Gwen Moffat (1924-???) was a British travel writer, mountain guide, and pioneering climber. Her nonfiction work covers travel destinations from Wales to the Himalayas, and she was the first woman to be appointed a mountain guide in UK. For her accomplishments, she was awarded the MBE, Lifetime Achievement Award from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild, and Fellowship in the Alpine Club. Her books on climbing including Life on a Mountain, Climb to the Lost World, and Space to Breathe are considered authoritative.

For more on her life, see: https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-stories/mountains-and-mysteries-the-trailblazing-life-of-gwen-moffat/

She wrote more than 30 books, including 16 mysteries about Miss Melinda Pink, a middle-aged justice of the peace and mountaineer. Like crime fiction writer Showell Styles who wrote about series character Sir Abercrombie Lewker as Glyn Carr, Miss Pink’s adventures are invariably set in and around mountains.

In Persons Unknown (Victor Gollancz, 1978), Miss Pink’s fifth case, she visits a village on the coast of West Wales, along the cliffs looking over the Irish Sea, to celebrate an old climbing friend Roderick Bowen on his 87^th birthday. Despite his age, Roderick is in full possession of his faculties. He recently led a successful opposition to a forced sale of some of his considerable acreage to the Atomic Energy Commission and he’s still rejoicing in the win. The Bowen family has lived on its part of Wales for centuries and he has no intention of letting it go. He has bequeathed the land to his granddaughter Rachel who loves it as much as he does, knowing that she will not let it leave the family.

Roderick sustained a fall down a steep set of stairs recently and he’s claiming that someone tried to kill him. Miss Pink has seen the stairs and wonders how he survived. While his family assures her it was an accident, she is aware of undercurrents within the household and she wonders about their source. Miss Pink is watchful when his family and many village residents assemble to honor her old friend on his birthday.

Unlike many mysteries that start off observing a wealthy character’s birthday, the victim this time isn’t Bowen. Instead, it’s one of the village visitors, a high-priced call girl who is seeking a publisher for her tell-all memoir. The reasonable assumption by the police is that someone named in her book cannot afford to have his name in print, which explains her death and the disappearance of the manuscript. Miss Pink of course becomes involved.

This is an original story with beautifully descriptive sections devoted to the Wales coast and its flora and fauna. I found myself looking up the various birds and plants Miss Pink mentioned in her wanderings up and down the rocky shore. To be expected in someone who lived most of her life outdoors, Moffat has an eye for nature in all its detail, and she is able to turn her observations into vivid written imagery. While I found the story rambling in places, the mystery has a great solution; the culprit in some ways might be considered predictable and in other ways not at all. There were some clues but none that led me to the final outcome.

Readers who enjoy mysteries with compelling outdoor settings, such as Craig Johnson’s Longmire books, the Timber Creek K-9 mysteries by Margaret Mizushima, the Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box, and the Anna Pigeon series by Nevada Barr, will want to look at this series.

Lume Books has reprinted them all in ebook and they are readily available.