Fallen into the Pit
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In this "hypnotically good" debut, a Nazi murdered in an English village sets Sergeant Felse and his son on an investigation few want solved (Boston Sunday Globe).
Edgar Award and CWA Diamond Dagger Award–Winning Author
It is 1952, and the shadow of World War II still lies over the green fields of the small village of Comerford on the Welsh borders. When ex-prisoner of war Helmut Schauffler is murdered, local policeman Sergeant George Felse has his work cut out: Schauffler was Nazi to the core and the majority of the villagers had good reason to despise him.
Sergeant Felse's fourteen-year-old son, Dominic—who found Schauffler's body in a shallow brook—is fascinated by the case. Much to his father's disapproval, he resolves to find the murderer—a decision that places his own life in great danger. . . .
Fallen Into the Pit is the first book in the Felse Investigations, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1951, but just now making its first American appearance, this mystery launched Peters's Inspector Felse series. Set in Britain just after WW II, the main sleuth here is not actually George Felse but his 13-year-old son Dominic. He and his best friend, Pussy Hart, are playing when Dom finds the body of Helmut Schauffler, an ex-P.O.W. who had stayed on after the war in the Comerford area. An autopsy indicates that Schauffler's skull was fractured by blows that were ``precise, neat and of murderous intention.'' Helmut, a loathsome blend of cruelty, cowardice and anti-Semitism, is hardly mourned, but his death so rends the village's social fabric that solving the case is imperative. In his first murder investigation, George has difficulty viewing his neighbors as suspects, although the area does have its share of demobilized veterans, i.e., trained killers. Even more distressing to George and his wife Bunty is the proprietary--and potentially fatal--interest that Dom takes in the case. By giving the youth a finely balanced blend of doggedness, good luck, ingenuity and foolhardiness, Peters sets out a very effective mystery while expressing, through the gradual unfolding of the character of Helmut,her own serious skepticism that aperson--or a country--can change his--or its--spots. In 1991, Mysterious reissued Flight of the Witch , a Felse mystery written in 1964.
