 UK First edition | |
| Author | Cyril Hare |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Francis Pettigrew Inspector Mallett |
| Genre | Detective |
| Publisher | Faber and Faber MacMillan (US) |
| Publication date | 1958 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | That Yew Tree's Shade |
He Should Have Died Hereafter is a 1958 detective novel by the British writer Cyril Hare. It is the fifth and last in his series featuring amateur detective Francis Pettigrew, a retired barrister. It also features an appearance of Inspector Mallet, a former officer of Scotland Yard who had last appeared in the author's With a Bare Bodkin (1946). It was published in the United States by MacMillan under the alternative title Untimely Death.
Synopsis
While holidaying with his wife in Exmoor, Pettigrew comes across a body in a beauty spot he had last visited in his childhood. When he returns with members of the local stag hunt, the corpse has disappeared. A couple of days later the body reappears at another location nearby and is identified as a ne'er-do-well who is the estranged husband of the woman whose house they are staying at. Mallet has retired to the district, but is hired to launch a private investigation by cousins of the deceased who believe the death may have been fraudulently concealed in order so that his wife and children should benefit from a large inheritance from his wealthy uncle. The matter ends in a convoluted case before the Court of Chancery but Pettigrew is still set on solving the murder that the local Devon police have failed to do.
References
- James p.158
- Reilly p.732
- Herbert p.94
- Reilly p.730
Bibliography
- Herbert, Rosemary. Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing. Oxford University Press, 2003.
- James, Russell. Great British Fictional Detectives. Remember When, 2009.
- Murphy, Bruce F. The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery. Springer, 1999.
- Reilly, John M. Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers. Springer, 2015.
- Van Dover, J.K. The Detective and the Artist: Painters, Poets and Writers in Crime Fiction, 1840sā1970s. McFarland, 2019.
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