''The High Sheriff'' is a 1937 mystery detective novel by the British writer Henry Wade. Wade was a writer of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, best known for his series featuring

Inspector Inspector, also police inspector or inspector of police, is a police rank. The rank or position varies in seniority depending on the organization that uses it. Australia In Australian police forces, the rank of inspector is generally the ne ...

Poole.Magill p.1666-1667 This was one of a number of stand-alone novels he wrote, structured as a partially inverted detective story.

Reception

Cecil Day-Lewis Cecil Day-Lewis (or Day Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written as C. Day-Lewis, was an Irish-born British poet and Poet Laureate from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonym of Nicholas Bla ...

writing in '' The Spectator'' under his pen name Nicholas Blake noted in his review that the author "turns from pure detection to the novel of character with a crime motif. The turn, to my mind, is not for the better: but that may be because I don’t care for hunting and shooting, which play a large part in the book, and because I found the hero, Sir Robert D’Arcy, rather a stick." A more favourable review was written by Sir Claud Schuster in the '' Times Literary Supplement''.

Synopsis

Sir Robert D’Arcy, the high sheriff of Brackenshire is

blackmailed Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false information about a person or people unless certain demands are met. It is often damaging information, and it may be revealed to fa ...

by a man who knows of his act of cowardice against the Germans during the First World War. D’Arcy, a proud and arrogant man from a leading family of the county can't bear the potential slur against his name. When the blackmailer is shot dead during a

shooting party Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or blowpipe). Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, rockets, and guided missiles can b ...

at D’Arcy's

country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

, suspicion inevitably falls on him.

References

Bibliography

* Magill, Frank Northen . ''Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction: Authors, Volume 4''. Salem Press, 1988. * Reilly, John M. ''Twentieth Century Crime & Mystery Writers''. Springer, 2015. 1937 British novels Novels by Henry Wade British mystery novels British detective novels British crime novels British thriller novels Constable & Co. books Novels set in England {{1930s-mystery-novel-stub