English Murder
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An English Murder (1951) was the sixth crime novel by 'Cyril Hare', nom de plume of Alfred Gordon Clark and one of the best-loved names in English 'Golden Age' crime writing. Gordon Clark was a county judge at the time of the novel's composition.
Snow is falling fast as a group of family and friends come together for Christmas at the country residence of Lord Warbeck, an ailing peer who wants to be among loved ones for what he thinks will be his last Christmas. But as midnight strikes on Christmas Eve there is a murder by poisoning. The local police cannot attend as snowfall has made Warbeck Hall inaccessible. So the case lands with the only policeman to hand - the personal bodyguard of Lord Warbeck's politician brother.
'Of Cyril Hare's detective stories my only complaint is that they are too infrequent.' Tatler
Cyril Hare was the pseudonym for the distinguished lawyer Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark. He was born in Surrey, in 1900, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. A member of the Inner Temple, he was called to the Bar in 1924 and joined the chambers of Roland Oliver, who handled many of the great crime cases of the 1920s. He practised as a barrister until the Second World War, after which he served in various legal and judicial capacities including a time as a county court judge in Surrey.
Hare's crime novels, many of which draw on his legal experience, have been praised by Elizabeth Bowen and P.D. James among others. He died in 1958 - at the peak of his career as a judge, and at the height of his powers as a master of the whodunit.