Lesson in Dying

My wife gave me this book to read on a recent trip. I didn't think that I would like it, but I gave it a try anyway. I'm really glad that I did! It really made me think about what it must have been like to be African-American in the South in the 1940's. The author really brings it home the way that whites treated blacks. Being white myself, I found myself ashamed while reading the sections in which the narrator found himself being talked to like a second-class person. I don't want to give away any of the book, but the next-to-last chapter in the book is the best part I believe. If you do buy this book, read it all at one time. That way you will get the full affect.

This book has a very involved plot. Harold Medburn, headmaster of the village school, is found dead in the schoolyard on the night of a Halloween party. The police accuse his wife Kitty of killing her husband because he was about to leave her. The school's caretaker loved Kitty when they were young and wants to help her. He sets his daughter to asking questions. No one is sorry Harold is dead, he'd been a bully who took pleasure in tormenting his staff, even some parents. So the emphasis is not so much on solving his murder as exonerating Kitty. Insp. Ramsey, who usually has a more effective role in Cleeves' mysteries, is almost a secondary character in this one. But the portrayals of the townspeople are well drawn and I enjoyed the story for that and the murder was solved in a surprising fashion in the end.