Book Review: Head of a Traveler by Nicholas Blake (pen name of Cecil Day-Lewis)
Nigel Strangeways, a writer and literary scholar when he isn’t being distracted by his private investigation work, is thrilled to have a chance to meet Robert Seaton, one of Britain’s greatest living poets. Plash Meadow, Seaton’s house, is in Oxfordshire near the Thames and in this June of 1948 is surrounded by roses. Strangeways largely enjoys his short visit, but notices certain tensions, including a reluctance by Seaton to speak about his current work…and the poet hasn’t published any new material in years.
In August, Nigel Strangeways returns to the area when a headless corpse clad only in a macintosh raincoat is found in the river nearby. It soon becomes clear that the traveler without a head is somehow connected to Plash Meadow and its inhabitants.
That connection narrows the list of suspects. Robert Seaton, the poet who’s been suffering from creative block. His second wife Janet, whose ancestral home Plash Meadow is. Robert’s son Lionel, a World War Two veteran who hasn’t quite got over what happened at Arnhem. Lionel’s sister Vanessa, a pretty teenager who’s keen on “hunting” as she’s learned it in the Girl Guides. Finny Black, their little person servant. Rennell Torrance, landscape artist and permanent guest on the estate. His daughter Mara, a promising sculptor. Oh, and just possibly Paul Willingham, the neighbor that introduced Nigel to the Seatons.
Nigel Strangeways must sift through the contradictory witness evidence and build a timetable that will prove who the real killer must be. It won’t be easy. Plash Meadow’s inhabitants have many secrets and loyalties that complicate their responses to this crisis, and there are some outright lies mixed in!
The title of this 1949 mystery novel is taken from a Housman poem, though it’s also a literal description of an object in the story. This is the ninth in the series of Nigel Strangeways books that began in 1935. One of the key points here is that (almost) everyone has a veneration for Robert Seaton as a poet, and they’re trying to not have him too distracted to finish his masterpiece. (We are never vouchsafed any actual poetry from him, you’re going to have to take the author’s word on the quality.)
The timetable aspect of the case is fairly easy to follow, and the sharp reader may spot which clues are incorrect by recreating it themselves. The possible motivations for the murder are also set out pretty clearly early on.
There are a couple of things that are…uncomfortable and may explain why this book, unlike some of the other Strangeways mysteries, has never been adapted to film. The first is Finny Black, the servant who is a little person with developmental disabilities. (Or in the text, “a dumb dwarf.”) His treatment by the other characters, and to an extent by the narrative, is ableist. There’s a “shock reveal” about him that Strangeways doesn’t quite buy but is never directly disproven.
The other is that one of the female characters has been raped and the matter hushed up so that she’s never been able to discuss it properly with anyone until now. Nigel correctly divines that one of the reasons it’s been affecting her so strongly is that despite herself she felt some sexual pleasure during the assault, and thinks that this makes her a ruined woman. He points this out in some very unfortunate phrasing, and this revelation basically cures her psychological issues instantly. Yeah.
Content note: Murder, suicide (or is it?), rape in the backstory, ableism, misuse of prescription drugs.
This is not considered one of the best Nigel Strangeways books, and is pretty midlist for the genre. Recommended primarily for Strangeways fans to complete the series checklist, check out library loan or a good used book store.
