I’ve been desperately attempting to put off this moment.  Tried every delaying tactic I can think of.  But, it is no good.  The end is nigh.

Sometime last year, not sure when it was precisely, might even have been towards the end of the year before, I started reading Christopher Bush’s series of crime novels, all featuring the same detective, Ludovic Travers.  Bush wrote 63 Travers books between 1926 and 1968, and with the excellent Dean Street Press recently reprinting them all in paperback, there was no great difficulty in acquiring the entire run of novels.

I began reading them in chronological order, starting with The Plumley Inheritance.  Back then, this moment of time, when I would be starting the 63^rd book in the sequence, The Case of the Prodigal Daughter, seemed a long way off.  Now it is a reality.

Sixty-two books in the series read.  All, without exception have been excellent, entertaining reads; never repeating themselves in terms of plot or ideas.  All absolutely fair, in giving the reader their own opportunity to solve the case with the clues provided.  I would thoroughly recommend them to fans of intelligent detective fiction.  But, all good things must come to an end.  And, I am at that endpoint.

As I have approached this momentous occasion, I have consciously inserted more and more, and longer and longer, other books in between each Bush book that I read.  But, it is only delaying the inevitable.  In between reading Bush #62 – The Case of the Deadly Diamonds – and Bush #63, I have deliberately begun to try-out books by other writers of series crime fiction – Anthony Gilbert, Patrick Quentin – to see if there might be a readymade replacement, who I can seamlessly turn to once the last Ludovic Travers story is read.  It has felt rather like a betrayal to Bush, but I am only being pragmatic.  However, so far, I am not sure that I have found the perfect replacement.  I am currently flirting with both Michael Gilbert and Elizabeth Ferrars.  There are possibilities there.  But will they be able to fill my Bush-shaped void? 

Only time will tell.

© Fergus Longfellow

At this point, Fergus Longfellow would like to say something about ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’, but he fears that it might sound too much like an epigraph.