Sally and Johnny Heldar are requested by a friend to check out some anonymous letters sent to a colleague which are steadily becoming more vitriolic and descending into utmost vulgarity.

At the National Press Archives Frank Morningside is someone who is not particularly liked or disliked. A rather tedious person he has many enemies and but when he is found bludgeoned to death the investigation takes a more serious turn.

Negatives are missing and whether these lead to particular instances where people could be blackmailed is the question. When a second death occurs made to look like an accident the Heldars know there is a murderer who will not stop at anything to cover his tracks.

It was a good detective story with a well planned story line.

I had not come across this author before, written in the golden age era style, I really enjoy making Henrietta Hamilton's acquaintance and I shall keep an eye out for further books.
A nice little husband and wife murder mystery which relies on timing. Quite a lot of twist and turns within the story with a somewhat surprise ending.

I had never read a Henrietta Hamilton book. I really enjoyed her style of writing and the way the main characters walked through each alibi, slowly narrowing the field. The husband and wife protagonists were likeable and believable. The book was quite long and did drag a little bit in the middle, however, it was worth persevering! I would definitely read more and recommend this to lovers of golden age mystery.

I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. The mystery itself was well done, with interesting suspects and victims in an interesting setting. However, the married couple solving the mystery were indistinctly drawn and did not interest me much, perhaps because this is the third in a series that I haven't read. The writing largely takes the wife's point of view, but she misses a number of the most interesting scenes because she has to stay home with the children, so we learn what was learned by more interesting characters as she is told it.

Poison pen letters and practical jokes are plaguing Frank Morningside at the National Press Archive, and amateur sleuths Johnny and Sally Heldar are enlisted to get to the bottom of matters. Johnny is an antiquarian bookseller who has solved a couple of murders – this is the third of four books – and they start to investigate at the Archive.
Surprise, surprise, soon the practical jokes turn deadly and Frank falls victim to a fatal booby trap. Johnny and Sally find themselves immersed in a game of untangling alibis to find the murderer – but can it be as simple as that?
Henrietta Hamilton aka Hester Denne Shepherd wrote four books featuring the Heldars – presumably the murder in the bookshop mentioned here happened in the first one – at least one more is on the way from Agora Books like this one. Agora are the publishers behind the recent re-issuing of Richard Hull’s work.
This is a much more straightforward mystery than the Hull titles, however. It presents a fascinating background of the National Picture Archive – the 1950’s version of Google Images – and the miscellany of suspects therein. It’s a very good example of a pretty standard mystery. Alibis are checked, suspects are accused and exonerated, another murder takes place and eventually the villain stands revealed.
There are a couple of dated attitudes from Johnny when his wife exerts a bit of free will in the investigation, a little surprising to read from a female writer, but apart from that, this bounces along nicely from beginning to end. I thought the murderer was a bit obvious from the structure of the tale, but I might be alone here – Kate, at least, thought it was a surprise.
Another welcome re-release of a long-lost author, this is well worth a look.

This book was first published in 1959. It has now been reprinted by Agora Books and released on 20th February 2020. It involves the husband-wife team of Johnny and Sally Heldar as amateur detectives.
Frank Mormingside, an archive assistant in the pictures department of National Press Archives is getting poison-pen letters and pranks are being played on him. When the situation becomes intolerable, Toby Lorn, the head of the pictures department decides to call on his friends Johnny and Sally Heldar for help.
The Heldrs agree to help and they visit the National Press Archives in the guise of archive researchers and start keeping regular watch in the office. However, soon, Morningside is found killed in the doorway of his office by a box of glass negatives falling on his head. Chief Detective-Inspector Lindesay of Scotland Yard takes charge of the case. He lets the Heldars help him. After a few days, another death takes place.
Even after a painstaking and plodding investigation by the Heldars involving examining and re-examining the alibis and timetables of the various suspects, they are unable to solve the case. But a chance remark by the culprit gives him/her away.
It is an agreeable, enjoyable read, though nothing brilliant. There is a vivid depiction of life in an archives office before the advent of computers. But the plot is too cumbersome and improbable.

