Ellis Peters' Fallen Into The Pit (Not Brother Cadfael)

Ellis Peters wrote another mystery series before the Brother Cadfael ones started; it's set in contemporary England and features Inspector George Felse, often assisted by his son Dominic, his wife Bunty, and not infrequently by Dominic's current girlfriend. It's a family affair.

This is the fourth of the Felse mysteries I've read and it's the first in the series, from 1951.

The war hasn't been over long when this takes place, and a German P.O.W. named Helmut Schauffler, is still in England, working on farms and waiting to be repatriated. Helmut insists he was just an innocent soldier, and all that Nazi stuff never meant anything to him, but we quickly learn that's not true, and he's slyly hiding his real white supremacist/anti-Semitic feelings. Well, everybody in the town knows, too, and when he's discovered murdered, there are plenty of suspects. High on the list is Chad Wedderburn, now the Latin master, but recently a ruthless Army commando.

It's Dominic and his not-quite girlfriend Pussy (they're both thirteen in this one) who stumble on the body, and from that moment Dominic thinks of it as his murder, even though his father tells him quite forcefully to stay away. A second murder complicates things--Dominic is the last person to see the victim alive except for the murderer--and it ends with a trap sprung on the perpetrator and some nice suspense.

I started reading the Felse mysteries when I was nearly out of Cadfaels, and they are a pretty good substitute. They're perhaps not quite as charming as her better-known series, but still a lot of fun. You will know, if you're at all a reader of Peters, that since Chad Wedderburn is in love with Io the barmaid, and she loves him back, there is no way Wedderburn will turn out to be the murderer.

That said, this is the first of the series. Peters was no tyro when she wrote this, but she would get better. This would be stronger if it were fifty pages shorter, and the identity of the murderer was signalled much earlier than it needed to be. Wikipedia tells me that it was ten years until the next Felse came out, and her style had changed substantially between the two, and I think, for the better. No need to read them in order.

Another book I read from Ellis Peters' Felse mysteries.

An entry for the Gold card in the My Readers' Block vintage mystery challenge:
Where. Set in a small village.

Ellis Peters' Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart

Black Is The Colour Of My True Love's Heart (1967) is an Ellis Peters' mystery from her other series. What? There's something other than Brother Cadfael? It was only after I finished the Cadfael stories that I began looking around.

The other series (there are also some one-offs, plus a historical novel or three) is based on Detective Inspector George Felse, with his wife Bunty, his son Dominic, and in this one, his son's girlfriend Tossa, all contributing to the solution. This is out of the middle of the series and is the third I've read. They're set in the present; Black is set (as you might guess from the title) at a folk music festival in the sixties. Dominic and Tossa are in attendance, but when one of the performers disappears and some bloodstains are found by the riverside, Dominic decides his father should be called in, despite any clear evidence of a crime. Well, of course, he was right when he did it. They find the body.

Some of the late Cadfaels have almost no mystery; the charm (which I still find considerable) is to see how Brother Cadfael plays matchmaker and to pick up a bit more of his complex backstory and maybe learn a little history. Black has a bit more mystery going. Lucien Galt is a folk singer, charming but very taken with himself, and we are shown a number of people with potential motives for his murder in the early pages: an ex-lover, a married woman who appears to be his current lover, her jealous husband who is also the music retreat promoter, a besotted teenage girl, and an irritating radio personality.

In presenting the setup, there's also some mild satire on the folk scene of the sixties. That was the weakest part of the story. I don't think Peters is a natural satirist, and I wasn't entirely convinced by the characters. Also all the Felses are just a little too sweetly understanding. Peters can't really bear to write a proper villain or even somebody a bit irritable. But the mystery plot I thought was quite strong, and when that got going, the story got much better. Several twists I didn't expect.

The story is also, it seems, a retelling of a traditional folk ballad, not one I'd ever heard: Gil Morice (Child ballad number 83). So if you know that ballad you'll know the motivation for the crime, though not the actual outcome, because there's also a twist on that story. But Peters does manage the pathos of an old murder ballad.

And Peters does put together one pair of potential lovers in the end.

Vintage Mystery Challenge. Silver. When. During a special event (folk music festival).