Hare, Cyril

 And we're done with the hard-boiled American stories and back to classic English mysteries, in this case, those of Cyril Hare, pseudonym of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark, whose mysteries usually have a legal background.  

Two young clerks in a real estate office go to inspect the premises of a house that has been rented for the previous month in Tenant For Death find the strangled body of Lionel Ballentine, an absconding financier.  Since Ballentine had been threatened by failed banker John Fanshaw that same morning, the case seems obvious, except for the fact that Fanshaw cannot be the person who rented the house the month before since he was still in Maidstone Prison until a few days before the murder.  So who is the mysterious Colin James who rented the house and what has become of him; these are the complicated questions Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard has to answer before he can unravel the mystery.  Grade:  B.  

Death Is No Sportsman finds Inspector Mallett investigating the murder of Sir Peter Packer, the much hated local squire who is found dead on the banks of an exclusive trout fishing stream.  Suspects include Packer's downtrodden young wife, the members of the fly-fishing syndicate who own the fishing rights, and the young laborer whose fiancee Packer has seduced.  Grade: B.

Inspector Mallett is wrapping up his vacation with a stay at Pendlebury Old Hall, a country hotel that was formerly the residence of the Dickinson family.  Over dinner the inspector falls into conversation with Leonard Dickinson, a sadly depressing man who returns annually to visit his birthplace.  When Dickinson is found dead in his bed the next morning, with indications of suicide, Mallett isn't surprised, and resists the efforts of Dickinson's son Stephen, who insists that it can't have been suicide, to drag the inspector into a murder investigation in Suicide Excepted.  Grade:  C.  

Tragedy At Law introduces Francis Pettigrew, a lawyer who follows the Southern Circuit on its rounds, presided over by Pettigrew's judicial nemisis, Sir William Barber.  Pettigrew is present in the judge's car one night when the judge, having had rather too much brandy at dinner,  has the misfortune to hit and injure a pedestrian.  Naturally, complications ensue for Pettigrew and Inspector Mallet to unravel.  Grade:  B.  

With A Bare Bodkin finds Francis Pettigrew pressed into service as the legal advisor to the war-time Pin Control Ministry, evacuated from London to a distant location in the north of England far from the Blitz.  Pettigrew and many of his co-workers are housed in a hotel; when one of the residents is discovered to be the author of several mystery novels, the game is soon afoot to devise The Plot.  The plotters soon settle on Miss Danville as the most unlikely of murderers, at least in part because of her inoffensiveness and her obvious mental instability.  When Miss Danville herself is actually murdered, Pettigrew and Inspector Mallett have to unravel the plot within The Plot.  Grade:  A.  

Now married and settled in rural England, Francis Pettigrew is drawn into the affairs of the local musical society; although he himself is not musical, his wife plays violin in the local orchestra in When The Wind Blows.  When the visiting soloist is found murdered during their first concert, Pettigrew and the local police must track down a mysterious vanishing clarinetist.  Grade:  B.  

Francis Pettigrew is called upon to sit in for an ailing judge on the local bench and hears several local cases of interest, including that of a poor widow, Mrs. Pink, whose landlord is trying to evict her.  When Mrs. Pink is found murdered in Death Walks In The Woods, it appears she may not have been what she seemed to be and suspects abound.  Grade:  B.

Untimely Death (alternate title:  He Should Have Died Hereafter) finds the Pettigrews vacationing in Exmoor, where Frank spent some of his childhood.  One of his memories from those days, when he stumbled upon a dead body, has haunted him for years.  That memory comes flooding back when he also encounters a dead body in the same location as the one from all those years ago, but this body promptly disappears when he goes to seek help, only to reappear several days later.  Subsequently, Frank finds himself in the unaccustomed position of appearing as a witness in the Court of Chancery in the case of a contested will.  The description of the trial includes one of my all time favorite scenes, and for that alone I give this an A.  Grade:  A.