Review – Suicide Excepted

Suicide Exceptedby Cyril HareGenres: Crime, Mystery Pages: 220 Rating: Synopsis: Inspector Mallett's stay at the country house hotel of Pendlebury Old Hall has been a letdown, room, food and service, and he longs for it to end. His last trial is to listen when a boorish old man, whose family once owned the house, joins his table. The next day the man is dead and Mallett finds himself investigating the suspicious 'suicide'. I can’t remember where exactly Cyril Hare’s Suicide Excepted popped up that led me to add it via Kobo Plus — maybe it was just recommended by Kobo! I hadn’t come across Hare before, at any rate, but he was writing during the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, and therefore falls into my interests pretty neatly, and picking up Suicide Excepted proved to be a good decision. The story is a bit unusual in that it opens following a police detective who gets caught up in a mystery: someone speaks to him the night before they’re found dead in portentous tones that seem to render…