Max Murray – författare

At a quiet resort on the French Riviera Anthony Tolworth, companion and agent of the exiled king of Althenia, lands from the King''s yacht in his search for entertainment and remuneration for the Royal household, but he meets a corpse on the beach in front of the Casino. He tries to solve the crime himself before the police can - who suspect the woman, Eve Raymond, with whom he is in love. He enlists the help of his headmistress aunt and two interfering and typical small boys. But the machinations of local politics, not to mention Althenian affairs, make the task almost impossible. The book, first published in 1949, is written with enormous humour and zest and the identity of the murderer is very well concealed. It''s a real pleasure to read.

Angela Pusey had sung her last song. At 3:30 one fine afternoon, a small blow to the back of the head cut her off in midnote and a grateful village breathed a sigh of relief. Aside from an outraged music lover, who would''ve wished the middle-aged spinster permanently silenced? Actually, who wouldn''t have?! Until her final breath, the vicious, prying snoop had meticulously collected bits and pieces of other people''s lives from scraps of conversation, pilfered correspondence and spying moments. Angela Pewsey knew something about everyone in the village of Inching Round and everything about some folks. In gloating, threatening letters, she let them know their secrets were no longer safe and those poison pen letters spelled an invitation to murder. Now Angela''s venomous pen had been stilled but her hate-filled diary remained to reveal the murderers name! The bumbling village police are quite off the track with their ''fanciful tramp'' theory; none of the locals believe it and certainly not young London solicitor Firth Prentice or ''Long Tom'' Fowler, the somber inspector just down from Scotland Yard. The Voice of the Corpse (1948) is an outstanding example of post-Second World War mystery fiction which combines excellent dialogue, fine characterisation and pervasive irony in a gripping tale of suspense.