What made me read it recently was the Morse TV
mystery of the same name. For a while it looked as though it was going to be
the same story, but the similarity ended fairly early in the piece.
Refreshingly, in this book you won’t find inspired
hunches by the leading detective. Nor will you by amazed by fortuitous
coincidences that point the police in the right direction. And definitely no
genius computer geek breaking through every firewall known to man to pry open that
all important clue. In short, in this mystery the reader walks hand in hand
with the police as step by step they track the villain.
In the style of “Dragnet's” Sgt. Joe Friday, it’s
all, "Just the facts, ma'am."
The sparse, heavy-handed banter between personnel
is chuckleable (if there is no such a word, there should be) and I enjoyed the
fact that, by the end of the book we learn quite a lot about the villain, but
we never, ever come face to face with him. Having at last found the crucial
evidence, ‘Go get him’ are the last words of the book.
I was disappointed to find that out of the fifty or
so Hillary Waugh’s mystery books, ‘Last Seen Wearing’ appears to be the only
one in print. While, of course, they are old, ('Last Seen Wearing' was first
published in 1952 and my copy is 2007 publication) I hope the heirs republish
some of the other books.
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