Snare in the Dark

Frank Parrish's Dan Mallett novels are unjustly neglected little gems, with twisty plots and lyrical descriptions of the English countryside. His detective is an unusual and memorable character; pushed into a banking career by his ambitious mother, he takes up his father's "career" of poaching after his death. When his mother needs a hip replacement and refuses to go to the public hospital, he begins stealing to save up the necessary money. A Snare in the Dark is the third in this series. Dan is preparing to snare partridges from a game preserve when he witnesses the murder of the gamekeeper. Fearing that the police suspect him, he goes into hiding while desperately trying to find out whom the gamekeeper was blackmailing and therefore who killed him. Following a false lead almost exposes him, and he goes to ground in a nursing home, where he finds a new lover and grave danger. As in the other books in the series, wonderful outdoors scenes (the fox cub hunt is a memorable sequence), interesting facts about poaching, and a twisty mystery -- and at the end of this one, a hint of a new relationship with the local police.If you like M.C. Beaton's defiantly unambitious Hamish Macbeth, you may also enjoy Dan Mallett.