A Voice Like Velvet (Detective Club Crime Classics) Paperback – April 29, 2021

As usual, the order was filled correctly and promptly. Good work!

More gentle satire than mystery, A Voice Like Velvet follows the adventures of Ernest Bisham, a reader of the news for the BBC in 1944. Bisham, his sister and his wife live together, an uneasy triangle at best. Ernest marries Marjorie at the urgings of sister Bess, but there is definitely something missing in their relationship for both of them. Much of the first half of the book explores the lives of these three, past and present. Although Bisham has a prestigious job as BBC announcer, he is unsatisfied and begins a Robin Hood like career robbing jewels from pretentious minor gentry types, his biggest problem being what to do with the loot. No one suspects him and like Mr. Bowling, in a later Henderson book, Bisham is always lucky in escaping the proverbial clutches of the law. Also like Mr. Bowling, he really doesn’t regard his crimes as criminal acts and how he justifies his thefts in the end is one of the more amusing parts of the book. An experienced police inspector does in fact suspect him, but is disinclined to arrest him — in part because he is a BBC ANNOUNCER and in part because his wife is a worshipful Bisham fan. Tossed into the character mix is a wannabe scoundrel butler and a recently invalided RAF pilot who is “browned off” by nearly everything, but decides that being a BBC announcer is probably worth getting out of bed for in the morning.Resolving the Bishams’ romantic issues and Ernest Bisham’s life of crime are very much tied together and Henderson provides an interesting conclusion to the whole affair. There are no real villains in this book and the butler villain wannabe attempts, almost touchingly, to make his crime as painless as possible to the victim and in the end is the only one to pay a price, unjustly as it turns out. Bisham steals from low-ranking aristocratic nitwits, but the first two victims are so good-natured about being robbed that it just seems that nature is striking some sort of social balance and no one seems all that upset. Similar to MR BOWLING BUYS A NEWSPAPER, there is an otherworldly quality to this book that puts this one closer to a picaresque than it does to a typical Golden Age British crime thriller. Henderson certainly seems more interested with the Bishams’ relationship than he is with burglary and almost reluctantly seems to kick the crime story into gear about halfway through the book. The book wasn’t a commercial success and Henderson may have decided he needed to carve with a sharper edge if he was going to write a crime novel, which he does in MR BOWLING BUYS A NEWSPAPER. Nevertheless, Bisham’s final caper is a hoot and this book was worth reading just for that—and Bisham’s final disposal of the loot completes the Robin Hood metaphor, Henderson’s tongue firmly in his cheek.Genteel romance, crime capers, the gentry and the BBC all get the send-up treatment but there is no malice and Bisham nevers considers himself above it all: he is a integral part of the whole fabric after all and is just a man trying to do the right thing.

The novel has a very clever plot with a nice twist at the end. The reader is taken inside the BBC as it was as Britain was rebuilding after the Second World War.

I first came across author, Donald Henderson, when I read the brilliant, “Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper,” and immediately wanted to read anything else back in print. In this re-issue, there is an interesting introduction by Martin Edwards, explaining how this book failed to give the author the success it should have. Given the rather uninteresting title of, “The Announcer,” the publishers failed completely to capitalise on the success of Mr Bowling and, sadly, Donald Henderson died young. Hopefully, though, more of his work will be re-published, as he certainly deserves a new audience.Ernest Bisham is a BBC announcer. He is a slightly portly, rather pompous sounding gentleman, whose good looks and velvet voice has seduced the nation – many of whom wait breathlessly, to hear him on the radio. Among these are his wife, Marjorie, and sister, Bess, an ATS sergeant. For it is wartime and, presumably, the public are grateful for Bisham’s reassuring tone while relating the news.Both Ernest Bisham and his wife, Marjorie, had had earlier, disastrous marriages and have been brought together by Bess. At first, they struggle to make their relationship work but, as the book progresses, we learn how their perceptions of each other change. For Bisham has a secret – he is a, rather unlikely, cat burglar. This began when he was dared to steal something from his headmaster’s office and has progressed to stealing jewels from wealthy people he meets through his position at the BBC. However, really he has no idea what to do with all the jewels he takes and now Hood, from the Yard, is taking an interest in him…Despite the fact that he is a thief, Bisham comes across as a really likeable character and you find yourself really hoping that he, and Marjorie, make a success of their marriage. As well as the fact that Bisham is such an unlikely burglar, I just love Donald Henderson’s writing. A solicitor’s clerk, for example, is described as looking, “rather like a Walt Disney spaniel which had just picked itself up after falling nine hundred feet down a lift shaft.” What’s not to like? This is clever, and amusing, writing; playing on social, and class, assumptions and poking sly fun at ‘Auntie’ in the process. Donald Henderson worked at the BBC himself and there is much humour from the young, eternally ‘browned-off’ Jonas Wintle, the son of a neighbour, who gains an introduction to the BBC through Marjorie and who finds out that the work as an announcer is not as easy as it appears. A joy – I look forward to reading more by Henderson.