Review: Dracula Returns to Yorkshire
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 3, 2013
Inspector Hartley, so far contented to be a small town detective, friendly with the natives and wary of the incomers, expands his experience by going on a dangerous sleuthing mission in Eastern  Europe. The Scrap-Yard Mystery is a new novel added to the popular series that was begun around 2000, by Englishman John Waddington-Feather, and now is available on Amazon Kindle. The author is native to Keighworth, the working class town near Bradford, once the most prosperous textile city in the world.  His fictional Hartley continues to fret about the changes to North Yorkshire brought on by industrialization and waves of immigrants. The rustic local criminals have made room for the Pakistani Quereshi gang, and such characters as Barbu Vlad a leader in a gang of Romanian gypsies camping at the quarry, who can be counted on to be either good or bad. Most recently, Hartley's territory has inherited some of the dregs of the eastern European countries whose dictators have forced ordinary people to scam for a living. Now they are teaching the locals a few tricks.In this novel, Hartley is challenged by the ability of an English "Upper Crustian" to profit from the Eastern European drug trade and prostitution rings. Under the noses of the police (especially the socially ambitious Superintendent Donaldson) Sir William Mornington, a baronet, seems to be growing hemp on vast acres under traditional glass houses, pretending it is for rope-making; his sidekick, a rector, Prebendary (volunteer) Wigglesworth-Smith, is performing quickie marriages for wily strangers who want to operate freely as English citizens. Class consciousness has been an underlying theme in the Hartley mysteries. While the Superintendent lives in a posh spa town, and hobnobs with aristocrats at every chance, Hartley is willing to engage with everyone. He is repaid by tips given to him by townsfolk with shady businesses who feel threatened by the new competition. Hartley's shining knight is his sergeant, Oxford educated, super athlete, Ibrahim Kahn, whose only weakness is his distaste for necessary consultations in the work environment of Gus Dunwell, the pathologist.Waddington-Feather retired from many years as a prison chaplain and English teacher, is a prolific poet, essayist, and storyteller. His mystery writing is both sophisticated and old-fashioned (compared to edgier crime writing these days), but he does not back off from the reality that many things are evil and getting worse in the turbulence that reaches England from distant wars and violence.  One can learn much by his careful detailing of worldly activities (without either prissiness or racial prejudice), and can enjoy an occasional homily embedded in the narrative.The Graveyard Mystery (Blake Hartley Detective Novels)