Hachette India

Below the Clock

JV Turner

"This isn’t an ordinary murder. The dead man was the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the murder was in the House of Commons."

The clock is Big Ben, above the Houses of Parliament. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is ready to present his non populist budget. Arriving a little late, he makes his preliminary speech, sipping from a glass of claret-and-seltzer as he talks. But it is a speech he is never to finish – for Edgar Reardon suddenly topples to the floor, dead.

Battling to keep any scandal to a minimum, Inspector Ripple and Amos Petrie uncover a conspiracy that goes to the very heart of government – and a murder so ingenious as to shock even an investigator of his experience with its audacity.

Below the Clock returns to classic Golden Age writing with an ingenious whodunit set at the heart of the political establishment.

JV Turner

John Victor Turner, who also wrote under the pseudonyms David Hume and Nicholas Brady, was a Fleet Street journalist and crime reporter who became a thriller writer. His stint as a crime reporter on The Daily Herald newspaper in Fleet Street gave him access to network of contacts in the underworld. He also had a brother who has a high ranking official in Scotland Yard and this gave him two inside views and he made good use of that knowledge in his thrillers. Turner, using the pen-name David Hume, was of the hard-boiled school of crime writing, his best-known creation being private eye Mick Cardby, the son of a Scotland Yard Chief Inspector (who later joins his son in the private detection game), who featured in a series of fast-moving thrillers (available as a yellowback).