Inspector Littlejohn is on vacation and run down. He is looking forward to his time at Cape Mervin Hotel, when a Bishop is coshed over the head, and he is asked to investigate. The body of the religious leader is emaciated from lack of food, which on the surface is a very odd thing, until you find out he is trying to follow psychology through the Eastern Religions, which recommends fasting. But as the Inspector interviews and tracks... through a bewildering amount of interviews, it becomes apparent this won't be the only murder.
Bellairs has a way with words and from the first page I was in my chair until I finished the book. He throws a lot of red herrings at the reader- but they are worth pursuing. I especially like his gift for story telling. The Characters are well- developed and I particularly enjoyed the eccentricities of the Macintosh family. So I highly recommend George Bellairs, as a new Author, to people who love the golden age of Mysteries and who read Nagio Marsh and Dorothy Sayers. Five stars
Blurb:
A corpse belonging to a gentle bishop is found at the base of a cliff on the Isle of Man in an ingenious mystery by the master of the “pure British detective story” (The New York Times).
Dr. James Macintosh, the Bishop of Greyle, was a mysterious man. For a long time, nobody even knew his last name… until his body is found emaciated and battered having been pushed face-first off the edge of a cliff.
Inspector Littlejohn faces an incredibly peculiar case. How to explain the savage murder of a gentle Bishop? Did he know too much about the secretive citizens of Cape Marvin? Or did it have something to do with the strange family he left behind in Medhope?
Above all, why was the Bishop’s body so undernourished that death by violence won out by only a few days over death by starvation?
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