Punshon, ER - The Conqueror Inn (1943)

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

A more straightforward and topical story than usual, which is both its strength and its weakness. The plot revolves around the Conqueror Inn, possibly the oldest licensed house in England (although rebuilt in 1750), with lorry drivers, army camps, the IRA and black marketeers all involved in one of the author's typically super-complicated webs. Bobby Owen's task is to identify the disfigured corpse in the grave, which could belong to either one of two young men, and to sort through vague and half-glimpsed truths and conjecture to reach the solution. This is where the book collapses, for the ending is badly anticlimactic.