Bats in the Belfry: A London Mystery

This entry in the British Library Crime Classics series, originally published in 1937 and part of Lorac’s Chief Inspector Macdonald series, effectively builds on its opening scene’s gallows humor to a satisfying fair-play resolution. After the funeral of Anthony Fell, an Australian gentleman who died in a car accident, Fell’s cousin Bruce Attleton discusses with other mourners the best way to conceal a murder. Attleton’s ward, Elizabeth Leigh, belongs to a London club that meets monthly to discuss an intellectual exercise, and she shares with its members this challenge—to devise a method for disposing of a corpse that’s “not only ingenious, but possesses the elements of practical common sense.” The parlor game becomes more serious when Attleton disappears, and the mystery deepens after a headless corpse turns up in a creepy London studio known as the Morgue. Macdonald, a nicely sardonic and plausible lead, investigates. Fans of golden age mysteries will look forward to seeing more of Lorac, a pseudonym of Edith Caroline Rivett (1894–1958). (May)