Book Review: "The King is Dead" by Hugh Morrison

As you probably know, I adore reading the British Library Crime Classics collection because of the way the books fit into the season. Imagine this: you are sitting under a lamp in a dimly lit room with your e-reader whilst drinking a cup of coffee, some mulled wine is on the table and it’s dark and raining outside. This is the exact time to pick up a British Library Crime Classic and get involved in a 1930s murder mystery. Last year, I had a bit of a binge of crime classic stories from this collection, reading some 20 or 30 in a row at a time. I just loved them that much. But when I finished what they had to offer in the collection, it was kind of deflating. That is, until now. The British Library are constantly releasing new books and murder mysteries of the golden age of British Crime and honestly, I can say nothing else apart from that I will definitely be trying to read all of them. I’m not sure they are going to run out any time soon since there were many people publishing crime stories, short stories and novels in that era. So, let us now take a look at what this book is really about.

“The King is Dead” is about a king from the Balkans who moves to England after the Bolsheviks take over his land and so he flees the country. Once he arrives in England, he asks for no protection, wanting to live like a true Englishman and not planning on returning to his homeland any time soon. This annoys his wife-to-be, Elsie, who is English and seems to have a fascination in having a big, fancy wedding because she is going to be the queen. The king’s right-hand man, Zorard, is constantly annoyed by the king’s foolishness but knows he must protect the crown. The king allows a woman to speak with him whilst she is trying to get a job in his house as a cook as she too, is from the same country he is from and she is married to an Englishman. He hires her. And then, after a rustling around outside reported by Zorard, the king is shot dead. They were all inside the house at the time and it seems as if the king was shot from the outside. But who was it? The town vicar, Shaw, is determined to find out.

Written in a classic 1930s style, the author did some serious research on language for this book. I really could not put it down at all and though I had some sort of idea about who did it, I still wanted to know the ‘how’ and the ‘why’. Throughout the book, people keep pointing fingers at each other, expecting the other one to crack rather than actually having the police investigate the crime, which is what happens in the second half of the novel. If you pay very close attention, I think you can find out who it is just after the king is shot dead through the reactions of everyone at that particular time. But I am saying nothing to spoil it for you. It really is quite clever in its solution.

To conclude, I love the fact that the British Library decided to publish this modern book written as a classic 1930s crime story because, I wager that if you didn’t know that it was written by a modern author, you would surely not be able to tell. A lot of hard work has gone into making it as authentic as possible.