Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Constable Country by Catherine Aird

  

Constable Country (Allison & Busby, 2023) is apparently the final book in the long-running British detective series by Catherine Aird (1930-1924) featuring Inspector Christopher Dennis Sloan of the fictional Berebury CID department in West Calleshire, England. Known as “C.D.” which invariably is pronounced “Seedy”, Sloan is generally accompanied by a clueless constable named Crosby, to whom Sloan has been unable to teach much of anything. Sloan reports to Superintendent Leeyes, irritable, demanding, and of no assistance during an investigation. Leeyes frequents the local Adult Education classes and is prone to quoting odd bits of information from the latest class that may or may not be relevant to the subject at hand. His adversarial approach to hearing about new topics has been known to get him booted out of class, leaving Leeyes to fulminate about the uninformed instructor.

Michael Wakefield, part owner of the high-end printing firm Forres and Wakefield, learns the day before the annual accounting audit of the books that the company he has worked so hard to establish is bankrupt. He had no idea that his partner Malcolm Forres has been systematically embezzling for years. With a new accountant onboard who was sure to report the defalcations, Forres emptied the bank accounts and fled to Europe in the middle of the night, leaving Wakefield facing a mountain of debt and looming bankruptcy.

While Sloan does not understand white collar crime and prefers a straightforward burglary, he knows embezzlement is illegal and begins to delve into bank statements and to interview the accountants. A day after Forres absconded, despite the stress, Wakefield focused on printing and binding the Earl of Ornum’s latest book in time to deliver copies for the launch party two days later. The books were produced and a sample was delivered by the firm’s apprentice Lenny Datchet to Ornum House, where the earl’s outrageously flirtatious twin daughters demanded rides on Lenny’s motorbike. In return, they invited Lenny to the launch party.

The morning after the party Lenny was found dead in one of the guest rooms in Ornum House, expanding the scope of the Forres and Wakefield investigation. The attempted murder of another of the peripheral players further confuses everyone.

Sloan is practical and focused as always here and navigates between the unhelpful Leeyes and the clumsy Crosby to a successful conclusion. The solution is innovative and the motive unexpected. The pieces mostly fall together nicely once Sloan sorts them out, although I found a couple of plot questions unanswered.

A pleasant traditional mystery of which I find far too few of these days. I would like to think that another three or four books in the series are lurking in Aird’s papers somewhere but I suspect we would have heard about them by now. So I will have to content myself with re-visiting the earlier adventures of Sloan and his colleagues in Calleshire County occasionally.

Followers of the series will not want to miss this one. Readers new to Catherine Aird should start with an earlier title.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Allison & Busby

·         Publication date: ‎June 22, 2023

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎320 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎0749030755

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-0749030759

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link:  https://amzn.to/43jvxnh

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.