The Glass Cage

John Ireland is a carnival barker starting out with a show on his own. It's a "starving man" act, in which Eric Pohlman is put on exhibition; for seventy days, Ireland tells the crowds gathered in front of the big tent, he will not eat. One shilling for adults to see him, six pence for children. It all seems rather foolish and tawdry, but Ireland has a lot of friends, and they get together to throw a party as he moves up in the world. Everyone is having a great time.... until a girl upstairs is murdered. Inspector Liam Redmond asks Ireland to keep his ears open.... but Ireland thinks he knows who did it.

It's an intriguing venue for a murder mystery, and the set-up reminds me of some of Fredric Brown's murder mysteries from the 1950s. However, there's no sense of a separate society among the carney people and the public; the latter may be suckers, but society is viewed as a continuum; Ireland is married to Honor Blackman, and they have a son. Everyone lives in flats, and Redmond thinks it's all perfectly ordinary. It's what you get when you remove the technique from film noir, and place it in an ordinary world: rather disappointing.