Just a Matter of Time

Just a Matter of Time by James Hadley Chase is a volume I serendipitously unearthed at a ramshackle flea stall near Churchgate station, parted from its previous owner for the princely sum of twenty rupees. Being a confirmed aficionado of Chase’s oeuvre, I knew instinctively that my meagre investment would yield rich narrative dividends—and I was not disappointed.

At a svelte 190 pages, the novel conforms to the quintessential Chasean template: taut, brisk, and unrelenting in pace. Chase, the consummate raconteur of the seamy underside of society, once again demonstrates why he remains unparalleled in his métier. His fictional universe is habitually populated by the morally bankrupt and the socially disreputable, embroiled in crime, deceit, blackmail, carnality, and intrigue—and this work is no exception.

At the novel’s heart is Mrs. Morley Johnson, an almost-blind widow whose considerable wealth is matched only by her vulnerability. Possessing vast reserves of money, jewels, paintings, and investments, she has but one presumptive heir—a feckless nephew whom she contemptuously disinherits, consigning the lion’s share of her estate to charitable causes and a portion to her astute investment banker. Into this fraught milieu enter an assortment of dubious characters: a chauffeur with ambiguous loyalties, a nurse whose voluptuous charms belie ulterior motives, and a master forger capable of alchemising deception into profit.

The narrative pirouettes breathlessly from stratagem to stratagem—some dazzlingly successful, others fatally flawed—hurtling inexorably towards a denouement that is as enthralling as it is unforeseen.

For devotees of Chase, recommendation is superfluous; they will, like myself—already fifteen novels into his prodigious canon—seize upon this with relish. On my part, I accord it an unreserved 5/5, a scintillating exemplar of why Chase endures as the bard of the noir underworld. Goodreads 5/5

Picture taken from the internet not with an intention to violation of copyright.