Murder at Liberty Hall

'He is certainly a find, he writes well and has a sense of humour.

* The Sunday Times *

Humour and Mystery

MURDER AT LIBERTY HALL is yet another detective-story for the connoisseur.  "Liberty Hall" is an advanced co-educational institution where sporadic outbreaks of arson have been causing anxiety, the victim being the wife of a member of the staff who is poisoned during a sherry-party.  Mr Clutton-Brock has a sense of humour and a pretty wit.  There is a wildy funny account of a cricket match between "Liberty Hall" and a public school, and the dialogue is very sprightly.

-- Western Mail * Humour and Mystery *

A touch of Dorothy Sayers in the dry, English wit, the leisurely pace, the literary fancying-up, and all very clever. Arson and murder break out in an ultra-progressive co-educational school in England, and James Hardwick, persuaded by his girl of the moment, goes down their to straighten matters up. Political and romantic affiliations among the faculty as motivating factors -- and Hardwick, a diffident detective, conjures up a neat solution.

-- Kirkus Reviews

As with people, so with books, there are some towards whom (or which) ones fells instinctively friendly.  In the case of "Murder at Liberty Hall", by Alan Clutton-Brock, this is due perhaps to the engaging air of youth there is about the tale.  Not, assuredly, youth in the sense of immaturity, but in that of gaiety, of vivacity of spirit, of freshness of outlook. The scene is one of those schools where the pupils are encouraged to develop themselves according to their own desires.  There is an outbreak of fire-raising and then a murder occurs.  The solutions of the two mysteries, the fires and the murder, are ingenious, and in the case of the outbreak of arson the explanation is amusing and psychologically probable.  Mr Clutton-Brock allows his fancy to tread so lightly down so many bypaths that the reader's attention also is apt to wander at times.  The account of the cricket match, for instance, is highly amusing but irrelevant, and one may be permitted to doubt whether cricket is a game at which pure intellect would triumph so easily and so quickly as Mr. Clutton-Brock seems to think.

-- E.R. Punshon * The Manchester Guardian *

Mr. Clutton Brock has written a satire on a millionaire-owned, ultra-progressive school with a murder investigation - by private detective originally called in to solve mystery of juvenile pyromaniac outbreak - as framework.  Alas, the murder - by poison at a cocktail party - and the satire interfere with each other to spoil what might have been either a good funny book or an original detective story.  However, there remains quite a lot of fun and some genuine crime interest to be got from "Murder At Liberty Hall," even though it may disappoint first expectations.

-- Maurice Richardson * The Observ