Shroud of Darkness by E.C.R. Lorac

 

 E.C.R. Lorac is the only British "queen of crime" from the golden age of the English crime novel—think: Christie, Sayers, Marsh, and Allingham—who is not remembered as a queen of crime from the golden age of the English crime novel. She wrote something like seventy novels, and as far as I can tell, except for the odd reissue over the years, most of them have been forgotten.

It's hard to know what accounts for this neglect. Perhaps it's because the protagonist of many of her novels, a Scotland Yard man named Robert Macdonald is not, like Poirot or Wimsey or Campion, notably eccentric. He's an intelligent, sensitive, hardworking policeman who gets the job done. (He's also a "confirmed bachelor," which may or may not be code for something whose name Lorac did not dare to name.)

If Shroud of Darkness is representative of Lorac's work then it's a shame that her books are not better known. Her plot is predictably twisty, and will engage those who are more interested in the puzzle aspect of these things. For those of us who enjoy the people one runs across in these sorts of books, Lorac's characters are fully fleshed out and engaging. And the prose is several cuts above what one often finds in these sorts of books. Her evocation of the London pea-souper—the shroud of darkness—with which the novel opens is exquisite.

I look forward to more Lorac.