The Dead Shall be Raised & the Murder of a Quack

July 15, 2017
Scotland Yard's Inspector Thomas Littlejohn shines, or at least glows softly, in this pair of reprints from 1942 and 1943.The longer first tale begins with the interruption of a Hatterworth performance of The Messiah by news of the discovery of ironworker/poacher Enoch Sykes' dead body. Since Sykes has been missing since 1917, you'd think that this sensational find would close this case. But it reopens it instead, because everyone in Hatterworth assumed that Sykes had murdered Jeremy Trickett, another ironworker whose friendship with him had been fatally undermined by their rivalry for the attentions of Mary Tatham. Now that it seems more likely that the same person killed both men, local Superintendent Frank Haworth wants Littlejohn, who thought he was on holiday, to help track a murderer who's escaped detection for over 20 years, and the two of them work together to uncover a surprisingly unsurprising malefactor. The shorter but more sharply characterized second novel asks which member of the little community of Stalden killed unlicensed bonesetter and homeopathic healer Nathaniel Wall and hung his corpse in his surgery. The natural suspect is local physician Dr. Alexander Keating, who'd long resented his rival's greater popularity. But Littlejohn, called down from London, digs deeper into the case and comes up with a more unexpected motive and murderer. Less of the unobtrusive wit that marked Death of a Busybody (2017)--readers will wait a long time for gems like one suspect's "air of stupid sophistication"--but still considerable nostalgia value for readers who'd rather revisit England at war than ponder 21st-century America at peace.

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August 14, 2017
Det. Insp. Thomas Littlejohn of Scotland Yard is the model of a calm, rational policeman, as shown in the two novels by Bellairs (1902–1982) in this solid entry in the British Library Crime Classics series. In The Dead Shall Be Raised (1942), the body of iron worker Enoch Sykes is dug up near the spot where, 27 years earlier, he was believed to have murdered his friend Jeremy Trickett, a fellow iron worker, before fleeing and disappearing. Now it’s clear that someone else killed the two of them, so Littlejohn must solve a double murder anchored in the past. In Murder of a Quack (1943), Nathaniel Wall, a bonesetter beloved by all except competing orthodox doctors, is hanged from his own medical apparatus, and Littlejohn must hunt for the motive in order to discover the killer. The two mysteries with their village settings are prosaic—no car chases, no master criminals—but assured prose, well-drawn characters, and the atmosphere of 1940s wartime England make them well worth the reader’s time.

Starred review from September 1, 2017
Two wartime novellas from Golden Age writer George Bellairs are resurrected here as part of the British Library's Crime Classics series. Detective Inspector Littlejohn of Scotland Yard, who lent his sensible sleuthing talents to bumbling local constables in stories spanning almost 40 years, appears in both of these puzzlers, published in 1942 and 1943 respectively. The first novella, set in 1940 on the moors of Northwest England, starts with the Home Guard unearthing the skeleton of a man who was suspected of murdering and burying his friend on the moors 23 years before and then disappearing during WWI. Local cops and Scotland Yard's Littlejohn are faced with two cold cases, and the realization that a murderer is still at large. The second novella, worthy of Agatha Christie at her fiendish plotting best, centers on an elaborately staged crime scene and a vast field of suspects, including village doctors who are envious of the victim (a bone-setter, or homeopath). Both of these tales are deeply satisfying reads, but what will probably hold readers most are all the Foyle's Warlike details of what day-to-day living during the war years in Britain was like.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)