Big Ben Strikes Eleven
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The discovery of Sir Robert Boniface's body on the floor of his blue limousine was made quite accidentally on a sultry Friday evening towards the end of June. The industrial and financial tycoon, and former stalwart of the British Cabinet, had been shot in the head and left in the quiet Vale of Health alongside London's Hampstead Heath. Nearby, a rejected portrait of Sir Robert is found riddled with bullets in the studio of the now- missing romantic artist Matt Caldwell.
As it hurtles towards its feverish denouement under the bells of the capital's most famous clock, this closely observed and stylish study of both character and motive transports the reader from the Stock Exchange to Scotland Yard. It asks the question of what it means to be crooked and how immense power corrupts.
First published in 1934, this novel is now extremely rare, and is long overdue its rediscovery.
David Magarshack (1899-1977) was an author and translator, best-known for his translations of Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy and Chekhov in the 1950s. Born in Riga, in present-day Latvia, Magarshack came to Britain to study at University College London, was naturalised as a British citizen in 1931 and wrote three crime novels in the 1930s.