Three May Keep A Secret is set in Dolph Hill, a large village on the South Coast. The scene is set by Rachel Veryan who has fled to Dolph Hill after the manslaughter of an old boyfriend. Rachel has been there a few months but she is now joined by another stranger, who also goes for walks along the beach. The stranger, Peter Markland, is tall, dark and handsome and despite herself, Rachel is attracted to him. Markland is staying in one of the holiday chalets owned by the Helmsley family who live opposite Rachel. His residency in Dolph Hill is extremely mysterious as it’s a low-key sort of place even in the summer, let alone in the middle of winter. Though he has a young woman and her baby in tow it doesn’t stop him from flirting with Rachel and the very willing landlady of the local pub.
Unfortunately for him, she has a very jealous husband. A few hours after a row between Markland and the pub’s landlord, a local busybody discovers Markland’s dead body.
Detective Chief Inspector Furnival and Sergeant King are called in, at first thinking it was a pub brawl gone wrong but inevitably finding that it was something more premeditated.
This is a very well written and nicely plotted whodunit with a particularly apt title. I had no idea who killed Markland but the denouement was very satisfactory with a believable motive. The pace is kept up and setting is well conveyed. The main characters are Rachel and the two policeman, though the reader gets to know more about Furnival, with his worries about his failing hair and teeth and childless status, than they do about King. This is the sixth in the Furnival and King series but it has been over thirty years since the fifth book so the earlier books are hard to track down, with the exception of library large print copies. This is a shame, as I would like to have read more in this series. Hopefully there will be a seventh soon.
The previous titles are Down to Death, The Hidden Wrath, Death in Arcady,
Death Makes The Scene and Death in Sheep’s Clothing.
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Karen Meek
This is the sixth novel about Furnival and King over a period of time, some
are available in reprints - Down to Death, The Hidden Wrath ( first published
in 1968), Death in Arcady (first published 1969) Death in Sheep’s
Clothing, Yet She Must Die.