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Hare, Cyril

Page history last edited by CHARLES GORDON CLARK 11 years, 3 months ago Saved with comment

Cyril HareCyril Hare was the pseudonym of Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark (1900 - 1958), an English judge. He was born in Surrey and educated at Rugby School, New College Oxford and Inner Temple London. He was called to the Bar in 1924. He married Mary Barbara Lawrence in 1933, and interrupted his legal career to do war work for the government in WW2. See here and here for details of his life and work.

 

His series detectives were Inspector Mallett and the barrister Francis Pettigrew. More about them can be found here


Mike Grost on Cyril Hare

 

Hare's collected short tales are mainly "crime fiction" without mystery, and not very interesting. There are some exceptions, including some genuine puzzle plot mysteries of plotting substance. "The Heel" offers a puzzle related in approach to Tenant for Death. This story, like Death is No Sportsman, satirizes the anti-American attitudes of some Britishers of the era. "Weight and See" pits Inspector Mallett against an alibi, with ingenious results. Both stories are consistent with the techniques and themes of the Crofts school. Hare also wrote a series of six mini-mysteries based on the "Monday's Child" nursery rhyme. All but one are genuine mystery tales, and most are pretty good, showing concision in their telling. They tend to deal with crimes short of murder, a welcome change of pace more authors should try. Among the non-mystery crime tales that turn on "twists", "Line Out of Order" has one of the more inventive plots. It also offers a portrait of government agents versus political radicalism, to go along with An English Murder. "A Life for a Life" is not any sort of crime or mystery tale at all. Yet it is a good story. It concentrates on the serious problems of an "ordinary" middle class Englishman, and relates these to political difficulties of history.

 

Bibliography

 

Tenant for Death (1937)

Death is No Sportsman (1938)

Suicide Excepted (1939)

Tragedy at Law (1942)

With a Bare Bodkin (1946)

When the Wind Blows aka The Wind Blows Death (1949)

An English Murder aka The Christmas Murder (1951)

That Yew Tree's Shade aka Death Walks the Woods (1954)

He Should Have Died Hereafter aka Untimely Death (1958)

Best Detective Stories aka Death Among Friends (1959)

 

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