The Devil's Elbow (1951)
1951 Michael Joseph blurb:
<>Dan Jeffries's job, as courier on a coach taking holiday-makers on a tour of Scotland, was fairly uneventful until, with the tour nearly over, one of the party was murdered. It was fortunate that the important facts preceding the crime had been faithfully recorded by Jeffries in letters to his fiancée, and even more fortunate that she should have been working for Mrs. Bradley.My review:
A work that is more
entertaining the second time round, largely because the reader is
expecting less, and so is pleasurably surprised when he finds a fairly
sensible, straightforward detective story, with more alibi-checking and
interviewing than imagination or flights of fancy, let down only by a
rather weak finish, as the culprit turns out to be a character we know
little about (although her diary and Mrs. Bradley's comments on it
serve as foreshadowing). The Scottish coach tour setting is
original, but the narrator / courier is, like so many of Mitchell's
young men, first cousin to Bertie Wooster (but not to a upas tree), and the
humour is often facetious and heavy-handed.