Hardcastle's Quandary
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- €9.49
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- €9.49
Publisher Description
A letter from a vicar in Norfolk leads DDI Hardcastle and DS Marriott on the road to a shocking and macabre discovery . . .
One rainy morning in March 1927, Divisional Detective Inspector Ernest Hardcastle of the Metropolitan Police is summoned to the office of the Chief Constable CID at New Scotland Yard. Frederick Wensley has received a letter from a Reverend Percy Stoner in Norfolk, convinced that his nephew, Captain Guy Stoner, has been murdered. He recently received a letter, supposedly from Guy, claiming that there had been a fire at his farm in Ditton, Surrey, and asking for money.
Assigned the case, Hardcastle and Detective Sergeant Charles Marriott travel to Ditton, where they make a shocking discovery, and are soon drawn into a shady world of deception, fraud, ex-army officers and West End nightclubs, navigating a labyrinth of twists and turns in their determination to see justice served.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1927, Ison's entertaining 15th mystery featuring Det. Insp. Ernest Hardcastle (after 2017's Hardcastle's Runaway) takes Hardcastle, the head of the CID for the Whitehall Division of the Metropolitan Police, along with his long-suffering sidekick, Det. Sgt. Charles Marriott, and newly promoted Det. Sgt. Henry Catto, from London to Norfolk. There they interview the Rev. Percy Stoner, the vicar of Southfork, who's worried that his nephew, Guy Stoner, a WWI veteran who's been struggling to run a farm and has gone missing, has been murdered. The subsequent investigation uncovers, among other surprises, a severed head in a biscuit tin. Fortunately, the case veers back to London, a venue Hardcastle much prefers. Catto is assigned the task of visiting the capital's nightclubs in an attempt to track down a beautiful young dancer, while Hardcastle and Marriott look into an interconnected series of crimes that all revolve around the missing Guy. The book's main strength is Hardcastle, an arrogant, tetchy, curmudgeonly, and yet admirable character. Readers will hope he has a long career.
