It was at a dangerous bend in the road that the body of Grace Jenkins was found. A villager who kept herself to herself, she had lived at Boundary Cottage for nearly twenty-one years with her daughter Henrietta, before becoming the victim of a hit and run accident. Except when Detective Inspector Sloan and his team look into it, it appears that after the car hit her once, it turned around and drove over her again, just to make sure…

But the bigger mystery involves her daughter, Henrietta, returning from Camford University when hearing the terrible news. When the autopsy is carried out on her mother, not only is murder all-but-confirmed, but it also shows that Grace Jenkins had never given birth in her life. So either she was lying when she identified the body as that of her mother, which seems very unlikely, or that everything Henrietta knew about the twenty-one years of her life was a lie… and the truth of it is something that someone will kill for to keep quiet.

Catherine Aird aka Kinn Hamilton McIntosh is the latest victim for my book group – not Golden Age per se, but we’ve decided to branch out a bit. Aird is the author of twenty-six (I think) mystery novels and a number of short stories, all but two (I think) featuring DI Sloan and DC Crosby. These are known as the Calleshire Chronicles, ranging from The Religious Body from 1966 to Constable Country, released this year.

Henrietta Who?, not chosen to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Doctor Who – shame – was the second book in the series, and it is certainly a ground-breaking book. As you may recall, I’ve not had the greatest of luck with Book Club reads – Reputation For A Song, The Documents In The Case, The Franchise Affair, etc – but after Murder Among Friends, this is the second book in a row that I’ve really enjoyed. The hat-trick is on (and given we’re doing an Agatha Christie next month, it’s looking pretty good!)

It’s a relative short read – my 1981 paperback is a mere 160 pages long – but it’s got everything you need in a mystery. There’s more than one body, an interesting police team – I did enjoy the interplay between Sloan and his boss – and a decent cast of characters.

Where it perhaps struggles for the armchair reader is that for a long time, it’s hard to get remotely close to any sort of motive, as most of the developments and discoveries that move things forward happen in the final third. What is a little odd is that I felt that the middle section should drag but it didn’t seem to (although it’s hard for a 160 page book to drag) but it never really did. I did feel at times it didn’t seem to be going anywhere, but I could feel from the construction that Aird was structuring this as a traditional mystery and that indeed proves to be the case, although the clue that gives away the villain occurs so early that it makes Sloan seem a bit daft for not doing something about it then and there. And the revelations/speculations about the villain’s full plan do seem a bit much…

All in all, though, an enjoyable read, and available for only a couple of quid on Kindle, along with most of the rest of the series. Why not give it a go?