"A Dartmoor Murder" by Roy Lewis

Inspector John Crow of the Murder Squad at Scotland Yard finds himself the pressure point of influence. An American mining company owner uses his pull with the British government to get Crow assigned to a case – the murder of his environmental officer at a major project in Dartmoor. Crow isn’t pleased, and he knows the local police won’t be pleased, either. 

It’s a strange case. The victim was found in the project’s tailings pond, a site accessible generally only to those familiar with the property and the project. Unfortunately for Crow, that turns out to be a long list of people, including contractors, sub-contractors, and delivery trucks. 

 

Worse for Crow, he can’t get his head around the personality of the victim and what the man was working on before he died. Drilling practices? Disputes with the local bigwig landowner? Delivery schedules? The man was a widower, living quietly, who kept an extraordinarily neat home and office. He generally kept to himself and wasn’t particularly close to anyone at the mining project or in the local village where he lived.

 

Crow is right about the local police; they’re not happy, but they’re putting up with his presence and that of the officer helping him. They have their own frustrations, including the death of a teenaged girl in a hit-and-run accident that looks like it may go unsolved. The village isn’t pleased with the prospect of more tuck traffic because of the mining project. And Crow’s physical appearance – tall, thin, hawklike nose and a bald dome head, is often as off-putting as the questions he asks and the observations he makes.

 

Roy Lewis

A Dartmoor Murder is the eighth and final Inspector John Crow mystery by British author Roy Lewis. It’s a fine mystery, filled with the details of village life in Dartmoor and some of the intricacies of the mining industry. And it will have a twist within a twist, as Crow’s assisting officer comes up with the right motive but the wrong suspect.

 

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. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.  

 

Crow is the kind of protagonist that grows quietly on the reader through several novels. In many ways, it’s a shame to see that A Dartmoor Murder is the last of the Crow stories. But it is a well-written, entertaining series, and this last book doesn’t disappoint.

 

Related:

 

A Lover Too Many by Roy Lewis.

 

Error of Judgment by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder for Money by Roy Lewis.

 

The Woods Murder by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder in the Mine by Roy Lewis.

 

A Fox Hunting Murder by Roy Lewis.

"Murder in the Mine" by Roy Lewis

Inspector John Crow of Scotland Yard is called to a murder case in Wales. A woman’s body has been found at the bottom of a mine shaft, and it’s a fairly recent death. Crow is told by his boss that he’s being called in as a consultant; he won’t be in charge of the investigation. And Crow knows that will inevitably cause problems. 

The local police are welcoming and accommodating, up to a point. Crow begins to trace the dead woman and learns she’s from the Durham area in Yorkshire. She’d also developed something of a reputation with having an eye to the main chance. And she’s been entangled in Durham with a situation that sailed close to fraud.

 

But there are connections, too, in Wales. Too many connections. She’d employed a private detective to find her husband. A former lover lives there. Crow and a local detective finally confront whom they believe is the likely murderer. And they hear a confession. The local detective is thrilled; Crow is dissatisfied. Something is wrong with the confession.

 

Roy Lewis

Murder in the Mine is the fourth Inspector John Crow mystery by Roy Lewis, and it may be his best in the series yet. Lewis takes the reader into a tangled web of past and present, suspect and hidden motives, and few people being what they appear to be at first sight. It’s an intriguing and highly satisfying mystery.

 

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. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.  

 

 

Related:

 

A Lover Too Many by Roy Lewis.

 

Error of Judgment by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder for Money by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis

"Murder for Money" by Roy Lewis

A reporter for a scandal-sheet newspaper is found dead in the entrance hall of the home he was renting in Yorkshire. He’s been beaten to death with a poker. At first, the murderer seems obvious – the outraged common-law husband of a local barmaid.  

But as Inspector John Crow of Scotland Yard investigates, that neat (and easy) solution looks less and less certain. Crow begins to consider why the reporter was in Yorkshire, why had had hired a car and chauffeur to drive him all over the region, and why a local tramp seemed to know more of what was going on than he possibly should.

 

Roy Lewis

Murder for Money, the fourth Inspector Crow mystery by Roy Lewis, takes Crow and his assistant Detective Inspector Wilson into the murky area of Nazi war criminals, CIA and British secret agents, and secrets long buried in the past. And that original neat, easy solution to the crime becomes anything but.

 

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. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.  

 

In this fourth Inspector Crow mystery, Lewis continues to develop his detective, adding more information both about his work, his background, and his private life. The solution to the mystery turns out to be considerably more surprising than the actions of an angry husband.

 

Related:

 

A Lover Too Many by Roy Lewis.

 

Error of Judgment by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

"The Woods Murder" by Roy Lewis

An attorney is murdered in a small town. The police force is already grappling with the brutal death of a schoolgirl in the woods, and months have passed without a single good lead. Inspector John Crow is brought in from Scotland Yard to manage the lawyer’s murder investigation, much to the irritation of the local detective chief inspector.  

What he finds seems to lead nowhere, and fast. The lawyer was highly regarded, but a notorious womanizer. He’d hired a private detective for a case of suspected infidelity but never reported to results to the client. His housekeeper was also his mistress, who tolerated his wanderings. And everyone involved seems to be holding back information that could lead to the killer.

 

The Woods Murder is the third in the Inspector Crow mystery series by British author Roy Lewis. It’s a tale of murder with root far into the past, entangled with another murder investigation, police officers with chips on their shoulders who often make mistakes and miss the obvious, and a young woman thinking she’s protecting her boyfriend but leading herself into imminent danger.

