The Murder Pit

by Mick Finlay

Overview

1896: A missing daughter. Three dead children. A sinister connection between a farm and an asylum.

Arrowood must catch the killer before he strikes again—and before Sherlock Holmes or the police take the credit…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780778369301
Publisher:	MIRA Books
Publication date:	02/05/2019
Series:	An Arrowood Mystery , #2
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	491,434
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mick Finlay was born in Glasgow but left as a young boy, living in Canada and then England. Before becoming an academic, he ran a market stall on Portobello Road, and also worked as a tent-hand in a traveling circus, a butcher's boy, a hotel porter, and various jobs in the NHS and Social Services. He teaches in a psychology department, and has published research on political violence and persuasion, verbal and nonverbal communication, and disability. He lives in Brighton with his family.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/03/2018
Set in 1896, Finlay’s enthralling sequel to 2017’s Arrowood draws the investigative duo of William Arrowood and Norman Barnett into an emotionally wrenching inquiry. In London, Mr. and Mrs. Barclay hire Arrowood and Barnett to track down their developmentally disabled daughter, Birdie, who married pig farmer Walter Ockwell six months earlier and has not communicated with them since. When the detectives travel to the farm south of the city, they get a harsh reception and are alarmed to find that Birdie has suffered a head injury, which Ockwell, who has spent time in prison for attacking a man with a club, claims was accidental. The case gets even darker when the partners learn that three children have died on the farm, but only one was buried. In an inventive move, Finlay casts Arrowood as an alternative Sherlock Holmes, who, instead of relying on physical clues and logic, focuses on the psychology of the people involved. This is a welcome grittier take on a familiar genre trope. Agent: Jo Unwin, Jo Unwin Literary Agency (U.K.) (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"If you ever thought the Sherlock Holmes stories might benefit from being steeped in gin, caked in grime and then left unwashed for weeks...Mick Finlay's 1895-set detective debut is for you." --Crime Scene"Arrowood is a flawed but engaging hero and the plot spins from peril to twist and back with real panache.... Finlay's debut marks the start of a new series that historical crime fans will be clamouring to read more of." --The Times of London"The Victorian workingman's answer to the higher-class Sherlock Holmes-a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, shabby detective with a seriously bad attitude toward his more famous counterpart.... It's a terrific premise... Finlay has fun referencing the Holmes canon, and he gives his hero a skill that the more famous detective lacks" -The Seattle Times on ARROWOOD(Summer's Hottest Crime Titles Round Up)"How I loved this book. Arrowood is an almost infuriatingly absorbing, awkward and brilliant character. I wanted to start his next mystery with him as soon as I'd finished his first. More than that, Arrowood feels strangely like he's always existed, we're only now being treated to an introduction. Mick Finlay's atmospheric, detailed, singular London is a terrifying place I hope to return to again and again." - Ross Armstrong, bestselling author of The Watcher, on ARROWOOD

From the Publisher

2018-10-18

William Arrowood, the poor man's Sherlock Holmes, goes looking for a silent bride and finds a cesspool of corruption.

It's been six months since "weak-minded" Birdie Barclay married pig farmer Walter Ockwell, and in all that time her parents, insurance clerk Dunbar and singing teacher Martha Barclay, haven't had one word from her. They just want to know she's all right, they tearfully assure Arrowood and his sidekick and amanuensis, Norman Barnett. Huffing at the much richer pot Holmes got for solving "The Adventure of the Priory School," Arrowood relieves the Barclays of a trifling sum and sets off for the Ockwell farm, where he intimates that he's brought news of a legacy to Birdie but is still prevented from seeing her by Walter Ockwell and his sister, Rosanna, who insist that Birdie isn't home even though Arrowood can see her signaling him from an upstairs window as he leaves. When a more direct attempt to unite Birdie with her parents fails, Arrowood hunkers down to investigate possible skulduggery at the farm, which seems to employ no one but the kinds of mentally challenged patients the Caterham Asylum deals with. For his pains he's warned off by Sgt. Root, of the Catford and Lewisham Police, and Barnett is soundly beaten. Edna Gillie, a woman who hints at stories of three dead children, disappears herself soon after Arrowood's one conversation with her, and he fears that she's dead, and that she's not the only one. What has Birdie gotten herself into, and can a man who sets himself apart from Holmes by calling himself "an emotional detective. I try and solve my cases by understanding people" extricate her from the danger?

Better detective work than the series kickoff (Arrowood, 2017) and less emphasis on the hero's amusingly futile rivalry with Holmes even though his case ends up echoing "The Priory School" in more uncomfortable ways than he could have imagined.

Kirkus Reviews