The Colour of Murder

⚖The case for it

A CWA Gold Dagger winner by the great critic of crime fiction who was also among its finest practitioners. A man suspected of murdering his wife; the reader is never quite certain of guilt or innocence. Symons used the genre to explore social class and psychological instability with rigorous intelligence.

— the canon

✕The case against

Built as a long first-person statement followed by a courtroom reconstruction, the novel grinds its gears at the changeover. Wilkins is a specimen more than a man, pinned for the class anatomy of 1950s lower-middle suburbia. If you require a verdict you can trust, the engineered ambiguity will land as a cheat.

— the honest librarian