Saltmarsh Murders, The

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Noel Wells, curate in the sleepy village of Saltmarsh, likes to spend his time dancing in the study with the vicar’s niece until one day the vicar’s unpleasant wife discovers her unmarried housemaid is pregnant and trouble begins. It is left to Noel to call for the help of sometime-detective and full-time Freudian Mrs Bradley, who sets out on an unnervingly unorthodox investigation into the mysterious pregnancy, an investigation that also takes in a smuggler, the village lunatic, a missing corpse, a public pillory, an exhumation and, of course, a murderer. Mrs. Bradley is easily one of the most memorable personalities in crime fiction and in this classic whodunit she proves that some English villages can be murderously peaceful.

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Gladys Mitchell was an English schoolteacher and the author of over sixty novels featuring her unconventional heroine, Mrs Bradley. An early member of the Detection Club, alongside Agatha Christie, G.K Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers, she was awarded the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger in 1976. Her hobbies included architecture and writing poetry. She studied the works of Sigmund Freud and her interest in witchcraft was encouraged by her friend, the detective novelist Helen Simpson.