A British Library Crime Classics first published in 1964 that has stood the test of time, a highly enjoyable read that I recommend to any lover of mysteries

In some ways, this book is a little different to most classic crime stories. There is a murder and a cast of possible suspects. Most of the action takes place in a country house, although there is a brief trip over to France. In addition to this part of the mystery, there is also the question of a missing member of the family returning to the family and the family not being sure if he is really who he says that he is. Of course, these two elements are linked and the answer to both mysteries is solved together.
The story is told from the point of view of a young member of the house, Christopher, who is there staying with his extended family for the holidays. He had lost his parents at the age of twelve and has been cared for by his mother's aunt, who he is now living with since then. I quite liked Christopher as a narrator, he is often very conscious of his role as storyteller, but on the whole, I think that this worked.
The pace of the story is possibly a little slow when compared to modern novels, but I think in this it works. It helps to create a sense of the past and places the novel in the post-war period that it was set. I think it was actually written a decade or so later than this.
Overall, I really enjoyed this read. I had figured out some of the mystery, but there were still a few surprises at the end.
I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

As always the problem with something that is meant to be funny is that if it is not your sense of humour, you then quickly tire of the whole thing. This book felt a tiny bit like one of my uncles who would tell joke after joke that I never got, but I had to sit through anyway. So sadly a miss for me, but I think, if you do get the joke, it would be a good mystery.

I am a sucker for these idyllistic covers. When you start the book you also know that you are in a stylised setting. Its almost medieval - the autocratic lady of the manor, no domestics (due to the great War) but ruling all with a fist of iron, two sons dead in the War, two left behind and one distant nephew adopted into the family. A motley collection but you sense a great story round the corner.

All the characters are eccentric, all live far removed from everyday life in England especially our Christopher the speaker in the story as it were. Orphaned at a young age, he was brought to the Belting house then sent to school, then on to university and has "expectations" as like everyone else though definitely not a greedy boy! the two sons specially were in their own ways wanting to get the fortune that waited them on their mother's demise.

When after years the news came through that David the eldest was alive, it threw the cat amongst the pigeons. Stephen particularly felt that it was unjust! and Miles followed blindly. Our narrator was devil's advocate but when David finally appeared he tended to be with the brothers, that David was an imposter. However David answered questions put forward by two people who knew from way back, but the brothers and Christopher were unconvinced.

How Christopher finally unravelled the sad story of the impersonation follows. Christopher broke from the mould, had his adventure and found love as well.

Christopher Barrington is an orphan. His mother's great-aunt, Lady Wainwright, comes to get him and bring him to her home. She is an elderly widow with 2 sons living with her. Stephen and Miles are her surviving sons. Hugh and David were killed in the war.

Lady Wainwright will raise Christopher as a part of her family. He will become part of life at Belting.

Now, a man identifying himself as David has arrived to return to the family and claim his portion of wealth which will be his inheritance.

This book was written in the 1960's by Julian Symons. Mr Symons is a new to me author. He is witty, very good at word games and writes a decent mystery. His characters are well developed. And he made me laugh out loud more than once.

Christopher is a character who was appealing. But, at times I felt he was rather full of himself and his intellect.

Lady Wainwright is a domineering woman who gives orders and expects them to be obeyed. She does not suffer fools gladly. And she has no patience with anyone who happens to disagree with her over anything.

Uncle Stephen, his wife Clarissa and Uncle Miles live under Lady Wainwright's thumb. It is what she wants and what they accept.

When David returns from the dead, it throws everything out of kilter. The lives of everyone at Belting will change forever.

And when an old family retainer is murdered, events become even more difficult for everyone concerned.

I liked this book very much. It is written in the manner of a long ago period in time. But, the story is well done. And it is a terrific book.

I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I am voluntarily writing this review and all opinions are completely my own.

A woman who bore four sons expects to die soon. Two of the sons were declared dead in the war. The other two live. A man claiming to be her son David shows up. Is he who he states he is? The woman believes he is. The two sons do not. Will the sons be able to prove he's an impostor before she dies--or will the alleged son inherit with a changed will? It's a pleasant way to spend a few hours. I either read this book previously or one with a very similar plot because the plot seemed familiar all the way along to the ending. I received an advance copy from the publisher through NetGalley with the expectation of an honest review.

