Murder’s a Swine by Nap Lombard
Agnes Kinghof, an amateur detective, and a teenage air-raid warden have discovered a body hidden under the walls of their street’s bomb shelter during a chilly London night’s blackout. When Agnes’ upstairs neighbour Mrs. Sibley is terrorized by the sight of a ghastly pig’s head outside her fourth-floor window, the night is once again disturbed as the police launch their inquiry.
Agnes and her husband Andrew, who are unable to resist a good mystery, launch their inquiry to determine the identity of a villain residing among the residents of their apartment building after learning of more sinister threats that appear to be signed ‘Pig-sticker.
This rare piece of Golden Age criminal fiction, a funny and amusing mystery with fascinating historical insight, is now available in print.
Murder’s a Swine by Nap Lombard
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Gordon Neil Stewart and Pamela Hansford Johnson. He was an Australian-born journalist, and she was a British poet and novelist. The couple resided in West London after being married in 1936. I believe they were both highly involved in volunteer work and civil defence. As soon as the war started, they both registered to become ARP wardens. They had the idea for this situation thanks to the incident, or more specifically Pamela’s experiences.
As Nap Lombard, they collaborated on two detective novels. The first one is practically unattainable and is called Tidy Death. For whatever reason, the British Library chose to republish Murder’s a Swine, the second book, first. Again, this conveys a beautiful and perfectly correct sense of the present.
Since Andrew and Agnes are fictional characters in the novel and the detectives are a married couple, it becomes sense that Pamela and Neil would impart elements of their own connection to them.
Since Andrew and Agnes are fictional characters in the novel and the detectives are a married couple, it becomes sense that Pamela and Neil would impart elements of their own connection to them.
They reside in a block of London apartments where few of their neighbours are familiar with them. Everything is quite ephemeral; people just show up when they are on vacation. Really, who is anyone? Agnes locks herself outside as the book begins. She makes the decision to go and wait in the air raid shelter out of the rain while she waits for the building’s proprietor to arrive and let her in. She runs upon a warden who is also loitering nearby, and the two of them discover that someone has stuffed a body amid the sandbags. The mystery was thus revealed from there.
