Richard Hull
Originally written: 1934, reissued by British Library Crime Classics

“It’s fantastic. Making me laugh” – my mother.

This is a fantastically fun use of an awful first-person narrator, who decides to murder his own aunt. Which is not a spoiler, but the premise of the novel. Edward, the narrator, is generally disgruntled, unimpressed and hard done by, full of his own suffering and mistreatment (much like my dogs when they’re wanting food). He is also lazy, rude, arrogant and conceited, constantly critical of others’ intelligence and appearance, whilst outraged if his aunt ever comments on his own (as part of his unpleasantness, Edward is described as pale, overweight* and pimply with hair greased back with strongly smelling tonic). Honestly, the fact that he decides to murder his aunt is not even slightly the worst thing about him.

To situate the book within the classic crime canon, Christie published The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1928, and Peril at End House in 1932. Anthony Berkeley Cox, as Francis Iles, published Malice Aforethought in 1931 and Before the Fact in 1932, and as himself, Jumping Jenny was published in 1933. Also that year, Dorothy L. Sayers published Murder must Advertise, the eighth Peter Wimsey novel. In his introduction to the British Library Crime Classics version of The Murder of my Aunt, Martin Edwards cites Malice Aforethought as a big influence on Hull, and the tone and structure of the book fits into this more experimental phase of classic crime fiction, whilst carving out its own path.

The uniqueness of the book comes not necessarily from the narrator being the murderer themselves, by 1934 this had been done already – some openly, and some (like Christie’s iconic attempt) as a surprise twist at the end – but that the narrator is the murderer and is absolutely unlikable in every way and as a reader we tend to be rooting for him to fail spectacularly. I say tend, I don’t want to make assumptions on behalf of all readers and their predilections / relationship with their own aunts. The novel also lacks any detective figure – professional or amateur, and there is very little solving done by any characters, with the mystery and pacing of the book focusing around if the murder will be successful, or if the aunt will notice Edward’s plans in time to save herself. Another difference to the few similar novels as a whole is that as the reader we know more than the narrator does. And that is a demonstration of Hull’s genius if anything is. By having an excessively stupid narrator with a tendency to take one interpretation of events and what people tell him, allows the reader to take a different and wider interpretation and get a better understanding of what others understand and are thinking. Though I know that while I was pretty sure I was reading the right things into Edward’s misinterpretation, I was never 100% confident in that and was quite on edge towards the end of the book as to the way the events would come out!

As a final note, one element of the novel that I did enjoy greatly was Edward’s great hatred for Wales. “Nothing but silly little hills… sodden damp woods… and stupid little grass meadows. Ugh! How it bores me.” Hull, the author, is clearly far from Edward in his opinions, and one has to admire his ability to show the beauty in a place in the eyes of someone who hates it, because he really does. As someone half Welsh, with half of my family based in Wales, I did enjoy the disgruntlement though: “Never, never does it stop raining here, except in the winter when it snows” – it definitely reflected some of my complaints as a teenager being forced to travel over the Severn Bridge and spend the weekend talking to relatives, though I’m pleased to say unlike Edward, my view changed as I aged!

*Fatphobia, or body shaming being rampant in fiction at the time, and often used as a quick visual guide to one’s moral compass (the legacy of Wilkie Collins etc), The Murder of My Aunt is not that bad at all on this topic. Yes Edward is fat, but that he is also greedy and lazy, and his fatness is a physical consequence of his actions rather than anything more symbolic. Potentially also because Edward is our narrator, we get our main understanding of his size through his outraged repetition of insults through his aunt, all seen as outrageous and insulting beyond coping.