Between 1931 and 1959 Edith Caroline Rivett (1894–1958) published more than 70 mysteries under the names E. C. R. Lorac and Carol Carnac. Nearly all of the E. C. R. Lorac titles, about 45 of them, feature Chief Inspector Robert MacDonald, a Scot on the London police force. Eight of her books have been reprinted as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, and her short stories appear in several British Library anthologies.
The 35th book with Inspector MacDonald is Murder of a Martinet (Collins Crime Club, 1951). It was published in the U.S. by Doubleday under the title I Could Murder Her and was reprinted with that title in 2021 by Rare Treasure Editions.
Aided by the extreme shortages of everything after World War II, Muriel Farrington keeps her husband and her children as well as their various spouses tightly under her thumb. She has a good bit of money and a lovely mansion large enough to hold all of them to support her controlling ways. The lack of housing keeps the family there while her thinly veiled mean-spiritedness drives them to distraction. Any effort by a family member to resist her results in Muriel taking to her bed and demanding that her long-time general practitioner drop everything to attend to her while tasty tidbits are carried up two flights of stairs for her.
Muriel dies in her sleep after a rare confrontation and a subsequent visit from the doctor who indulged her hypochondria. Her family calls the doctor’s office and, instead of the doctor who would have signed a death certificate without hesitation, the new young doctor in the neighborhood arrives. He doesn’t like the looks of things and he refers the case to the coroner. An autopsy found insulin had been administered, resulting in her death, and Inspector MacDonald is called in.
MacDonald is a pleasure to watch at work. He is methodical and careful and low-key. No flamboyant over-the-top idiosyncrasies here, just solid police procedure and wisdom of experience. Lorac has a gift for sketching credible characters in a few words and sound plotting with enough misdirection to keep me guessing until the end of the book. I do not understand why her books had to be re-discovered. Highly recommended.