Reading the Detectives discussion

Welcome to our December/January buddy read of It Might Lead Anywhere Published in 1946 this is the 22nd in the Bobby Owen series.

Why should anyone want to murder a man like Alfred Brown? Yet slain he was, in his own home and with a poker. The murder seems to be connected to a bout of religious fervour gripping the village of Oldfordham - in particular a battle royal between the Reverend Alexander Childs, and his nemesis Duke Dell, boxer turned revivalist preacher. But Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Owen has numerous other local suspects, and local gossips, to contend with in a puzzler of a case that indeed might lead anywhere.

It Might Lead Anywhere was first published in 1946, the twenty-second of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series eventually including thirty-five novels.

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

There are quite a few people involved it this story, but it was made clear who was who. Bobby finds a young woman who is very flirtatious, and this he finds disarming, but it seems a lot of the men like this and the inspector particularly is attracted.
I enjoyed the book , and Bobby is still toing and froing throughout.

I'm not planning to read this one as I find this series a bit heavy-going these days - but I've just found an interesting blog review which also has snippets from some contemporary reviews at the end:
https://grandestgame.wordpress.com/20...

I thought this bit was very interesting:

"In Ch. XVIII, Punshon beats Monty Python to one of their most famous jokes: “Here there was a choice of spam jardinière, egg and fish cake, omelette au spam, fish cake hors d’oeuvre, spam pie, fish cake varié, and finally, nobly alone – Spam.” Was one of the Pythons a detective enthusiast?"

Strikes me it could also be that the Pythons remembered being offered similar menus as children during rationing!

I enjoyed the scene where Bobby nearly took a second helping of salted cod.

I hadn't quite considered clothes coupons before in terms of damage to clothes in professions like the police.

I enjoyed this one, the writing especially but also the mystery--I managed to guess some part of it (that it was to do with Kayes property etc) but not all of it.

My only complaint was that Punshon, and Bobby, went on and on about the flirtatious young woman. I really got tired of hearing about her ability to shift from innocent to evil.

The rest was fine. An excellent portrayal of wartime Britian, interesting characters in the ex-prize fighter vs the Reverand, and a plot that I felt I should have figured out better than I did. Bobby's heroic adventure was different enough to not seem like a repeat from other books.