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The Sussex Downs Murder is an ingenious and highly enjoyable detective novel. Since its original publication in 1936, it has languished in undeserved obscurity, and affordable copies have been almost impossible to track down, even though the author, John Bude, carved a successful career as a full-time crime writer for more than two decades. Bude’s first two detective stories, The Cornish Coast Murder and The Lake District Murder , which had been equally rare, have found an appreciative new public in the twenty-first century thanks to their reappearance as British Library crime classics. I suspect that Bude has more readers now than he did during ‘the Golden Age of murder’ between the two world wars, and his new fans will surely relish The Sussex Downs Murder , which shows a youngish writer quietly mastering the craft of entertaining mystification.

This story is, to my mind, a conspicuous advance on his previous work, because of the range and quality of the ingredients. First comes the setting. Throughout his career, Bude’s careful depiction of place was one of his strengths. Here, the Rother family farmhouse, Chalklands, and the surrounding area, are convincingly realized, and in keeping with Golden Age tradition, we are supplied with a map to help us follow the events of the story after John Rother goes missing, in circumstances which at first (but deceptively) seem reminiscent of the disappearance of Agatha Christie.

Second comes the plot. Bude’s growing confidence as a novelist is on display as he offers a pleasing sequence of twists and turns, dextrously shifting suspicion from one character to another, despite the relatively small cast list. A clever touch sees a significant clue planted at a very early stage in the story, while even the title of the book is significant. In common with many other Golden Age novelists, Bude borrowed plot elements from real life. The message which lures William Rother to Littlehampton General Hospital calls to mind the hoax at the heart of the legendary Wallace case, five years before this book was published. Crime writers ranging from Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham to Raymond Chandler and P.D. James have been fascinated by the Wallace mystery, and several good books have drawn on it. A sign of Bude’s skill is that the mysterious message forms only one of a host of complications facing Superintendent Meredith. Here, as in his previous book, Bude shows himself to be a disciple of Freeman Wills Crofts, most famous of the meticulous detective novelists of the Golden Age whose elaborately constructed puzzles tested the wits of countless readers.

Third comes the detective. Meredith was introduced in The Lake District Murder , and proved such an appealing character that Bude not only relocated him from Cumberland to Sussex for this story, but also went on to feature him in most of his later novels. Meredith is modelled on Crofts’ Inspector French, both in his diligence and his love of a good meal, but has a stronger sense of humour, as well as a cheeky son who makes a telling contribution to the detective work. Meredith is no undisciplined maverick, and unfashionably (by modern standards) lacks both a drink problem and a tormented emotional life. But he is portrayed credibly – some of his early guesswork proves mistaken, but he keeps battling on – and with genuine affection.

Fourth comes the manner of writing. There is nothing pretentious about John Bude’s work. He did not have the high literary ambitions of Sayers or Allingham, but his characterization is neat, and his touches of humour deft – one witness who claims to have ‘a psychic eye’ illustrates both qualities, while the brief final chapter is a nice touch. Bude’s humanity – evidenced here by Meredith’s reflections at the end of the story – also helps to lift this book out of the ‘humdrum’ category to which so many Golden Age mysteries have been consigned, often without much critical thought.

The Sussex Downs Murder may not have made Bude rich, but it confirmed the promise of his earlier books. Bude’s real name was Ernest Elmore, and sound research was his hallmark. Sometimes he used personal experience as the basis for his settings; a spell as a games master at a school provided background for the wittily titled Loss of a Head , while holiday trips inspired Death on the Riviera and Telegram from Le Touquet . Like Crofts (and unlike most modern crime novelists) he made effective use of industrial backgrounds in novels such as Trouble-a-Brewing , Death on Paper , and When the Case was Opened .

A quiet, sociable family man with a son and a daughter, he ran the local Home Guard during the Second World War, having been deemed unfit to serve in the forces. He enjoyed golf and painting, but never learned to drive (although his daughter Jennifer recalls that this did not deter him from pointing out to his wife when she should change gear). In 1953, he became a founder-member of the Crime Writers’ Association, and was a co-organizer of the Crime Book Exhibition which was one of the CWA’s early publicity initiatives. He lived near Rye, and was a popular and hard-working member of the CWA’s committee from its inception until May 1957. The following November, having just delivered the manuscript of what proved to be his final novel to his publishers, he went into hospital for an operation, and died two days later. He was only fifty-six, and one speculates that, had he lived another fifteen years or so, his body of work might have been impressive enough for his name to have remained reasonably well known to crime fans. It was not to be, and until the British Library took the initiative in reviving his early work, the merits of John Bude were remembered only by a select number of connoisseurs. Now, the reappearance of The Sussex Downs Murder should help to secure his reputation as one of traditional British crime fiction’s more accomplished craftsmen.