The Voice of the Corpse

Angela Pusey had sung her last song. At 3:30 one fine afternoon, a small blow to the back of the head cut her off in midnote and a grateful village breathed a sigh of relief. Aside from an outraged music lover, who would''ve wished the middle-aged spinster permanently silenced? Actually, who wouldn''t have?! Until her final breath, the vicious, prying snoop had meticulously collected bits and pieces of other people''s lives from scraps of conversation, pilfered correspondence and spying moments. Angela Pewsey knew something about everyone in the village of Inching Round and everything about some folks. In gloating, threatening letters, she let them know their secrets were no longer safe and those poison pen letters spelled an invitation to murder. Now Angela''s venomous pen had been stilled but her hate-filled diary remained to reveal the murderers name! The bumbling village police are quite off the track with their ''fanciful tramp'' theory; none of the locals believe it and certainly not young London solicitor Firth Prentice or ''Long Tom'' Fowler, the somber inspector just down from Scotland Yard. The Voice of the Corpse (1948) is an outstanding example of post-Second World War mystery fiction which combines excellent dialogue, fine characterisation and pervasive irony in a gripping tale of suspense.