Christopher Barrington, the narrator of Julian Symons’ frequently twee mystery The Belting Inheritance, has a complicated relationship with his family. It’s not the kind of complicated relationship we usually see in fiction. Christopher has a fairly good relationship with Lady W and his uncles; it’s only when he’s older that he learns that very few people actually like the Wainwrights of Belting. He also learns, when a possible long-lost relative returns, that the Wainwrights are their own worst enemies.

Christopher begins his narrative in a way reminiscent of Tristam Shandy. It takes him a long time to get to the point. This may annoy some readers, but the opening of The Belting Inheritance sets up the quirkiness and eccentricity of the Wainwrights. Uncle Myles has the mind of a crossword puzzler. Lady Wainright and Uncle Stephen seem like stock characters from Dickens. Aunt Clarissa and her bull terriers are also from central casting. Christopher seems to be headed towards caricature himself when a man claiming to be one of his uncles, David, believed to have died after being shot down over Germany in 1944, sends a letter to Belting. The letter sets the cat among the pigeons. Lady W is over the moon, but her sons are very much not happy at the thought that their mother is being duped and that their inheritance might be even more diminished. Everyone’s problems get that much worse when the “lost uncle” turns up with a shady lawyer in tow and Christopher trips over a corpse the very next day.

After the corpse appears in the shrubbery at Belting, self-described aesthete Christopher develops “detective fever.” He starts asking his own questions alongside the police. It’s lucky for Christopher that he meets Elaine Sullivan fairly early in his investigation. Elaine is much more savvy than Christopher is, having grow up outside of the strange Belting bubble. Not only did she grow up in the real world, Elaine has some actual experience asking questions and putting the answers together from her work with a small newspaper in Folkestone. Christopher hilariously looses his head when he and Elaine follow the clues tying the mysterious, possibly faux uncle and not just one but two murders over the Channel to France. Thankfully, Elaine keeps him from drifting into a someone’s art project as the clues start to come together on a sea of pastis in Christopher’s brain.

The Belting Inheritance is another re-published mid-twentieth century mystery and, as such, bears some of the hallmarks of the genre: fiendish puzzles, plenty of surprising reveals, etc. That said, this novel is far from a masterpiece. It’s overly complicated. Christopher’s narration seems more interested in creating little character studies and obscure jokes than anything else. Readers who don’t like twee novels should probably avoid this book; it is unbearably silly at times. Readers who like lateral thinking and possess an English public school education will feel right at home with this novel, even if it does wrap up too neatly at the end.

I love these classic British mysteries. Although this set in the 1950's, it is unusual is that it has an 18 year old narrator and a character who says he's the son of the matriarch who has been mourning his death and that of his brother in WWII. It has a twisty plot with some engaging and quirky characters.

It isn’t often I laugh out loud on the first page of a book, still less when it’s a detective story, but I did just that when I began reading The Belting Inheritance by Julian Symons. It’s a slightly unusual read for me, a rerelease of a book first published in 1965, which isn’t exactly the Golden Age of detective fiction. It’s set in Kent, where the Wainwright family is much-depleted by the war, and the narrator is Christopher, a poor relation taken in by the family after the death of his parents.

As with all detective fiction I can’t say too much about the plot for fear of spoilers, but it’s based around the appearance of a man claiming to be David, one of two brothers thought to have been killed in the war. His two surviving younger brothers are disbelieving and downright hostile, but their dying mother welcomes him with open arms. And, this being detective fiction, there’s a murder.

I really loved this book. It wasn’t just the plot, which was clever but perhaps not as twisty as the modern reader looks for. It was the characters. Symons captures the idiosyncrasies of family life, and the part where I laughed was where there’s a family joke that caught my attention — and engaged me immediately. The book’s huge strength is its characterisation, not just of Christopher himself but of its whole cast of fallible individuals, some of them more likeable than others but all of them human. And as the plot goes on Christopher, a somewhat pretentious would-be writer, grows up and becomes an altogether more mature human being.

Interestingly, there’s an introductory note which reveals the author’s concerns that he hung the plot too heavily on a coincidence for it to be a good book, but I didn’t find that. Yes, there was a coincidence, but it wasn’t too crushingly incredible, and it led off on a slightly mad section of the book where everything became very different to the first half. But that didn’t affect my enjoyment in any way — rather the opposite.

The cast of characters was diverse and all were handled well. I particularly liked Christopher’s Uncle Miles, the youngest of the brothers, with his fondness for jokes (especially bad and complicated puns), his genuine care for young Christopher and his tendency to slope off to watch cricket whenever things got difficult (which, of course, they often did).

