MURDER AT HOLLY HOUSE

Denzil Meyrick

(Bantam, £16.99)

Nestling inside its festive-looking bookjacket, Murder at Holly House marks a change in tone for Denzil Meyrick, best known for the darker and grittier thrillers charting the beleaguered DCI Daley’s attempts to combat crime in the west of Scotland.

The first of the memoirs of Frank Gasby, and dedicated to Meyrick’s late grandfather, Cyril Pinkney, “a Yorkshireman to his bootstraps”, this murder mystery is set just before Christmas 1952 in the remote town of Elderby in Yorkshire. Inspector Frank Gasby, who is more accustomed to treading the streets of York, has been banished there by his superiors after an embarrassing incident involving the escape of 20 of an aristocrat’s thoroughbred horses during the arrest of a suspect.

It’s the kind of setting that brings a glow to the cheeks of nostalgic Boomers: a tightly-knit rural community centred on a pub and a church, which, despite its size, can support a butcher, baker, greengrocer, fishmonger and, somehow, a milliner’s.

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With Christmas only a few days away, it’s covered in a picturesque blanket of snow. Elderby sounds idyllic, but we’re not allowed to forget the awful food, the privations of rationing, the bleak chill of a northern winter and the mental scars of a recent world war.

In his exile, Grasby has been ordered to investigate a spate of robberies that have taken place in the area. Raised by a clergyman who has never shied away from humiliating and denigrating him, the Inspector has a bit of an attitude and doesn’t take this demotion well. But the town has piqued his curiosity. Alongside the expected local characters, he’s surprised to find two Americans. One, Deedee, is a mature student from Yale studying criminology who works as an intern (a new and unfamiliar concept) at the police station.

The other is a US journalist who reported on the D-Day landings and is now married to the local GP. Grasby’s new sergeant has narcolepsy and can fall asleep without warning. Odder still, the digs he has been assigned are like something from an Edgar Allen Poe story, presided over by a woman we might nowadays describe as an ageing goth, complete with her own raven. War veteran Grasby can take all this in his stride, but when he finds a corpse stuck up the chimney of the local landowner, Lord Damnish, things start to get properly strange.

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It slowly emerges that there’s a lot more going on than a few burglaries and internecine warfare between branches of the Damnish family. When the top brass instruct Grasby to mount a cover-up, the former soldier decides, somewhat reluctantly, to comply. But what can a man do when information just keeps falling into his lap? And what’s almost as maddening: how does Grasby’s spiritualist landlady know so much about his churchly dad?

Frank Gasby is a likeable protagonist. Resilient, a tad roguish, made cynical and prickly by a lifetime of being put down by his dad and his experiences in the war, but when he decides to do the right thing he’ll put his heart and soul into it. He recounts his adventures with a swagger and a sly, ironic glint, but he’s not afraid to own up to his weaknesses.

Murder at Holly House is much lighter and more humorous than Meyrick’s usual fare, but he does it without sacrificing high stakes or tension. There’s murder, beatings and a genuine conspiracy with potentially far-reaching consequences, but it’s a hugely entertaining yarn with an authentic period feel, making it a satisfying, escapist yarn for the cold, dark nights ahead.