Review: Bodies in a Bookshop

Bodies in a Bookshop by R.T. Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a child and adolescent I delighted in the mysteries of Nero Wolfe, champion orchid devotee, and his feckless but well-meaning sidekick Archie Goodwin. Imagine my delight to discover the mysteries of R. T. Campbell, pseudonym for Scottish poet Ruthven Campbell Todd . Published post-World War II, these several short novels were an excursion into detective fiction for poet Todd, who offered them for publication (to an eventually defunct publisher) under the nom de plume to keep them discrete from his poetry.

Professor of Botany John Stubbs and his adorably feckless, reading-devoted, live-in companion and amanuensis Max Boyle, also a botanist, live in London where Stubbs teaches and develops his history of botany. Max studies, reads, tries to keep the Professor's home library from encroaching into his room, and expends terrified moments riding in the Professor's Bentley. The "old man" is also an aficionado of mysteries (and beer) and insists on applying his "scientific approach" to various mysteries in order to assist the beleaguered Detective Chief Inspector Bishop.

First published in 1946, BODIES IN A BOOKSHOP and its fellow mysteries are as much character-driven as mystery-driven, although definitely the mystery is puzzling, right until the end. The denouement and revelation, and its subsequent consequences, are superb and finely-tuned. This was a one-sitting reading, providing much intellectual and emotional enjoyment to this reader.

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