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    The Incredible Crime: A Cambridge Mystery
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    The Incredible Crime: A Cambridge Mystery
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    The Incredible Crime: A Cambridge Mystery
    Ebook261 pages4 hours

    The Incredible Crime: A Cambridge Mystery

    By Lois Austen-Leigh

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder

    "This British Library Crime Classics reissue features richly evocative settings, an appealing romantic subplot, and sly nods to other fiction, including that of the author's illustrious ancestor." —Publishers Weekly

    Prince's College, Cambridge, is a peaceful and scholarly community, enlivened by Prudence Pinsent, the Master's daughter. Spirited, beautiful, and thoroughly unconventional, Prudence is a remarkable young woman.

    One fine morning she sets out for Suffolk to join her cousin Lord Wellende for a few days' hunting. On the way Prudence encounters Captain Studde of the coastguard—who is pursuing a quarry of his own.

    Studde is on the trail of a drug smuggling ring that connects Wellende Hall with the cloistered world of Cambridge. It falls to Prudence to unravel the identity of the smugglers—who may be forced to kill, to protect their secret.

    This witty and entertaining crime novel has not been republished since the 1930s. This new edition includes an introduction by Kirsten T. Saxton, professor of English at Mills College, California.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateJul 4, 2017
    ISBN9781464207471
    Author

    Lois Austen-Leigh

    LOIS AUSTEN-LEIGH was the author of four mystery novels published in the 1930s, which have been out of print for over 70 years until the publication of this new edition. Austen-Leigh was the great-great niece of Jane Austen.

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    Reviews for The Incredible Crime

    3/5

    30 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This book was sent to me by the publisher Poisoned Pen Press via NetGally. Thank you.Lois Austen-Leigh is the great-great grandniece of Jane Austen and she has something of her famous relative’s deft touch at social satire in this mystery published in 1931. In this relatively short novel, the author casts a humorous eye the Golden Age mystery genre. She chooses both the academic mystery and the country house mystery as her subject.The academic aspect is set in Cambridge where the daughter of the Master of Prince’s College, Miss Prudence Pinsent is the erstwhile heroine. She is brilliant, beautiful, and daring. She is also conveniently ageless, sometimes described as young and fashionable and at other times the playmate of one of the 50 year old suspects. One of her beaux is a scruffy professor who becomes devastatingly handsome once he takes a shower, uses cologne, shaves his beard and gets a haircut. The other, more platonic relationship is with her cousin the lord of Wellende Hall, a manor located on the east coast and historically the site of smuggling.The academic setting is loaded with professional rivalries, publish-or-perish anxieties, worry about tenure, and dependence on the college porter who really “runs” the college. The country house part has everything, too: possible ghosts, hidden passages, streams under the manor house to offload contraband, and blood sports. The wife of the local doctor speaks only in the slang of the horsey set and inhabitants are always off shooting at small animals, even on a dark, moonless night.What links the two? Well, there appears to be a drug ring which has its distribution center in Cambridge which brings in obligatory detective from Scotland Yard who believes that the drugs are being smuggled into England near Wellende Hall which has that convenient stream running from the coast to under the manor house!And there are even carrier pigeons! What a fun well-written read!
    • 3/5
      Much is made in the introduction to this reissued Golden Age novel that Lois Austen-Leigh is the granddaughter of Jane Austen's nephew. And there were moments, reading this, that I caught a glimpse of the wit and language style of Jane, and wondered whether she was doing it on purpose for a few minutes here and there the thought did cross my mind that this was a bit like the sort of mystery Jane Austen would write, with wit and romance and cleverness. (It had the kind of cursing JA might have used had she been writing a hundred or so years later: "and what the something something ’ave yer to do with me?" Heh.)

      But … the cleverness of the book seemed to falter in the delivery of the actual mystery, the "incredible crime". In fact, I had a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what was meant as the "incredible crime". There was a lot of circumlocution about smuggling drugs in the style of all the stories of past centuries, and a lot of exploration of whether it was sporting or not (which, the consensus was, it was when it was rum or such being smuggled, but not when it's drugs), and who was involved, and was it okay if the drugs weren't going to be marketed, and wait really who was involved … I was a bit – pardon the pun – at sea for big chunks of the book.

      One reason for my state of I have no idea what's going on was – I admit it. I skimmed parts of it, because there were a chunk devoted to my old nemesis, bridge, and several chunks spent on my new nemesis: fox hunting. I mean, I'm largely ignorant of fox-hunting – my impression being of rich and bored people riding roughshod over the countryside and people's crops chasing a pack of hounds which are chasing a fox, jumping over fences, falling off occasionally, and, in the end, watching as the dogs tear the fox to pieces? I could be wrong. I'm sure there's much more to it. Heaven knows the reverence with which the process was treated in this book indicates a deep culture behind the … sport. All I can say as a 20-21st century American is that when a character asks "Does it convey what it should to you, when I tell you that in five days’ hunting the hounds have made one six-mile point—point, Harry, and two seven-mile points?" I could only say "No".

      There is some extremely uncomfortable pre-feminism … stuff, particularly in men's attitude toward silly and untrustworthy women ("Prudence’s first impulse was to point out to him the unwisdom of belittling the trustworthiness of women in general, to the woman he apparently proposed to trust"). I was mildly dismayed by the way Prudence, the initially strong and capable woman at the heart of the story, went down a rather Taming of the Shrew path. But at least she didn't ride astride when she hunted.

      I don't know. I liked parts. There was some nice atmosphere, some nice characterization, some very enjoyable writing … but my mental image of the plot is of a huge tangle of that really fuzzy kind of yarn that loses its integrity in places and just becomes a puff. Was there smuggling? Of what? Who was that spy fellow, and could he be trusted? Who could be trusted at all? Was the puppy okay? And who killed the man who died very late in the plot, and why? It was a mess.

      One note which might help the modern, baffled reader: "sported his oak" means "shut his door to indicate he wasn't 'in' to visitors". I must have seen that in the past – I must just never have looked it up before.

      Quote I enjoyed:
      "This is a very serious allegation that you are making,” said Colonel Marton hoarsely. “Do you quite realize what you are saying, I wonder?"
      It was quite obvious that Mary did. “I don’t know about no alligators,” she said cautiously…

      The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.
    • 5/5
      This novel by "the grand-daughter of Jane Austen's favorite nephew" may not be quite as good as the introduction claims, but it mixes scenes of Cambridge University and the English coastal countryside in a pleasing way. There is also a rather subtle handling of the uncertainty of two of the major characters, a brilliant chemist at Cambridge and his kinsman, a country squire type of nobleman --are they part of a drug-smuggling ring, or not, and if not, what are they doing?At one point it seems the question must be answered one way, but then it turns out to be answered another. The heroine is being awkwardly courted by the chemist and grew up with the nobleman, and feels a conflict of loyalties when asked by the police to spy on them. The final answers may seem improbable, and feminists may not approve of the heroine's ultimate submissive attitude, but overall I thought it was cleverly done. There is a brief but beautiful description of .a chapel service at Cambridge I particularly like.
    • 2/5
      This book falls utterly flat as mystery or detective fiction; its only saving grace is the author's fondness for the hunt. While she has little to say about life in Cambridge, Austen-Leigh comes into her own when her characters abscond to the country producing effusive descriptions of hunting rituals and the characters involved. 'The Incredible Crime' has far more in common with the works of R.S. Surtees or Somerville and Ross than it does with those of Margery Allingham or Dorothy Parker.