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    The Norfolk Mystery
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    The Norfolk Mystery
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    The Norfolk Mystery
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Norfolk Mystery

    Written by Ian Sansom

    Narrated by Mike Grady

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    The first book in The County Guides to Murder Series.

    The County Guides to Murder are a series of detective novels set in 1930s England.

    The books are an odyssey through England and its history.

    In each county, the protagonists – Stephen Sefton, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and his employer, the People's Professor, Swanton Morley – solve a murder.

    The first book is set in Norfolk. The murder is in the vicarage.

    There are 39 books – and 39 murders – to follow.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateJul 18, 2013
    ISBN9780007421428
    Unavailable
    The Norfolk Mystery
    Author

    Ian Sansom

    Ian Sansom is the author of 10 books of fiction and non-fiction. He is a former Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and a former Writer-in-Residence at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry in Belfast. He is currently a Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3 and he writes for The Guardian and The London Review of Books.

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    Reviews for The Norfolk Mystery

    3.5/5

    64 ratings8 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Stephen Sefton is assisting Professor Swanton Morley, a prolific author who plans to write guidebooks to every county in England (40+ of them) within two years, by 1939. He needs Sefton’s help. Their first county is Norfolk – and just as they begin their research a local vicar is found hung in his church, an apparent suicide. But IS it a suicide?I was prepared to really love this book, the first in a new series by an author whose bookmobile series I really enjoyed. No such luck. The author has created in Morley an insufferable and pompous character given to spouting Latin phrases and making obscure references I had no clue about. A self-educated genius, Morley manages to make his new assistant feel like a dolt. Unfortunately, he also made this reader feel like a dolt. Two other genius detectives – Nero Wolfe and Sherlock Holmes – had no such need and their stories are vastly superior to this dog.I won’t be reading another in this series.
    • 4/5
      Stephen Sefton, a traumatized Spanish Civil War veteran is broke and in search of a job. He responded to an advertisement for a job where "intelligence is essential", which begins his association with Swanton Morley, an autodidactic columnist with a rapid-fire mind and a penchant for Latin. Morley is planning a series of books on the counties of England, beginning with Norfolk. Soon after they begin the journey they are drawn into the mysterious death of the vicar of Blakeney. This most recent book of Sansom's is a charming trip into the past. The writing style, characters and even the layout of the book, with old black and white photos from Norfolk, set the tone perfectly for 1937. Funny and imaginative, I enjoyed this mild mystery.
    • 4/5
      Stephen Sefton, a disillusioned poet, former schoolmaster, Communist and Spanish Civil War veteran, down to his last two pounds, replies to a 'situations vacant' advertisement in The Times where intelligence is essential, and against all expectations gets the job. Hired as Swanton Morley's assistant, he is required to accompany the well-known writer to all of England's counties to write a series of travel accounts: The County Guides – first stop: Norfolk. While exploring the coast, they come across the body of the reverend of Blakeney, hanging from a beam in the vestry. Detained by the police, Morley, with the help of Sefton, begins to ask questions: did the reverend indeed commit suicide, or was he in fact murdered?This was a fun and very erudite homage to the great detective stories of the thirties that, while not taking itself too seriously, might be a little bit too clever for its good, peppered as it is with Latin, biblical and literary quotes and random fact(oid)s, uttered by 'The People's Professor', Swanton Morley, himself. The front cover informs the reader that the novel has a 'touch of Sherlock Holmes and a dash of Lord Peter Wimsey'; while I can understand the comparison with the great detective from 221B Baker Street, I fail to see the same with the charming aristocratic amateur detective, apart from his hailing from the same county as Morley: Norfolk. An autodidact and walking encyclopaedia, blessed with a keen intelligence, a never-ending, almost childlike, curiosity and a boundless supply of energy, Morley shares a single-minded determination and anti-social character traits with Holmes, though where I thought I detected parallels was with another great detective of the era: Hercule Poirot. Both are eccentric and slightly pompous, and almost always underestimated/not taken seriously by those around them, possessing the knack of coaxing important information from those involved in the case, without them being aware that they've done so.I agree with those reviewers who found Morley very irritating, but I feel this is indeed the author's intention, as the reader sides and agrees with Sefton and Morley's daughter Miriam, Sefton's wry commentary and observations providing the anchoring point for the plot. As the novel is set in 1937, class snobbery is still alive and well, and Morley is constantly looked on contemptuously by those of the middle classes who consider themselves his betters, while the reader is also treated to a discussion of the increasingly volatile situation on the continent. With all this social commentary, it is no surprise that the actual mystery rather dissolves into the background at times, with Morley able to draw astonishingly accurate conclusions from what little evidence there is; but with all this amusing banter and verbal sparring, Morley (and the author) is forgiven.I would have liked to see a little more of Miriam Morley, who seems a thoroughly modern woman with her own opinions, able to stand up to her father, and who I thought was quite under-used in the plot. I suppose that the first volume in the series needed to establish the central relationship between Morley and Sefton, but I hope that she plays a larger role in subsequent Guides. Full marks to her, though, for arranging in advance a lot of the locations that would provide her father with crucial information in his investigation – evidence of psychic abilities, per chance? (Only joking of course; I did find those coincidences hard to swallow, but again this is in the best detective fiction tradition.)Opinions are split over this book, and it's easy to see why. It's possible that eventually Morley's know-it-all attitude will get tiresome, but at the moment I'm looking forward to the next volume in the series.
