Read Online Murder by the Book by Eric Brown - Free Book Online

platitudes.’
    â€˜Perhaps I’m becoming kinder in my old age.’
    â€˜Well, how about reinvigorating your pieces with some real venom? If a book’s bad, then say so, and state why it’s so bad.’
    Langham ignored the editor and concentrated on selecting four titles. The fact was that he had become kinder of late; or at least less inclined to dish out cutting criticism. Nowadays he was loath to make enemies, not so much because he feared earning retribution in the competing review pages for his own novels, but because he thought that most writers – despite Grenville’s assumptions otherwise – were actually trying their best. The only time he allowed his spleen full ventilation was when he came across a lazy novel obviously hacked out by a writer who should have known better.
    Grenville leaned forward, squinting at him over his half-moon spectacles. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, Langham, what on earth happened to your head?’
    â€˜Oh, this,’ Langham said, touching the bandage that looped around his neck, partly concealed by the turned-up collar of his overcoat. ‘I was coshed by a blackmailer while delivering a ransom demand on behalf of a friend.’
    Grenville snorted. ‘You’ve been writing too many Sam Brooke yarns, Langham. More likely you fell down the steps of a public house, hm?’
    â€˜Are you accusing me of inebriety, Grenville? Perish the thought!’
    â€˜Speaking of which …’ the editor began.
    â€˜Inebriety?’
    â€˜No, Sam Brooke,’ Grenville said. ‘The early titles were put out before the war by Douglas and Dearing, weren’t they? Did you know an editor there – Max Sidley?’
    â€˜He edited my first three,’ Langham said. Sidley was an editor of the old school, a classical scholar with the sagacity and unruffled manner of a sleepy owl.
    â€˜Well, the poor blighter topped himself yesterday. Can’t say I blame him, some of the titles Douglas and Dearing made him work on. It must have been more than his good taste could tolerate.’ He pointed across the room to the editor’s office. ‘Nigel Lassiter’s in there now, delivering the obituary.’
    â€˜He killed himself?’ Langham said, shocked. He’d last met Sidley just after the war, but had always harboured a fondness for the man who’d bought his first novel and thus set the course of his subsequent career.
    â€˜He was seventy-five and still wielding the blue pencil. Poor sod should have got out years ago. A salutary lesson to us all.’
    Langham squinted at Grenville, wondering if corrosive cynicism was a requisite for the post or the result of editing other people’s tired copy.
    â€˜I’ll take these four,’ he said, slipping the books into his briefcase and standing. ‘When do you need the piece?’
    â€˜First thing Friday. And remember, do inject a soupçon of venom, hm?’
    â€˜I’ll see what I can do.’
    He was threading his way through the tightly-packed desks when a stentorian summons sounded above the clatter of typewriters.
    â€˜Donald! Hold on, old man!’
    He paused by the door while Nigel Lassiter exaggeratedly mimed jogging the last few yards and arrived panting before him. He was a tall man in his fifties, running to fat from the good life provided by two-dozen best-selling titles, the proceeds of which afforded him a big house in Islington, a yacht in the south of France and a table at the Ivy perpetually reserved in his name.
    â€˜Just the man. You busy?’
    Langham held up his case. ‘Just collected some review copies.’
    â€˜Still churning out the column?’ He clapped Langham on the shoulder, his breath stinking of drink.
    â€˜Well, it does keep the wolf from the door.’
    â€˜You still with that pretentious old queer, Elder?’ Lassiter asked.
    â€˜I know you had your differences,’ Langham said,