Book Review- Dead Centre

The ‘cosy’ British mystery novel, a literary genre, so the stereotype goes, exclusively written and read by spinster aunts, this book is unashamedly part of that tradition and displays many of its virtues.

The plot involving murder, several murders in fact, at an upmarket golf club is curiously satisfying, even though it does stretch credibility at times. Lorrimer gets perfectly the gossipy insularity of a closed community where prejudices get to mature over the years like a fine wine pressed from bitter grapes.

The setting is a fairytale version of Southern England, a place where people use mobile phones, but in most other respects still behave as if the 1950’s had never ended. This does make for somewhat two dimensional characterisation, particularly in the case of the two stolid policemen investigating the case; you can easily imagine them being played by John Mills and Jack Warner in a black an old British B-movie.

This might make ‘Dead Centre’ sound like a museum piece, the literary equivalent of a lovingly restored steam engine and in some ways that’s exactly what it is with all the corresponding attractions of nostalgia you might expect. Lorrimer is wise enough though to update things just enough to keep the book from becoming a parody, the motivations of her characters aren’t the sort of thing Dame Agatha and her contemporise would have considered suitable subject matter for books read by ‘nice’ people.

What is it then that makes this book so enjoyable? Partly it is familiarity, you know that the good will be vindicated and the bad get their comeuppance; the relief of knowing that in a book like this you won’t have to gag your way through at least one explicit autopsy scene or be bored rigid by another ‘troubled’ protagonist wrestling with his inner demons play a part too.

Perhaps the real charm of books like this lies in not having to worry about the troubles of society for however long they take to read. Julian Symons wrote that reading a traditional ‘cosy’ detective story was like climbing up on nanny’s knee to be told that all is right with the world. You wouldn’t want to spend too long there perhaps; but I can think of worse places to spend a couple of hours.

Dead Centre
Claire Lorrimer
(Severn House, 2005)