Johnny Heldar is a former WWII commando who runs a family-owned antiquarian bookstore. From references in this book, Johnny and his wife, Sally, albeit amateurs, were involved in solving some crimes in the past. Given this, a friend who works at the National Press Archive, London, asks the couple to investigate the harassment of a fellow worker, Morningside. Morningside has been the brunt of a series of jokes, including itching powder in his shorts, fake ink stains, and he also has been receiving nasty notes. As they begin to investigate, Morningside is killed by what appears to be yet another prank, but the Heldars have their suspicions that it was no prank. A few days later, another employee seems to have accidentally fallen into an old bomb crater and died. The Heldars investigate the workers from the messengers up to the head and one-by-one begin eliminating them as the perpetrator. The book is well written and there are plenty of red herrings and misdirection to keep the reader guessing. Written in the 1950s, it does display ethnic slights and disparaging comments about an older, unmarried working woman. The author, Henrietta Hamilton, may not be as well known as other writers from that time, but she's worth looking up. The painstaking details of each suspect did get a little too drawn out for me, and I became impatient at times

This book is an enjoyable mental puzzle in the tradition of the Golden Age classics although published in 1959, which I consider at least ten years outside the era (again, much argument but never mind). Unfortunately, it's almost too mental. In my review I gave only three stars because the puzzle seemed far too convoluted. As near as I can figure, most of the action takes place in two separate office groupings of a single business, each with its own entrances and exits, loosely connected by various hallways and all existing within a larger office building with yet more entrances, exits and day-and-night porters. At times following the sleuths (a charming couple) as they try to pin down timetables is like watching a bedroom farce – people constantly going in and out and narrowly missing each other.
Another reason for three stars is that I guessed the killer about a third of the way through, and after that it was just a matter of watching for substantiating clues or hints. That doesn’t happen very often, and the story was engaging enough that I was quite willing to keep reading in the hopes of being proved wrong. I wasn't, but oh well. I haven’t read any other books by this author, but based on this one, I wouldn’t call her a Queen of Crime. Maybe a second or third cousin to a Princess.

I'd never heard of Henrietta Hamilton prior to being offered this book by Crime Classics to read and review and I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. The book starts at the National Press Archives where one of the members of staff Frank Morningside is being sent crude messages, schoolboy pranks like itching powder and finally very crude poems and letters. Toby Lorn his direct supervisor takes matters into his own hands and calls on amateur sleuths Sally and Johnny Heldar to find the culprit or indeed culprits so that they can be dealt with correctly. Unfortunately during their investigation Frank Morningside is murdered and Scotland Yard are called in. A good old fashioned murder mystery which I would thoroughly recommend.

I received this book from Netgalley for review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Classic crime adds this fine edition from 1959 to the modern library in this novel by Henrietta Hamilton. It is part of the Uncrowned Queens of Crime series. A suspicious death at United Press Archives on Fleet Street has the Heldars, Johnny and Sally, investigating. They are antiquarian booksellers with a penchant for Amateur sleuthing. Toby Lorn, a newspaper man at the archives is concerned about a series of pranks and poisoned pen letters that are upsetting Frank Morningside enough to influence his work in the archives. When Morningside is found dead, this leads to a full investigation of the archives and workers. Someone has secrets. Someone will stop at nothing to keep them.
An excellent example of Crime procedural. Follow the clues closely for there are many threads, twists and tangles. Well done and enjoyable read.

A nice cross between a classic whodunnit and a Paul Temple mystery, with husband and wife sleuths Johnny and Sally Heldar investigating a series of poison pen letters at a photo library and the effect this has on their personal relationship and their domestic life. I found the setting fascinating, wih the descriptions of how the negatives and pictures at a busy newspaper library were used, and the characterisation was very memorable. I hadn't read anything else by Henrietta Hamilton before but I will now seek them out.

This is a must read for all classic crime fans. It had everything - a very clever plot, lots of red herrings and a brilliant ending. I'm afraid that I didn't know the name of Henrietta Hamilton before so I sincerely hope that the publishers will bring us more of her books to enjoy.

It's the first book I read by this author and won't surely be the last.
It's a classic whodunnit, well written and engrossing.
It starts slow with a description of the fascinating environment and the introduction of all the characters.
Sally and Johnny are a fascinating couple, very modern even if some moments reflect the age spirit.
The mystery is solid and the solution came as a surprise.
I can't wait to read the next instalment.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Dirty Deeds In Fleet Street....
Poison pen letters, underhand practical jokes, sinister doings and dirty deeds in Fleet Street. Sometime amateur sleuths, Sally and Johnny Heldar, are called upon to assist when suspects become too numerous to list but when murder rears it’s ugly head things begin to get very serious indeed. Hugely enjoyable classic crime, fully entertaining with well drawn characters and an engaging plot. A very worthy reissue from Agora Books (and part of their ‘Uncrowned Queens of Crime’ series). Highly recommended.

I picked this book because of the publishers and the fact that it was a reprint. I am still in the process of updating my woefully inadequate relationship with older books by non-Christie authors. I have made a significant dent in the past couple of years if I do say so myself. This particular book was very enlightening for a very specific purpose. That is the concept of physical photographic archives. I kept imagining the minions(here, the characters of the story) running around behind the scenes in the google image code, finding out our required information.

