First published: UK, Macdonald, 1951; US, Macmillan, 1952
Bush is clearly in his middle stage by now, for he has moved away from the elaborate alibis of his 1930s work to a style and approach resembling the American ‘hard-boiled’ school. Ludovic Travers runs his own detective agency, and vows to solve the murder off his own bat when one of his operatives is murdered – à la The Maltese Falcon. There is very little interest in finding out the murderer’s identity; indeed, we know almost from the beginning who the villain is. Instead, the chief interest is in the unwinding of a trail leading from the burglary of the corner cottage back to a murder and forward to another, involving a rather depressingly sordid professional crime milieu. Fortunately, there is plenty of interest in the second half (the first comes to a grinding halt but picks up again with what appears to be a rather staggering coincidence), the details all fit neatly together, and, although the reader will anticipate most of the solution, there is a neat twist at the end. Some Spadework.
Contemporary reviews
Observer (Maurice Richardson, 15th April 1951): Ludovic Travers investigates the disappearance in East Anglia of one of the operatives at his private detective agency, an odd raffish rogue-elephant of a hearty named Godfrey Prial. Trail leads to a jewel-theft plot. Some nice characterisation, including an impressively mad madman, and some neat plotwork. Travers, freed of the egregious Wharton, is loosening up and enjoying life a bit more.
Kirkus (15th November 1951, 60w): Slowpoke but solid.
NY Herald Tribune Bk R (James Sandoe, 27th January 1952, 100w): The crotchets of Ludovic Travers are less apparent than usual in this slow, palely ingratiating tale.
NY Times (Anthony Boucher, 10th February 1952, 90w): Exasperating is The Case of the Corner Cottage with a ‘surprise’ solution which is at once over-obvious, implausible and brilliantly deduced by Ludovic Travers from a ‘fact’ concerning Catholic rosaries which happens to be flatly untrue.
San Francisco Chronicle (L.G. Offord, 10th February 1952, 50w): Good specimen of the leisurely, soothing British school. C plus.
The Saturday Review (Sergeant Cuff, 15th March 1952): Star op of London agency knocked off; Boss Ludovic Travers dogs killers, even wangling trip to Ireland; Yard picks up crumbs. Cast oversized, plot over-ramified, but story moves amiably without exceeding speed limit. Standard.
The Grandest Game in the World 