The King and the Corpse

At a quiet resort on the French Riviera, Anthony Tolworth, the cynical and suave social advisor to the exiled King of Althenia, has come ashore from the King’s yacht seeking entertainment and remuneration for the Royal household. However, his discovery of a corpse on the beach in front of the Casino upsets any plans for the evening.

The police are quick to suspect secretary Eve Raymond, as the dead man was her employer, gambler Leonardo Manetti, who’d been blackmailing her father. As Tollhurst is rather fond of Eve, he enlists the help of his headmistress aunt and two interfering and typical, small boys, to help him investigate the case. But the machinations of local politics – not to mention Althenian affairs – make the task almost impossible.

Published in 1949, a great sense of humour and zest suffuse this second mystery after The Voice of the Corpse (1948), the identity of the murderer is very well concealed. A real pleasure to read!

Max Murray (1901-1956) began life in Australia as a bush boy. His first job was that of a reporter on a Sydney paper but after a year he set out to work his way round the world. He spent eight months in the US and later worked for the News Chronicle. During the Second World War he wrote scripts for, and edited Radio Newsreel for the BBC Overseas Programme. After the war, with intervals for travel, he devoted himself primarily to writing fiction. He published twelve novels during his life, eleven of which had the word “Corpse” in the title.