Bland Beginning by Julian Symons
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Adam to Eve: "This breast hard as an apple,
These slim, straight thighs, are built from dung and dirt.
The vitriol sucked from each tautened nipple
Runs in the veins of all whom life has hurt."

Bland Beginning (1949) is another classic British mystery by one of the genre's grandmasters, Julian Symons (by the way, it is the 10th book by the author that I am reviewing on Goodreads). As usual, the author delivers an extremely clever and solid mystery, which is literate, well-written, and a pleasure to read, even if it is not my favorite type of mystery or my favorite style of prose.

The Prologue is set in 1949 in a London library where the author searches for literary inspiration for his next novel. There he meets Detective Inspector Bland who mentions his first successful case from a quarter of a century earlier. We jump to 1924 and meet young Anthony Skelton who proposes to Victoria Rawlings, the granddaughter of Martin Rawlings, a minor 19th century British poet. As an engagement present Anthony buys Victoria an expensive first edition of the famous set of poems by Rawlings. They happen to meet John Basingstoke, a young man who is an expert on all things literary; he tells them that the book is a forgery. Trying to learn the truth they consult various experts, including a publishing house employee, Miss Cleverly. Anthony is assaulted, the book is stolen, and pretty soon things get very serious. There are four murders and despite the police investigation, the mystery is solved by Basingstoke's friend, young Bland, then an amateur sleuth.

The mystery plot is quite captivating, but to me characterizations of people, places, and socio-cultural background are much more important. The literary forgery thread is superb. On a lighter note we have an interesting "romantic" thread:

"The battle between two men, one of them physically and the other mentally disfigured, for a woman. Which of them gets her?"

It adds zest to the plot that the romantic configurations change, as dictated by the events. Yet of the main characters, only Victoria is believably drawn, with all her lack of seriousness of purpose. I love how she does things based on how they will look written about in her private diary. Very lifelike character! Alas, other personas are mostly caricatures who serve as devices to move the plot.

Samples of poetry written by the fictional Martin Rawlings in mid 1800s are wonderful. They straddle the boundary between poetry and kitsch, and tend towards the latter, as shown in the epigraph. As a nice bonus the poetry plays a role in the clever solution of the mystery. I love the scenes of the cricket match between two neighboring villages. On the other hand, the novel is full of usual classic British mystery novel clichés. They are almost tolerable, though, because of masterful prose by Mr. Symons. So all in all, not my type of book, but certainly well done job and a great example of its genre. Recommended without too many reservations.

Three stars.

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