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lelia_t's review
4.0
An enjoyable mystery that moves quickly. I find Detective Inspector Reeves more interesting than the main series character MacDonald.
melissa_who_reads's review
5.0
Very enjoyable - I guessed who did it, but not why ... I did want more of one character, but the story devolved from her point of view and we didn't really see her as a character again until the end. Still, ECR Lorac wrote good tales, and this was definitely worth reading.
krobart's review
4.0
See my review here:
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2019/08/29/review-1389-murder-in-the-mill-race/
https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2019/08/29/review-1389-murder-in-the-mill-race/
annieb123's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.
Murder in the Mill-Race is a re-release of a classic golden age mystery by E.C.R. Lorac published in the British Library Crime Classics series by Poisoned Pen Press. Originally released in 1952 as Speak Justly of the Dead, this is the 36th book featuring Chief Inspector Robert MacDonald. Reformatted and re-released 6th August 2019, it's 256 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats. Many (most?) of these re-printings include an erudite and thoughtful introduction by mystery maven Martin Edwards and this one is no exception. It's always worth the price of admission to read Mr. Edwards' background information and context notes for these volumes.
This is a classic post WW2 mystery set in in an isolated small village in Devon. The sudden death of the fearsome and draconian do-gooder who's the local matron of the orphan charity school necessitates the intervention of the police and Reeves and MacDonald are called in to solve the case. There are hidden motives and interrelationships among the residents which come to light gradually over time.
The author was remarkably talented at descriptive prose and the sense of setting, the moors, the village, the people, are all finely drawn. The local accents can be a bit over the top, but they are faithfully rendered. It's nice to read about a married couple, the young doctor and his wife who move into the village, who are genuinely fond of one another. I enjoyed reading their interactions with one another.
This is a solidly entertaining mystery and it wears its age (65+ years) surprisingly well.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
Murder in the Mill-Race is a re-release of a classic golden age mystery by E.C.R. Lorac published in the British Library Crime Classics series by Poisoned Pen Press. Originally released in 1952 as Speak Justly of the Dead, this is the 36th book featuring Chief Inspector Robert MacDonald. Reformatted and re-released 6th August 2019, it's 256 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats. Many (most?) of these re-printings include an erudite and thoughtful introduction by mystery maven Martin Edwards and this one is no exception. It's always worth the price of admission to read Mr. Edwards' background information and context notes for these volumes.
This is a classic post WW2 mystery set in in an isolated small village in Devon. The sudden death of the fearsome and draconian do-gooder who's the local matron of the orphan charity school necessitates the intervention of the police and Reeves and MacDonald are called in to solve the case. There are hidden motives and interrelationships among the residents which come to light gradually over time.
The author was remarkably talented at descriptive prose and the sense of setting, the moors, the village, the people, are all finely drawn. The local accents can be a bit over the top, but they are faithfully rendered. It's nice to read about a married couple, the young doctor and his wife who move into the village, who are genuinely fond of one another. I enjoyed reading their interactions with one another.
This is a solidly entertaining mystery and it wears its age (65+ years) surprisingly well.
Four stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
tombomp's review
3.0
Solid mystery novel of a golden-age inspired mould - not exceptionally good but satisfying and very readable. The ending is good in that it's clearly been foreshadowed when you look back so it feels pretty "fair", with the new facts that complete the case being clearly hinted at a few times before. Only mild annoyance with the ending is it's one of those ones where the case against the murderer is circumstantial and would be unlikely to hold up in court and then the murderer does something silly and unnecessary to get the case clinched. But it's not too bad (although 1 particular thing stood out to me:
Spoiler
they emphasise multiple times that the murderer was in too bad physical shape to reasonably climb the hill... but then in the "what happened" narrative the detectives casually mention they climbed the hill in order for the ending to shake out. I mean you can make up your own explanation just felt like a weird oversightslferg's review
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
A young doctor and his wife take over a village practice. When ‘Sister Monica’ is found dead in the millrace, it brings to mind the death of a young girl from the Gramarye (the children’s home) who was being trained as a maid by Sister Monica. Nancy was found drowned in the mill pond. The local constable Peel suspects murder but gets no help from the villagers. All describe Sister as wonderful to the police and haven’t seen or heard anything. However, Chief Inspector MacDonald and his assistant Reeves arrive from Scotland Yard and immediately make their presence known in their own ways. Someone in the village is trying to present Scotland Yard with their own, unhelpful clues.
fictionfan's review against another edition
4.0
Hidden secrets...
