Faith, Fiction, Friends: "Murder at Haggburn Hall" by Roy Lewis

An ambitious Morpeth councilman, eying a close reelection race, takes on an investigation into the bureaucracy, and for some strange reason, the Department of Antiquities & Museums is the first in the barrel. In seemingly no time at all, Arnold Landon’s boss Karen Stannard is suspended with pay pending the investigation’s outcome. That’s followed by the suspension of the director himself. No charges have been made public, but the implications are rather ominous.

Mild-mannered but stubborn on matters of principle, Landon is incensed at the treatment of his superiors, much as he dislikes both. When he’s offered the interim directorship, he refuses, and punches home the point by asking for two weeks of vacation leave he’s due.

At the invitation of his professor friend, he’s off to Haggburn Hall, where Karen Stannard is also temporarily working on a dig. She’s not exactly pleased to see him, but she’s taken aback when she realizes he’s there as a protest against the investigation.

Roy Lewis

The Hall is owned by an eccentric elderly lady, who has various hangers-on enjoying her hospitality, including a kind of wastrel nephew who expects to inherit her wealth and a charlatan looking for money to fund his reincarnation study center. When a young man seen hanging around the local village is found in the Haggburn stable with his head bashed in, the signs seem to point to the reincarnation charlatan. But the police are having a dickens of a time determining motive and opportunity.

But then, Arnold Landon is on the scene, and it’s Landon who’ll figure out what actually happened.

Murder at Haggburn Hall is the 13^th Arnold Landon mystery by British writer Roy Lewis. It represents something of a change from its predecessors. Landon and his boss are becoming something less than adversaries, although animosity is present as an ongoing condition. Ad Landon seems to be moving in a direction away from his museum work. It’s a good story, and it’s interesting to watch the change in Landon.

Lewis (1933-2019) was 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 lived in northern England.

Related:

Murder in the Cottage by Roy Lewis.

Murder Under the Bridge by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Tower by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Church by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Barn by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Manor by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Farmhouse by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the Stableyard by Roy Lewis.

Murder in the House by Roy Lewis.

Murder by the Quay by Roy Lewis.

Error in Judgment by Roy Lewis.