Below the Clock

Amos Petrie #7

by J.V. Turner

"This isn’t an ordinary murder. The dead man was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the murder was in the House of Commons."

Amidst the excited bustle of Budget Day, the House of Commons is packed with people, eagerly awaiting the Chancellor's annual speech. But it is a speech he is destined never to finish - for before he is able to complete his address, Edgar Reardon falls to the floor, dead. When Inspector Ripple and Amos Petrie, the eccentric solicitor and detective, investigate the death, they find that Reardon has been poisoned - murdered in full view of the House. Battling pressure to keep any scandal to a minimum, Petrie uncovers a conspiracy that goes to the very heart of government - and a murder so ingenious as to shock even an investigator of his experience with its audacity.

Originally published in 1936, this is a vintage murder mystery from the golden age of crime fiction.

Genres: Mystery, Crime

239 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1936

About the author

John Victor Turner, who also wrote under the pseudonyms David Hume and Nicholas Brady, was a Fleet Street journalist and crime reporter who became a thriller writer.

Reviews

[BrokenTune · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE House of Commons has its moments.
Ascot bends a fashionable knee to hail Gold Cup Day with an elegant genuflection, Henley hesitates between pride and sophistication to welcome the Regatta, Epsom bustles with democratic fervour as Derby day approaches, Cowes bows with dignified grace as curving yachts carve another niche in her temple of fame, Aintree wakens and waves to saints and sinners on Grand National day, and Wimbledon wallows for a week in a racket of rackets.
The House of Commons has its Budget Day …

What a fabulous mystery to read when life calls for some lighthearted, yet clever, diversion.

The mystery itself tells of the Chancellor of the Exchequer collapsing dead in the House of Commons just when he is about to announce the new budget.

I'm not sure what I loved more, the atmosphere of the story, the lighthearted (yet far from silly) tone of the writing, or the fact that literally every MP is a suspect in the first few chapters.

I have some issues with the murder method, or rather, the police's suspected substance, but this has in no way jarred my enjoyment of this book. (It might have if the rest of the story had been less well developed.)

(And as this seems to be book # 7 in a series, it seems there are other books by the author to look forward to.)

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this 1936 mystery, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in the middle of his budget speech when he collapses and dies - from poison. Amos Petrie, a prosecution solicitor, is soon on the case.

I found this a bit flat - all the characters seemed the same, and I kept forgetting which politician was which. It was fine, but books like this mostly serve to remind me how good the better-known "golden age" mystery writers were.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this pacy and dramatic crime classic, particularly because it is set in London. The conspiracy and intrigue were dark without ever imperilling the neutral detective Amos Petrie – a solicitor by trade, though we never see him at it in the book. There were some pleasant turns of phrase, too.

My only criticism is that the reader discovers evidence alongside the tec with the result that nobody could really reach the root of the crime until the last few chapters. It isn't so much revealed as unwound.

I don't tend to read crime fiction for the sake of mystery so much as for the drama, so I enjoyed it!

[Victor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly good detective story hampered by the most irritating detective on earth.Amos Petrie is frankly insufferable...He is rude ,full of self importance (This being the 7th book in the series ,he may have reasons ) and is gimmicky for the sake of it. Any 50 year old solicitor in 1930's Britain ,is very unlikely to call his police counterpart as Sunshine,Angel ,Dynamite ... but Petrie did too frequently.
The story is full of crafty people who are too full of words . None of them are described adequately to make the reader care for them let alone like them . Infact , I still have no mental image of Farguson or Lola Reardon at all because they were not described with any detail .
All in all,this was a book which has some suspense but very little of anything amusing or likable.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has an interesting set-up with the Chancellor of the Exchequer murdered with great ingenuity in the House of Commons on Budget Day.

Unfortunately what results is one of the dullest and least involving mysteries I have read in a while. Petrie is rather muted and there are few fishing references. Instead he has taken to referring to the long-suffering Ripple as "angel" and "sunshine", which grates rather.

The characterisation is somewhat perfunctory and there are too many repetitive interviews of suspects.

A disappointing end to a reasonably good series.

[Colin · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few good things here, the rudiments of a clever story. However, there's far too much tedium in the telling, and it's not helped by a set of unpleasant yet strangely colorless characters. By the end I found it a real slog to get through.

[Mitasha Kirpalani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the slow start, the plot and characters were very engaging and developed. Definitely a relaxing mystery with which to pass the time.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5? Bit tetchy and not sure if the plot quite hung together...

[Richie Bannister-Lowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic read, kept me guessing right up to the end and finished just as I thought