Death on the Riviera

"This was published slightly after the ‘Golden Age’ period of detective fiction that I normally stick to—between the two World Wars. But John Bude started out during that period and carried on in that style, even though this was published in the 1950s. What I like about this book is that it’s a holiday mystery in the sense that a lot of it is set on the French Riviera, a popular holiday destination for well-off people, and it’s also a sort of holiday for the detectives involved, because they have been sent from Scotland Yard to pick up a suspect associated with a case that’s going on in London. They are on a bit of a jolly to the south of France, they’ve got a holiday spirit about them as well. The crime they are there to investigate is also very much of its time, and the British Library edition does a good job of explaining it. Basically, it’s a currency racket: post-Second World War, there were all these currency protections put in place in Europe and Britain, to protect economies from massive fluctuations in the market. A counterfeiting operation, overseas, is extremely illegal on several counts. That’s what they are there to investigate. Yes, there are more than 100 of them now. A lot of these were books that were out of print or very, very difficult to get hold of, and mostly from that Golden Age period between the two World Wars. This series has brought back into easy accessibility lots and lots of writers who otherwise weren’t getting read. And they’ve had some interesting surprise bestsellers! What’s good about the collection is that the books have been chosen for their quality, so if one appears in the series, you can be fairly sure it’ll be a good one. If a writer has published 30 books, and they’ve picked five, they’ve picked those ones for a reason. They all come with an introduction that offers some context about the writer and some key social history of the period as well—stuff like the currency racket in Death on the Riviera has all been explained nicely before you actually plunge into the mystery and get confused."