Cards on the table. I know David Weir. He and I are both work for, and with, London Pub Theatres Magazine as critics and judges. Now, normally I am chary about reading books by friends and acquaintances (or at least about admitting that I have) because it can be embarrassing if the product is weak. I was fairly confident that in this case there was no need to worry, not least because David has an agent and a commercial publisher. I was right. Published last month, The Honourable Member for Murder reads as smoothly and compellingly as any detective novel I’ve ever read. And I’m a bit of a sucker for them interspersed with other weightier reading. I’ve always argued that eclecticism is crucial for anyone who considers her or himself as a Real Reader.
Maxwell Murray is a parliamentary researcher – as David was for many years so we’re in a world he knows and understands intimately. Max is bright, perceptive and longsuffering unlike his cliché-loving boss Eliot Oakcroft MP who is dim, vain and shallow. His newish assistant is a forthright feisty young woman named Diana.
A request arrives from a constituent. Rebecca Cley has been in prison for two years for the murder of her husband, Charlie. Miranda, their daughter is asking Eliot for help because she claims to have seen her father buying ice cream on the pier at Cromer. So he can’t … err .. be dead. Thus her mother can’t have murdered him.
What follows is a complex investigation in which Max and Diana get involved as amateur quasi sleuths to the annoyance of the Norfolk police but of course, it’s they who eventually come up with the answer after, naturally given the genre we’re in, other deaths and some dangerous confrontations.
The characterisation is excellent. Max, who drives his late father’s old Bentley, is a thoughtful, conscientious man whose role in life seems to be saving others from themselves and doing most of the work of a constituency MP. Diana is very attractive and fearsome. There is a spark between them – like, for example, Robert Galbraith’s Strike and Robin, Elly Griffiths’s Ruth and Nelson or Elizabeth George’s Linley and Havers. I wonder how many books there will be before David gives us a resolution? The tradition is to keep the reader dangling for the equivalent of several piles of War and Peace.
Also in the mix is Max’s sister Ronni, an incisive journalist who uses her attractiveness to tame Inspector Adrian who’s in charge of the case. Then there’s Miranda’s Uncle Tim, her father’s business partner, who isn’t quite what he seems. And I really liked Tony, (aka Lord Wenhamville) a rapier-sharp former High Court judge who loves an audience. The Minister for Law and Order, Estella Chamberlain, a ruthless old flame of Max’s, is entertaining too.
It’s light-hearted, witty and engagingly written. And, of course, the setting – the shabby meeting rooms at the House of Commons, the competitiveness amongst MPs, the background beavering of people like Max – is completely convincing because David knows, really knows, what he’s talking about,
And as for the Eliot character, I bet he’s a composite of dozens of MPs David has met or worked for. I sense that the vacuousness is only slightly exaggerated. He’s funny in a novel but would be infuriating to work with in real life. He and the trio he’s part of would make good television. No doubt David’s agent is open to offers.
This novel is billed as the first of the Westminster Mysteries and the next title A Motion for Murder is due to publish in February 2027. I have pre-ordered it – not out of loyalty to a mate but because I am intrigued to see where this series goes. The opener is very promising.
