SUDDENLY AT HIS RESIDENCE

Brand (1907–88) locates this Golden Age whodunit, first published in 1947, in a setting both cozy and hellish.

Even in his palatial English estate of Swanswater Manor, it doesn’t take much to set off Sir Richard March for reasons that have nothing to do with the Blitz of 1944, which is littering the neighborhood with bombs on a regular basis. When his adult grandchildren’s idle discussion is suddenly punctuated by Edward Treviss’ revelation that his cousin Dr. Philip March has been exiled to the spare room because he’s cheating on his wife, Ellen, with another cousin, Claire March, Sir Richard grows testy and vows to disinherit the lot of them, even nurse Peta March, who as the daughter of his firstborn son is his heir apparent. Demanding that family solicitor Stephen Garde get down to the business of drafting a new will posthaste that leaves everything to Bella, the former mistress he married after his beloved first wife died, Sir Richard, who’s clearly never read any detective stories, hies himself off to the estate’s lodge, where he’s found dead the next morning, poisoned by the coramine someone pinched from Philip’s medical bag. That someone was obviously very close to Sir Richard and all the suspects, and it’s no easy task for Brand’s franchise detective, Inspector Cockrill, to interrupt the witty buzz of their theories, suggestions, and accusations long enough to identify the killer just as the Blitz strikes alarmingly but predictably close to home. Despite the small number of suspects, fans with a taste for formal whodunits can rest assured in the certainty that they won’t beat Cockie to the solution.

Perhaps the most underrated country-house mystery of them all.