The entire story is based in a National Press Archives, primarily focused on the image archives. One of the archive assistant's life has been disturbed by increasingly troublesome pranks. Toby Lorn comes to his friends the well-known detective duo, the Heldars' home posing the problem to them. They begin their investigation methodically, and the story continues in the same format. There is a suggestion made and then the evidence to either back the theory or to remove it from contention is gathered and discussed. There is the unfortunate casualty that changes the tone of the investigation some way into the story. Unfortunately for me, I guessed the culprit halfway into the story and kept finding the hints and felt like giving Sally and Jhonny a great shaking to make them see the glaringly obvious fact they were not even considering!! Surprisingly, however, despite that setback, I liked the simplicity of the narrative and the way the resolution of the story was dealt with. The other thing of note here(to me) is the quaint way certain 'inappropriate' behaviour was handled here, the merest hint of it and the narration veers away from details, one such example-the actual contents of the poison pen letters that the victim was being hounded with.

I recommend this to others like me who are reading older reprints of lesser-known authors. I would definitely pick up more by the author, preferably older stories, to get more of a background of Sally and Jhonny Heldar.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is solely based on my reading experience and my sudden fascination with the idea of manual archiving.

It’s good to see so many forgotten authors of crime fiction being brought back into print by various publishers recently. Henrietta Hamilton is another one I had never heard of until I came across Answer in the Negative, originally published in 1959 and now available as part of Agora Book’s Uncrowned Queens of Crime series.

Set in the world of 1950s journalism, the novel follows husband and wife detective team Johnny and Sally Heldar, who are called in by their friend, Toby Lorn, to investigate a case of poison pen letters and practical jokes. Toby runs a newspaper cuttings agency in London’s Fleet Street, providing archived photographs to writers and publishers, and it is one of his assistants, Frank Morningside, who is the target of the nasty letters. Johnny and Sally quickly discover that there is no shortage of suspects as Morningside is disliked by so many of the other archive workers, but before they have time to identify the culprit, Morningside is found dead in the doorway of his office, having been hit on the head by a box of heavy glass negatives. Suddenly the Heldars find themselves investigating a murder case, but can they stop the murderer before he or she kills again?

Answer in the Negative is a short book and kept me entertained for a day or two, but it’s not one of the better ‘forgotten crime novels’ I’ve been reading lately. It got off to a promising start, but quickly became bogged down with repetitive discussions of alibis and lists of who was where at what time. I know other readers enjoy that sort of mystery more than I do, so it’s really just a matter of personal taste. The characterisation didn’t seem very strong either, which is a problem in a book where so many characters are introduced in a short space of time. Johnny and Sally themselves are likeable enough but they are no Tommy and Tuppence and I found the dialogue between them quite wooden. Their partnership is not a very equal one and it’s quite clear that Johnny is regarded as the detective and Sally as just his helper, but I was pleased to see that she does occasionally go off and have adventures of her own – even if Johnny isn’t very happy about it!

I did find the setting interesting and enjoyed the little insights we are given into 1950s life; it was particularly fascinating to see what was involved in archiving and the use of photographs in books and newspapers in an era before computers and digital images made everything available at our fingertips. For some reason, though, the constant references to ‘pix’ and ‘negs’ really irritated me! I know it’s realistic that the characters would have used that terminology for pictures and negatives, but it was so grating. Again, not something that will bother everyone, of course.

I don’t think Henrietta Hamilton is an author I would want to read again, but other reviews of this book are more positive than mine so I hope Agora will continue to publish her other titles for those who are enjoying them.

I had never heard of Henrietta Hamilton before I was invited to review Answer In The Negative by the delightful people at Agora Books,but now I have read it I hope they plan to republish the rest of her back catalogue, small though it is.
Set in the 1950’s in a newspaper archive, it is a very nicely paced murder mystery with enough interest to keep you reading.
The setting made for a fascinating insight into the sort of archives that were common before the days of digital, and reminded me how much I enjoyed Stephen Poliakoff’s Shooting The Past, set in a picture archive.

I liked Sally and Johnny Heldar, Hamilton’s married couple amateur detectives, from the first chapter of this mystery and became more fond of them as the book wore on. They were respectful of the Police and the Police of them, and their investigations ran in parallel. We also got some peeks into their family life with Nanny upstairs caring for the children whilst they went under cover at the archive, with case discussions over the washing up.
I’m not too sure quite how many 50’s husbands would share the cooking and washing up as Johnny does but then how many were amateur detectives in their spare time from the family bookshop?!
The mystery was well put together being a case of poison pen that turns into murder, with a good amount of suspects and some red herrings along the way.

