A review of Minute for Murder by Nicholas Blake – 240108

The problem with putting an author on a pedestal, as I have done with Nicholas Blake, the pen name of Cecil Day-Lewis, is that when you come across a Book that falls slightly below their expected standard, you feel more disappointed than you would have done if you had read a fair to middling book from an author you have no particular feelings for. This was my overwhelming sense when I had finished Minute for Murder, originally published in 1947 and the eighth in Blake’s Nigel Strangeways series.

It is set in the last few months of the Second World War, the German war having ended but the theatre in the Far East is still awaiting its devastating denouement. Strangeways is working as head of the Editorial Unit of the Visual Propaganda Unit of the Ministry of Morale, a position that allows Day-Lewis to draw directly on his experiences as a publications editor at the Ministry of Information. His descriptions of office life, the foibles of and tensions between members of the staff ring true and one of the strengths of the book is his understanding of character and their psychological make up.

In my experience office parties are best avoided but an impromptu one held at the ministry to celebrate the return of a conquering hero, Major Charles Kennington who had pulled off an audacious capture of a leading Nazi, ends in tragedy. Nita Prince, secretary to the Director, Jimmy Lake, dies in front of her colleagues, having been poisoned, seemingly by a cyanide capsule which the Major had brought to show his former colleagues.

Soon afterwards, Jimmy is found stabbed, an attack which he survives, but utters some words which have profound significance in understanding who was behind Nita’s death. However, what has led to the assault on Jimmy is the uncovering of a plot involving blackmail and the passing on of secret files. In the context of the war, this is the more serious crime but in the book it is little more than a subplot that focuses attention on three other characters and then is suddenly dropped, only to be resuscitated towards the end as a sort of distraction motive. It is all very curious and as well as elongating the novel makes the story seem a bit disjointed.

The key to the mystery is a love quadrangle involving Nita Prince who is having an affair with Jimmy and was once engaged to Kennington who just happens to be Alice Lake’s twin brother. There are only two credible suspects and the culprit is fairly obvious but the way the murder was committed involving an eye for theatre and no little legerdemain is ingenious, requiring just the eponymous minute for murder, although I wonder whether it really could have been pulled off.

The plot is not as complex as some of those in Blake’s other books but there is much to admire, not least the author’s confident, erudite but engaging style. There is a wonderful episode of mental duelling in the penultimate chapter which leads to the culprit finally cracking, a tour de force which is worth reading the book just to enjoy. Nigel Strangeways is a calm student of human psychology and puts his suspects into situations where he can obtain vital evidence from their reactions, physical or physiognomic.

Sadly, we learn that Nigel’s wife, Georgia, who featured prominently in The Smiler with the Knife (1939) had been killed earlier in the war. She will be missed.

This is a good, solid murder mystery but by Blake’s standards, not one of his best.