I thought I had read all of
the Inspector Sloan books by Catherine Aird, having discovered the series
perhaps 10 years ago. But a Kindle edition of one of her books popped up at a
reduced price recently and it prompted me to compare my copies with those available,
which led to the identification of three or four missing titles. One of them is
Inheritance Tracks (Severn House, 2019), a wonderful traditional mystery
strongly reminiscent of Agatha Christie with references to John Galsworthy.
Mrs. Sue Port, Clive Culshaw, Miss
Samantha Peters, Martin Pickford, and Tom Culshaw are called to the office of
Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery in Berebury to hear that they are the recipients of
a trust established by their great-great-great grandfather or granduncle
Mayton; relationships that far removed from the progenitor are complicated.
Mayton had made a fortune by selling a patented nostrum during the first part
of the 1800s. The trust itself is a tortuous instrument that evokes comparisons
to the trust developed by Timothy Forsyte, the youngest of the wealthy Forsyte
brothers in The Forsyte Saga. Another inheritor has yet to be located,
and no distribution can be made until he can be found. Puckle is hopeful that
one of the cousins he has found knows where the missing one might be;
unfortunately they don’t.
The trust itself is a sort of
tontine such that if any of the inheritors dies, their share of the money does
not go to his or her beneficiaries but instead to the rest of the trust
participants, thereby increasing their share. Christie used this financial device
in 4:50 from Paddington (What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! in the U.S.)
Because of this arrangement, when one of the inheritors dies under odd
circumstances Puckle is worried enough about it to request a police
investigation. He knows nothing of the trust beneficiaries and he fears one may
be starting a homicidal career.
Because Puckle has heard the
missing cousin might be part of the street-living community, the issue of
homelessness is examined in some detail and approaches to resolve it, as well
as their success rate, are described. For instance, one of the store owners has
installed a sound machine in the back of his building to discourage rough
sleepers from congregating there.
Sloan never seems to escape
being assigned to monitor Constable Crosby, who is incapable of learning his
job and in real life would have been booted out of the force long ago. However,
fiction being what it is, he remains to provide comic relief. The scene in
which Crosby describes a prank one of the sergeants at the station plays on
Crosby and some of his equally dense colleagues is priceless.
The plot is a classic Golden
Age fair play mystery. Highly recommended.
·
Publisher:
Severn House; First World
Publication edition (August 1, 2019)
·
Language:
English
·
Hardcover:
208 pages
·
ISBN-10:
072788932X
· ISBN-13: 978-0727889324
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/44NCezm
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025
Aubrey Hamilton is a former
librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
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