Untimely Death by Cyril Hare
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
Hare’s series amateur, Francis Pettigrew, appears solo in some of the stories but acts in concert with Inspector Mallett in others. A Thurberesque male at odds with inanimate objects, bolting ponies, and incalculable females, Pettigrew works as a barrister and finds himself dragged into murder cases much against his will and inclination. Inspector Mallet is a “beefy man with a nimble brain.”
Untimely Death was last of the books featuring the detecting team Pettigrew and Mallett. Pettigrew, retired and vacationing with his wife, stays at a bread and breakfast in Exmoor, the same neighborhood in which as a boy he was frightened by finding a corpse. Unluckily enough history repeats itself as Pettigrew finds another corpse. When he returns to the scene of the crime with members of the local hunt club, however, the body has vanished. His new-age wife convinces him that it was pre-cogniton – a vision of future events – so he doesn’t inform the cops.
This sin of omission and the deaths that occur in the village during their vacation comes back to haunt him after he returns home. Mallett, also retired, is called in to act as a PI for people involved in a lawsuit concerning a death. Due to his efforts, Pettigrew is subpoenaed as a witness in a Chancery case about an unusual legal point arising out of the death. In other books, too, such as the stand-alone mystery An English Murder, the case hinges on legal point. Hare in real life worked as Judge Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark.
One hesitates to criticize “last books” since authors are facing The Big Sleep falter (See Chandler’s Playback or Gardner’s All Grass Isn’t Green). But the story and characterization seem thin in this one. Easy to read, with a tight plot, enjoying this would be readers who like amateur and professional duos and the familiar elements of cozy mysteries such as descriptions of the Somerset and Devon countryside, stag hunts on the moors, crazy wills, and eccentric judges wearing little wigs. Hare also presents provocative asides about memory and middle-age.
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