The Progress of a Crime

January 11, 2021
A confrontation during a dance between a gang of young hooligans and landowner James Corby in the English village of Far Wether drives this taut mystery from MWA Grand Master Symons (1912–1994), first published in 1960. After vowing to return, the gang members show up on Guy Fawkes Night when the residents of Far Wether burn an effigy of a legendary wicked local, Squire Oldmeadow, and set off fireworks. The night ends tragically with Corby’s fatal stabbing. Overheard cries of “Get him, King” before the murder lead the police to Jack Garney (aka King), the head of a group of coworkers in a canning factory. After Scotland Yard gets involved, Garney and a follower, Les Gardner, are charged with killing Corby and a related murder. Much of the action focuses on their trial, which is viewed from the perspective of journalist Hugh Bennett, who identified Gardner as being present on the fatal night. Symons excels at conveying the wide impact Corby’s murder has on multiple people. Fans of realistic, downbeat crime fiction will welcome this British Library Crime Classic reissue.

January 15, 2021
Guy Fawkes rides again, though a good deal more bleakly, in this Edgar-winning 1960 reprint by Symons (1912-1994). It's not much of an assignment for someone who's not much of a reporter on a local paper: Take a train to Far Wether to cover a fundraising dance with a fireworks theme in place of a regular reporter who's down with the flu. Before the night is over, though, Gazette rookie Hugh Bennett has watched the arrival of the Peter Street lot, seen the chaos the invading teenagers bring to the event, and witnessed the fatal stabbing of emcee James Corby, a partner in a timber business, when the ruffians' jesting attempt to relieve him of his fireworks gets out of hand. Given the blanket of confusion the holiday, the disruption, and the murder have thrown over the event, it's not clear who wielded the knife that killed Corby, but soon enough Detective Superintendent Frederick Twicker, who's been sent down by Scotland Yard, arrests gang leader Jack "King" Garney and Leslie Gardner, who's clearly a lot more devoted to Garney than to his own father, soggy Labour firebrand George Gardner. Throughout the investigation and the trial that follows, Symons fastens a gimlet eye on even the most sympathetic characters, who seem equally damned, and self-damned, whether or not justice is done. The enduring fear of juvenile delinquents that provides the engine for an appended short story, "The Tigers of Subtopia" (1982), makes it a perfect complement. The first of Symons' unmistakably sociological procedurals, and in some ways still the finest.

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March 1, 2021
A man is stabbed to death by the light of a bonfire at a Guy Fawkes celebration in Symons' Edgar-winning mystery, first published in 1960 and now reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. The murder scene, in which a local squire is surrounded by a crowd through which one or more of his killers dart, delivers the same eerie punch as Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." One of the witnesses is hero Hugh Bennett, a young journalist sent to cover the bonfire (the local angle is that the villagers burn an effigy of a long-ago raping and rapacious squire), who continues to investigate after the current squire is murdered. This was a very public murder, with obvious suspects being the youths on motorcycles who rode into the village before the bonfire, but the confusion brought on by darkness, fireworks, and drunkenness makes any real identification sticky. Bennett battles through his newspaper's efforts to bury the story, stonewalling efforts by police, and the secretiveness of the villagers in this engrossing puzzle.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.