Milham in the Moor looks idyllic to Anne Ferens when she moves there with her doctor husband, Raymond. This isolated village in North Devon has its own social structure and minds its own business. But Anne soon begins to realise that perhaps all isn’t as it seems on the surface. Some months earlier, a young girl, Nancy Bilton, drowned in the mill-race (the stream that turns the paddles of a watermill, in case, like me, you don’t know what a mill-race is) and, although it was decided she’d committed suicide, there are all kinds of rumour and gossip. Nancy had been a maid at the local children’s home, Gramarye, working under the formidable Sister Monica. The more often people tell Anne that Sister Monica is a “wonderful” woman, the more Anne’s instinctive dislike of her grows. And then Sister Monica is found dead, drowned in the mill-race...
ECR Lorac is becoming a regular in the British Library’s Crime Classics series, and her revival is well deserved. This is another enjoyable entry in the Inspector MacDonald series. Lorac’s settings are always one of her strengths, and here she gives a very credible picture of a village that has, in a sense, turned in on itself, preferring to deal with its own problems rather than letting the authorities handle things. So the local police are getting nowhere with their investigation, and when MacDonald is sent in from Scotland Yard he will have to break down the resistance of the villagers to talking to outsiders. As newcomers, Anne and Raymond are in the position of being half-in and half-out of village life – accepted, but not yet fully. MacDonald hopes they’ll be able to give him a clearer picture of the village personalities but, as the new doctor, Raymond doesn’t want to alienate the people who will be his patients.
Sister Monica is very well drawn as someone who likes to dominate others. She may be swimming in a small pond but she’s the biggest fish and relishes her power. It doesn’t do to cross her – she has her own ways of paying back perceived slights, often by ensuring that scurrilous rumours are spread concerning the offending party, sometimes true, sometimes not. So despite the villagers’ avowal that she’s a wonderful woman, when she turns up dead there’s a surprising number of people who might have had a motive. And can it be coincidence that the two deaths should have happened at the same spot?
Chief Inspector MacDonald is accompanied by his Detective Inspector, Reeves, another competent and dedicated officer. They’ve obviously worked together often and know each other’s strengths, each falling naturally into the role that suits them best – MacDonald as the more formal interrogator of the upper echelons of village society, while Reeves uses his easy manner to try to elicit gossip from those lower down the social scale. There’s a bit of the usual snobbery in their relationship, with MacDonald as the more cultured and better educated of the two, but it’s not as glaring as in some Golden Age pairings, and overall they come over as having equal respect for each other.
The plot is interesting, and leads up to a nice denouement. But it takes second place really to the characterisation of Sister Monica and the depiction of the children’s home, both of which are excellent and cast some light on the lack of monitoring of such facilities back in those days (post-WW2) which allowed nasty people to abuse the power they were granted over both children and staff. (Don’t worry, though – no graphic abuse is heaped on the poor children in this one, so it’s not a harrowing read.)
Overall, another very good read from Lorac – I like that each of the ones I’ve read so far have had entirely different kinds of social settings. I’m hoping the BL continues to re-publish more of her work.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Milham in the Moor looks idyllic to Anne Ferens when she moves there with her doctor husband, Raymond. This isolated village in North Devon has its own social structure and minds its own business. But Anne soon begins to realise that perhaps all isn’t as it seems on the surface. Some months earlier, a young girl, Nancy Bilton, drowned in the mill-race (the stream that turns the paddles of a watermill, in case, like me, you don’t know what a mill-race is) and, although it was decided she’d committed suicide, there are all kinds of rumour and gossip. Nancy had been a maid at the local children’s home, Gramarye, working under the formidable Sister Monica. The more often people tell Anne that Sister Monica is a “wonderful” woman, the more Anne’s instinctive dislike of her grows. And then Sister Monica is found dead, drowned in the mill-race...
