AN ENGLISH MURDER [Paperback]

CYRIL HARE (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HARPER & ROW (1978)
• ASIN: B001MZBJLG
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Superb English Mystery by Cyril Hare - Engaging, Intelligent Plot, October 15, 2006

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An English Murder (Paperback)

An English Mystery (1951) is one of those remarkably good English mysteries that remains as fascinating and enjoyable today as it was decades ago. Inexplicably, the author Cyril Hare (pseudonym for A. A. Gordon Clark, a distinguished English judge) is not well-known, and yet his stories are uniformly excellent. Fortunately, many of his mysteries have been reissued by Dover, Harper-Perennial, and most recently by House of Stratus.

An English Mystery offers everything that might be expected in an English mystery. Relatives and guests gathered together for the Christmas holidays find themselves snowbound in a remote country manor. Their host is an aged peer, still aristocratic, although his family has suffered gradual decline, even impoverishment. And, of course, there is the faithful butler.

In Cyril Hare's hands, these traditional elements are melded into an exceptionally good story, notable for its fascinating characterizations, it decidedly intelligent plot, and for its surprising, and satisfying, deductive solution.

An English Mystery makes a great introduction to the literate, intelligent, and yet completely enjoyable stories by Cyril Hare. I also highly recommend three other mysteries by Cyril Hare: Untimely Death, The Wind Blows Death, and Suicide Excepted.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only in England..., June 6, 2011

By 

Colonel Zagbar - See all my reviews

This review is from: An English Murder (Paperback)

This 1951 novel is easily the best I've read by Cyril Hare. It begins in a seemingly traditional setting, as the aging, feeble Lord Warbeck invites several guests to his country estate for Christmas. Among them is the peer's neo-fascist son, who does not endear himself to the other guests (including two people connected with England's ultra-liberal government and a Jewish historian doing research on the estate's past). The son is poisoned during a champagne toast at midnight on Christmas, and a raging blizzard has cut off the house's inhabitants from the rest of the world...

The mystery in this novel is especially good--despite a relatively small amount of suspects, I was completely surprised by the murderer's identity, but this was well foreshadowed throughout the story, as was the motive. Hare also provides some heavy satire of English life in the early fifties (notably the "socialist" politician who still clings to antequated British customs). The detective is the Czech refugee Dr. Bottwink, who provides ironic commentary on English cultural life throughout the book. And the title is quite accurate, by the way--this really is a crime which could occur only in England, as the motive for the murder involves a particular legal point which is unique to that country (the author was a lawyer who often included this sort of thing in his stories).

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A SATISFYING ENGLISH MYSTERY, July 31, 2009

By 

mari (CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An English Murder (Paperback)

I purchased this book in a used book store because it looked like it might be a good mystery and I have been reading a lot of mystery writers of the 30s and 40s and earlier. The previous review pretty much says it all without giving away the mystery. I am in the process of reading all of his books. TENANT FOR DEATH is a good mystery with a somewhat surprising twist and DEATH IS NO SPORTSMAN is interesting also for a picture of the British "system" of stream fishing rights and of fly fishing.