Harry Devlin #4

Yesterday's Papers – Martin Edwards

This 1994 mystery is the fourth of eight starring Liverpool lawyer Harry Devlin. Edwards is a mystery writer steeped in the traditions of the Golden Age of Whodunnits. So even though the time and setting are post-modern, so to speak, this mystery has a steady and predictable rhythm typical of the “corpse in the library in the vicarage of a quiet village” type of Golden Age mystery by Christie, Sayers, or Allingham. Also in the tradition: great surprises and the dialogue is a little stilted but pleasant in its awkwardness.

Basically, our hero Devlin’s task is to investigate a cold case. Tall, bent over with study and with wet fox-like eyes, Ernest Miller asks the well-known lawyer help him solve a crime that took place thirty years earlier, in 1964 during the heyday of Liverpool swings like a pendulum do. Miller claims the wrong person had been accused of the terrible strangulation murder of a teenaged girl, convicted on a false confession, and then killed himself in jail before he could be hanged.

Though Devlin thinks it’s a long shot, he agrees to read the lawyer’s file on the accused and interview people of interest that are still around. Devlin compares and contrasts the various testimonies and tries to clarify attitudes and emotions obscured by the passage of time. While recognizing the pointlessness of his task, since it is now impossible to undo the mistakes caused by the vagaries of human behavior, Devlin wants to get to the bottom of the story to discover the truth. The only thing left is to restore the reputation of those who have been unjustly blamed.

For mystery, It thus has its profound aspects, which reflect on routine errors of judgement and their impact on people and on how anxiety over reputation and fear of poverty trump truth in the world. As for the actual riddle, the work is configured more as a psychological mystery than a classic one. Still, it stands an a excellent mystery because it mixes elements of the classic and modern mystery.