Nigel Strangeways #14

The Worm of Death – Nicholas Blake

Cecil Day-Lewis, classics professor and poet laureate, didn't take seriously the 20 or so detective novels he wrote as Nicholas Blake. This doesn't mean they deserve their neglected status nowadays.

In this 1961 story Blake gives detailed descriptions of scene and characters. The murder story is set in Greenwich, a shabby sinister part of London at the time and we readers walk in the chill and fog along the banks of the River Thames. 

Setting up this gloomy backdrop, he also describes the melancholy Loudron family. Father Piers, a doctor, goes missing and his corpse is discovered. Devastated yet relieved by his demise are his younger daughter Rebecca who's now free to marry her boyfriend, the low class painter Walter; his son James, also a doctor, who's worried how the death will disturb his current clientele; his other son Harold, pushing businessmen with his trophy wife Sharon; and his adopted son Graham who was seen as an “old lag” (convict) by series hero PI Nigel Strangeways and his counterpart Superintendent Blount of the Yard.

Blake's realism is pretty dark in this outing. The representation of the perp chills us readers in its plausibility. Blake implies World War II still claimed victims after the cessation of hostilities in 1945.

Others by the Same Author: Click on the title to go to the review

·         A Question of Proof (1935): well-done kids

·         The Beast Must Die (1938)

·         The Smiler with the Knife (1939)

·         The Corpse in the Snowman (1941): two spontaneous kids play bit parts

·         The Dreadful Hollow (1953)

·         The Widow’s Cruise (1959): well-done kids again

·         The Private Wound (1968)