Corridors of Death
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Battered to death with a piece of abstract sculpture titled "Reconciliation", Whitehall departmental head Sir Nicholas Clark is claimed by his colleagues to have been a fine and respected public servant cut off in his prime. Bewildered by the labyrinthine bureaucracy of Whitehall, Scotland Yard's Superintendent Jim Milton recognizes a potential ally in Clark's young Private Secretary, Robert Amiss.
Milton soon learns from Amiss how Whitehall works: that it can be Machiavellian and potentially homicidal, that Sir Nicholas was obnoxious and widely loathed, that he had spent the weeks before his murder upsetting and antagonizing family and associates, and that his last morning on earth had been spent gleefully observing the success of his plan to embarrass his minister and his department publicly. And they still need to discover who wielded the blunt instrument.
This is the first of Ruth Dudley Edwards' witty, iconoclastic but warm-hearted satires about the British Establishment
Ruth Dudley Edwards
Ruth Dudley Edwards was born in Dublin and now lives in London. A historian and prize-winning biographer, her most recent non-fiction includes the authorized history of The Economist, a portrait of the British Foreign Office, written with its co-operation, and ‘The Faithful Tribe’, a portrait of the Orange Order. Three of her satirical crime novels featuring Baroness Troutbeck have been short-listed for awards from the Crime Writers’ Association.
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Reviews for Corridors of Death
37 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is the first book in the Robert Amiss Mystery Series which captures the Machiavellian and homicidal world of the British Civil Service. I learned a lot about British governmental hierarchy within the complex bureaucracy of Whitehall. It's a social satire with engaging characters and a murder investigation under the direction of Detective Superintendent James Milton of Scotland Yard. Sir Nicholas Clark is dead and all the suspects clearly wanted him dead, including his wife. It's not until a very surprising ending do we find out what really happen to Permanent Secretary, Sir Nicholas Clark. I found this to be a page turner and can't wait to read the next book in the series. I highly recommend the book to those who like British police procedurals with satire and wit.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A senior British senior servant is found murdered right after an important meeting, and the only suspects are important bureaucrats.Detective Milton of Scotland Yard is on the case, and he continually needs to prove himself because everyone seems to want the case wrapped up and hushed up. Fortunately he has an 'ace in the hole', Robert Amiss, a secretary who is willing to secretly give him information on all these important people.I was feeling 'meh' about this book most of the way through. I bumped up my rating to 3 stars by the end because the dead man turned out to be very 3-dimensional. At first I thought he was a typical nasty man whom everyone wanted to die - but as the book unfolds he became much more interesting. (It's an odd feeling building a relationship with a corpse!) And might I add that Amiss, the amateur detective, is a more enjoyable character than the detective.Bottom line: Thought it was going to be boring, but turned out a bit better than I expected. And I learned a little about British civil service at this time period.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is a "who-dun-it?" in the classic mode.
A civil servant is killed and the investigation gets under way with considerable input from a junior public servant who explains the workings of the public service to the investigating officer. It's quite clever and funny at this point--something like the "Yes, Minister" and Yes, Prime Minister" television series.
The rest of the book is more conventional, as they try to work out who , amongst all his collegues, actually didn't want to kill him.