The Dreadful Hollow
– Nicholas Blake, 1953
Poison
pen letters figure largely in Dorothy Sayers' novel Gaudy Night, Agatha Christie's The
Moving Finger and John Dickson Carr's Night
at the Mocking Widow. Ditto for The Dreadful Hollow. Someone is sending abusive missives in the small Dorset
village of Prior's Umborne. One of the recipients has committed suicide, another
has attempted it, and yet another has had a nervous breakdown.
Not
only has the tranquility of a quiet village been deeply disturbed by the
letters, but the wheels of the factory, the main employer in town, are moving
more slowly too. This enrages the imperious owner Sir Archibald Blick. He hires
private detective Nigel Strangeways to identify the culprit. He
gently questions a variety of characters in the cozy village settings of
the post office, the Sweet Drop pub and inn, the vicarage
and Little Manor,
the home of the thirty-something
sisters Celandine and Rosebay Chantemerle.
Celandine
is a cornflower-blue-eyed blonde, full of vivacious charm,
but wheelchair-bound. She has suffered hysterical
paralysis ever since she discovered the corpse of her father in a
quarry. Rosebay is younger and auburn-haired.
Like her red-haired sistern, she’s a passionate soul, which means she’s a blast
when she’s feeling good but sullen and
closed when she’s feeling bad. Dinny
has kind of a past with Charles Blick,
a son of Sir Archibald, while Bay
has a present with him.
Nigel Strangeways depends on
his insight, phenomenal memory, and deadpan manner
in his investigations. His foil is Scotland Yard’s Inspector
Blount, down to earth, candid, and tough. In the
first half, the focus of the story is always
on the anonymous letters. A religious manic-depressive adds to the climate
of anxiety in this novel. So the setting is cozy, but the tone is decidedly
nervy, though not on the same high pitch as the relentless The Beast Must Die.
Cecil Day Lewis, English poet and novelist, used the pen
name Nicholas Blake for seventeen mystery novels starring this series detective. His characters
and settings are always well-defined, even if the detecting side is
sometimes too easy. The writing is highly intelligent and articulate without
being overly intellectual. Day Lewis was a classicist so
the plots have an undercurrent of Greek tragedy: mistakes come out of impulse,
tormented personalities cause a lot of fussing and fighting.
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