ECR Lorac is becoming a regular in the British Library’s Crime Classics series, and her revival is well deserved. This is another enjoyable entry in the Inspector MacDonald series. Lorac’s settings are always one of her strengths, and here she gives a very credible picture of a village that has, in a sense, turned in on itself, preferring to deal with its own problems rather than letting the authorities handle things. So the local police are getting nowhere with their investigation, and when MacDonald is sent in from Scotland Yard he will have to break down the resistance of the villagers to talking to outsiders. As newcomers, Anne and Raymond are in the position of being half-in and half-out of village life – accepted, but not yet fully. MacDonald hopes they’ll be able to give him a clearer picture of the village personalities but, as the new doctor, Raymond doesn’t want to alienate the people who will be his patients.
Sister Monica is very well drawn as someone who likes to dominate others. She may be swimming in a small pond but she’s the biggest fish and relishes her power. It doesn’t do to cross her – she has her own ways of paying back perceived slights, often by ensuring that scurrilous rumours are spread concerning the offending party, sometimes true, sometimes not. So despite the villagers’ avowal that she’s a wonderful woman, when she turns up dead there’s a surprising number of people who might have had a motive. And can it be coincidence that the two deaths should have happened at the same spot?
Chief Inspector MacDonald is accompanied by his Detective Inspector, Reeves, another competent and dedicated officer. They’ve obviously worked together often and know each other’s strengths, each falling naturally into the role that suits them best – MacDonald as the more formal interrogator of the upper echelons of village society, while Reeves uses his easy manner to try to elicit gossip from those lower down the social scale. There’s a bit of the usual snobbery in their relationship, with MacDonald as the more cultured and better educated of the two, but it’s not as glaring as in some Golden Age pairings, and overall they come over as having equal respect for each other.
The plot is interesting, and leads up to a nice denouement. But it takes second place really to the characterisation of Sister Monica and the depiction of the children’s home, both of which are excellent and cast some light on the lack of monitoring of such facilities back in those days (post-WW2) which allowed nasty people to abuse the power they were granted over both children and staff. (Don’t worry, though – no graphic abuse is heaped on the poor children in this one, so it’s not a harrowing read.)
Overall, another very good read from Lorac – I like that each of the ones I’ve read so far have had entirely different kinds of social settings. I’m hoping the BL continues to re-publish more of her work.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
rb1004's review against another edition
3.0
I’m trying to branch out into more authors from the golden age of detective novels, and I think that this story was a worthy attempt, but with some notable pitfalls. Mostly, the character work in this story felt severely lacking. It was difficult to keep any of the towns people straight as so many of them were working class men and elderly women who all talked and acted the same. The authors portrayal of the victim also seemed to shift over time, and not in the way that was intended. Her personality seemed to be described differently between the beginning and end of the book, which made for some of the revelations at the end to feel shoehorned in.
I thought the mystery was solid enough and the duo of detectives were smart, enjoyable characters. I just wanted to see a bit more effort put in to everyone else to make it truly believable.
I thought the mystery was solid enough and the duo of detectives were smart, enjoyable characters. I just wanted to see a bit more effort put in to everyone else to make it truly believable.
vsbedford's review
5.0
A classic British mystery that strikes (particularly appreciated by me) a balance between character study/village tableau and crime procedural - fans of both styles should find plenty here to enjoy. The dialect in the dialogue is finely crafted, the author applies the class-skewering to the upstairs and downstairs both, and there's some lovely landscape description, especially in a moment of reflection between our Scotland Yard-outsiders. The mystery is a bit catch-as-catch can, and I'm not wholly convinced that the detective work pans out, but it's a fun ride while it lasts. A strong recommend.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.