Weekend at Thrackley

Written by Alan Melville

Narrated by Gordon Griffin

Jim Henderson is one of six guests summoned by the mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious stones, to a weekend party at his country house, Thrackley. The house is gloomy and forbidding but the party is warm and hospitable except for the presence of Jacobson, the sinister butler. The other guests are wealthy people draped in jewels; Jim cannot imagine why he belongs in such company. After a weekend of adventure with attempted robbery and a vanishing guest secrets come to light and Jim unravels a mystery from his past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Soundings
• Release date: Oct 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781407969404

Alan Melville

ALAN MELVILLE (1910–1983) was a well-known television broadcaster, as well as a playwright, producer, and scriptwriter. Among his works are several crime novels from the 1930s, often set in the popular entertainment world he knew firsthand. Quick Curtain and Death of Anton were reissued as British Library Crime Classics in 2015.

Reviews for Weekend at Thrackley

[Norma · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I’ve read Death of Anton and I’ve listened to Quick Curtain. Both were amusing and the stories pulled me along. So I had high hopes for this one, but it is just a story of some people who go to a country house, invited by someone who you’re told straight away is a jewel thief. It’s a bizarre weekend with a couple of deaths in the last few chapters. The deaths are a way to tidy up and conclude the story. In the last chapter or so some Scotland Yard detective explains what was going on and boom! That’s it. The character that is a mild theme of the novel is the irritating sort of man who drives a fast car, puts his hand round the neck of the woman he wants to marry and insists that she kisses him. Yuck. Then decides that he and his fiancé are going to go to the Registry one morning to get a marriage licence and just tells her that. Perhaps it’s an unintentional illustration of how men of that period thought that they should behave.

The narrator is excellent, as he always is. It is the type of book that passes the time whilst your clearing out a cupboard. Though even then, I’d prefer something absorbing, which this definitely is not.

Disappointing.