Nicholas Rhea’s long and popular series is perhaps best known as having inspired the hugely popular (and sadly missed) TV series Heartbeat.  Here is a new paperback reprint of one of these books and, like all of them, it has a theme.  It could be argued that all the books have living in the country as their theme, but this book examines many different aspects of country life in the 1960s.

As a piece of social (and police) history, it makes for fascinating reading.  Mr Rhea looks at such topics as family life, living on a farm, the village pound, country lanes, rural attitudes towards many diverse topics, thatched cottages, and how life during this period changed forever and why.  Interspersed between all these nuggets of information are many anecdotes, and you can find out what happens when Claude gets a brightly painted new car, what odd items were hidden in a thatched roof, spectral (and otherwise) beasts roaming the moors, a Christmas discovery and what happens when a local criminal decides to take up mountaineering.  I’ve no doubt that more embroidery than the Bayeux Tapestry has gone into making these tales so lively and unusual, but all serve to show what life was like in rural Yorkshire in those days, complete with laws that have since changed... or not in many cases.  Anybody interested in this place or period can probably do no better than to read some of these absorbing books.

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