The Immaterial Murder Case

One of Symons' earliest books (it was written in the late 1930's, but not published until 1945), this is best categorised as a humorous detective story, although to be honest it isn't all that funny. Even Symons didn't think much of it in retrospect. It deals with a group of avant-garde artists and their hangers-on, and an art movement called Immaterialism which seems hardly any different from Surrealism. It features an amateur detective called Teak Woode, supposedly the stupidest detective ever created, and a policeman called Bland (no forename is provided) who reappeared in a couple of later books. Some of the interest when originally published came from the fact that it has characters based on real people such as the poet Ruthven Todd, but as no-one nowadays will know who they were this is pretty irrelevant. Not a total waste of time - as you'd expect from this author, it's well written - but not a strong recommendation. ( )