When the mystery surrounding the motives of the investigators is as intriguing as that surrounding the murderers, you know you have a tale that is going to keep you turning those pages until the end. Atmospheric and tense, with above average quality of writing for the genre, this is well worth picking up. ( )

I am so disappointed.
This book had a fabulously strong start with gorgeous writing, an almost tangible atmosphere, and a tense protagonist, who seemed to be under a lot of pressure.

In any case, he seemed to sweat a lot.

Once the plot got going, the story went downhill. Our protagonist developed into one of the tropes that I cannot stand - the romantic hero that seems dark and deep and mysterious, but has not reason at all for his idiotic behviour.

But then, if our protagonist had told the police everything he knew instead of being obnoxious, and had behaved like a normal person who'd found a corpse, there would have been no story and the police would probably have caught the killer within 20 pages or so. It would have been uneventful, and we would have missed out on our protagonist chasing a young woman across the country, on the young woman being all mysterious and - quite understandably - trying to get away from out protagonist, and on the police using all sorts of disguises to track our protagonist instead to the killer...

I mean it was clear pretty early on that certain characters could not have been the killer, so there was a lot of hanging around daft plot developments to even find out what was what. And when the background was finally revealed, it was rather underwhelming.

This story was so very much not what I am used to from Farjeon.
Unfortunately. ( )

This is a terrific "chase" adventure story with a strong romance element. At the beginning I needed to take a leap of faith and believe that a young man would drop everything to rescue a mysterious woman that he happens to see on a train. Once that hurdle was cleared, the story took control and carried me along. The action is non-stop right up to the end, when all is explained and the story comes to a satisfactory conclusion. There's several mysterious and sinister characters to add colour. The police inspector indulges the young man to a questionable degree and that requires another leap of faith to get the story told.

The Introduction by Martin Edwards is as usual a helpful read, with information about the book and the author. ( )

I read a number of early 20th century mystery/crime novels while working on my 2011 reading project - 100 years, 100 Books - including such classics such as [b:The 39 Steps|153492|The 39 Steps (Richard Hannay, #1)|John Buchan|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1391320797s/153492.jpg|2422487] and [b:The Red House Mystery|1333202|The Red House Mystery|A.A. Milne|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328866812s/1333202.jpg|2724945], along with, of course, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers.

J. Jefferson Farjeon was a lesser known but still accomplished member of the cadre of writers who produced these early mysteries. The Z Murders follows the typical plot of many mysteries from that era - a dashing, clever man meets a mysterious damsel in distress and attempts to outwit the police and the criminals while embarking on a madcap chase across England. In this instance, Richard Temperley spends most of the book chasing the mysterious Sylvia Wynne, who spends most of the book refusing to explain her predicament to Temperley. A disfigured villain with no arms, plenty of disguises, quaint and trustworthy villagers all combine with the likable Temperley and the reticent Wynne to make a pleasant if somewhat confusing mystery.

The lack of foreshadowing throughout most of book left me fairly unsatisfied and irritated. The reason for the "Z Murders" and the relationship between the two villains is only explained in the last couple of chapters, and not very well. If you really love British mysteries from this era, you'll like this book well enough, but it's not one that I'll remember for very long. ( )

A man is shot dead in a hotel smoking room. The hero sees a woman exit the room and immediately falls in love with her because she is beautiful. Other than being beautiful, the woman hasn't a single redeeming quality and the only mystery here is why the hero didn't dump her within 5 minutes of meeting her.

Honestly, this is a god-awful book and Farjeon is an immensely boring writer. A good editor could have slashed the book by at least one-third, only then it wouldn't be a novel, would it?

The main contribution to the book's length is that the characters repeat everything the other person says. I'll give a made-up example. Suppose you have a line of dialogue that goes like this:

"Tell me what happened."
"I saw someone."

In Farjeon's hands, you'd get this:

"Tell me what happened."
"You want me to tell you what happened?"
"Yes, I want you to tell me what happened."
"Very well. I'll tell you."
"So what happened?"
"I saw something."
"You saw something?"
"Yes. I saw something."
"What did you see?"
"You want me to..."

On and on and on, circling about and going nowhere. Dash Hammett it isn't. Farjeon also has an annoying habit of throwing in little asides and observations that contribute nothing. It's all padding that fills space but adds nothing.

Maybe things were different back when the book was published. I can imagine reading it on a train where the confined space and monotonous rhythm might lull the reader into sticking with it. However for a modern reader I can't see the appeal and I do not plan on revisiting this author anytime soon. If ever. ( )