readingomnivore
Well-Known Member
THE CHELTENHAM SQUARE MURDER is one of Ernest Carpenter Elmore's Superintendent Meredith series from the Golden Age of Murder written under his John Bude pseudonym. Originally published in 1937, it was reissued in 2017 in print and digital formats.
The murder of Captain Mark Cotton, shot in the head with an arrow, reveals outwardly serene, upscale Regency Square in Cheltenham seething with ill-will. At least five of the Square's residents are members of the Wellington Archery Club, and several had motives. On leave from the Sussex County Constabulary at Lewes and staying at #8 Regency Square to collaborate with detective story writer and friend Aldous Barnet, Superintendent Meredith takes the case along with Inspector Long of the Cheltenham force. Investigation reveals fraud, adultery, blackmail, gambling, and revenge as motives, but those with motives seem to have no opportunity to commit the murder, and those with opportunity have no motive. Then Edward Buller, in whose study Cotton had been killed, dies in the same way. What is going on?
THE CHELTENHAM SQUARE MURDER is typical for its age. Residents of Regency Square are the best developed of its characters, though they are stereotypes--dithery spinster sisters, aloof aristocratic couple, busy doctor, gossipy vicar and downtrodden sister, respectable bank manager and flighty wife, retired stock broker, professional man losing his money and his wife, a man of questionable background. There's little development of Meredith or Long; neither have first names.
The plot is repetitious. Meredith and Long form a theory of the crime, then charge about after evidence against their current candidate to discover that he or she could not be guilty. Start over with another suspect. The solution finally comes down to a process of elimination. Repeated recounting of "who shot whom from where" becomes tedious. Several major real-world holes seem evident in the plot even by the standards of 1930s police investigation. The police allow Dr. Pratt, a suspect, to be first examiner on each of the bodies, and they accept his conclusions on timing and cause of death. No autopsy is performed on either body; Buller's later exhumation confirms the arrest but is not part of the solution of the case. Neither crime scene is promptly or properly searched, neither preserved intact, only the first photographed. Background checks on suspects and victims are delayed or only partially complete. Meredith and Long make no attempt to trace the highly original weapon--a socketed longbow that breaks down for easy concealment, available but rarely used in England.
I am not impressed with THE CHELTENHAM SQUARE MURDER. (C)
The murder of Captain Mark Cotton, shot in the head with an arrow, reveals outwardly serene, upscale Regency Square in Cheltenham seething with ill-will. At least five of the Square's residents are members of the Wellington Archery Club, and several had motives. On leave from the Sussex County Constabulary at Lewes and staying at #8 Regency Square to collaborate with detective story writer and friend Aldous Barnet, Superintendent Meredith takes the case along with Inspector Long of the Cheltenham force. Investigation reveals fraud, adultery, blackmail, gambling, and revenge as motives, but those with motives seem to have no opportunity to commit the murder, and those with opportunity have no motive. Then Edward Buller, in whose study Cotton had been killed, dies in the same way. What is going on?
THE CHELTENHAM SQUARE MURDER is typical for its age. Residents of Regency Square are the best developed of its characters, though they are stereotypes--dithery spinster sisters, aloof aristocratic couple, busy doctor, gossipy vicar and downtrodden sister, respectable bank manager and flighty wife, retired stock broker, professional man losing his money and his wife, a man of questionable background. There's little development of Meredith or Long; neither have first names.
The plot is repetitious. Meredith and Long form a theory of the crime, then charge about after evidence against their current candidate to discover that he or she could not be guilty. Start over with another suspect. The solution finally comes down to a process of elimination. Repeated recounting of "who shot whom from where" becomes tedious. Several major real-world holes seem evident in the plot even by the standards of 1930s police investigation. The police allow Dr. Pratt, a suspect, to be first examiner on each of the bodies, and they accept his conclusions on timing and cause of death. No autopsy is performed on either body; Buller's later exhumation confirms the arrest but is not part of the solution of the case. Neither crime scene is promptly or properly searched, neither preserved intact, only the first photographed. Background checks on suspects and victims are delayed or only partially complete. Meredith and Long make no attempt to trace the highly original weapon--a socketed longbow that breaks down for easy concealment, available but rarely used in England.
I am not impressed with THE CHELTENHAM SQUARE MURDER. (C)