Suicide Excepted

[1] It was his third novel to feature Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard, one of the numerous investigators of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

[3] When a man dies of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills in a country hotel that had once been his family's ancestral home, Inspector Mallett is staying there for his holiday.

However as this verdict means that his lucrative life insurance is not effective due to a clause excepting suicide, his son, daughter and her fiancée set out to try and prove that he was murdered.

A review in The Times noted "it needs Mr. Cyril Hare’s usual detective, Inspector Mallett, to bring Suicide Excepted to its logical, but surprising, conclusion.

The author has an eye for character and writes with a quiet humour that is a pleasant change from the hell-for-leather type of crime story."