Murder at the Chase by Eric Brown is the second book in the Langham and Dupre mystery series. These books tick a lot of boxes for me as I enjoy the 1950s setting, this one begins as a locked room mystery – something else which I like – and there’s an English village location.
It’s not absolutely necessary to have read the first book in this series Murder by the Book but it is preferable I think. You can read my thoughts on that one here.
It’s July 1955 and the writer Donald Langham has just about plucked up courage to ask Maria Dupre to marry him but he’s planning a romantic setting in which to do the deed, he’s taking her off to rural Suffolk.
Just as they are about to leave for their trip Langham gets a phone call from Alastair Endicott asking him for help to track down his father who seems to have gone missing, despite his study door and window being locked. Edward Endicott had been working on the biography of a Victorian Satanist called Vivian Stafford, a some time resident of Humble Barton, the small Suffolk village where the Endicotts live. Vivian Stafford has apparently returned to the village, claiming to be over 120 years old and a possessor of supernatural powers.
Donald Langham realises that Humble Barton isn’t far from where they were going for their romantic break so he decides to go there and see if he can help solve the mystery.
I’m already looking forward to reading the third in this series, which is yet to be published. My only gripe with this one is that the literary agent Charles Elder doesn’t appear in it as much as I would like and not being of a romantic frame of mind I’ll be very glad when Langham and Dupre actually get hitched, then they can settle down to married bickering and banter which I find to be more entertaining than romance. This is a well written book in which Brown manages to conjure up a very believable 1950s.