I’m a fan of Lovesey’s Peter Diamond series, as is Deb English; but I’ve
recently discovered that Lovesey has also written a series
of mysteries set in Victorian England and involving a police sergeant
(later inspector) named Cribb. They are long out of print, at least here
in the United States, and I’d never seen any until a recent conference
brought me to New Orleans. The French Quarter has six or seven used book
shops, and I visited all but one of them (occult and new age stuff, not
my thing). And in those six or seven shops I located four of the Cribb
novels, of which this is the first.

The book’s a competently written mystery; had I been in the mood for a
mystery and picked it up at random, I’d not have been disappointed. But
Cribb isn’t particularly interesting, and Lovesey shows little of the
flair I’ve come to expect from his later books. (Great word, flair–I’m
not at all sure what it means in this context, except that Lovesey’s writing
has improved in the decades since 1970.)

The setting, on the other hand, is fascinating. It seems that footraces
of various kinds were popular in mid-Victorian England, and one kind in
particular–the Six-Day Go-As-You-Like, also known, gruesomely, as the
Six-Day Wobble. The rules are simple: the racers have six days to walk
or run as far as they can. That’s six contiguous 24-hour periods–there
are no mandated breaks. You can take a rest whenever you like, for as
long as you like, you can eat whatever you like (provided you have
someone to bring it to you), insecure in the knowledge that while you are
resting or eating that your competitors might still be wobbling along.

Six-Day Wobbles were usually held on the open road; this book concerns
a race held on a track in London’s Agricultural Hall. There are two
favorites, experienced “pedestrians” both, competing against each other
on an inner track, and a number of unproven riff-raff competing on the
outer track, and things look good for the race’s promoter until one of
the favorites collapses on the second day. Enter Sergeant Cribb and his
dogsbody Constable Thackery.

Bottom-line: not bad, and I’m quite curious to see if Cribb develops into
a more memorable character.