Everyone in this book is awful, pathetic, or both. Not terribly so: just ordinarily awful, mundanely pathetic. And I suppose not quite everyone. There's a barrister whose only character flaw is a measure of egotism, and a likeable prostitute. But every other character, minor or major, is composed in a rebarbative key. It's quite an achievement to make even the brief walk-on parts believably unpleasant.

The narrative centres on John Wilkins, a minor-league fantasist in denial about his drinking problem. His fantasies and his drinking owe much to his grasping, social-climbing wife, May, and his overbearing, meddling mother. Their intertwined lives induce an atmosphere of intense entrapment. The reader is given to wonder how many similar miserable situations have been avoided by the liberalisation of the divorce laws and the loosening of stifling middle-class social norms since the 1950s. If John and May could just have separated painlessly, and acceptably to all, none of the plot happens.

Since they can't separate, the plot happens. John's fantasies lead him into a tangle of lies and a delusional semi-affair with a young woman; his lies, along with his drinking and concomitant blackouts, contribute to the credibility of the murder case against him when she's found dead. The book has two parts. The first is a long pre-trial interview between John and a psychiatrist. He was irrationally involved with her. He may have killed her. He doesn't know. He can't remember. The second is the trial itself. An epilogue seems intended to cement the ambiguity surrounding the murder case, but rests on a coincidence so far-fetched that the ambiguity instead collapses. The book might have been better without it.

The Colour of Murder was reissued as a British Library Crime Classic in 2018, so it wasn't just a prize-winner in 1957; it is esteemed today. Both accolades deserve inquiry.

Why did it win a prize in 1957? Perhaps because of the forensic focus on the states of mind of the central suspect. The introduction to the BL edition highlights this as a novelty at the time, and certainly in comparison to novels from the "Golden Age" of crime novels, there is considerable depth, nuance, and plausibility to the psychological characterisation. This is mostly in the first part of the book. The trial part is nicely done, and I might have appreciated it more had I not recently read Grierson's similar, better effort. The introduction claims that Symons uses this part to "explore the nature of justice", but I can't say I found much exploration worth considering.

Symons' reputation in the world of crime fiction now rests mostly on his history of the genre, Bloody Murder, rather than on his own novels. So why reissue this one (and one other, The Belting Inheritance)? While it certainly has merits as a novel, it's also fascinating as a social document of the 1950s. The introduction notes this, but in relation to concrete facts about the prevalence of "television parties" and racism. I was more struck by what the book tells about the claustrophobic, small-minded, straitened nature of lower-middle-class 1950s life: among other elements, how painfully important it was to cleanse oneself from any taint of unsuitable social origins or associations, and how temptingly easy it was to re-associate oneself to disastrous effect. If you ever want to read a novel that makes you both aware and glad that the not-too-distant past really is the past, this is one to consider.

Several of these early winners are out of print. My copy of "The Second Man" is a yellowed, liver-spotted hardback. It smells of dusty libraries and dingy storerooms. It's delicious.

The book itself is less redolent of its times than you might fear from a synopsis, though it still has a distinct 1950s air. The central character is Marion Kerrison, a barrister newly arrived in an unnamed northern town that is clearly Sheffield and has clearly never seen a woman wearing a barrister's wig before. You might expect this setup to lead inevitably to her game conquest of the man's world, allowing the author displaying their impeccable egalitarian credentials—after all, would you premise your novel so if you were going to do your heroine down? And expecting this, you might be wary, because often what looked impeccably egalitarian in the 1950s is apt to seem rather cringeworthy today.

But Grierson doesn't actually seem that interested in his clash-of-genders premise, nor in proving that he's on the right side. The novel is narrated in the first person by a chambers colleague of Kerrison. This is a neat distancing trick that proofs against posterity; we don't quite know whether the condescending stuff about women's emotional nature and so on is due to the author or the character. But it also distances the narrator from the protagonist. Kerrison very sensibly avoids the boy's clubs of the lawyers' mess and such, and so is often absent as the narrator drinks loyal toasts, passes port, and sinks snooker balls. The narrator positions himself between his overtly reactionary colleagues and those who fall over themselves to offer patronising support. He doesn't seem to care too much; nor does the author.

So what does the author care about? Not the central plot: there's some mystery, but we're effectively told whodunnit early on, and the remaining howdunnit questions aren't especially taxing. Not the quarter-hearted romance subplot, which really seems to be there due to a vague sense of novelistic necessity. Rather, and rather nicely, he cares about the practice of the law: the conduct of trials, the nuances of cross-examination, day to day life in chambers and courts.

Given that Grierson was a barrister who wrote fiction and crime novels on the side, perhaps this isn't too surprising, but it's still striking, and strikingly well done. The book is excellently paced, with a few short chapters leading up to two long ones that describe in great detail the trial at the novel's heart. After these, a few more short chapters wrap things up briskly. It's really those two central chapters where the interest of the novel lies. They are very good, written with verve, dramatic without melodrama, the obvious product of deep involvement with what's being described. They're worth reading the book for. The defendant at the trial is also a well-drawn character, perhaps better drawn than the protagonist or narrator.

Very well. A good, competent, engaging legal mystery. But why exactly did this win an award? Was competent and engaging good enough in 1956? (I suppose reading the other books shortlisted that year might provide a clue, but life's too short) Was the award jury swinging back towards the familiar certitudes of law and trial after the dalliance with ethical thinking the year before? Hard to say, but I'd more happily read further Grierson than further Graham.