How nice to find a sympathetic investigator with deep pockets and friends in high places! Idelia Fisher recruits Henry Gamadge to help her trace a lost friend - Howard Crenshaw, whom she met in upstate New York. Now he has moved to New York City and been taken to hospital, and the only thing of his she possesses is an old edition of Shakespeare - a convenient pretext for engaging Gamadge's professional interest.
Unfortunately Crenshaw is dead of leukemia, Idelia's interest in the case gets her head bashed in, and Gamadge is left to pursue the case. Luckily he has contacts in detective agencies to cover the upstate angle and in the FBI to cover Manhattan. Who killed Idelia and attempted Gamadge's life? Is it the shifty doctor, the unexpected Mrs Crenshaw, ingenuous Lucette Daker or the mysterious Mr Pike?
Set during WWII, The Book of the Dead incorporates some features of wartime; petrol rationing and the absence of young men, for instance. There are odd and (to me) incongrous moments of romance, and a good deal of shrewd character-drawing. Gamadge himself remains fairly formal and colourless, rather reminiscent of Leo Bruce's Carolus Deene, but his investigation is thorough enough. Some clues are kept from the reader, but the basic structure of the scam is clear almost from the beginning. Moderately entertaining.
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