Detection as it should be

Press, 21 January 1984, Page 16

Detection as it should be

Blood on the Happy Highway. By Sheila Radley. Hutchinson, 1983. 190 pp. $20.95. (Reviewed by Ken Strongman) With this, the fourth novel in which D.C.I. Douglas Quantrill meanders his way through sleepy Suffolk, Sheila Radley will have established a following. This is the proper stuff of traditional British detective fiction. The atmosphere of Suffolk, redolent with local history, is created with ease and charm. Quantrill is the right sort of thoroughly engaging basic man to merge into this background. He is a man of the land, but with a proper professional overlay. He is happily married and yet quietly fancies his new (female) detective sergeant. He does nothing about if of course and struggles hard to fight off attacks of creeping chauvinism.

The plot of “Blood on the Happy Highway” is just as it should be. A headless corpse is found in a layby, a headless cat is found on a doorstep. Is there a connection? Have the Arrowsmith family, variously famous or notorious in local circles, anything to do with it? Can Quantrill sort it out, helped by his new sergeant with her good bone structure, or will the young thruster from the regional crime squad get there before him? Then, in the midst of this not altogether frantic activity, there appears another corpse. See what I mean? This is very nearly perfect detective fiction. It is beautifully paced, does not go on too long, conjures a nice sense of atavistic menace, and explores motive just as it should. Sheila Radley is to be commended for keeping alive a worthy tradition.