Charles
Berney was a successful brewer and a womaniser. His death
was far stranger than his rather unremarkable life, for he
was found trampled to death on a lonely moor. The culprit
must have been a horse, but whose horse and if he was indeed
a reformed character with a beautiful new wife, who was angry
enough with him to commit murder in such a bizarre manner?
The Gently novels are each memorable for something, and Mr.
Hunter had some fun devising different styles to write about
the detective’s adventures. One thing they all have
in common, apart from their admirable and effective brevity,
is his wonderful talent for describing a place. In the last
book Gently With The Innocents he presented a locked room
style of mystery on a dark and stormy night, where all the
events were tied together in a claustrophobic whole while
a shocking conclusion awaited. In this book he does something
similar, only with a lonely moorland setting, a large old
house with its eccentric inhabitants and the killer horse.
From Gently’s arrival and sighting of a seeming spectral
horse and rider onwards, events almost seem to step out of
time into a secret world where the outside does not exist,
enhancing the sense of doom and weirdness. The conclusion
with its surprise ending (which I guessed and maybe you will
too but this does not detract from the enjoyment) merely leaves
the reader hoping that the next title won’t be too long
in coming. A stunning series and in case you are worried,
nothing at all like the BBC dramatisation…
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