An Inspector Mallett mystery - Inspector Mallett's stay at the country house hotel of Pendlebury Old Hall has been a disappointment. Room, food and service have been a letdown and he eagerly anticipates the end of his holiday. His last trial is to sit and listen as the hotel boor, whose family once owned the house, sits down at his table. The next day the man is dead and Mallett unwittingly finds himself investigating the suspicious 'suicide'.
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'Adroit in its manipulation...and distinguished by a plot-twister which I'll wager Christie wishes she'd thought of.' -- New York Times
About the Author
Cyril Hare was the pseudonym of Judge Gordon Clark. Born at Mickleham near Dorking in 1900, he was educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. At the bar his practice was largely in the criminal courts. During the Second World War he was on the staff of the Director of Public Prosecutions; but later, as a County Court judge, his work concerned civil disputes only - and his sole connection with crime was through his fiction. He turned to writing detective stories at the age of thirty-six and some of his first short stories were published in Punch. Hare went on to write a series of detective novels. He died in 1958.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good plot, Surprise Ending, Four Stars,
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This review is from: Suicide Excepted (Paperback)
The British Imperial Insurance Company repudiated liability for payment for the death of Mr. Leonard Dickinson as his policy had been in effect only eight months. Clause 4a clearly specified that death by suicide was excepted from coverage during the first year of the policy. Mr. Dickinson's wife, his son Stephen, and daughter Anne all considered suicide highly unlikely. The police investigation eliminated the possibility of accident. Stephen, Anne, and her fiance, Martin Johnson, undertake a private investigation to uncover evidence of murder.
The plot, setting, and characters in Suicide Excepted are well developed. Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard, one of Cyril Hare's popular, recurring characters, plays a key role at various points, but does not dominate this story. The death occurs in a locked room at Pendlebury Old Hall, a manor house converted to a bed and breakfast hotel. By happenchance, Inspector Mallett was a guest at Pendlebury that weekend. Is it really murder? Who might be the suspects? What might be the motivation? The amateur investigations by the younger members of the Dickinson family more often than not lead to dead ends, but we do learn enough about the suspects to develop credible theories. The ending is likely to be a surprise. Cyril Hare is a pseudonym of judge Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark. Having just read Suicide Excepted for a second time (October, 2006), I easily rate it as 4 stars, possibly higher. (For some unexplicable reason I originally rated this story a few years ago as only three stars.) Suicide Excepted was originally published in Great Britain in 1939. Macmillan published an American edition in 1954.
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