Time to Kill (1974) by Roger Ormerod

Last year, I delved a little deeper into the work of a reprehensively overlooked mystery novelist, Roger Ormerod, whose writing career stretched from 1974 to 1999 during which he tried to balance the classic, traditionally-plotted detective story with the contemporary, character-driven crime novel – culminating in the creation of what can only be described as retro Golden Age mysteries. You can traces of Ormerod's ties to the classical detective story running through his earliest novels (e.g. More Dead Than Alive, 1980), but the dark, gloomy grit of the police procedural and private eye fiction appeared to dominate those earlier works. I assumed from my limited reading it was a difficult, fifteen-year-long process to arrive at those perfectly balanced, finely-polished 1990s retro Golden Age mysteries like The Key to the Case (1992), A Shot at Nothing (1993) and And Hope to Die (1995). 

So the plan was to continue to root around that period, but then Isaac Stump, of Solving the Mystery of Murder, began praising Time to Kill (1974) as "it perfectly sets up Ormerod's thorough and educated understanding of Golden Age-style alibi trickery almost in the style of Christopher Bush." That caught my attention even more than Isaac labeling Time to Kill as an impossible alibi with one of his favorite explanation to that particular problem. Christopher Bush died less than a year before Time to Kill was published and, suddenly, the prospect of Ormerod's classically-styled alibi-smasher appeared like a passing of the torch moment. Ormerod taking over the torch from Bush as he bowed out of actively being alive. And so it got moved up the pile. 

Time to Kill marked Ormerod's debut and introduced his first series-character,st Sergeant David Mallin, who demonstrates here why he's destined to abandon his career with the police to become a private investigator.

Several years ago, a then still Detective Constable Mallin assisted his mentor and later friend, Inspector Geoffrey Forbes, to catch a particular nasty piece of work. Eldon Kyle is a vicious drug pusher who moonlights as a championship snooker player and spends all his time around billiard halls, which is where he meets and ensnares, "like wretched hooked fish," his clients – picking them clean to "the last ounce of suffering cash." And "if the odd suicide depleted his clientele," there was always "the next initiate waiting in the agony line." Forbes really wanted to take Kyle down and eventually succeeded when Mallin had a flash of inspiration where he had hidden two pounds of heroin. Kyle is not the sporting type and immediately started uttering threats upon his arrest, which he repeated right up until he was sentenced. Eldon Kyle has now served his sentence and it doesn't take very long for Mallin to cotton on to the fact that he's out of prison.

The first chapter opens with Mallin being thrown around like rag doll by a big, bulky goon with "a face like an angel carved out of granite" and "huge, solid hands that swung just above his knees." A surprisingly good-humored, intelligent goon who later on in the story politely introduces himself as Odin Breeze and tails Mallin throughout the story while his massive frame is magically folded into a bright, orange Mini. Odin Breeze left behind one of Kyle's visiting card ("with the compliments of...") which is followed by a telephone call to invite Mallin to play snooker. Mallin accepts the invitation and the evening becomes an intense game with a growing crowd of spectators gathering around the snooker table. Needless to say, Mallin didn't emerge from the game smelling like roses, but the evening becomes even stranger when the night porter brings him a message. Mallin had no idea the retired Forbes had an apartment above the billiard hall and he had asked the night porter to tell Mallin to come up and see him. But what he found was murder. Forbes had been stabbed in the guts with a long, thin blade and left to die.

A murder with "all the hallmarks of Kyle's personality, the viciousness of the wound, lethal but not immediately," but Mallin had unwittingly handed Kyle a gift-wrapped alibi. Mallin is determined "to bust his alibi wide open," but only succeeds "in tightening his alibi" and digging a hole for himself. Kyle might have an unimpeachable alibi, but Mallin has a gap in his and, as it turns out, a pretty sweet motive to boot as he has been in love with Elsa Forbes for years – which eventually places him in direct opposition with his own superior. Only way to dig himself out of that hole is smashing Kyle's alibi to pieces. 

Time to Kill is a very short, snappy detective story that immediately comes to the point and handily uses the trappings of the character-driven police procedural of the time to simultaneously setup the series and the plot. There are no unnecessary, extraneous plot-threads dangling around the background as everything's linked together and the result is a very trim, crisply told detective story with a cleverly contrived plot carefully balanced on a daring a alibi-trick. The trick really is something on par with a top-tier Christopher Bush novel! I had a pretty good idea how Kyle could have done it, but there was a huge, gaping hole in the theory that warranted second thoughts. But then the solution turned the entire situation around (ROT13: “V jnfa’g gurer va beqre gb tvir uvz na nyvov”) to neatly plug that hole. A possibility I had not considered, while it seems rather obvious in hindsight. So you can say Ormerod delivered the kind of goods you expect (or hope) to find in a detective novel penned in that fine, time-honored tradition of the genre's golden period!

However, I've to disagree with Isaac's qualification of Time to Kill as an example of the impossible alibi. I know it's not a widely accepted definition of the impossible alibi, but I can only accept an alibi as an impossible crime when the murderer appears to have been physically impossible to have carried out the crime. So no tampering with clocks, manipulating witnesses or so-called paper trails. It must appear as a physical impossibility for the murderer to have done it, because of a physical limitation or under going surgery at the time of the murder. Time to Kill is an excellent alibi-smasher, but, alas, not an impossible one. But feel free to disagree. Everyone else does around here. :)

So, on a whole, Time to Kill is a short, but sweet, detective novel that played the inverted mystery as a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between Mallin and Kyle with an annoyingly sturdy alibi as the linchpin of the plot. And it worked marvelously! Ormerod understood what makes a plot tick and gave his readers a glimpse what could have been had the Golden Age detective story been allowed to evolve naturally pass the 1950s. Highly recommended as Ormerod deserves to be acknowledged for keeping the home fires burning during the final decades of the previous century. A period that was not exactly kind to the traditional detective story.