The Worm of Death

I have really enjoyed the other Nigel Strangeways mysteries I’ve read so far, but this one was weak. It also seemed to change the main character in ways I didn’t like. In the past I’ve read Nigel as clearly brilliant and even a little arrogant, but also a bit courtly and dignified. In this book he’s misogynistic, anti-Semitic, a little brutal, and disrespectful of his partner Clare. (Though he applauds a landlady for not discriminating against West Indians, so there’s that, at least.) The mystery is fine, but the main redeeming quality was the atmospheric depiction of Greenwich and the docklands circa 1960. Feels like another world from London today or even from when I lived there almost 30 years ago and was evoked so well by show more Blake. Otherwise this book fell pretty flat for one who was becoming a Strangeways fan. show less

Kind of creepy Nigel Strangeways murder mystery. The usual acerbic rich old man controlling his family—this one through sheer strength of personality—dies in very strange circumstances. Murder? Suicide? Strangeways and the police investigate but another person is killed before they can uncover the killer.
I thought this one was a bit trite and shopworn, and Blake’s writing didn’t shine through as much. Very good puzzle, though.

Pretty weak, especially for Blake. The plot of Christie's A Holiday for Murder (1938) is repackaged and brought up to date for the sixties with a red herring involving a drug ring. Handling of the female characters (other than Clare) is quite misogynistic; the reader is also treated to Nigel's ruminations as to why the victim's "autocratic," "snubbing, cutting manner" means he "must be Jewish." Once the tyrannical patriarch is murdered, the book settles into one of those tedious investigations involving breaking the alibis of the (nasty) suspects, all of whom tell lies. Despite all the mystification, the guilty party is obvious long before the big reveal during a ludicrous and protracted shipboard climax. Nigel is unexpectedly and not show more very convincingly in hard-boiled mode, kissing a female suspect "hard" and beating up another suspect. show less