sure that this was a goodreads recommendation and, based on this and a few others, I should start paying more attention to what the algorithms say, Very entertaining mystery, mixing the modern well,, when it was published, After a heart attract Thomas Harding amp his wife retire to the country in an old manor house, He discovers a secret room that contains a body aboutyears of age,
The room is a priest hole from the time of Elizabeth, This was not a good time mids to earlys to be Cathlic in England, Harding sets out who the boy was amp why he was murdered amp hid in the Priest hole, At the same the local police are searching for Alan Fenny for the murder of his wife, Harding gets evolved in that also, The question is,are the two murdersyears apart connected,
This is the only mystery written by Aird that is a part of her series of inspector Slone amp constable Crosby, It is one of her best,
If you like mysteries I would recommend this
This mystery was first published the year I was born,so it definitely an old fashioned type mystery, not much in the way of forensics.
It is Ms Airds only stand alone mystery all the others were in one detective series, I picked up the reprint because I had wanted to revisit some older mysteries this year,
Thomas and his wife, Dora, have moved from London to the countryside to live in a Tudor manor house, Thomas was a very successful businessman but a heart attack ended his career and he is very much the invalid, resting much of the day in his house and hating it.
He has a few wants: to be able to do more physically and to leave some of his largesse to his new home, much like the former owners, the Barons Barbary who have their names attached to just about everything in the village from thes up to thes when the family emigrated to America mysteriously and gave up the land.
The story opens with Thomas and Gladys, the housekeeper and frankly the only female character with a whisper of personality and not much at that, wondering why Charlie Ford put the electrical plug in such a weird spot.
It quickly comes to light that the plaster happens to be over very old wood, Once that is taken down, the wood is revealed and with it a hidden priest hole, built at sometime in thes to hide Jesuits from the pursivants who would have tortured and killed them in the name of the Queen.
Startling them all, there is a skeleton in the priest hole, ayear old boy with his skull crushed, When the police wont really investigate it, Thomas takes it on his own head to try and find the identity of the young boy and why he might have been killed.
The police have their hands full with a fresh murder, Mrs, Mary Fenny has been strangled to death and the police think it was her husband, Alan, to blame, Alan is missing and the townspeople, believing him innocent, are protecting him, Thomas is oddly angry that the police are more interested in that than in his case which made no sense to me especially after they prove the boy has been dead betweenyears ago.
It doesnt take long for him to go through gravestones, church records and historical society data to find out that the boy is most likely Toby Barbary, who should have inherited the baronetcy in Napoleons day but disappeared in a fishing accident.
But just who killed him and why, is a puzzle Thomas needs to work on, As for the investigation of Mary Fennys death, about the only thing we see happening is the police poking into peoples homes and lamenting no one will talk to them.
That, and Alans mother purposely crossing paths with Thomas to taunt him with the fact her son is innocent and hed see soon enough though Im not sure why he should care.
On the whole, its a nice slow mystery, With the events a century in the past, there is of course no sense of immediate danger except maybe from Thomass heart, That part of the mystery was entertaining, However, this wasnt without its faults,
Mary Fennys mystery is solved deus ex machine and well, frankly illegally and almost as an afterthought,
None of the female characters have a personality, Dora exists only to remind us Thomas is unwell, Seriously. And for that matter, Thomas obviously doesnt like women at all, He is superior and patronizing in the extreme, even for as man, more like thes or before, Ive seen more enlightened Victorians, Multiple times he dismisses things Dora thinks as irrelevant and the one passage that stuck with me was He could think of many reasons to strangle a blonde woman but none for killing a fifteen year old boy.
Wow, says it all about him, doesnt it
And the way the reprinters oversold the introduction, Dont get me wrong. I applaud them for bringing us these older mysteries, long out of print, I like
being able to see them again even knowing misogyny might be in them, However, to tout this as the perfect mystery and to reference customers who agree is a bit much, Perfect mysteries dont ignore half the mystery going on for one, If I had read the intro first I think I would have been terribly disappointed, Its a decent mystery but far from perfect,
This was a wonderful book! A true cozy, complete with hidden rooms, spooky sounds and happenings and a superb cast of characters, This may have been the author's third book, but it isn't the third Inspector Sloan installation, Rather, it is a stand alone story, It also has the makings of a wonderful whodunnit cozy mystery, It flowed easily, the characters were well rounded and the plot well explained at each stage of a discovery,
This book has become one of my topfavorite cozys and I have no doubt that I will read and enjoy it many times over,
Brava, Ms. Aird, brava for this highly recommended book, Rating Clarification:.Stars
Fans of Josephine Tey's sitelinkThe Daughter of Time would probably enjoy this standalone novel from Aird, Both novels feature a semiinvalid protagonist who spends his time solving the mystery through research, deduction and yes, it must be said conveniently available clues,
As to the mystery involved, there were actuallyrunning concurrently: one murder from the past and a current murder from the area, The mystery from the past was my favorite, and involved ahigh powered London businessman who was forced by a heart condition to retire and take it easy.
