''Death at Low Tide'' is a 1938

detective novel Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

by the British writer

Cecil Street Cecil John Charles Street (3 May 1884 – 8 December 1964), who was known to his colleagues, family and friends as John Street, began his military career as an artillery officer in the British Army. During the course of World War I, he became a ...

, writing under the pen name of Miles Burton. It is the seventeenth in a series of books featuring the

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...

amateur detective Desmond Merrion and Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard.Reilly p.1259 A review in the ''

Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to '' The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

'' declared "this is probably the best work of an author who has already had many brilliant successes". However ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'' noted "Miles Burton still remains faithful to the Crofts school in his austere refusal to develop a style."

Synopsis

In a small

West Country The West Country (occasionally Westcountry) is a loosely defined area of South West England, usually taken to include all, some, or parts of the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Bristol, and, less commonly, Wiltshire, Glo ...

port one summer evening a

ferryman A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water tax ...

fishes a body of the harbour at low tide. It proves to be the unpopular

harbour master A harbourmaster (or harbormaster, see spelling differences) is an official responsible for enforcing the regulations of a particular harbour or port, in order to ensure the safety of navigation, the security of the harbour and the correct operat ...

, whose plans to transform a seaside resort into an industrial port has made him many enemies. Shot through the head it is a clear case of murder, and the services of Arnold and his friend Merrion are called in to investigate.

References

Bibliography

* Evans, Curtis. ''Masters of the "Humdrum" Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1920-1961''. McFarland, 2014. * Herbert, Rosemary. ''Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing''. Oxford University Press, 2003. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1938 British novels Novels by Cecil Street British mystery novels British detective novels Collins Crime Club books Novels set in England {{1930s-crime-novel-stub