This is a fun cartoonish spy thriller, with a ruthless dastardly villain. Scotland Yard Detective Inspector McCarthy finds himself with a couple of bloody murders to solve, assisted by his unofficial sidekick "Big Bill" Withers, a London taxi driver and his alter ego Paoli Vanadi. His superior officer, Assistant Commission Haynes, helps too. Sometimes it's difficult who is the superior because McCarthy is good at giving Haynes tasks to do.

It's a story about a puzzling situation that comes to an exciting conclusion and a satisfactory conclusion. Written in the early 1940's it's full of then-current colloquialisms and stereotypes, some of which offend our current political correctness. Some sensitive souls may want to skip this book on account of this. Despite that, it's pure entertainment, where you can tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. Being set in London during the early days of WW2, there's plenty of atmosphere in the background provided by the mandated blackout.

There's an informative Introduction written by author and critic Martin Edwards. He puts the book in context with Golden Age authors of the day, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers and provides some biographical background on the author, John Gordon Brandon.

Recommended. ( )

I love Soho. And finding out that the main plot of this book is set in one of my favourite places filled with fond memories of a previous place of employment, I had high hopes for this book.

Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed.

I still love that the British Library Crime Classics are reminding us of some great novels we would otherwise miss out on, but this was not one of them.

For all I care, I'd happily never encounter Brandon's work again. Ever.

Still, I guess there is some value in having this book as a reminder that publishing and crime fiction in general have, for the most part, moved on from creating pulpy, badly researched, slashers that base their entire plot on the portrayal of racism and tropes such as ugly, evil dwarves on a killing spree.

I even gave this book the benefit of my doubt as far as I could because I fully understand why some of the xenophobia was present in this story, but this story just does not work. Near enough the entire story is set in the immigrant communities, and yet, the only plot and tension was created because of the cliched portrayal of the groups of immigrants. I cannot even think of any one individual character who was portrayed as an individual human being. Not a single one.

Add to this some other ridiculousness - apparently, there was an espionage story in there somewhere - and I seriously cannot think why any trees had to die for this particular re-issue. ( )

This story is set chiefly in the Soho area (somewhat more raffish then than now) in the early days of World War 2. The lead detective (Inspector McCarthy) is the son of an Irish father and an Italian mother, born in this ethnically mixed area. He talks a thick Irish brogue which is a bit hard to believe, but he does do some capable detection in about the first two/thirds of the story --after that, the author reveals the villains by given a third-person description of the next crime, which rather spoils the puzzle effect. The story really does begin with a scream in Soho, given, it turns out, by a transvestite German agent being murdered. It develops that this agent had recently stolen Britain's air defense plans. McCarthy does eventually find out who killed the agent and took the plans. The really odd fact is that the killers turn out to be more German agents. No explanation is ever given of why Germans in the same gang of spies would murder one of their own. One can imagine explanations -- the murdered agent was planning to go rogue and sell the plans for himself, the murdered agent was a member of a rival German intelligence organization such as that led by Adm. Canaris -- or whatever --but the author does not provide such an explanation. One agreeable aspect of the story is that although like many British thrillers of the era it includes some nasty stereotypes, notably an Italian gangster, it also includes several positive depictions of Italians, and McCarthy himself, as noted, is himself a product of the ethnic mix of his district and not some Anglo-Saxon aristocratic "clubland hero." ( )

This book was sent to me by Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you.

The British Library Crime Classics is a wonderful series which reprints novels from the Golden Age of detective fiction. Most of the authors are long out of print now, even though in their heyday many of them were considered in the same class as Christie, Allingham, or Sayers. So the reader has a very good chance of finding a forgotten treasure. On the other hand, some novels can only be considered curiosities and reflections of the readership taste of the period. A Scream in Soho falls into the latter category.

The setting is 1940 Soho during the blackout. Our detective Inspector McCarthy hears a scream as he is preparing for bed and immediately throws a coat over his pajamas and runs out to Soho Square He and the constable on duty cannot find a body but McCarthy, who keeps slipping in and out of an Irish brogue, smells a distinctive perfume by a doorway splattered with blood. No body, but the scent lingers in the air. In fact, the perfume is so powerful that it clings to the clothes of a man who has contact with the body, can be sniffed on a mutilated corpse on Golders Green, and is still around the body hours later when it is brought into the morgue. Oh, and the aroma lingers in a office and enables the detective to identify the victim as the person who rented the space. And herein lies the problem with the book. Too many incidents are just too preposterous.

If McCarthy sounds like Danny-Boy, every Italian sounds like Chico Marx. The villain cannot hide his Teutonic accent, although his grammar is perfect. The racial stereotypes are cringe-worthy to a 21st century reader. Although I cannot remember if a Jewish character actually appears in the story, I was brought out of the narrative by a description of unflattering Fagen-like features and the shady business dealings of the tribe. Add to that the silly plot and I was glad to finally finish this short novel which seemed much longer that it was.

The book isn’t really worthy of reprinting, except as an example of the type of escapist stories people were reading to help them get through the real blackouts. (It helps to cast this as a Marx Brothers movie. Grocho as the detective, Chico as every Italian character, and Harpo as the cross-dressing corpse.) ( )

Some of the prejudices in this book are laughable - the idea that only degenerate Germans would dress up as women, the stereotypical Italians and Jews. I suspect it was written as war propaganda, given the stolen secrets plot. Writing style is very difficult to read, not one of the best in this series. ( )