I’ve read a few of John Bude’s books since they were reprinted by the British Library, and I’ve enjoyed all of them. His plots have been clever and inventive – the solving of a murder crime in Death on the Riviera was particularly imaginative.
Detective Inspector Meredith is quite happy to leave the miserable weather of London to work on a case with the French police. Taking the eager young Acting-Sergeant Freddy Strang along with him, they head off to the French Riviera, their aim being to apprehend a well-known English forger thought to be heading up a lucrative counterfeit money racket in the area.
There are a number of threads to this story which make it an interesting read as well as a mystery that isn’t solved until the last couple of pages, something John Bude tends to do in all his mysteries.
When Meredith and Strang arrive in France they meet Bill Dillon, a fellow Englishman who like themselves has no idea how to get where they want to go. A local man helps them on their way and unknown to any of them, the three men are destined to eventually meet again in Menton at the Villa of a wealthy widow who has an assortment of house guests living with her, including her young niece, Dilys.
Once off the quayside Bill realised that the small hours of a bitter February morning was not the ideal time to weave one’s way of out Dunkirk. Presumably there had been roads between the rubble heaps and undoubtedly, before the holocaust, they’d lead somewhere. But now there was nothing but a maze of treacherous, pot-holed tracks meandering aimlessly between a network of railway-lines and flattened buildings.
The beauty of some of these older books is the setting and very often with the British Library Crime Classics, the effects and disruption of war forms the backdrop. Martin Edwards wrote the introduction to Death on the Riviera and said,
‘Setting mattered to Bude, and he began his career with mysteries located in attractive parts of England such as Cornwall, the Lake’s District, the Sussex Downs, and Cheltenham. After the Second World War, at a time of rationing and austerity, he recognised that readers hungered for a touch of the exotic, and Death on the Riviera was the result.’
Bude’s Detective Meredith isn’t a lone ranger like some other crime investigators in books. He has a great relationship with his counterpart in France and he is willing to listen to his young sidekick who is instrumental in helping to solve some key issues in the investigation.
Freddy falls in love while covering this investigation and although Meredith pulls him into line at times and jokes at his expense, he is sympathetic to the young man. It’s a good relationship.
Bude also gives some pertinent cues in this story, which I only picked up afterwards! (I’d make a lousy detective 
Like this one when Bill was allowed over the French border:
Inwardly he heaved a sigh of relief. It was not that he had anything to declare, but there was one object aboard the car that might have caused comment. And once interest had been aroused an explanation might have been demanded…
Now, what was it??
In Meredith’s opinion he was faced with one of the toughest problems of his long and arduous career. Lashings of information. A plethora of first-rate clues. Evidence galore. And not a single theory on which to base the next phase of his investigation.Another pleasure for me is coming across obsolete or rarely use words. I think I’ve come across this phrase in one of Bude’s other books: ‘ack emma,’ which is a military term meaning before noon. (e.g. ‘between the hours of two and six-thirty ack emma yesterday morning.’)
Death on the Riviera is a good introduction to Bude’s crime novels. Like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, he isn’t surprised by evil, and although he understands why some people commit murder, and may feel compassion for their situation, he doesn’t let this interfere with his pursuit of justice.
I think Death on the Riviera would be a good introduction to John Bude’s work. It’s not as technically complicated as some of his other stories and the setting is great.
Within the next half-hour, it was more than possible that his investigations would be at an end…
And it wouldn’t be easy, he realised, to take leave of this sunlit, sparkling coast with its terraced vineyards and olive groves, its palms and oleanders, its fantastic cacti, its mimosa scented streets and impossibly blue seas. He thought of Old Kent Road on a wet February night and shuddered.
Fortunately for Bude and his readers, this observation took place on pg. 88 and there are still 154 pages left until the end.
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