Plain Murder (Forester C.S.); Penguin, 2011

Taking us into a 1930s London of grimy back streets, smoky cafes and shabby rooms, Plain Murder, C. S. Forester's second crime novel, is a brilliantly atmospheric and gripping portrayal of the dark heart of a killer, published in Penguin Modern Classics.

'They'll get you for certain,' said Oldroyd. 'Then they'll hang you.'

At the Universal Advertising Agency on the Strand, London, a murder is being planned. Three men have been discovered taking bribes and face the grim prospect of the dole queue, unless they can get rid of the person who caught them. Their ringleader, thick-set and vicious Mr Morris, soon discovers that killing is far easier than he thought - and that he even has a talent for it. He might, he feels, be superhuman. But as he will discover, there is no such thing as the perfect crime, and no deed goes unpunished.

Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (1899-1966), better known by his pen name Cecil Scott Forester, was an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen (1935; filmed in 1951 by John Huston). His novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. He began his career with the crime novels Payment Deferred and Plain Murder, now reissued in Penguin Modern Classics along with The Pursued, which was lost for over 60 years.

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