 

Roy Lewis

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. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.  

 

In addition to offer an intriguing story, The Woods Murder provides a more in-depth look at Inspector Crow than the first two novels in the series. He’s shown as his speculative best as he sails disastrously near the wrong suspect.

 

Related:

 

A Lover Too Many by Roy Lewis.

 

Error of Judgment by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis

"Error of Judgment" by Roy Lewis

The body of a young woman is found in the elevator of a polytechnical institute. Inspector John Crow is called in to investigate. The victim was the secretary for the institute’s principal. But no one can offer a motive. 

Ac Crow ad his team investigate, they learn that not everyone who might be a suspect has a solid alibi. And the investigation is complicated by ongoing student demonstrations against the administration (it’s the 1960s; student demonstrations were part of the university experience). In fact, Crow and his colleagues find their hands full of protesting students while they try to find the killer. 

 

Side stories begin to play into the investigation. A sociology instructor starts an affair with a student protester. A manager from the Ministry of Education begins to look into the murder himself. One suspect has suffered a heart attack. The stories and events are swirling, but Crow is finding almost every promising avenue a dead end. 

 

Roy Lewis

Error of Judgment by British author Roy Lewis is the second in the Inspector Crow mystery series. The policeman plays an expectedly large role in this story, unlike the first, A Lover Too Many, in which he seemed almost a minor character. Lewis is developing his chief protagonist, and we’re learning more about his background and his relationships with his team, and what it is that makes him successful (dogged determination).

 

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. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.  

 

Error of Judgment is a tale of human frailty, misplaced passions, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time, all the while telling a story of student unrest in the 1960s.

 

Related:

 

A Lover Too Many by Roy Lewis.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Sedleigh Hall Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Farming Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Quayside Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Diamond Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Geordie Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Shipping Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The City of London Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Apartment Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Spanish Villa Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Marriage Murder by Roy Lewis. 

 

The Wasteful Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Phantom Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Slaughterhouse Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Tattoo Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Football Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Tutankhamen Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Zodiac Murder by Roy Lewis.

"A Lover Too Many" by Roy Lewis

Peter Marlin is an attorney, a partner in a law firm is a small English town. The inquest into his wife’s death has returned a verdict of “murder by person or persons unknown.” Not surprisingly, the coroner, and a number of other people as well, have cast suspicions in his direction. But he has an alibi; his secretary knew he was working at the office late the night of the murder, because she was working as well. There was also the small matter of an affair Peter had, during the seven months his wife had suddenly pulled up stakes and left him. But she returned, and Peter broke off the relationship.  

He’s asked to leave the firm by the senior partner. He’s trying to complete a financial transaction involving an acquisition, including the shares he manages as a trustee. He’s sailed close to the wind with buying his own shares in the acquiring firm. A lot is riding on the completion of the takeover.

 

Then Peter discovers letters written to his deceased wife, and he now thinks he knows who’s killed her. He hires a private detective to investigate. What he should have done was go directly to Inspector Crow, brought in from Scotland yard to investigate the murder of Peter’s wife.

 

Roy Lewis

A Lover Too Many by Roy Lewis is the first in the Inspector Crow detective series. It is an entertaining story, full of twists and turns, with a plethora of suspects, tangled motives, and hidden passions. 

 

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. The Arnold Landon series is comprised of 22 novels. Lewis lives in northern England.  

 

The surprise about A Lover Too Many is that, while it’s an Inspector Crow mystery, Inspector Crow plays a relatively small role. The chief character is Peter Marlin, at once appealing and having conflicted motives. Nevertheless, it’s an entertaining story, one in which justice will ultimately be done.

 

Related:

 

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Sedleigh Hall Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Farming Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Quayside Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Diamond Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Geordie Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Shipping Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The City of London Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Apartment Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Spanish Villa Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Marriage Murder by Roy Lewis. 

 

The Wasteful Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Phantom Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Slaughterhouse Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Tattoo Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Football Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Tutankhamen Murder by Roy Lewis.

 

The Zodiac Murder by Roy Lewis.

“A Cotswolds Murder” by Roy Lewis

Chuck Lindop manages a site for vans in the English Cotswolds. The site is what Americans would call a trailer park. He’s something of a bully, and he’s always willing to take advantage of women. He also never seems to be around when the owner of the site comes around to look at the books. And the books need looking at.

When Lindop’s body is found on the site, his head bashed by an iron pipe, the suspects abound. And the reader of this rather classic mystery story thinks he knows who did the deed. As it turns out, the reader may know less than he thinks he does, even knowing many of the facts.

Is the killer the young man bullied by Lindop, the young man whose wife started labor the night of the murder? Was it the woman in another van who had been shamefully taken advantage of? Was it the man whose wife had run off after a fling with Lindop? Or was it some of the criminal types in the area who seem to have had themselves mixed up with the dead manager?

Roy Lewis

Inspector Crow of Scotland Yard arrives, to help the local police. He painstakingly recreates the timing of the crime, and where everyone was. He discovers that virtually all of the suspects had an alibi. The crime looks insoluble.

A Cotswolds Murder by Roy Lewis begins as something that reads like a serious literary novel and then becomes a vintage mystery story, It was first published in 1975 under the title of A Part of Virtue, and it’s now been republished along with several other Inspector Crow mysteries.

Lewis is also the other 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. He lives in northern England. 

The reader of A Cotswolds Murder thinks he knows the killer’s identity almost from the beginning; it seems this will be a mystery of how the detective unravels the crime. But it changes several times, with a final twist that delivers a punch.