The Belting Inheritance
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder
'Cleverly told ... brilliant character work and plotting up to the usual Symons standard.' —Observer
'An intriguing puzzle centered on identity...' —Publishers Weekly
Lady Wainwright presides over the gothic gloom at Belting, in mourning for her two sons lost in the Second World War. Long afterwards a stranger arrives at Belting, claiming to be the missing David Wainwright—who was not killed after all, but held captive for years in a Russian prison camp. With Lady Wainwright's health fading, her inheritance is at stake, and the family is torn apart by doubts over its mysterious long-lost son. Belting is shadowed by suspicion and intrigue—and then the first body is found.
This atmospheric novel of family secrets, first published in 1964, is by a winner of the CWA Diamond Dagger.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An intriguing puzzle centered on identity drives this entry in the British Library Crime Classics series, first published in 1965, from MWA Grand Master Symons (1912 1994). Within five weeks in 1944, Lady Wainwright learns that two of her four sons, Hugh and David, are missing in action and presumed dead. Some years after WWII, Oxford student Christopher Barrington, the nephew of Lady Wainwright, returns to Belting, the family home, after learning that she's dying of cancer. Lady Wainwright reveals that she has just received a letter purporting to be from David. The writer explains that he escaped his fighter plane's crash with a minor injury, only to end up in a Russian labor camp for seven or eight years. David's mother naturally considers the missive a miracle, but her surviving sons are skeptical. The claimant's arrival at Belting is followed by a murder, whose solution is tied to the question of whether David is an imposter. Symons throws in some clever twists, though the book is less memorable than similarly themed mysteries such as Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar.
