Fallen Into the Pit - Softcover

ELLIS PETERS

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0708848397 ISBN 13: 9780708848395

Publisher: Futura, 1991

Synopsis

Vintage paperback

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published in 1951, but just now making its first American appearance, this mystery launched Peters's Inspector Felse series. Set in Britain just after WW II, the main sleuth here is not actually George Felse but his 13-year-old son Dominic. He and his best friend, Pussy Hart, are playing when Dom finds the body of Helmut Schauffler, an ex-P.O.W. who had stayed on after the war in the Comerford area. An autopsy indicates that Schauffler's skull was fractured by blows that were "precise, neat and of murderous intention." Helmut, a loathsome blend of cruelty, cowardice and anti-Semitism, is hardly mourned, but his death so rends the village's social fabric that solving the case is imperative. In his first murder investigation, George has difficulty viewing his neighbors as suspects, although the area does have its share of demobilized veterans, i.e., trained killers. Even more distressing to George and his wife Bunty is the proprietary--and potentially fatal--interest that Dom takes in the case. By giving the youth a finely balanced blend of doggedness, good luck, ingenuity and foolhardiness, Peters sets out a very effective mystery while expressing, through the gradual unfolding of the character of Helmut,her own serious skepticism that aperson--or a country--can change his--or its--spots. In 1991, Mysterious reissued Flight of the Witch , a Felse mystery written in 1964.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

In postwar England, the village of Comerford--home to Police Sergeant George Felse--has its share of returned heros: Quiet teacher Chad Wedeerburn; decorated paratrooper Jim Tigg, now sheepherding on Chris Collins's farm; and Charles Blunden, who fought his way across Italy, now back to his father Selwyn's substantial land holdings. There are also a few POWs in Comerford- -helping where needed. Helmut Schauffler is one of them--hard- working, outwardly meek, but Nazi to the core. He's finally been placed with a group of coal-mining workers but continues his secret verbal torture of Gerd, the stoic Jewish refugee wife of farmer Chris. When Sergeant Felse's clever young son Dominic finds Schauffler's body in a shallow brook, the suspects are many, but the case is still unresolved when a second murder stimulates Dominic to a burgeoning flood of logic and courage beyond his years, forcing the solution to a puzzle deep-rooted in the past. The first of the Sergeant Felse series to appear in the US (it was published in England in 1951), joining the author's Brother Cadfael stories. The leisurely, introspective style so well suited to the life and times of a 12th-century monk seems excessively slow and wordy here, but there are rewards for the patient reader. Others may find it a bit of a slog. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Futura
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0708848397
• ISBN 13: 9780708848395
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 278