Nigel Strageways (our series detective) and his partner Clare Massinger have just moved to Greenwich. They're invited over to meet their new neighbours the Loudrons. Dr. Piers' wife has passed, but there are also his adult children, three sons (one adopted) and a daughter.
Dr. Piers disappears on a foggy night. The Loudron children approach Strangeways for advice. A week later his body is found floating in the Thames. Both wrists have been slashed.
Suicide? But the wrists are slashed in such a way that suicide is unlikely, and if it was suicide how did the body get into the river? (As the cover suggests, a slashed-wrist suicide often takes place in the bath.) And just in case you were inclined to the suicide theory, Dr. Piers' daughter-in-law is strangled halfway through the book.
All four of the children have plausible motives to murder their father as does as the daughter's boyfriend, whom Dr. Piers didn't approve of. Strangeways hints he knows who did it pretty early (and I kind of did, too) but Blake does a pretty successful job of keeping us on our toes. I've had mixed results with the Strangeways series, but I thought this one a pretty good entry.
It was fun as a 1961 book because it makes good use of the old East End of London, which, of course is all changed now:
"When he [Strangeways] got home, Clare kissed him, 'My goodness you've been drinking port.''Yes, with an old tart in the Isle of Dogs."
Nicholas Blake is a pen name for the poet Cecil Day-Lewis, probably better known now as the father of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt
Silver Age (1961). Dead body.
Not sure why I have never read this author, particularly because my sister's name is Clare so we were always aware of books/characters that spelled it without the i. I also didn't know his real identity. I will keep my eyes open - I haven't been to a really good library book sale for some time.
ReplyDeleteI read them catch as catch can when I find one at a library sale. They can be fun.
DeleteI didn't know Cecil Day-Lewis wrote mysteries. Fun!
ReplyDeleteI find his mysteries a bit uneven but they can be fun.
DeleteYour 1961 was a real crime spree! hee hee
ReplyDeleteJust my larcenous soul showing through... ;-)
DeleteBlake’s realism is unrelieved by any promise of comfort. There is no coziness here, only the slow tightening of dread as the revelation unfolds with an appalling credibility. 1961 was only about 15 years after the end of the war, its casualties continued to surface long after the guns fell silent
ReplyDeleteYou definitely still feel the war in this one, and not just in the need for urban renewal in East London. He makes great use of the atmosphere, definitely Dickensian.
DeleteBut I was once again annoyed by Day-Lewis complete lack of understanding about drugs.