"Murder in the Mill-Race" is an enjoyable vintage mystery but it is not my favorite work by the author. By all means, this is a well-written golden age era mystery, but it certainly is not Lorac's most memorable work let alone an unique read from the period. The plot is quite predictable, and clues pretty much point to the only obvious suspect. I didn't enjoy it as much as her other works which have been republished to date ("Fire in the Thatch," "Murder by Matchlight" and "Bats in the Belfry.)

Far away in a self-sufficient and remote English village where people usually live in peace, the village sergeant knows the two drown cases that he has been dealing with are no accidents. Calling in the Scotland Yard to step in, Inspector Macdonald has to tackle villagers who usually turn blind eye and pretend ignorant when horrible things happen. The inhabitants' tendency to harbor malice by following the unspoken norm, "never made trouble in the village," does not make the investigation any easier. Macdonald, once again, exercises his wits and experiences to solve the puzzles when there are no apparent motives and witnesses.

What I love about the book:
- E.C.R. Lorac's description of the village and scenery is simply stunning and beautiful. And I love her subtle way of showing the post-war traumas to civilians at the beginning of the story
- a well constructed and believable plot

What I don't like about the book:
- the plot is predictable. There are just a small number of suspects, and clues are obvious
-The pace is a little too slow

"Murder in the Mill-Race" is still an enchanting vintage mystery. Readers of old-school crime novels would find Lorac's writing appealing and entertaining.

I really loved this book; such country village drama.

Hidden secrets...

Milham in the Moor looks idyllic to Anne Ferens when she moves there with her doctor husband, Raymond. This isolated village in North Devon has its own social structure and minds its own business. But Anne soon begins to realise that perhaps all isn’t as it seems on the surface. Some months earlier, a young girl, Nancy Bilton, drowned in the mill-race (the stream that turns the paddles of a watermill, in case, like me, you don’t know what a mill-race is) and, although it was decided she’d committed suicide, there are all kinds of rumour and gossip. Nancy had been a maid at the local children’s home, Gramarye, working under the formidable Sister Monica. The more often people tell Anne that Sister Monica is a “wonderful” woman, the more Anne’s instinctive dislike of her grows. And then Sister Monica is found dead, drowned in the mill-race...

ECR Lorac is becoming a regular in the British Library’s Crime Classics series, and her revival is well deserved. This is another enjoyable entry in the Inspector MacDonald series. Lorac’s settings are always one of her strengths, and here she gives a very credible picture of a village that has, in a sense, turned in on itself, preferring to deal with its own problems rather than letting the authorities handle things. So the local police are getting nowhere with their investigation, and when MacDonald is sent in from Scotland Yard he will have to break down the resistance of the villagers to talking to outsiders. As newcomers, Anne and Raymond are in the position of being half-in and half-out of village life – accepted, but not yet fully. MacDonald hopes they’ll be able to give him a clearer picture of the village personalities but, as the new doctor, Raymond doesn’t want to alienate the people who will be his patients.

Sister Monica is very well drawn as someone who likes to dominate others. She may be swimming in a small pond but she’s the biggest fish and relishes her power. It doesn’t do to cross her – she has her own ways of paying back perceived slights, often by ensuring that scurrilous rumours are spread concerning the offending party, sometimes true, sometimes not. So despite the villagers’ avowal that she’s a wonderful woman, when she turns up dead there’s a surprising number of people who might have had a motive. And can it be coincidence that the two deaths should have happened at the same spot?

Chief Inspector MacDonald is accompanied by his Detective Inspector, Reeves, another competent and dedicated officer. They’ve obviously worked together often and know each other’s strengths, each falling naturally into the role that suits them best – MacDonald as the more formal interrogator of the upper echelons of village society, while Reeves uses his easy manner to try to elicit gossip from those lower down the social scale. There’s a bit of the usual snobbery in their relationship, with MacDonald as the more cultured and better educated of the two, but it’s not as glaring as in some Golden Age pairings, and overall they come over as having equal respect for each other.

The plot is interesting, and leads up to a nice denouement. But it takes second place really to the characterisation of Sister Monica and the depiction of the children’s home, both of which are excellent and cast some light on the lack of monitoring of such facilities back in those days (post-WW2) which allowed nasty people to abuse the power they were granted over both children and staff. (Don’t worry, though – no graphic abuse is heaped on the poor children in this one, so it’s not a harrowing read.)

Overall, another very good read from Lorac – I like that each of the ones I’ve read so far have had entirely different kinds of social settings. I’m hoping the BL continues to re-publish more of her work.

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, the British Library.

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Murder in the Mill-Race, also published as Speak Justly of the Dead, takes place in a small, somewhat isolated town North Devon. Dr. Ferens has taken over the practice of the mostly retired town doctor and he and his wife are happy to move away from the grit and grime of the city. Of course, villages come with their own sets of difficulties, and in this particular village, one of those is Sister Monica who runs the children’s home. Mrs. Ferens has an instant dislike to her and while the townsfolk all praise her, you know something’s not quite right. It’s no surprise when she ends up dead in the stream just beyond the mill.

We meet the people in town as Dr. Ferens does and we are allowed to settle into the setting nicely before the murder occurs. Even then the local guy does a bit of investigating before MacDonald is called in. The villagers are not keen on answering the detective’s questions. They’d all like to pretend the death was an accident – although it clearly wasn’t.

MacDonald is a good series detective. Smart, but understanding too. He pays as much attention to the people as he does the clues. And he and his sidekick Reeves work together well. This is a fair mystery, we see the clues, actually our attention is drawn to them over and over, but I didn’t put it together, maybe because the killer was not exactly typical.

Murder in the Mill-Race works well as a stand-alone. The secondary characters and setting are as new to MacDonald as they are to us. And, at least in the two that I’ve read, he doesn’t have much of a personal life that changes over time, even if the world does. The last one I read was set in London during the war which gave it a very different feel than this one in the countryside. Honestly, I prefer this one slightly in that respect, but that’s a personal taste.

I love that so many of these Golden Age mysteries are being reprinted.

An enjoyable mystery that moves quickly. I find Detective Inspector Reeves more interesting than the main series character MacDonald.

Very enjoyable - I guessed who did it, but not why ... I did want more of one character, but the story devolved from her point of view and we didn't really see her as a character again until the end. Still, ECR Lorac wrote good tales, and this was definitely worth reading.

See my review here:

https://whatmeread.wordpress.com/2019/08/29/review-1389-murder-in-the-mill-race/