Except For One Thing

3.6/5 ( ratings)

Just how possible is the perfect crime? And if committed, who would know?

Richard Harvey, or “Ricky” to those close to him, is engaged to Valerie Hadfield, a wealthy actress with whom he fell in love with.

However, as time has gone on during their engagement, he’s realised she’s not the women he thought she was.

Despite his wishes for the engagement to be brought to an end, the vicious and vindictive Valerie threatens to cause a scandal, ruining his standing as a reputable chemist.

More recently, Richard finds the affections of Joyce Prescott, a smart and friendly woman, and the two wish to marry.

Frustrated with his situation, Richard muses over ways in which he can be rid of Valerie, freeing the way for his marriage to Joyce.

It is at this point that he bumps into Chief Inspector Garth of Scotland Yard, a friend with whom he’s worked with in the past on cases that require his expert scientific abilities.

With other members of the police force, the group soon get to discussing the nature of murder cases and modern forensic techniques. Garth believes that the advances in science make it virtually impossible for someone to commit the “perfect crime.”

This gets Richard thinking about his options…

With all of his experience working alongside the police force, particularly in forensics, he has all the knowledge he needs.

All seems to be going to plan, he has thought of everything; covered his tracks in every way he could conceive.

However, his own ego soon begins to betray him…

He hasn’t in fact been quite as thorough as he had first thought and his plans soon begins unstuck as the tenacious Inspector Garth quickly begins to see the cracks in Richard’s story…

Except for One Thing is a thrilling work of crime fiction from one of the genre’s greats.

Praise for John Russell Fearn

“I have yet to read a book employing the same murder method. It is unusual and imaginative ideas like this that make [Fearn’s] books worth tracking down and reading.” – Pretty Sinister

“… A pioneer of science fiction […] he was one of the Greats of the earlier ages, and his name should be there with Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Murray Leinster, and all the others whose thoughts and works formulated today’s modern science fiction.” —John Carnell, New Worlds

John Russell Fearn was an extremely prolific and popular British writer, who began in the American pulps, then almost single-handedly drove the post-World War II boom in British publishing with a flood of science fiction, detective stories, westerns, and adventure fiction. He was so popular that one of his pseudonyms became the editor of Vargo Staten’s Science Fiction Magazine in the 1950’s. His work is noted for its vigor and wild imagination. He has always had a substantial cult following and has been popular in translation around the world. He passed away in 1960 at the age of 52.