Review: Okay but count the flaws
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
Probably the best way to enjoy this book is to read it as a primary source in the history of the development of the police procedural novel, especially the cozy type.  That way the reader can forgive  the flaws, its slow pace and rather cardboardish characters.  The plotline is okay but  a great deal of the inspector's time spent going over clues and then focusing his suspicions on different people as new clues develop.  All in all, the inspector seems rather slow on the uptake and a bit patronizing.  And really, would an inspector allow another person, in this case the vicar, to go through the victim's papers before the police?  After a  while I also became thoroughly annoyed at his comments about illogical, irrational, emotional, and sentimental women.  I know the setting is the 1930's but at that time Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Georgette Heyer, and Dorothy Sayers were writing well plotted and highly logical crime novels with fully developed characters.  The most serious flaw is the denouement and the discovery of the murderer by the vicar.  Unfortunately, and unfairly, the vicar recalls some  information that is never given to the reader in any way.  He figures out who the guilty party is but the reader is left feeling cheated.