Mysteries Ahoy!

Originally published in 1953
Also known as Shepherd’s Crook (USA)
Inspector Macdonald #38
Preceded by Murder in the Mill-Race
Followed by Let Well Alone

“I’m minded of the way a fire spreads in dry bracken when we burn it off the fellside: tongues of flame this way and that – ’tis human tongues and words that’s creeping like flames in brushwood.”

It all began up at High Gimmerdale with the sheep-stealing, a hateful act in the shepherding lands around the bend in the Lune river – the Crook o’ Lune. Then came the fire at Aikengill house and with the leaping of the flames, death, disorder and dangerous gossip came to the quiet moorlands.

Visiting his friends, the Hoggetts, while searching for some farmland to buy up ahead of his retirement, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald’s trip becomes a busman’s holiday when he is drawn to investigate the deadly blaze and the deep-rooted motives behind the rising spate of crimes.

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When it comes to E. C. R. Lorac, my blog paints a rather misleading impression of my feelings about their work. Were you to read my broadly positive reviews, you might think that I have generally positive views of their work. The problem is this does not reflect the abandoned attempts made to read some of their other novels. Those negative readings outnumber the positives and the result is that I am always a little wary when I pick up one of these. Happily though I can report that Crook o’ Lune is well worth seeking out.

The story is set in rural Lancashire in the area known as Lunesdale. Gilbert Woolfall has recently inherited a house in the area after the death of his uncle, Thomas, and is weighing up what to do with it. He is torn between his love of the area and his recognition that his business life has left him ill-suited to working the land. As he considers this, he receives approaches from several local residents, each of whom have requests related to the property. One farmer wishes to buy it, a young couple ask if they might live in several of its rooms as caretakers for the property while Gilbert is away, while the rector proposes that Gilbert ought to donate a sizeable portion of the inheritance to the church.

Meanwhile Chief Inspector Macdonald is also in the area and considering his future. He is starting to consider what he will do when he retires from the Police Force and is imagining life as a farmer. His friends, the Hoggetts, point to the area as a place he could look to buy a farm but while he is investigating the area, he learns of a fire at Woolfall’s home that had killed the housekeeper. With suspicions of arson, Macdonald agrees to help the local police with their investigations and to discover if the death was planned or just a tragic accident.

One of the most striking elements of the way this book is written is the way Lorac allows the background to the case to slowly unfold. These opening chapters are leisurely paced, primarily existing to establish characters and their goals. This information is not unimportant, but even when we learn of a death, it is not clear that there is any murder involved. In fact, much of the early investigation concerns whether the arsonist would have known the victim was in the home, as well as the motives for committing the crime.

As I have found with several of their previous rural mysteries, Lorac is incredible at building dimensional, realistic communities to set her stories in. Perhaps that may have been helped in the case of this story by it drawing on some real locations (including the author’s own home), but Lorac injects her story and situations with a palpable sense of local history and tensions between the characters which sometimes goes back generations. This not only creates some fascinating conflict between the characters, it makes the setting feel all the more credible.

The investigation unfolds slowly, reflecting that it is far from clear that murder was intended at all. There is an added complication with discussion of a secondary set of crimes taking place in the vicinity, some sheep thefts, and one of the challenges for Macdonald is to understand how these different elements should fit together. As he talks with the locals, he begins to get a better understanding of these different personalities, bringing the case slowly into focus.

The result is a story that while not brimming with incident, is nevertheless quite fascinating because of the human elements involved as well as our interest in seeing positive outcomes – at least for a couple of the characters. The more we learn, the more interesting and complex this story becomes, building to a really interesting and credible explanation. Lorac clues the various components to this well and while that solution could easily be quite dry and technical, the case is so grounded in those characters and relationships that I felt it was really satisfying.

As for Macdonald, he is one of those solid, reliable detectives that seems a little lacking in personality but is interesting to watch. While Lorac gives him a personality and shares his hopes and aspirations, he remains a largely functional character. In other stories that might be a little frustrating but given the cast of strong personalities in Crook o’ Lune, this works nicely to keep our focus on what is being done rather than the person doing it.

Throw in the lovely descriptions of the landscape and the buildings, and you have a really pleasant read. This is the Lorac I have enjoyed most to date by some way and it left me wondering if I simply have a preference for the author’s countryside mysteries over those set in cities. Perhaps then that is the key for me in the future when it comes to her work. Clearly I respond to her ability to conjure up a sense of rural space, so I will have to test this by seeking out some of her other rural mysteries in the coming months.

If you have any suggestions for Lorac (or Carnac) novels you think I might enjoy, please feel free to share them in the comments below!

The Verdict: I was pleasantly surprised how engaged I was with this rural mystery, appreciating its slow and steady pace, well-drawn setting, and its attention to character development.