Cocktail Talk: The Message on the Sun-Dial
Here we have another British Library Crime Classics Cocktail Talk. What are the British Library Crime Classics, I can hear you ask? I’m glad you did ask, friend! These are rediscovered novels and short story anthologies brought back from the mists of time for our modern-day reading pleasure. I’ve read a few of the novels, but even more of the short story collections, which are marvelously done (the editor is a chap named Martin Edwards, who also writes his own mystery novels, and does so much editing I doubt he sleeps). The most recently read one for me was called Murder At the Manor: Country House Mysteries, and as with all of them, it’s a delight in the main, with stories from a host of authors known and unknown – really, these are dandy ways to discover authors from the past you may have missed. For me, that includes J.J. Bell, journalist and author, who it seems wasn’t as well known for his mystery output as perhaps he should have been (perhaps more known for comic fiction). The quote below from his story “The Message on the Sun-Dial” features a not-so-savory man named Bolsover. You might not like him by the story’s end, but you have to admire his ability to drink at lunch.
He lunched leisurely at an unusually early hour. He preceded the meal with a couple of cocktails, accompanied it with a pint of Champagne, and followed it with a liqueur. He felt much better, though annoyed by an unwanted tendency to perspire. On his leaving the restaurant, the tendency became more pronounced, so much so that he feared it must be noticeable, and once more he took a taxi, telling the man to go Kensington way.
— J.J. Bell, “The Message on the Sun-Dial”
