Patreon Post: Murder at the Flood (1957) by Mabel Esther Allan

I came across this book when dipping into Jacques Barzun & Wendell Hertig Taylor’s review of it. They opined that: ‘The author writes clearly and consecutively about an East Anglian village that is severely flooded […] Good scenes of refugees in the church, second crime, and tragedy at the end.’ Whilst floods are not as common in crime fiction as snow, there still seems to be quite a few examples out there. For instance, there is Flood (1971) by Lionel Black, The Nine Taylors (1934) by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Supper Club Murders (2021) by Victoria Dowd, Taken at the Flood (1927) by Geraldine Bonner, ‘The Night of the Tiger’ by Robert Van Gulik and The Body in the Dumb River (1961) by George Bellairs. Crooks and detectives alike get cut off by rising water levels and have to create continency plans. A couple of these examples are a little bit different. Sayers’ novel concludes with a flood, which provides a form of unorthodox justice, whilst in Bellairs’ mystery, the flood is only an…