Thomas Harding finds retirement anything but retiring, and wonders if he and his wife Dora did the right thing in spending all his hard earned cash on a Tudor mansion in the sleepy village of Calleford.
It's not long before the need for a plugin socket reveals a mysterious skeleton inhabiting a hidden priest hole, and Thomas finds his raison d'être, It's a fun romp, and Aird provides subtle and sly wit to his characters and a good historical sleuthing adventure for Thomas and the reader, The current murder isn't as successfully developed or concluded IMO, I would have liked to have known a bit more about the leading suspects and the victim then I ended up getting, and the resolution was a bit farfetched.
However, I liked how both the past and present murders intersected in some places, and I was completely surprised by whodunnit but then again I usually am!
The thing I personally enjoyed about this book was the way Aird wove real historical content and people into her mystery.
In this case, I learned all about an Elizabethan Jesuit lay brother/carpenter named Nicolas Owen, Know who he is Well, quite a few of the priest holes found in Tudor homes and probably many that are still undiscovered have been attributed to Owen, who in his time was nicknamed "God's Carpenter".
Owen, a devout Catholic, made it possible for priests to hide away when suspect homes were searched for evidence of Catholic "idolatry" during the reign of Elizabeth I.
Owen was later captured, tortured, martyred and canonized by the Church, He revealed absolutely nothing to this captors, The idea of hidden places and getting "one over" on authority really appeals to me, and Aird did a wonderful job of marrying history with fiction in this story.
Who can resist a Tudor mansion containing a skeleton in a hidden priest hole Sign me up!
A very entertaining and easy read clocking in atpages.
I will certainly be on the lookout for more by Aird,
A really oldstyle, very British, mystery, I have no idea how this book landed on my shelves, Perhaps a used bookstore trip I have read a couple other titles by this author, so that probably explains it, If you like Agatha Christie you'll probably like Catherine Aird, All of her other titles are part of the Inspector Stone series, This title was a stand alone, The mystery is set in an old Tudor Manor House where a successful London businessman has been forced into retirement by illness, While his body may be frail, his mind never stops and leads to the solution of not one, but two mysteries!! This mystery novel, written in, is great! Forced by ill health to retire early, Thomas Harding and his wife move to an historic Tudorera home in the English countryside.
They make an exciting discovery of a secret room a priests hole and even more exciting, they find a skeleton in it, Foryears it has lain there and the discovery spurs Thomas on to solve this puzzle, A local villager has been recently strangled and the author cleverly weaves together these two subplots, Although theres not a lot of action, this book is definitely a page turner, leading to an interesting and convincing conclusion,
"The Most Contagious Game" is a stand alone novel by Catherine Aird, It follows a retired man who finds a skeleton while trying to have his home rewired, It seems the skeleton is aboutyears old, and so the police don't care who the murderer is, but our hero, Tom does, Soon, he is able to piece together the motive for the killing, and so discovers the killer, In the meantime, the police are trying to solve a modern murder, with the suspect in hiding, The two mysteries entwine, and so our hero helps to solve two crimes, Good book, with solid information about priest holes, and such,
CMB I have read every single one of Catherine Airds C, D. Sloan mysteries, and, with Aird now in hers, I didnt expect any more novels, You can imagine my delight when I discovered that Aird released a standalone cozy mystery inher second novel and the only one not to feature Inspector Sloan and his slipshod sidekick, Constable Crosby.
I immediately bought the audio edition and one sale, too! What joy!
Thomas Harding, a workaholic forced into retirement by a heart condition, chafes at being forced to slow down in his newly acquired Tudor mansion in a backwater village.
But Hardings existence livens up when he discovers a secret priest hole in his new home and, within it, a skeleton of a teenager killedyears before, Harding and his wife Dora seek to discover why the teen was killed and by whom, Surprising, the ancient mystery has a connection with a presentday crime, A delightful read and an unexpected treat to devour one final Aird cozy, A lovely book with quietly sympathetic characters, Not everything was explained at the end, but with ayear old mystery that's plausible, A Most Contagious Game has so many things that I enjoy in a mystery it's set in an English village, there is a hidden room, and fun characters.
This is a stand alone book by the author of the Inspector Sloan series, It being a stand alone book is my only complaint, I really enjoyed spending time with these characters and want to learn more about what happened to them, Plucked this from shelf in my shop, Not sure where it came from but did enjoy it, Older British mystery. Knocked a star for odd interpretation of U, S.
Do we all drawl to the British ear
Do they understand that we do not use titles
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