The Port of London Murders

July 5, 2021
A cast of Dickensian characters lifts this British Library Crime Classic from Bell (1897–1987), first published in 1938. Before the arrival in the port of London of a cargo ship that sets in motion a series of events that eventually lead to murder, Bell introduces a diverse group of people, including Leslie Harvey, a boy rescued from drowning by boatman Harry Reed; the affluent Pamela Merston; and Divisional Detective-Sergeant Chandler. Chandler responds to the scene of an apparent suicide—a woman appears to have killed herself by drinking Lysol, but needle marks on her body suggest foul play. After Chandler unexpectedly is unable to continue his probe, the baton’s passed to another policeman. Bell ably weaves together the disparate plot strands, but the book’s strength lies in her plausible and affecting depictions of people forgotten by much of society, including the destitute, who lived “in the worst possible surroundings, and the Public Assistance saw to it that they did not die too soon.” Lyrical prose makes the Thames feel almost like a living character. Traditional mystery fans won’t want to miss this gem.

July 1, 2021
A steamship docking on the Thames after a voyage its crew members never expected to survive brings nothing but trouble--or rather reveals and heightens the trouble already running through London's docklands in this reprint of Bell's 1938 tale. The arrival of the San Angelo brings no joy to Leslie Harvey, a boy who celebrates the event by nearly drowning, or to his sister, June, a worker at Lulu, a neighborhood lingerie shop, or to Harry Reed, who saves Leslie's life and gets his hand mangled as a reward. A dozen of the containers in the San Angelo's cargo hold have been cast into the river, and the police officers who recover one of them find, along with its shipment of raw rubber destined for Listons' rubber works, a woman's nightgown. The garment arouses suspicions about Lulu, whose owner Martha Kemp's relation (wife? mistress?) to Gordon Longford, the agent for the Cynthia product line, isn't strong enough to keep him away from heiress Pamela Merston. The plot thickens when Mary Holland, who's recently come to lodge with the local Dunwoody family, is found dead from a lethal dose of Lysol shortly after consulting Dr. Ellis, a questionable medico who's playing an angle of his own. The Scotland Yard detective sent to investigate soon disappears and is found dead. There's never much doubt whodunit, but the evocation by the pseudonymous Bell (1897-1987) of a working-class neighborhood where spouses bicker, the lucky find rough work, attractive young women fend off unwelcome advances, and the elderly suffer wasting illnesses is strikingly ahead of its time. Come for the mystery, stay for the dankly atmospheric portrait of prewar South London.

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