An English Murder

The novel unfolds at Warbeck Hall, a snowbound English country estate where a small group of guests gathers for Christmas. Among them are a dying aristocrat, a rising Labour politician, an ambitious young historian, and the victim’s embittered heir. When murder strikes, suspicion and tensions rise, and it falls to Dr. Bottwink—a Jewish refugee scholar, outsider, and unlikely detective—to unravel the truth.

Hare combines the cozy trappings of the genre—an isolated manor, a storm that cuts off escape, a tightly-knit cast—with deeper themes of class conflict, antisemitism, and the fading power of the British aristocracy. The result is both a clever whodunit and a thoughtful portrait of a changing England.