And Death Came Too by Richard Hull

I was approved access to this book quite recently and by my self-imposed rule, I should have either read it before its release this year (original release 1939) or pushed it further down the queue. But after my reactions to the other books by the author I had the pleasure of reading recently, I just could not help myself.

[The book is still active on NetGalley and the cover leads back to it if this interests you]

The other books that I reviewed were:(The covers link back to their respective reviews)

This title was not even on Goodreads a couple of months ago and was a little surprised at its existence. I do like the cover of this book as compared to the other two. It seems to convey a pretty accurate impression about what we may find inside the book and it definitely indicates the tone of all the people and the investigation (there is a dead body, so there has to be an investigation)

I preface the brief summarizing of the tale with the fact that this is not for people who need a plot to sustain them, now moving on to that summary.The new owner of Y Bryn is dead. There were a few people around a dining table waiting for his arrival late at the night.They are there at his behest.

We have a rich pair of siblings, a fiance, a possible future fiancée, an older schoolmaster,a mystery woman and a very cocky policeman. This is a motley crew, some with stronger ties to the man than others and we are given an insight into their thoughts or at least we are allowed to think so. Then the revelation is made. The skeleton, (reasonably) untrained police staff of the village has to now take up a murder investigation. Things move painstakingly slowly but the description of the process and the subtly hilarious interactions between the lot made me feel very clever when I spotted them.The culprit is apprehended in the most normal of ways, and there is not much of a fight to get them to reveal all. This last part being the reason that you do not read this book for the resolution of the case but the process of getting there. Richard Hull’s books remind me of the joy I felt at a time when I still read slowly and read only the few books a local library could provide me with. These being older English books, I am very familiar with this form of narration. Although not meant for everyone in this fast paced literary lifestyle, I highly recommend taking a detour down a simpler more intricately paved lane to visit with the people in the Richard Hull’s world.