If you like gritty, fast paced realism then this isn’t for you, but if you enjoy Agatha Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence books you’ll love it

Re-release of a Golden Age mystery featuring amateur sleuth husband and wife team Sally and Johnny Haldar. A poison pen persecution that the couple is investigating for a friend turns deadly - can they find the murderer among the rather small pool of suspects? I found it unusual that there was very little interaction with the official detective on the case. Well-clued enough for me to figure out the culprit and full of interesting characters and an engaging story. Recommended.

This is a new author to me, brought back into print by Agora Books. It seems as though Hamilton was not a prolific mystery author, as Agora list her other titles as: The Two Hundred Ghost (1956), Death at One Blow (1957) and A Night to Die (1959). Her tales feature ‘crime-solving husband and wife duo, Sally and Johnny Heldar.’ Jamie Sturgeon was also able to provide me with further information on this writer and the Hamilton name was a pseudonym for Hester Denne Shepherd. According to Jamie she was born in 1920 in Dundee and went to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she studied modern languages. In War World Two she served in the wrens and after the war she worked in a London bookshop for a while. She died in 1995.

Hamilton’s time working in a bookshop makes its way into her stories, as her Johnny Heldar is an antiquarian bookseller, (with Commando experience), who lives with Sally and his three children, (plus a nanny), in Bloomsbury. One evening the couple are visited by Toby Lorn. He suffers from the effects of polio and Johnny was able to support in his time of need, when as a teenager he lost his father and brother, (the latter due to the war). He now works in the National Press Archive, which has been recently established. Toby wants Johnny to help him with a poison pen writer who seems to be targeting a colleague called Frank Morningside. The rude rhymes and pranks began small and were in juvenile taste, but the later epistles and poltergeist activity have become more destructive and unpalatable. Two days into the job and already Johnny has identified that more than one person has been involved in this literary attack and he decides to have a conference with Frank and two others in the know at Frank’s office on Wednesday evening. But you will probably have already guessed that by the time they arrive Frank is dead, the victim of a booby trap involving a heavy box of glass negatives…

Overall Thoughts

Although this is the second to last novel from Hamilton, the reader quickly finds their feet with her series characters. Interestingly in this story we get a reference to a dead body which was found in Johnny’s shop. Perhaps that is when the pair got involved in amateur detection? We are given an interesting array of suspects to consider in this mystery: a love rival, a fastidious spinster, a young reprobate, an ex-fiancée. The disappearance of certain files at the archives also adds to the case, as does the growing anxiety that someone close to the Heldars might be involved. Johnny and Sally work their way through the suspects methodically, providing the reader with plenty of data in alibis, criminal timetables and more. Consequently, I was quite taken back that Hamilton managed a very neat surprise at the denouement, which works very effectively and does not come across as far fetched or out of the blue. This is indeed a rarity.

Despite being told that Johnny and Sally are a crime sleuthing couple, I think it is advisable that readers go in with a slightly altered expectation. Namely that Johnny is the investigator and Sally is his able assistant. Whilst they equally divide surveillance work, Johnny has very firm lines dividing what Sally can and can’t do in an investigation. The narrative at one point says that, ‘Johnny seldom gave her orders, but when he did, she had no choice. If she disobeyed him, she would be left out of it next time.’ Moreover, he is far from pleased when Sally decides to tail a suspect off her own bat and ultimately this is an action she feels she needs to apologise for. In the main she is more of an encourager for Johnny, as well as a sounding board for his ideas, also taking part in some of his re-enactment experiments at home. However, it was a relief to see Sally adopt the principle of being honest with the police, believing that she ‘had got to freely’ communicate with them in order for the guilty to be found.

So all in all this was a pleasant introduction to the work of Henrietta Hamilton and I am interested to read more by her. Thankfully it seems Agora will be reprinting more by this writer as my copy includes a snippet from another title: Death at One Blow.

I would say more like 3.5 stars, but only because I pegged the killer very early on. I was also puzzled as to why the distribution of cigarettes was featured in every social situation. I realize that smoking was more common and acceptable, just found the repetitive mentions a little odd. The only other criticism I have is the mention of Johnny’s commando training several times, even though he was never in any situation where he used it. Show, don’t tell, or least tell once and let it lie.

For the positive, I really enjoyed reading it despite knowing who because I didn’t know why. I also found the characters to be quite likable. There are apparently a few books in the series before this one, but not having read them did not hamper any understanding or enjoyment of this one. I would gladly read the others if they became available.

Thank you to NetGalley and Agora Books for providing a copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review.