A hit-and-run accident uncovers a lot of secrets in the second in the Calleshire Chronicles. At first it looks like it could have been an accident, but the autopsy indicates that Mrs. Jenkins was run over twice. And the autopsy shows that Mrs. Jenkins never had a child, yet it is her daughter Henrietta, a nearly twenty-one-year-old university student, who identifies her mother's body.

Detective Inspector C. D. Sloane of the Calleshire police force is called in to investigate. He wants to know who murdered Mrs. Jenkins. Meanwhile, Henrietta is more concerned with finding out who she is since she now knows that Mrs. Jenkins wasn't her mother.

All Henrietta has to contribute to the investigation are stories her mother told her when she was growing up and she doesn't know how many of them were true. A break-in at their cottage indicates that someone is looking for something they are convinced Mrs. Jenkins had. All Henrietta knows is that her mother kept her papers in the locked bureau that the thieves broke into.

This was an engaging historical mystery. Attitudes about illegitimate children play a role in this one and highlight that it is a historical novel. I enjoyed all of the period detail. I also liked the various characters and have a bit of a soft spot for Sloane's young confederate who is being taught by Sloane but who is just a little dim.

Robin Bailey did a good job with the narration. I liked that he didn't even try to mimic women's voices but had quite a variety of men's voices at his disposal. ( )

I whizzed through this second Inspector Sloan book in a single car journey and was so immersed in it that I didn't mind being in an almost immobile queue of traffic for large parts of the trip. 'Henrietta Who?' has the same police personnel as 'The Religious Body' and it depends upon a cunning trap at the end to get the villain but otherwise it has little in common in either content or tone.

I was propelled through the book partly by the novelty of the idea: that a violent death reveals that Henrietta, a young woman approaching her twenty-first birthday, is not who she has been raised to believe she was. The subsequent investigation is as much about finding out who Henrietta is and why she was given a different identity as it is about investigating the violent death.

The pieces of the puzzle are revealed one at a time and with great dexterity. I enjoyed the view that they gave me of rural England in 1968, when World War II was a childhood memory for the youngest character, while the oldest one served in the Boer War, and when 'murder by motor vehicle' was rare enough to feel novel.

I can see that Catherine Aird is going to become a go-to author for comfort reads. Her ideas are original. Her storytelling has a light touch that keeps the plot moving without making it feel forced. Her humour, which plays upon the many ways in which we misunderstand each other, is mostly kind. Her close observation of people and places grounds her stories, making them easy to relax in.

She has also contrived a clever way to prevent the exposition needed to solve a puzzle from becoming tedious by providing Inspector Sloan with two foils to discuss the case with: his not-stupid but sometimes slow to see inferences and consequences young DC, who needs coaching and his micro-managing, usually impatient boss who is always looking for the quick solution, even when the solutions contradict one another. It seems to me that when Sloan is talking to either of these two, he's the voice of the author tickling the reader to work things out for themselves. Aird softens the edge of this kind tickling by imbuing both relationships with an attitude of long-suffering humour from Sloan.

Aird's novels are bite-size things, almost novellas by modern standards, so, to me, they're like watching an episode of a clever police series where the detective solves a new mystery in a new setting every week.

I'm expecting to consume of alot of them over the coming months.
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Henrietta Who. Catherine Arid Calleshire Chronicles Book 2. 2015,(originally,1968). The Kindle folks are smart. I finished The Religious Body when I was at the gym and it led right into 3 chapters of this book. I was hooked by the time I finished my time on the treadmill and the bike! Detective Inspector Sloan is called to the sight of a hit and run accident. The postman found Mrs. Jenkins body. Henrietta, the daughter, is called home from college and discovers that a desk in the house has been broken into. Meanwhile the medical examiner tells Sloan, that Mrs. Jenkins is not the mother of Henrietta or anyone. Henrietta is devastated and it is up to Sloan to untangle the mess which he does very neatly! ( )

death of a pedestrian leads to perflexing question of identity and a plot reachinf back over twenty years

This was a very interesting mystery. Good solid police investigation before the days of DNA and modern technology. Woman is found dead in the middle of the road by a mailman on his early rounds. First believed to be a hit and run but then the coroner states that she was run down and then the car backed over her after she was dead. The case switches to her daughter, Henrietta, away at university when the coroner reveals that Mrs. Jenkins never gave birth to any children. So, who is Henrietta? ( )