    • 4/5
      'Sherlock Holmes with a dash of Lord Peter Wimsey' indeed? Well, hardly: unless we are speaking of the author, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of trivia and Latin tags, as put in the mouth of his protagonist, the autodidact and polymath, 'People's Professor' Swanton Morley, certainly challenges that of Holmes himself; and the whole enterprise on Sansom's part is nothing if not whimsical ...But what fun we have with Morley and his sidekick, our narrator Stephen Sefton, mainly at the expense of such characters and their 'golden age' setting. It's a joke, and it looks as if not everybody gets it.The icing on the cake, and yet, too, the fly in he ointment of this particular confection, is of course the simultaneously attractive and repellent Swanton Morley himself. Are we meant to admire him - or condemn him? Sefton doesn't seem too sure, either, now impressed, now exasperated by this employer.In his Mobile Library novels, Ian Sansom developed a wonderful conceit whereby the hero would routinely uncover the deepest wells of knowledge and experience behind the unlikeliest and most unprepossessing net curtains (etc.) on the North Antrim coast. His Swanton Morley seems to have been born of a similar idea, but now sustained over a whole novel. Some of my fellow reviewers here obviously feel this is asking rather a lot, but I think Sansom just about gets away with it.
    • 3/5
      This had its moments, but I'm not sure that it lived up to the blurb on the cover. That described this as being a sort of mashup of Sherlock Holmes and Peter Wimsey. Whatever that might mean, it didn't match up in my imagination to what the book actually contained. The book is narrated by Stephen Sefton, a veteran of the Spanish civil war and at the end of his tether applies for a job as assistant to Swanton Morley. This character is a working class man who has made his way in the world and has earnt the tag "the people's professor". He's written an awful lot of books and is setting out to write a set of books, the County guides, one per county, capturing the history, character and culture of each county. The plan is to spend about 6 weeks in each county, so churning out the books in double quick time. On the tour of Norfolk, he arrives in Blakeney to use this as a base to visit churches and the towns and villages of the North Norfolk coast. Only in the first church they visit, the come across the vicar, hanging dead in the belfry. It all gets a bit convoluted, is this murder, who had a motive, why did the maid commit suicide as well? He manages to attract a significant amount of hostility to himself, by his manner, his questions and his massively annoying traits (the Latin tags was enough to put my back up). It manages to be convincingly set in the lats 30s. The Holmes I can see, Morley is full of information, but there's none of the charm of Wimsey. Sefton has some life and interest and his narration is light hearted, he feels exasperation and admiration for Morley in almost equal. But as a whole, it felt a little like poking fun at all of the locals, it didn't feel very kind.
    • 3/5
      Just finished this and not sure yet what I think. I'd definitely read another Sansom before I tossed him aside.
    • 3/5
      As usual, Ian Sansom can be counted on for a witty and peculiar mystery where the characters outshine the actual mystery. But that's OK because Sansom's wit always carries the day. I've been waiting for a new book from Sansom since the last installment of the Mobile Library Mysteries and this one didn't disappoint. If you are familiar with his work you'll know the sort of quirky people you should expect to meet.
    • 3/5
      Subtitled "A County Guides Mystery," this e-book is one of HarperCollins new Witness Impulse imprint. I will be trying several titles from this imprint in the next few weeks, hoping that the books will be good reads. This is a good start.The story begins in London in the 1930s and then moves to Blakeney, a village in Norfolk County. Stephen Sefton, our narrator, has been hired as an assistant to famous author Swanton Morley. Sefton has no particular background for the position since he neglected his education, drifted, flirted with Communism when he thought he should do something serious, went off to Spain to fight in the civil war, came home disillusioned, and drifted again. He is penniless and has no prospects when he answers Morley's ad in the paper. This will change his life.Swanton Morley is a pompous bore who talks nonstop whether anyone is interested or not. He's also loud so no one can avoid hearing his sometimes controversial views, but he is oblivious to any objection. His daughter, Miriam, has a small role in the story but since she is her father's exact opposite, she provides comic relief.Morley has decided his next project, after countless books on various topics, will be a set pf guides to all the counties in England. To research the series, he and Sefton, along with Miriam on occasion, will travel to all the counties. They set off in Morley's car with his portable desk surrounding him, on which a typewriter is secured. He talks and types, and makes me tired. I just couldn't stand him at first, but eventually I was caught up in the story and could see the subtle humor in his stream of conscientiousness. I like Sefton. He provides the common sense as well as the compassion Morley lacks. There are photographs throughout the book, taken apparently in the 1930s. The mystery doesn't begin until the 28% mark when they find the body of a Church of England minister hanging in his church. At that point the story takes off and more interesting characters are introduced. This isn't the greatest mystery in the world, but it is witty and a good read.RecommendedSource: Witness Impulse Imprint, HarperCollins