I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over
at My
Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read
books that you already own.
A Most Contagious
Game – Catherine Aird
In this 1967 whodunnit, our main character, Charles
Hardin, is a London business man who has had to retire in his early fifties
because of a dicky heart. While in hospital, he’s given his wife a blank check
to buy whatever manor house she can find that she finds suitable.
Once discharged and in the house in the village of
Easterbrooke, Charles is discouraged to find the house is not much of a fixer-upper.
His attitude changes quickly when he discovers a priest’s hole, a hiding place
for a priest built into many of the foremost Catholic houses of England during
the period when Catholics were persecuted by the Tudors. The chamber, in fact,
contains a skeleton about 150 years old. To parallel this old murder mystery is
the contemporary murder of an errant wife, whose husband, having vanished, is the
suspect.
As Charles does his research on the old murder, readers
will be reminded of Josephine Tey’s classic A Daughter of Time, in which a bedridden copper rehabs the rep of
Richard III. This village cozy has a brisk pace and well-drawn characters. The
prose is witty and intelligent but not too much so. This is a stand-alone
mystery, her only outing that did not feature the team of Sloan and Crosby.
Though I have kiddish memories of an uncle who read mysteries having Catherine
Aird books, this was the first one of hers that I’ve ever read. I can say that
I’d like to read more, though I’m usually snooty about cozies.
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