Near St. Brynneys in the Welsh border country, isolated by heavy snow and flooding from the thaw, a calamity has occurred. Old Dr. Robinson, a known ‘menace on the roads’, has met his end in a collision with a jeep on a hazardous junction. But when the police arrive at the scene, a burning question hints at something murkier than mere accident: why was there a second body—a man not recognised by any locals—in the back of Robinson’s car?
As the local inspectors dive into the muddy waters of this strange crime, Chief Inspector Julian Rivers and Inspector Lancing are summoned from Scotland Yard to the windswept wilds, where danger and deceit lie in wait.
Puzzling and atmospheric, this exceedingly rare mystery from one of the masters of crime fiction’s Golden Age returns to print for the first time since its publication in 1954.
CW – as with many older books, there is period language and attitudes, extreme fatphobia
Review
I’d recently read another book, “The Theft of the Iron Dogs,” by Carnac published under another of her pseudonyms and enjoyed it for what it was. I took a gamble on this one and though much is the same, this one was just too slow and repetitive for my taste.
On a dark, rainy night Old Doctor Robinson is out driving when everyone knows he really shouldn’t be. There’s a terrible crash heard by nearby neighbors who swing into action to help, as country people do. The doctor is dead, the other driver is injured and … there’s another dead body in the doctor’s car. When the local DCI is injured, an inspector from the Met and his Cockney DI are sent out to take up the case. A long (reading time), slow, repetitive time later, it’s finally solved.
A lot of this book focuses on the lives of the many characters in it. These are hard-working people who are used to making-do and doing a lot by themselves. Most are salt-of-the-Earth but a few are bad’uns. As the chief inspector tells the Cockney DI, one of them is a good person but is judgy. By descriptions and actions, certain characters are made to be either sympathetic to the reader or painted as the likely suspects. But all is not as clear cut as it might seem.
Rivers and Lancey (the DCI and DI) are methodical, observant, and good at what they do but Lord, do we get to hear of suspicions, scenarios, and likely motives wheeled out, looked over, and rethought until I had a headache. The pace is as slow as molasses.
A lot of time is spent laying out the local roadways and the various farms. Unlike “Iron Dogs” though, I never could quite get it clear in my head and after a while, one more mention of the twisty road just about drove me batty. Yet I plowed on because at this point finding out who did it had become a masochistic quest. Did I really care who did it? By the end, no, but I felt I had earned discovering who it was.
All is Revealed by pages of exposition as the two police detectives tell another character what happened after they tell him why they thought this and eliminated another character because of that. Then something that was actually fairly important is discussed as if it was the first thing the policemen realized but yeah, we heard nothing about it. Still, looking back, I should have thought about it, too. But what really got me is when the DCI admits that he still wasn’t quite sure until he shone his torch in the person’s face. Huh. This one was an exercise in endurance. C-
~Jayne
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Jayne
Another long time reader who read romance novels in her teens, then took a long break before started back again about 25 years ago. She enjoys historical romance/fiction best, likes contemporaries, action- adventure and mysteries, will read suspense if there’s no TSTL characters and is currently reading more fantasy and SciFi.