It’s not a modern detective story, but it was a thoughtful and engaging read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The story’s set up is not that unusual for a classic mystery: A man appears on Lady Wainwright’s doorstep, claiming he is her oldest son David who was declared dead in the second World War after his plane was shot down. Lady Wainwright, whose health is fading, needs not much convincing and happily accepts the man as her son. Miles and Stephen – her two other sons – are less certain that the man is really their oldest brother. Not long after he appears, a murder happens.

The only slightly unusual thing about it so far is the narrator: Christopher. He’s a distant relative who was taken in by the Wainwright’s after his parents’ death in a plane crash. So, he’s neither a policeman nor one of those amateur sleuths who keep tripping over bodies. He’s a family member but removed enough to be more level-headed about the whole affair. He has neither Lady Wainwright’s deep desire to see her favourite son alive nor the other sons’ worry about having to share their inheritance. That means he has neither reason to believe David nor to disbelieve him.

But the thing about Christopher is, that he is also an extremely annoying narrator. He’s an incredibly patronising 18 at the time of the events in the book but tells the story decades later – as an incredibly condescending old man. Inbetween him recollecting the events he deigns to grace the reader with his opinion on various literary works (like Treasure Island and The Moonstone – both are stupid because they have narrators who would never actually sit down and write down a story), tells us all about the interior decoration in his Thomas Lovell (his bedroom…don’t ask) and generally gives his opinion on everything. And, of course, since he is telling the story as a much older man, he can also give his opinion on his younger self, giving his opinion…

And then there’s the final third of the book: In it, Christopher finds something that suggests a quite definite answer to the question “Is this man really David?” But he doesn’t show it to anybody in the family. He leaves a note saying “I know what’s going on! Now I’m off to Paris” And then he is off to Paris where a string of miraculous coincidences happen and he has a revelation that solves everything while he is drunk on pastis and watching an Ibsen play. It all reads like the author had a maximum page-count and had a hard time resolving the multitude of threads so he just went “Oh who cares? He knows this because…because you are more intelligent when you are drunk! GENIUS! GIVE ME AN AWARD!” That’s a shame because once I had made my peace with Christopher’s annoyingness, I enjoyed the story and all the twists and turns it took. And I think the solution is very clever – but the way we got there isn’t.

Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and Netgalley for providing an advance reading copy of this book. The views expressed are my own.

This is an enjoyable puzzle mystery story set in the 1950's in England, although its style seems dated to the 1930's. The mystery concerns David Wainwright an aviator who went missing in 1944 on a mission over Germany in WW2. The Wainwright family suffered several deaths in the war: David's father and his brother Hugh. This leaves Lady Wainwright as the matriarch of the family with her two surviving sons, and now in the mid-1950's she is near death with terminal cancer. David, or someone purporting to be him, emerges to claim that he was held in Russian captivity for many years but is now ready to return home to Belting, the family estate. Lady Wainwright accepts that the man is David. However, the two other sons believe he is an imposter. Of course, the sons have their eyes on the old lady's estate and who will inherit the family fortune when she dies. Shortly after the mystery man's arrival a trusted family retainer is murdered with suspicion falling on him on the theory the victim was able to disprove his claim. The story is also complicated by an unsolved murder from the time that David disappeared. He and his brother were home on leave when the body of Hugh's former business partner was found in the river. This case was never solved, although there was suspicion that David was involved.

The story is narrated by Christopher Barrington, a young orphaned cousin of the Wainwright family who was taken in by Lady Wainwright several years before David's re-appearance. In addition to his narration duty, Christopher does some sleuthing and actually solves the puzzle in the end. The police play a small role in the story.
Christopher is an interesting character. When first introduced at the beginning he is an unsophisticated college student, and matures as he investigates the imposter. A trip abroad to Paris opens his eyes to the world outside England, particularly as he encounters the city's bohemian lifestyle.
The conclusion is a satisfying resolution of the puzzle, with an ironic twist affecting Lady Wainwright's heirs. A good read.

This really is a cracking read! Although it seems to start slowly, it builds up almost in layers of complexity. It combines social comment on the years post-1945, but never becomes preachy or...well...dull.
There is an earthy feel to it as the protagonist, Christopher Barrington, discovers his developing feelings for his family, and those around him, as well as his sexual awakening.
In some ways, perhaps ahead of its time The Belting Inheritance is definitely one to read.

