While it embraces several of the tropes familiar to Golden Age novels, Murder Underground is also it's own beast.

The murder happens very near the beginning, and although it takes place in a very public space (the stairs to the platform at Belsize Park tube station), the suspects are all enclosed in a hermetic little world centred around a bedsit in Hamsptead.

But there is also a comedic element to the way the story is told, and, unlike most murder mysteries, and although the police, of course, involved, there is no chief investigator guiding the reader on the path to forensic enlightenment.

Instead we are led by the all seeing eye of the author, illuminating, in turn, the actions, deductions, discoveries and thoughts of this or that character, with the certainty of lighthouse in the night.

Slowly the facts emerge from the fog, and by three quarters of the book, who the murder is, even if they haven't actually been named, becomes ever more obvious. The pleasure then resides in finding out the means and circumstances of their ultimate downfall.

Despite a regrettable lack of pacing and momentum, which makes the narrative drag a little, this is overall an enjoyable and entertaining little tale. Nothing to demanding.