A well written mystery set in just one small village, but with each character given a believable back story and motive. Another success for the British Library's Crime Classics collection.

Gather round, children. You probably think that, before TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and the Internet, there wasn’t written bullying. Indeed, that’s what the denizens of this particular village thought in 1932, too. The villagers are described as “not only well-bred and charming, but endowed with such charity that there was no poverty or unemployment in the village. The ladies had not to grapple with a servant problem, which oiled the wheels of hospitality. If family feuds existed, they were not advertised, and private lives were shielded by drawn blinds.”

Ah, but what goes on behind those drawn blinds? you may ask. And that gets us to the form of bullying you’ll find in detective novels of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s (including this one) called poison pen letters: letters that reveal that an anonymous somebody knows a very shameful secret you thought no one knew. Will they tell anyone else? And who is this person? Could it be the betrayal of a close friend? It’s easy to see how poison pen letters could breed distrust and even paranoia.

Enter delightfully ascerbic Ignatius Brown, “who’s potty on puzzles.” The village rector, Reverend Simon Blake, summons Brown to investigate the puzzle of the poison pen letters

Brown’s a tiny man with a big imagination and a bigger brain. It’s a pity that he only appears in <i>Fear Stalks the Village</i>, as I would have loved to see Brown in a series; it’s an even a bigger pity that Brown doesn’t saunter into the village until 42% of the way into the novel, as the pace is much too slow until then. Luckily, after that, it’s one shocker after another. Making me raise the rating from three stars to four.

I have been meaning to read something by Golden Age author Ethel Lina White since I read a short story by her in a crime analogy by the inestimable Martin Edwards. But with one thing and another, it’s been several years, and this novel is my first introduction to White. I’ll likely try another, but I had higher hopes of Fear Stalks the Village, which is no The Moving Finger or even Gaudy Night.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, British Library Crime Classics and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review.