Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Richard Garth, Merchant Navy sailor, is relaxing through the picturesque rolling hills of Lunesdale after 25 years away. Because of Richard’s choice of wife, Richard is estranged from his curmudgeonly father, Robert Garth, who has kept him away from the land of his forefathers. Still, after a long sojourn in Canada and a string of hardships, he wishes to see the beautiful land that shaped him into the man he is now.

Richard has no intention of seeing his father or siblings, of returning to the farm; they all still run or get embroiled in their petty family squabbles, so when he is spotted by tenant farmer John Staple, he beseeches him to keep his ramble across the hills a secret from his family.

However, Richard Garth and John Staple’s reunion was overheard by Richard’s half-brother Malcolm who was resting in the heather. Malcolm Garth, who has never met his half-brother, is fascinated by the man and, upon returning home, tells his sweetheart- Elizabeth (Lisa). Soon there are unconfirmed rumors of Richard Garth being sighted in the village.

Robert Garth, who at over eighty years old, is working the land like his father before him and is disappointed that his farm is being helmed by his daughter Marion. Capable, level-headed, and business-minded, Marion is a great farmer, who has the admiration of her tenant farmers, but her father resents his daughter being a farmer. Marion’s brother Charles, who recently ran out of Malaysia due to the Japanese Invasion during WWII, is struggling to adjust to farming life and misses being a prosperous businessman, their youngest half-brother Malcolm is too physically weak to be much help on the farm and desperately wishes to escape farm life for more artistic pursuits. Family drama is bubbling under the surface until Robert Garth is found shot in a shed by John Staple after a fox hunt.

Everyone in the family has a motive, and the valley’s residents are reticent to talk to the local police, who make little headway with Garth’s fellow farm folk. Enter Chief Inspector MacDonald, who respects the people and the land, and laments that he never learned to milk a cow before he solved the murder of Robert Garth.

Fell Murder is, precisely as the title says, a Lancashire mystery. It’s a story of a people and their symbiotic relationship with the land. The generations of people have worked in harmony until one person disrupts the balance of the land and its people, and then the worst happens- a murder.

I liked the long descriptive paragraphs about the land and the intensely atmospheric setting. I felt like I was also going on a long ramble through the hills, and I could feel Lorca’s intense love of the land. Her house, which served as the model for the farm in Fell Murder, feels natural. I live in a farm country, like seven generations of farmers farming the same land country, and she captures the insular and codependent nature of farm folk.

The Garth family, whose patriarch is trying to keep up with the social mores of pre-world War II England, is in constant conflict with his children, who have progressed and have new ideas in a place where things survive because they stay the same. Marion and Elizabeth are sound, substantial farmers, contradicting Robert Garth’s notions of what women should do. He is a man whose time has passed. It is exciting to see how the people living in the country cannot outrun the social and moral progress ushered in by World War II.

Fell Murder may be too preoccupied with atmosphere and social commentary because the mystery is run-of-the-mill. The characters are well-crafted but boring. The secret is simple, and in the grander scheme of Lorac’s works, simple is surprising; her other works are complex puzzles with riddles and lots of misdirection; these elements are mostly missing. Chief Inspector MacDonald comes into the story late and investigates the murder with plodding kindness, but there are no flashes of ingenious or cleverly hidden clues to be teased out. I liked the setting, but the mystery was perfunctory and forgettable. Fell Murder is a good mystery, but when most of Lorac’s books are some of the best secrets in the genre, a good mystery is a disappointment.

Fell Murder Reviews

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