J. S. Fletcher
8 Bücher
- If a quiet English detective yarn with sea air suits you, this delivers: an actor vanishes near a ruined tower on the Yorkshire coast, and young Copplestone pokes around asking awkward questions. It's cozy rather than clever, Fletcher's puzzle tidy, the oily agent Chatfield good fun to distrust.
- Two respectable town officials share a convict past, and the one man who knows it turns up dead. Fletcher tells it plainly, more procedural than puzzle; the pleasure is watching respectability sweat in a small northern town.
- The opening hooks fast: a young barrister on a late-night Tube watches the stranger opposite him drop dead, and the man's companion simply melts into London. What follows is a steady, old-fashioned 1920s puzzle, more comfortable than clever, lovely if you like foggy legwork over fireworks.
- A young journalist finds a dead man in a London lane at 2 a.m. and just refuses to let go, and following Spargo's digging (old court records, a scrap of paper, a decades-buried fraud) is quietly satisfying. Come to it for the puzzle, not deep characters.
- A cathedral close called Paradise, a stranger dead at the foot of an old stair, and a guardian whose past is locked tight. Fletcher's quiet English scene-setting does the real work; the mystery is serviceable, the town is the pleasure.
- Most of the fun is watching Linford Pratt, a law clerk who finds a dead millowner's will and quietly pockets it, scheme his way deeper into trouble. Unhurried Yorkshire crime in the old style, more chess game than thriller, good if you like watching plans curdle.