Book of the Week: The Theft of the Iron Dogs

As I said yesterday, a busy week in life and also a fairly busy week in reading. And I’m back with a British Library Crime classic pick today, because this is really good – and also has a beautiful cover.

It’s just after the war and Inspector MacDonald is hunting for a coupon racketeer who has gone missing in London, reported missing by his fiancée. In Lancashire Giles Hoggett, a book dealer turned cow farmer, has found something strange and potentially sinister in his fishing cottage. His wife is sceptical but he writes to a Scotland Yard detective who solved another case locally not that long before. Soon MacDonald is visiting for the weekend and it seems that his coupon case may be connected to the missing items at the cottage.

I really like E C R Lorac. Almost every time I read one her books it’s up there for Book of the Week – and it was a surprise to me that it’s been a year since I picked one. She is so good at writing about Lancashire and the communities there, and this really evokes the tight-knit community in the countryside as well as the immediate aftermath of the war. As the granddaughter of farming families (on both sides!) I really love the way she writes about people who know their land, the rhythms of the seasons and that you have to respect nature. Oh and the mystery is pretty good too!

The Theft of the Iron Dogs is available as a paperback in the British Library Crime Classics range and it is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, which means it’s not on Kobo right now, but as I’ve said before the BLCC titles rotate in and out of that still be back on Kobo at some point.

Happy Reading!