It’s murder ahoy as the Marlow Murder Club take to the Thames and pit wits against another nefarious killer in Murder on the Marlow Belle. Robert Thorogood’s cosy mysteries – which have inspired a television series starring Samantha Bond – continue to go from strength to strength, drawing on staples of bucolic British life as the inspiration for ingenious, yet relatively bloodless, crimes.
This time round, acerbic crossword setter Judith Potts, dogwalker and local radio personality Suzie Harris, and long-suffering vicar’s wife Becks Starling are engaged by Verity Beresford to investigate the disappearance of her husband, Oliver. The couple had attended a Marlow Amateur Dramatic Society (MADS) soiree aboard the Marlow Belle the night before, but Oliver failed to return home after the boat docked.
The trio of sleuths don’t have a chance to make much progress before Oliver’s body is discovered, washed up on the banks of the Thames, complete with two bullet wounds that hadn’t been there before. It seems he was killed aboard the boat before being dumped overboard, meaning that the only viable suspects are the four people who accompanied him on the jaunt and the boat’s captain.
Determined to identify the murderer and discover how the crime could have been committed without anyone aboard noticing, Judith agrees to take on a supporting role in the upcoming MADS production of The Importance of Being Earnest. With access to the suspects secured – aided by Suzie’s prior relationship with the captain of the Marlow Belle– all that’s left is to actually crack the case before the curtain rises on opening night.
The greatest strength of Robert Thorogood’s Marlow Murder Club series is his central characters. While Judith may at first seem like the kind of solitary sleuth typically seen among private detectives – where the likes of Holmes and Poirot solve crimes largely on their lonesome, only letting their hangers-on in on the details at the denouement – she actually relies heavily on Suzie and Becks to get to the a-ha! moment.
The three women form a redoubtable team, with occasional input from DS Tanika Malik, and their friendship adds welcome warmth and humour to the story. Their respective knowledge, skills, quirks and foibles complement each other, providing multiple avenues for pursuing clues and revealing red herrings, and their firm basis in reality makes their tendency to become embroiled in murder cases in one of England’s least crime-riddled locales strangely plausible.
The dialogue in Murder on the Marlow Belle is particularly strong, both among the trio of sleuths and when they are interviewing suspects, with their conversations flowing naturally while conveying subtle quips regarding people and situations they encounter. Thorogood plays on the fact that side characters frequently both underestimate the women and struggle to know how to deal with them, particularly when Judith is at her prickly, accusatory best.
Thorogood’s Marlow is also a scene-setting triumph, proving every bit as important to the story as the characters who inhabit it. Indeed, rather than serving as a mere backdrop, the Buckinghamshire town and its river are woven into the fabric of the mystery. Each book in the series has expanded the scope of Judith, Suzie and Beck’s world, and Murder on the Marlow Belle continues this by introducing the town’s theatre and life along the Thames.
The decision to have the Marlow Belle serve as the crime scene is inspired. Not only does the boat provide a closed circle of suspects reminiscent of a classic whodunit but it also captures the nostalgic, almost timeless atmosphere that characterises the best of both cosy and classic crime. This timelessness is further reflected in Thorogood’s descriptions of Marlow, with the town simultaneously being recognisably contemporary and somehow otherworldly in the quintessential Midsomer Murders way.
Moreover, the mystery at the heart of Murder on the Marlow Belle is genuinely intriguing. As the murder occurred while the Marlow Belle was cruising the Thames, with only one crew member and five passengers in its confined and rather rickety space, it seems impossible for the killing to have gone unnoticed – by those aboard and those on the shore – and then for the murderer to have disposed of both the victim and the weapon without being spotted.
The cases tackled by the Marlow Murder Club never proceed in a strictly linear fashion, but the killing of Oliver Beresford is a particularly thorny knot to unpick. Plus, once all the suspects have disembarked, their interlinking relations, secrets and motives spill over into their actions on land, meaning that not even the genteel world of the theatre is free from peril. Judith is left to dodge deadly danger while learning her lines and unmasking the guilty party.
For more murder prompted by the slings and arrows of outrageous amateur dramatics, try Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal.
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CFL Rating: 5 Stars
