I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This was written in 1952 and is very much of its period. The women in it are the personality-free Anne, whose husband calls her 'angel'; the redoubtable Lady Ridding; Sister Monica, who has had too much power for a woman and has therefore become a tyrant and megalomaniac; cook, who has hysterics and gives notice whenever she is upset; the psychologically damaged Hannah; and various village gossips whose West Country speech is rendered by them saying 'her' whenever standard English would say 'she'. The middle-class characters have a tendency to make long speeches to one another, helpfully explaining things the reader needs to know.

DI MacDonald and his sergeant Reeves are excellent and the scenes featuring their investigations are where the book really gets going. There is much harping on the villagers' determination not to even allow themselves to consider unpalatable facts, which becomes tiresome after a while. The identity of the murderer was reasonably satisfactory, but if I wanted to I could pick holes in the explanation at the end.

This book dates back to the writers of the Golden Age, with another author I enjoy and with another mystery that I have not read before.
These books really know how to tell a story, there is a real build up of the characters as the story progresses and as the mystery is slowly solved.
It is wonderful that these books are being republished, I really enjoyed this one.