The Worm of Death

The Worm of Death – Nicholas Blake

Cecil Day-Lewis, classics prof and poet laureate, didn’t take seriously the 20 or so detective novels he wrote as Nicholas Blake. This does not mean they deserve their neglected status nowadays. In fact, this novel is dark enough to appeal to post-modern readers who like dark mysteries.

This 1961 story, the 14^th featuring PI Nigel Strangeways, opens with Strangeways and his artist wife Clare Massinger having dinner with an awkward family. Father Piers, a doctor, is sarcastic and tyrannical. Daughter Rebecca longs to be free to marry her artist BF whom he father dislikes. His son James, also a doctor, fears making a misstep that will hurt his reputation. His other son Harold is a flash businessman and his trophy wife Sharon is as flirty as we’d expect. The favorite son, Graham, is seen as an ‘old lag’ (ex-con) by Strangeways.

The setting of docks, alleys, barges, and the Isle of Dogs is the main attraction here. Greenwich was a shabby part of London at the time. We readers walk in the February chill and fog along the banks of the River Thames. It’s the perfect backdrop for Father Piers Louden to go missing and then turn up dead in Thames clad only in a tweed coat. Son James hires Strangeways to investigate which he does with the help of Inspector Wright. They narrow the circle of suspects down to the unhappy family.

Blake’s dark realism is decidedly not cozy. The reveal chills us readers with its plausibility. The Perp is consumed with envy and bent and revenge. Blake asserts that WWII claimed victims after the cessation of hostilities in 1945.