in the United States by CBS and made into a film in 1945 under the title My Name is Julia Ross. She never married, and evidence of her feminism is elegantly expressed in much of her work.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 12, 2018
I came across this looking for a female author writing under a male pseudonym for a reading challenge, and I’m glad I did because it was a lot of fun.
Con Gardiner is a lawyer who had been living a stagnant life since returning from the war and being dumped by his fiancée, who thought he should forget about all that. Then Caro Graves, who is fleeing her husband, asks him for a pound so she can get a room for the night; Con is instantly taken with her, and when her husband turns up dead, he helps her get away from the police. Of course Caro’s name must be cleared and the real murderer found!
Con ends up having little to do with this, but the delightful spinster Emmy Crisp, who doesn’t care for policemen, steps in to help, and then she calls in Arthur Crook. Crook, a rather disreputable London lawyer, was apparently Gilbert’s answer to the popular aristocratic sleuths of her day. He doesn’t appear in a lot of the book, so I didn’t get that good a feel for whether I’d want to read more about it. But the intrepid Caro and Miss Crisp are great. I enjoyed all the female characters (and Crook too) who think that dodging the police is the only sensible thing to do in the situation.
Great characters and a reasonably twisty plot. Gilbert wrote about 50 Crook books, but I’m not sure how many would be easy to find. My library had this one, a lucky random pick.
Con Gardiner is a lawyer who had been living a stagnant life since returning from the war and being dumped by his fiancée, who thought he should forget about all that. Then Caro Graves, who is fleeing her husband, asks him for a pound so she can get a room for the night; Con is instantly taken with her, and when her husband turns up dead, he helps her get away from the police. Of course Caro’s name must be cleared and the real murderer found!
Con ends up having little to do with this, but the delightful spinster Emmy Crisp, who doesn’t care for policemen, steps in to help, and then she calls in Arthur Crook. Crook, a rather disreputable London lawyer, was apparently Gilbert’s answer to the popular aristocratic sleuths of her day. He doesn’t appear in a lot of the book, so I didn’t get that good a feel for whether I’d want to read more about it. But the intrepid Caro and Miss Crisp are great. I enjoyed all the female characters (and Crook too) who think that dodging the police is the only sensible thing to do in the situation.
Great characters and a reasonably twisty plot. Gilbert wrote about 50 Crook books, but I’m not sure how many would be easy to find. My library had this one, a lucky random pick.
May 23, 2023
There was more in this for me as a historian than as a reader of mysteries.
Set in Coronation Year-1953 not 2023- the background of the slightly rundown London of the postwar era, with rationing not quite at an end, strict government economic controls still in place and a severe housing shortage, is well-realised and used to the full.
However, I concur with Anthony Boucher in finding this one of the weaker entries in the Arthur Crook series, with a less skilful denouement than is usual.
Apart from the delightfully eccentric Emily Crisp, the characters are a bit cliched,and the love interest does not quite work, although there are perceptive insights into the perils of marriage.
Not one to which I will quickly return, despite its high score for readability.
3.25 stars.
Set in Coronation Year-1953 not 2023- the background of the slightly rundown London of the postwar era, with rationing not quite at an end, strict government economic controls still in place and a severe housing shortage, is well-realised and used to the full.
However, I concur with Anthony Boucher in finding this one of the weaker entries in the Arthur Crook series, with a less skilful denouement than is usual.
Apart from the delightfully eccentric Emily Crisp, the characters are a bit cliched,and the love interest does not quite work, although there are perceptive insights into the perils of marriage.
Not one to which I will quickly return, despite its high score for readability.
3.25 stars.
March 13, 2016
‘Anthony Gilbert’ was the pseudonym of crime writer Lucy Beatrice Malleson, who wrote 69 novels, 51 of which featured her best-known character, the lawyer and detective Arthur Crook. The author created Crook as a corrective to the spate of aristocratic detectives in vogue at that time. Loud, belligerent and completely biased in favour of his clients, Crook looks and acts like a fugitive from a Vaudeville act. Wearing a brown bowler, ghastly suit, and careless of causing offence, his interest is less in finding the real criminal than building a case against someone other than his client.
Snake in the Grass begins when Con Gardiner is accosted one night by a strange young woman, who asks him for the loan of a pound. Caro Graves has just walked out on her husband Toby after a bitter quarrel and tells Con that she needs the money for a room for the night, until she can get herself a job the next day.
Caro is attractive and adventurous and makes a deep impression on Con, who has no attachments or family and frankly has a tedious existence, living only for his job working in a solicitor’s office. Going in search of the young woman later, he finds that her husband Toby has been murdered and naturally the police are anxious to speak with the errant Caro. Con’s arrival on the scene unannounced naturally throws him into a questionable light, too.
Soon to be introduced on the side of the angels (or at least on the side of Caro and Con, which may or may not be the same thing) is Emmy Crisp, a spinster with yellow hair prompting uncharitable comparisons with a belisha beacon, and a deeply unfortunate hat. This is the second Anthony Gilbert novel I’ve read, and both have featured slightly dotty old ladies who plunge into the proceedings with an enthusiasm that dismay all around them.
The last few chapters of this novel are genuinely exciting, events suggesting an Arthur Hitchcock movie as Emmy blunders onto an unexpected truth and finds herself pursued by the killer through crowds of late-night shoppers. First rate entertainment!
The 1955 Thriller Book Club edition has a marvellously moody dust jacket painting by C.G.—the artist’s initials shown in the lower right corner. Regrettably, I haven’t been able to further identify this artist. My own copy has a slightly tattier (but complete) dust jacket, and as I picked it up for a few pence in a junk shop, I’m hardly complaining.
More about Lucy Beatrice Malleson:
Lucy Beatrice Malleson also wrote non genre fiction and an autobiograpy, Three a Penny, as Anne Meredith. Her first mystery novel, The Man Who Was London, appeared in 1925 under the name J Kilmeny Keith. It's also been suggested that she might have completed Annie Haynes novel, The Crystal Beads Murder, in 1930. I've been unable to locate any photos of this author. She was a cousin of film actor and writer Miles Malleson.
July 29, 2013
Not bad but it would have been better if strange lawyer, Arthur Crook, who is quite an entertaining character, appeared earlier in the story.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews