This book is aptly named--for several reasons. First of all, it's one of Symons's earliest mysteries (third one, in fact). Second, although it is the third book written with the character of Bland, it shows us Bland before he becomes a police inspector and before he becomes a policeman at all. It...
Julian Symons' "The Belting Inheritance", after a very promising start, gradually fizzles to standard, boring mystery fare. At least it gives me a chance to write a short review - always a good thing.The narrator, Christopher, loses both parents at the age of 12. Lady Wainwright, his great-aunt, ...
A likeable but rather hapless young man decides he's tired of small-time games and attempts to break into the big league. However, he finds himself woefully out of his depth and ends up caught out in an ingenious back-firing murder conspiracy. Entertaining and full of suspense, Symons' plot has e...
Anderson was a bored, unhappy sales executive longing for something to liven up his monotonous life. But perhaps he wished too hard because not long later he found his wife lying dead at the bottom of the cellar stairs. An accident of course – so why wouldn’t the police believe him?
Symons, Julian. THE PLAYERS AND THE GAME. (1972). ****. Symons writes psychological crime novels with heavy sprinklings of police procedural. He is one of the few English writers elected a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. His company there includes Graham Greene, Daphne du Ma...
Now, as he walked idly out of the park and turned into a street just off Lower Regent Street, he read the plates in the doorways of the solid Victorian buildings, and was stopped by one particularly shining and beautiful and, to judge by its unscratched nature, new, that said PFC, 1st Floor. In s...
Slight, neat, perhaps a little too well-dressed, he spoke of the dead girl with such evident sincerity, such an obvious sense of loss, that it seemed the jury must be impressed. He looked only once at the man in the dock, when he was speaking of the incident at the party, but then the look in his...
She sat in the row reserved for witnesses, pale and calm. He knew that in her presence it was more than ever important that he should do well. Hardy opened quietly, almost amiably. ‘Would you call yourself a truthful man?’ ‘On the whole, yes.’ ‘As truthful as most people?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Let us s...
Awake he was certainly, and panic-stricken, aware that something had happened and that action was demanded of him. Hand groped for light switch over bed. There was none. For a moment place eluded him. Then he remembered, got out of bed, turned on the light, looked round the room. Nothing seemed c...
Arthur’s share of the necessary capital had been provided by his army gratuity, together with a small inheritance he had received from an uncle. Lektreks was a flourishing little firm of electrical contractors, and the partners expected it to provide a living for them while they developed the Bro...
It is a description that could well be applied to Julian Symons, except the writing he produced had nothing about it smelling of the mechanical. The greater part of his life was devoted to putting pen to paper. Appearing in 1938, his first book was a volume of poetry, Confusions About X. In 1996,...