Untimely Death by Cyril Hare

Few lawyers turned writers have matched the originality of Cyril Hare or produced a detective as likeable as retired barrister Francis Pettigrew.

First published in 1957 as He Should Have Died Hereafter, this tale finds the reluctant sleuth on holiday on Exmoor, where he can't even enjoy a cream tea and a verse of Swinburne without being interrupted by the boyhood memory of discovering a corpse nearby. Setting off to exorcise this trauma, he finds another body in exactly the same hill, and soon stumbles into an elaborate inheritance drama to rival Kind Hearts and Coronets. A reissue prompted by its appearance in the new PD James, The Private Patient, it's not the most nail-biting crime caper you'll read, but Hare, a compassionate observer of human failings, conveys it with such amiable humour, you can't fail to be charmed..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

Francis Pettigrew travels to Exmoor for a holiday with his wife - an area in which as a young boy he was traumatised by coming across a dead body on the moor. In an attempt to exorcise this trauma, Pettigrew walks across the moor to the place where the incident occurred - only to find another dead body. Moreover when he returns to the scene with the police, the body is gone. Did he really see a body - or is it a hallucination conjured up by his return to the scene of the crime that has haunted him since childhood? In "Untimely Death", Cyril Hare conjures up an intriguing puzzle whose twists and turns will keep the reader turning the pages until the final surprising resolution.