Wed 17 Nov 2021
JOHN BUXTON HILTON – Dead-Nettle. Inspector Thomas Brunt #3. Macmillan, UK, hardcover, 1977. St. Martin’s, US, hardcover, 1977.
Hilton works the previously untapped treasure lode of tales from the English lead-mining country of Derbyshire once again. The year is 1905, and the grist of Inspector Brunt’s dogged investigation is the death of a miner’s long lost wife, a woman who had suddenly returned to him without warning.
Complicating matters is the shyly aloof man’s new love, the mine owner’s daughter and a remarkably liberated lady for the times. Much of the affair is related second-hand, but that in no way interferes with the reader’s growing involvement with the players upon the stage.
Superb melodrama.
Rating: A minus
November 17th, 2021 at 10:46 pm
I enjoyed the few Hilton’s I read.
November 18th, 2021 at 7:54 am
A new author for me. Seems like a book I might enjoy.
November 18th, 2021 at 10:18 am
I think you would, Neeru, and are a lot more worth tracking down. Besides his Inspector Brunt books, of which there are six, Hilton also wrote 17 mysteries about Supt. Kenworthy, all of which were also very good. And as John Greenwood he wrote six more about Inspector Jack Mosley. These I own, but I’ve yet to read any of them.
November 18th, 2021 at 8:38 pm
I read more of the Greenwood’s than the Hilton’s but only because at the time they were easier to find.