Margaret Yorke (1924-2012) was born Margaret Beda Larminie Nicholson in Surrey, lived in Dublin for many years and moved back to England. She was a ferocious champion of libraries, for which she won the CWA Golden Handcuffs award, given in recognition of the popularity of the country’s leading crime writer within the library service and to its borrowers. She launched her writing career in the late 1950s and published more than 40 books after working in Oxford’s Christ Church library and as an Assistant Librarian in St. Hilda’s College libraries. She chaired the Crime Writers’ Association between 1979 and 1980. In 1982, she won the Swedish Academy Detection award for the best translated novel, The Scent of Fear. She received the Diamond Dagger in 1999. See a complete obituary on the CWA website here: https://thecwa.co.uk/past-winners/margaret-yorke/
Dead in the Morning (Geoffrey Bles, 1970) is her first mystery about Dr. Patrick Grant, M.A., D.Phil., Fellow and Dean of St Mark’s College, Oxford, and lecturer in English. Urbane, witty, and inordinately curious about other people, Grant is visiting his sister in the village of Fennersham, when the cook for the Ludlows, the wealthiest family in the area, dies suddenly. Grant can’t resist getting involved.
The matriarch of the Ludlow family is immobile with arthritis and is forced to rely on her family for assistance with nearly everything. Rather than being grateful, Mrs. Ludlow showers her unhappy daughter with abuse as well as her older son, his wife, the gardener, and anyone else who enters her orbit. Currently she is denying her granddaughter the opportunity to attend college, despite Cathy’s very good marks on her A levels. All in all, if someone were to be murdered, she was the logical candidate. When the sweet-loving cook dies after eating Mrs. Ludlow’s leftover dessert from dinner, everyone assumed that Mrs. Ludlow was the intended target.
His sister is canvassing for a local charity so Grant offers to help her as an excuse to knock on the Ludlow’s door and ask questions.
What would crime fiction do without the rich and parsimonious elderly relatives who only exist to make their younger relatives miserable? They seem to be a never-ending source of material.
I was somewhat disappointed as I read because by the time I had completed a quarter of the book I thought that I could see who both the victim and the killer were. I was only half right so the story was not as predictable as I feared. Grant is a good addition to the pantheon of academics turned sleuth and the village is a fine backdrop to the action. I am adding the further adventures of Dr. Grant to my TBR list.
For fans of traditional mysteries.