Head of a Traveller (1949)
Blurb:
My review:
Blake's masterpiece: a genuinely tragic and beautifully written novel which neglects neither the detection or the mystification. When a corpse is found floating down the Thames outside Plash Meadow, the Oxfordshire home of the poet Robert Seaton and family, all so sharply characterised that it is painful, Nigel Strangeways descends, and, despite his consciousness of his ambiguous position as both friend and traitor, finds the answer to the murders in the poetry of Robert Seaton, the suicide of his brother Oswald, scattered severed heads, and a mackintosh. He discovers the truth against his will, despite his own efforts to protect the Seaton family, so that his old friend and colleague Supt. Blount becomes hte enemy. At the end, his feelings lead him into a superbly-handled moral quandary, a deliberately open-ended conclusion which shocks and startles more than any ending in which all the ends are neatly tied together. Yet, despite the open-ended finish, the clues to the murderer are properly explained, with admirable ratiocination on the parts both of Nigel and Blount. In short, an immortal book, a book that combines an understanding of the human psyche with a properly worked-out and surprising solution, doubly satisfying on both counts.