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Constable on View
Constable series #31

by Nicholas Rhea



      UK visitors to this site will know all about Heartbeat, the long running and tremendously popular TV series about a police constable on a rural beat in the 1960s. People in other countries might be wondering what the fuss is all about, but before the series there was another series - of books. Read these gentle anecdotes and discover what life was like on the Yorkshire Moors back in the 1960s.

There is something sublimely relaxing, and educational at the same time about these books. It is true that I have loyally watched the show since the first season, but history has even more appeal when it is as recent as this, and yet seems a world and more away.  Rhea’s tales about times when police work was as much social work as catching criminals have the fascination of being true (at least partly), and he certainly has some extraordinary stories to tell. Such as a whole forest disappearing overnight, a mysterious person who leaves notes in houses telling the occupants that they could have been burgled and the tragic account of a man whose family hated him so much they refused to pay for his funeral. Rhea has an easy, storyteller style that conjures up images of old fashioned pubs on dark evenings while the wind howls across the moors that suits his material. There are some useful hints to prevent burglary too - which lights would you leave on in an empty house?  Compulsive reading.

Reviews of other titles in this series

Constable At The Double - Constable Around the Village #3 & Constable Across The Moors #4
Constable Over The Stile
  #17
Constable Goes to Market  #
22
Constable Along the Riverbank  #24
Constable In The Wilderness
 #26
Constable over the Bridge   #27
Constable Along The Trail   #28
Constable in the Country   #29
Constable On The Coast   #30
Constable on View   #31
Constable Beats The Bounds #32 
Constable at the Fair   #33
Constable Over The Hill   #35

The Book

Robert Hale
March 2008
Hardback
070908417X / 9780709084174
Historical mystery [1960s Rural Yorkshire, England]
AMAZON US || UK

The Reviewer

Rachel A Hyde
Reviewed 2008
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