Review by Nick Fuller
4/5
An amusing and lively period piece reminiscent of contemporary Christie, and showing the Coles at their best. The story opens in Devonshire, where Ronald Bittaford finds the dead body of his uncle in a creek on Sir Charles Wylie’s property, his beard shaved off after death. It soon transpires that Percy had died of cancer at Sands-on-Sea, and that the posthumously shaved corpse is that of Bittaford’s brother from Australia, Harold (shades of Conan Doyle!). With the Devonshire police under a preposterous Chief Constable attempting to pass the death off as accident (for the police don’t like murder) and Ronald arrested for murder, it falls to the amusing drunkard Wylie and Ronald’s fiancée Dolly Daniells to clear his name and solve the case. Much of the work is done by Wylie, who sacrifices his personal comfort in order to dig out the truth at Sands-on-Sea, while Dolly endures the constant praying of the wonderfully dotty cult to which Percy belonged. It is, of course, Wilson who applies the finishing touches to the case, revealing a complicated and ingenious insurance scam (similar to Austin Freeman’s D’Arblay Mystery). The pace is exactly right: the reader and Wilson work at the same speed, neither too fast nor too slow, giving the reader the chance to work out many (but not all) the details. Highly satisfying.
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