The Private Wound

The Private Wound by Nicholas Blake was a very different sort of mystery from his Detective Strangeways series. This was more of a dark character study than the light, very British mystery writing of his series. Set in Ireland in the months just preceding WW II, an Irish-English author arrives in a rural village looking to find a remote place in which to write his next novel. He rents a cottage and before too long finds himself involved socially with the locals and in particular has embarked on an affair with the wife of the local gentry.

When his lover is murdered one night by the river, there are a number of suspects including the author and the husband, but these two decide between them that neither one did the deed and so join show more together to find the culprit. The author wants to clear himself, while the husband is set on revenge.

I found the mystery fairly straight forward and I knew who the murderer was right away. The emotional intensity of the story comes more from the passion between the two lovers and the author’s own insights. The main character was rather a self-pitying twit and the female victim most unlikable so I didn’t really much care about the murder. Nevertheless this melodramatic story held my attention with the other assorted and interesting characters, the local landscape and the peek into Irish sensibilities of the day. show less

Blake managed to fit an illicit romance, a murder mystery, and 1930s Irish politics into this emotionally charged novel that has a somewhat immature narrator and odd characters. His outlandish portrayal of the female victim shows a lack of skill with female characters although the victim's sister-in-law was more believable. It was easy to recognize the murderer even though he put up a good case for other potential culprits.

I have not read much Nicholas Blake (pseudonym of Cecil Day-Lewis) but will certainly keep an eye out for other books. The title is from a line in [[William Shakespeare]]'s [Two Gentlemen of Verona].

Completely out of Blake’s usual mystery style, this stand-alone takes place in 1939 western Ireland. An author seeks a quiet retreat where he can work on his next novel.
By a quite random chance he lands in a quiet, rundown village, where he soon becomes involved in a romantic intrigue and some political intrigue.
The plot is very straightforward for a Blake mystery, and the solution is very well-done. Literate and well-written, with good character development.

I picked this up after reading about Nicholas Blake in PD James autobiography. He is listed as one of the Golden Age of Detective Stories. I can't say I cared much for this. There wasn't one single character with whom I could sympathize. And none that I cared a hoot about. They all seemed thoroughly unlikeable. I will say the ending was surprising but inevitable, but the rest of the book was a chore.