Review - Resorting to Murder ***

Not surprisingly bought as a holiday read, Resorting to Murder was pleasant enough to pass the time, but didn't really hit the spot. Part of the problem is that by comparison with the opening Sherlock Holmes story (The Adventure of the Devil's Foot: itself not one of Conan Doyle's best as a mystery, though decidedly an atmospheric piece of writing), it becomes obvious that a lot of the classic crime writers featured here weren't very good at crafting an entertaining story.

It was fun to discover the holiday locations, many of them in the UK or France, and some of the stories worked well, but too many seemed to lack either literary or mystery value. In a couple of cases, the storyline really didn't hold together - it was difficult to make any great sense of what had happened - or the whole thing was a little too far-fetched (as in the otherwise quite entertaining mystery of the mother who disappears from a French hotel, along with the room she had been staying in).

If, like me, you are very fond of period British murder mysteries, you will probably still enjoy this collection. But otherwise I'd give it a miss.

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