Initially, L. J. Hurst worked in the backrooms of the media industry. He now divides his time between work for an international scientific publisher and a rather more British independent bookseller. In years past he was a regular attendee at the Shots on the Page Festivals from whence Shots Mag sprung
For a book about sex and cars, even in its own day (Mystery at Olympia was first published in 1935) this book was a best-seller. By the time war broke out in September 1939 it had gone through six printings. Mind you, after a very technical and intense first chapter on gear boxes, the motor element shows up in a rather different way, particularly as the emphasis changes to car ownership and parking down dark lanes.
Wealthy Nahum Pershore dies among the crowds at the motor show at Olympia, but when the constabulary go to notify his household at Weybridge they find a doctor in attendance there, intending to find a police officer (as soon as he can leave his poisoned patient). It appears that while Mr Pershore was dying in London, one of his housemaids was close to death in the suburbs. Investigation will find more poison, let alone a bloody shooting. Things are happening, and even friends and relations will admit to doing acts of recklessness if not turpitude as the novel works out.
For the social historian, though, this is a superb resource, if you know where to look. Take the description of the murdered man’s home. Rhode’s policeman, Inspector Hanslet, goes there and finds “it to be a fair-size modern in the Willett tradition”. Willett (it was the same man who semi-retired and began campaigning for British Summer Time) built the Eton estate in Hampstead and the eponymous estate in Brighton: he was the second or third most important architect and housebuilder in Victorian Britain after Norman Shaw: a Willett house was not any old Victorian house, it would have been enormous. Yet with his wealth, Nahum Pershore did not buy the house as he wanted it: he had sound-proof baize doors installed to a side-entrance to his study, while at the back of the house, where a convenient incinerator was installed, he left the service road unmade and dark, where a motorcar could park unseen.
Without giving too much away we are talking about a hypocritical old goat in a time of intense public sexual morality, for whom coming and going was better unnoticed. The method of his death proves to be unusual, although if you know how actor Bruce Lee allegedly died it will not surprise you. On the other hand – and that is why this is another of John Rhode’s mysteries to be recommended – there are also a satisfying number of suspects and motives.
