Originally
published in 1968 but set a few years earlier, Catherine Aird's
third novel now has a patina of age which only adds to its charm. An
outwardly quiet, respectable widow has been killed in a hit and run
on a quiet country road, but as Inspector Sloan delves into the case,
it turns out that the woman seems to have been living a lie for
reasons known only to herself – something which comes as a great
shock to her daughter, the eponymous Henrietta.
This
is very much an old-style rural mystery, populated by cosy village
rectories, gossipy post offices and grand mansion houses. It's
penned in a clipped, quizzical style, not a word wasted and with
dialogue driving the narrative, the tone blending black humour and
flashes of the macabre, rather in the manner of Jack Trevor Story's
The Trouble With Harry and decidedly not in the more meditative,
poetic vein of, say, W.J. Burley's Wycliffe novels.
Sloan
himself makes for an amiably long-suffering detective, lumbered with a
constable who isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and forever having
his ear bent by his know-it-all superintendent ("I don't like the country. There are never any witnesses".) If you relish mysteries that are well-turned, brisk and steeped in dry wit, then it's well
worth getting acquainted with Henrietta Who?
