Poet’s promising debut detective novel
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The Vintage edition of A Question of Proof |
It is the annual sports day at Sudely Hall on a glorious
summer’s day and all the parents and children are looking forward to the races.
But by the end of the afternoon the police have to be called when the
headmaster’s obnoxious nephew is found in a haystack having been strangled.
The English master, Michael Evans, who is in love with
the headmaster’s beautiful young wife, soon finds himself the police’s main suspect
for the murder and so he calls in Nigel Strangeways, an old friend from
university who has become an amateur detective, to investigate the case ‘on
behalf of the school’.
The author of A Question of Proof was the poet Cecil
Day-Lewis, who eventually became Poet Laureate. At the age of 31 he turned to
crime writing to supplement his income from poetry, using the pseudonym
Nicholas Blake.
He was hailed by the reviewers as a master of
detective fiction and went on to produce another 15 Nigel Strangeways Mysteries
as well as four detective novels and some short stories that don’t feature his
series character.
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Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, alias novelist Nicholas Blake |
The spotlight is on the young good-looking Evans, who
is preoccupied with arranging a secret assignation with Hero, the wife of the
Rev Percival Vale, the headmaster.
But once Nigel Strangeways arrives, the story is
mostly told from his point of view. He joins forces with the investigating
officer, Superintendent Armstrong, to try to solve the crime. Armstrong’s willing
cooperation is explained by the fact that Strangeways is a nephew to the Assistant
Commissioner of Scotland Yard.
Cecil Day-Lewis, aka Nicholas Blake, describes the
environment of a public school for boys brilliantly, showing the bickering
between the masters and the factions among the boys. Strangeways is received
well by masters and boys alike and quickly reveals his talent for blending in with
any company, along with displaying his own small eccentricities, such as
drinking large quantities of tea.
In order to solve the crime, he has to join the Black
Spot gang and pass the initiation rituals imposed by the members, but he then
has the support of a small group of boys who open up about what they know and help
him with his investigation. Interestingly, he uses psychology to solve the
crime, rather than concentrating on the most obvious suspects in the manner of the
police. It is not surprising that Strangeways was a fictional detective who was
going to live on for another 30 years.
All the Nigel Strangeways Mysteries have now been republished by Vintage Books.