This anthology will delight anyone who enjoys stories from the Sherlock Holmes period, through English village crimes, to sport on a lazy summer afternoon. A variety of shorts awaits, some only a few pages, others comparatively lengthy. Fifteen quite different styles and sleuths are to be found in SETTLING SCORES. These sporting mysteries, as the subtitle suggests, contain gamblers and murderers, thieves and innocents.

We meet sportsmen and very occasionally sportswomen. Women don’t pay a major role in most tales, except as the love interest, but sometimes they play a determined part in resolving the mystery. Sports range widely around the British countryside, including horse racing, swimming, archery, boxing, rowing, rugby, cricket and angling.  

The range of dates for original publication is 1894 to 1976. The least sporting tale is probably Celia Fremlin’s more modern story, Dangerous Sport, about a mistress whose relationship has soured. One of the more sporting stories is about a tennis player by Julian Symons, The Wimbledon Mystery. A top tennis player is about to make it to the centre court at Wimbledon, but vanishes from the changing room. His family and friends swear he would rather play than anything else, even above meeting a long-lost relative. Clearly, someone is up to no good.

The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter stars Sherlock Holmes by his original writer, Arthur Conan Doyle. Mainly the tale is off the rugby pitch and on the move, but Holmes wasn’t much of a sports fan. I like the tales mentioned, and also found one unusual mystery about archery, which is under-represented but is an obvious deadly weapon sport, when we think about it. There’s a horse racing tale, but it looks at a bookie or two, not the horse, so that one doesn’t make it to my favourites list.

Maybe some readers will enjoy the old Oxford – Cambridge rivalry with The Boat Race Murder by David Winser, which nicely brings characters to life.

One striking point for me, was how often the murderer was denounced and promptly swallowed some poison. I have to think that legal defences, pleading to a lesser charge, brazening it out and hoping the evidence would not stand up in court, or plain denial, would have not suited the writers, who just wanted to wrap up a short magazine fiction piece with an admission of guilt and instant punishment.  

Not all the authors will be familiar to readers, but a page of introduction gives an outline of each writer’s career so you can follow up if you enjoy a detective’s style or a crime writer’s thought processes. Think of SETTLING SCORES, edited by Martin Edwards, as a trail of clues leading you to discover authors you may enjoy.

Book Summary