Review – Tenant for Death

Tenant for Deathby Cyril HareGenres: Crime, Mystery Pages: 200 Series: Inspector Mallet #1 Rating: Synopsis: Two young estate agent's clerks are sent to check an inventory on a house in Daylesford Gardens, South Kensington. Upon arrival, they find an unlisted item - a corpse. Furthermore, the mysterious tenant, Colin James, has disappeared. In a tale which uncovers many of the seedier aspects of the world of high finance, Hare also introduces his readers to the formidable Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard. Cyril Hare’s Tenant for Death was apparently adapted from a play, but it works well in the novel format too, and introduces Hare’s Inspector Mallett (not to be confused with Mary Fitt’s Superintendent Mallett — and I think there may be another Mallett in classic detectives stories somewhere, too?). Like Suicide Excepted, which I actually read first (the order doesn’t really matter as there’s little character/plot progression), it’s worked out pretty cleverly, though does less by…