In Memory of Charles

by Dorothy Erskine Muir, Curtis Evans (Introduction)

Charles, according to all accounts, had clearly been boiling up to be murdered.

Charles Courtley was a difficult man. Prone to violent outbursts and a bully to his wife and daughters, he had uprooted his unhappy family from London to a country house in remote East Anglia. Wealthy and increasingly intolerant of any dissent, Charles enjoyed dominating everyone around him. His family, his employees and even the locals – banned from using the traditional footpaths on his forested estate – have multiple reasons to bear a grudge. When Charles is killed in the woods, Inspector Simon Sturt finds conflicting motives and tangled relationships between Mrs Courtley, her daughter Pamela and the local men whose family had once owned the estate. But each has an alibi for the time of the murder and no one is talking…

Genres: Mystery

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Dorothy Agnes Sheepshanks (1889-1977) was one of seventeen children of John Sheepshanks, Bishop of Norwich. She attended Oxford, worked as an academic tutor, and began writing professionally to supplement the family income after the unexpected death of her husband, in 1932.

Dorothy worked for Oxford University & became an outside specialist tutor to whom colleges might refer undergraduates. According to family sources, Machiavelli and His Times was written with the Political Thought and Renaissance Special Subject papers of the Oxford History School in mind.

Under the moniker, D. Erskine Muir, Dorothy wrote three accomplished detective novels: In Muffled Night. (1933), Five to Five (1934) and In Memory of Charles (1941).

Reviews

[Blasr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book the best of the author's three crime novels, not a view shared by all readers. I also found the writing style easier.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

D Erskine Muir gives a vivid picture of a marriage which, at its inception, had been convenient to all parties concerned. Now, more than twenty years on, both Anne and Charles Courtley find themselves trapped, he by pride, she by money and fear of losing her children.

Anne is edging on forty and is restless, Charles is sixty and intent on enjoying retiral to a remote East Anglian estate. Throw in handsome young neighbours, a dodgy male secretary, angry and insular locals, and the scene is set for murder.

Both Anne and Charles are self-centred egotists, and while the author makes the husband and father an obvious and obnoxious bully, the picture she paints of the wife and mother imparts her awfulness rather more slowly and subtly.

The author asserts that her story and solution have a basis in real life, as have her two other mystery novels , but Curtis Evans, who wrote the Introduction, has been unable to track down the case.

Here the solution seemed to me to be the weakest and most unsatisfying part of an otherwise well-crafted and absorbing tale.

[Ms M J Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather clunky

This one is a bit of a plodder. The writer spends a lot of time establishing that the lead character is thoroughly bad tempered and it’s really a surprise that no-one has done him in before. The murder itself seems to be strangely overcomplicated. And there is a lot of repetition of various facts as if to hammer home their importance. Oh dear! Maybe I didn’t pick the best novel by this author.

[unknown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I picked it up by chance in my local bookshop. It sweeps you back to a past era of posh country living. The dysfunctional family were well portrayed and the mystery keeps you guessing.

[S Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

v decent.

I liked this, very well thought out. The story stutters a bit at the threequarter mark but recovers for the finish.