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Edward Powell doesn't like the small Welsh town of Llwll. Edward Powell doesn't like his Aunt Mildred. Unfortunately for Edward Powell, the odd provisions of his grandmother's will mean that he has to live with Aunt Mildred in Llwll. He could move out, but then she wouldn't have to give him an allowance any more, and that would mean he'd have to work for a living. Obviously this appalling situation forces Edward Powell to murder Aunt Mildred; and as he's a man of letters, he keeps a journal describing exactly how he goes about it.
THE MURDER OF MY AUNT is another in the British Library Crime Classics series. The series title is a bit of a misnomer, as rather than being familiar classics all the books in the series have been out of print for a considerable time and the authors largely forgotten. They are all recent enough to be ineligible for scanning by the Gutenburg Project, and all have an informative introduction by Martin Edwards. They're all worth reading because they are good books (so far, anyway) and show that readers in the 'Golden Age' had more than Christie and Sayers to read.
Richard Hull (real name Richard Henry Sampson) was a chartered accountant, who took up crime writing after reading MALICE AFORETHOUGHT by Francis Iles and wrote with a similar attitude to crime as him. Martin Edwards classes them both as 'Ironists'.
THE MURDER OF MY AUNT was Hull's first book, and received good reviews in Britain and America (the extract from D.L. Sayers review in the Sunday Times quoted in Martin Edwards' introduction is excellent). It isn't a whodunnit; anyone who wants a corpse in the first chapter will be disappointed. It's really an example of the rarer 'how will he do it and will he get away with it?' sub-genre, and an early example of the 'inside the head of the murderer' sub-genre.
The story is almost entirely driven by Edward's character as revealed in his own words. This isn't always a pretty sight. He isn't an unreliable narrator, mendaciously holding information back; that would be too simple. Instead, while he's scrupulous in explaining what he thinks has happened or will happen, it's fairly obvious that he's misinterpreting things quite a lot of the time. Hull's style is light and extremely readable once you realise you aren't expected to admire Edward.
All in all, an excellent addition to the British Library Crime Classics series.
§Rik Shepherd has been a computer programmer and a web accessibility consultant. He lives in the north West of England and is mildly surprised to have just realised he's been reading crime fiction for 45 years.
Reviewed by Rik Shepherd, December 2018
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