Death in Midwinter

Inspector Kentworthy #2

by John Buxton Hilton

Lured into a scandalous rendezvous with a lovely milk-maid, a young politician suddenly finds himself a suspect when the girl turns up murdered, and it is up to Scotland Yard's Inspector Kenworthy to sort out the truth. Reprint.

Genres: Mystery

200 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

John Buxton Hilton was a British crime writer. After his war service in the army he became an Inspector of schools, before retiring in 1970 to take up full-time writing.

He wrote the Superintendent Simon Kenworthy series and the Inspector Thomas Brunt series, as well as the Inspector Mosley series under the pseudonym John Greenwood. Hilton died in Norwich.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

"It was the dead of winter -- in more ways than one.

"A family funeral brought a young politician to the town of Carrion Clough. And a lovely young milk-maid lured him to a scandalous rendezvous. Now the lass has been murdered. A brutal blizzard has left the village snowbound. And Inspector Kenworthy must plow through the icy drifts -- and red-hot scandals -- to catch a coldhearted killer."
~~back cover

Another complicated plot graced with many local characters -- all of whom come under the lens of suspicion at one time or another. Again, if there were clues along the way, they went over my head, and when the killer was identified in the classic summation gathering a page or two before the end, it was a complete surprise to me.

[Eugene · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, not a great, mystery. Inspector Kenworthy is not a character one can warm up to, his signature gruffness bordering on cantankerous and his treatment of others, including his Sergeant, are close to downright rude and hectoring. While author Hilton may have been seeking to develop the Inspector’s quirky personality as one we’d like, he left out far too much of the warmth and regard for others I’d want to see…
That said, as a police procedural it’s well done, altho’ one could easily believe it to be set in the early 1900’s rather than the more “contemporary” 1960’s of it’s publication; whether this intentional or not I can’t say, but it is a palpable atmosphere of the two I’ve read.
While I haven’t grown into being enamored of them, they are well enough done that I will definitely read more of these.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-constructed mystery. I did not guess who the murderer was, and the answer was not revealed until the very last page. Of course Inspector Kenworthy knew a long time before that, but he did not share that information with anyone else, and certainly not the reader.

[Marci · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one better than the first. I still had a little trouble with the language of the time, but as I thought, it got easier for the second book. I think that the plot line are different and interesting.