Two-Way Murder

Starred review from April 15, 2022
With this puzzler by E. C. R. Lorac (1894-1958), the British Library Crime Classics series adds a never-before-published mystery to its collection of more than 100 reissued novels, largely from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Lorac's last work (her other titles in the series include Checkmate to Murder, 2021, and Murder in the Mill-Race, 2019) was only recently discovered through a series of accidents, as Martin Edwards, the series editor, explains in his fascinating introduction. The setting, the fog-bound roads surrounding a Regency Hotel perilously near the chalky cliffs in the South of England, contains both the mystery and its solution. A young woman disappeared on the eve of the annual Hunt Ball in the hotel a year before. This year, a young man and woman, driving back from the ball, stop just short of a body in the road. Was the dead man a victim of a hit-and-run, or was he placed in the road after he was murdered somewhere else? The mystery intensifies as no one in the village is able (or willing) to identify the body. This has all the earmarks of classic Golden Age fiction, including intense atmosphere, characters with warring motivations, and an absolutely unguessable ending that, when explained by the chief detective, makes perfect sense. A lucky find.

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