Thank you NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for my copy of this book. The Belting Inheritance is a unique multiple-murder mystery and I simply couldn't put the book down once I started reading it. Not knowing who to trust or if that person really was who they were pretending to be, made this book a must-read. Even though crime books about inheritance are not rare, I've never read another one as thrilling as this one. This is my first Julian Symons book and I was thoroughly impressed. I can´t wait to read more from him.

A murder mystery that draws on the lives of many complicated people. And their search for the truth, a saga of wealth, greed and deception.

The Belting Inheritance by Julian Symons, first published in 1964 , is part of The British Library Crime Classics. It was somewhat historical in nature when first published, being written about a time that was approximately ten years post WWII. The writing is more characteristic of this time period, with longer, more complex sentences and people who speak more formally than typical characters in modern day fiction.
In this novel, Christopher is the central character and narrator of the story. The characters are well drawn, although none of them held much appeal for me. It was difficult to read at times as the narration was filled with word plays such as anagrams and spoonerisms. These didn’t translate as well in the modern era as they might have when the book was first written.
It took a few pages to feel comfortable reading the book, as I adjusted to the writing style and developed some skill at solving the word puzzles that were embedded in much of the story. In truth, I spent more time solving, or at least contemplating, these word puzzles than I did on the story itself. Christopher, aided by Elaine, a young woman he meets about two-thirds of the way through the novel do more wandering through the story than detecting.
The opening of the novel offered the promise of an interesting story which wasn’t fully carried through to the end. Some of this was due to the fact that it was difficult to develop any sympathy toward the characters as they were not particularly likeable nor were they drawn with much depth. Even Uncle Miles, who had more likeable qualities failed to capture and hold my interest. By the time I reached the end of the book I didn’t particularly care what had happened to whom or the true identities of the mysterious stranger and friends who and disrupt the life of the inhabitants of the Belting Estate.
My thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing an advanced digital copy of this newest publication with not requirement for a positive review. The opinions stated here are entirely my own.

I enjoyed this book, even though it is rather old-fashioned. The ramblings of the narrator suited the storyline, and I didn't mind it being written in the first person at all. One of my issues over the years has been dishonest narrators, but Christopher is the most honest I've come across.

I don't always read the introductions to books, but I'm glad I read this one. It gave valuable insight into the novel. It's interesting that the book was written and published over fifty years ago. Despite that, it's timeless literature. The characters are a little stereotypical, but well-developed nonetheless, and the plot unfolds easily. I did not fully expect the ending, and it was not disappointing in any way. If I'd paid a little more attention, I may well have come to the same conclusion, so it was very believable.

As murder mysteries go, it fits right in there with the best, and is an enjoyable way to spend a few hours reading. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an opportunity to read the book prior to publication of this edition.

I have always enjoyed Julian Symons writing and this book does not disappoint. With the first third of the book being a real page turner, the last part did not move as quick and it did get a little stuck for me. The ending was surprising, coming out of left field, although when after I put the book down and rethought the clues, the ending was a natural conclusion.
If you enjoy books of this era - around the golden age - you will really enjoy this. Written in the first person, it does not have any of the drawbacks which are usually attached to this style, it moves freely and the plot is well rounded.

"The Belting Inheritance" is a romantic mystery originally written in 1964. The viewpoint character is a young man who gets stuck in the middle of the debate when a stranger arrives claiming to be a dead son who stands to inherit. The other heirs don't think he's actually their brother and bring others in to confirm that he is a fraud. When someone who could identify him turns up dead, the police get involved.

The main characters asked the stranger questions to determine if he was genuine or a fraud. The main character and his girlfriend end up going to France in pursuit of proof of who he really is and almost by accident uncover what really happened in the past and present. Two couples end up married by the end of the story. There was no sex. There was some bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this interesting crime story, though it's not a typical mystery.

mystery, family-dynamics, British

I'm still not certain how I feel about this one. The characters are clearly presented and well worth response from the reader, either negative, positive, or sadness. The lifestyle of the group strikes me as rather odd for the time, but then I am an American who could easily have read it when originally published. On the other hand, the sly humor and asides into the young narrator's life are of as much interest as the suspense of finding out whether the prodigal son is who he says he is or a very clever impostor. Definitely worth reading this British Library Crime Classic!
I requested and received a free ebook copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley.