Death on the Cherwell
by Mavis Doriel Hay (Skeffington & Son, 1935)
audiobook read by Patience Tomlinson (Soundings, 2015)
Hay starts off with amateur detectives (students from the Oxford women’s college whose setting elevates the novel) then discards them—along with the obvious suspects—in favour of an avuncular Scotland Yard man whose deductive skills at no point outstrip the reader’s.
The Santa Klaus Murder
by Mavis Doriel Hay (The Bodley Head, 1936)
audiobook read by Gordon Griffin & Anne Dover (Soundings, 2015)
A country house snoozefest with a thoroughly uningenious murder, virtually no actual investigation, a disagreeable cast of characters more pusillanimous than suspicious, and one of the most insipid detectives (Colonel Halstock) in genre history. Griffin’s audiobook reading conspires to add melodramatic hand-wringing.