No. 17

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

The first book featuring Ben, the lovable, humorous ex-sailor and down-at-heels rascal who can’t help running into trouble.

Ben is back home from the Merchant Navy, penniless as usual and looking for digs in fog-bound London. Taking shelter in an abandoned old house, he stumbles across a dead body – and scarpers. Running into a detective, Gilbert Fordyce, the reluctant Ben is persuaded to return to the house and investigate the mystery of the corpse – which promptly disappears! The vacant No.17 is the rendezvous for a gang of villains, and the cowardly Ben finds himself in the thick of thieves with no way of escape.

Ben’s first adventure, No.17, began life in the 1920s as an internationally successful stage play and was immortalised on film by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock. Its author, J. Jefferson Farjeon, wrote more than 60 crime thrillers, eight featuring Ben the tramp, his most popular character.

• ISBN13: 9780008155889
• Publish Date: 11 August 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins Crime Club
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 224
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[brokentune]

Once more the inmates of the room missed something through lacking eyes in the backs of their heads. The passage door slowly and softly opened, and a figure crouched in the aperture. A big, broad-shouldered figure, with one shoulder higher than the other.
‘Now, then, don’t pretend you don’t know anything about these diamonds,’ rasped Brant. ‘The telegram mentioned them—’
‘Oh, what’s the use?’ muttered Henry.

Oh, what's the use indeed. This one was pretty bad, but it was made even worse by knowing that Farjeon was actually a terrific writer as evidenced by his other books Mystery in White and Thirteen Guests.
This book, however, ... If the convoluted plot about a jewel robbery hadn't been enough to make my eyes roll, then the really insipid conversations between the characters which seemed to consist mostly of catch-phrases and idioms but no clearly articulated trains of thought, would have been enough to make me reach for the wine.

And of course, we also have the main character, Ben the Tramp, the former merchant seaman, to whom I just couldn't warm up to. There is nothing I could see that makes him out as rounded character - he seems to remain a caricature throughout the book.

This is one 1930s mystery series that I am going to give a miss.