The nicest way you could describe this book is "competent". The mystery itself is technically sound but he has a tin ear for dialogue writing and his characters barely qualify as such - probably the most well depicted characters are the ones which are merely stereotypes! The main character is a complete cipher and most of the main players have at best a sentence of description. Most action and dialogue is statement of facts with some minimal generic embellishment, which is probably for the best because the times he attempts more it's very clumsy. It felt like the way a child writes. The mystery is technically fine but I feel any experienced mystery reader would have guessed the key plot point the main character only works out at the very end within the first 10 pages - I'm oblivious and still spent the last quarter being annoyed with how much of a dingus the police guy was being. a faked death - they just assumed a random skeleton was a missing guy The ending just leaves you feeling like "oh right, fair enough". From what i understand his geographical descriptions are highly accurate (he apologises at one point in a footnote for a slight simplification) which could be interesting but it just means he gives tons of place names and locations it's impossible to keep track of, even with regular references to the map (which doesn't show a lot of important detail because it has to fit in the entire wide area he talks about!)

overall it's not something i hated but i can't think of any reason you'd want to read it and I'll probably forget about it totally soon enough ( )

Enjoyed this one a great deal: the setting is interesting, the red herrings are plentiful, and there's a fair bit of good humor. ( )

geography lesson thrown in for free ( )

I enjoyed this classic British mystery, even though I had an inkling of the crime's solution for most of the book. There were some interesting twists and turns, and I appreciated the thorough exploration of every line of inquiry. I was a bit disappointed with the treatment of female characters, though I imagine much of that can be chalked up to the time period in which it was written. Still, it's surprising for a main character's spouse to go unnamed for the duration of a novel, especially when his son is referred to by name on several occasions.

If you enjoy classic British mysteries, you'll most likely enjoy this one, too.

Note: I received a digital galley of this book through NetGalley. ( )

The Sussex Downs Murder by John Bude is a 2015 Poison Pen publication. (Originally published in 1936)

This Golden Age mystery was saved from obscurity with the help of the British Crime Library and is now available via Poisoned Pen Press in digital format.

Any avid, contemporary, mystery reader will have absolutely no trouble at all figuring out, well in advance, 'whodunit', and maybe a whole lot of the ‘how’ part too.

While that would ordinarily bug me to no end, it wouldn't be fair to judge this novel by our wizened and jaded modern day standards.

I think it is obvious the author put some serious thought into the plot, with some truly novel details, but, still, I’m not even sure the more innocent 1936 audiences would have been entirely baffled by this plot.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy seeing how Meredith pieced all the bits and pieces of the puzzle together to finally solve the crime he investigated for months.

This is my first ‘Meredith’ mystery, and while it certainly didn’t blow me away, I did enjoy reading an old Golden Age mystery by an author I was not familiar with.

Meredith has some nice dialogue and observations in the story- and takes a few jabs at the detectives featured in popular novels of the day-

“But when it comes to a proper detective yarn give me something that’s possible, plausible, and not crammed with a lot of nice little coincidences and ‘flashes of intuition’. Things don’t work that way in real life. We don’t work that way. At least, sir, that’s how it seems to me anyway.”

Oh snap! I do detect a bit of snark there!

Of course, this is a quick, gentle, clean mystery, I can’t think of anything I found offensive, though the story is very much a product of its time.

I found the book mildly entertaining, with most of the novelty coming from its rescue from obscurity. I’m so happy to see these older detective and mystery novels reaching new audiences, though, and even if some of the material isn’t nearly as challenging to readers as it was when first published, they are still fun to read!!

I will definitely look for more “Meredith” mysteries in the future! ( )