Faith, Fiction, Friends: “Murder in the Tower” by Roy Lewis

Arnold Landon has now transferred from the County Planning Council in Morpeth in northern England to the Department of Museums and Antiquities in the same location. His former Planning Officer thought it best for Landon to work directly in an area suited to his knowledge and interests – and to remove an employee who often seemed to involve himself in controversies and publicity involving the police.

Landon is pleased with the move. But he knows that while he doesn’t go looking for trouble, trouble seems unerringly to find him. Like with two current assignments. His director has asked him to step in and take over the research and writing of a brochure about the medieval towers of Northumberland. The staffer assigned to do it has inexplicably taken leave, without asking for permission or telling anyone what he was up to. The brochure is already late, and Landon discovers that what there is of it is badly done.

Roy Lewis

To add to the deadline pressure, Landon’s director also tells him to meet with a local resident about a painting found hidden in an old Rectory. Landon knows nothing about paintings, but the director needs the resident off his back. What Landon discovers is that the painting is tied to the subject of the towers for the brochure. And while he thinks it nonsense, both seem connected to the stories surrounding the Shroud of Turin. He gradually discovers that both have a connection to two murders – a couple having an affair. And the prime suspect is the missing work in Landon’s department.

Murder in the Tower is the seventh novel in the Arnold Landon mystery series by British author Roy Lewis, and it may be the best one yet, which is saying something for the previous six books which have all been fascinatingly good. Lewis or a close friend new a lot about medieval construction in wood and stone, and the reader will learn a lot about the subject as well. Landon is one of the more unusual fictional amateur detectives – unassuming, mild-mannered, often taken advantage of by his superiors at work, but stubborn to a fault when he knows he’s right. And Lewis adds a slight touch of romance into the mix.

Lewis is the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.