Murder's a Swine: A Second World War Mystery

by Nap Lombard, Martin Edwards (Introduction)

Overview

"I should imagine this was murder, too, because it would be very difficult to build yourself into a heap of sandbags and then die…"

In the blackout conditions of a wintry London night, amateur sleuth Agnes Kinghof and a young air-raid warden have stumbled upon a corpse stowed in the walls of their street's bomb shelter. As the police begin their investigation, the night is interrupted once again when Agnes' upstairs neighbour, Mrs. Sibley is terrorised by the sight of a grisly pig's head at her fourth-floor window.

With the discovery of more sinister threats mysteriously signed "Pig-sticker," Agnes and her husband, Andrew—unable to resist a good mystery—begin their investigation to deduce the identity of a villain living amongst them in their block of flats.

A witty and light-hearted mystery full of intriguing period detail, this rare gem of Golden Age crime returns to print for the first time since its publication in 1943. This edition includes an Introduction by award-winning author Martin Edwards.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781464215490
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	12/07/2021
Series:	British Library Crime Classics
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

NAP LOMBARD was the joint pseudonym used by the English author and playwright Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912–1981) and Australian writer and journalist Gordon Neil Stewart (1912–1999). The couple married in 1936 and enlisted as air-raid wardens in London at the outbreak of the Second World War. Under the Nap Lombard pseudonym they co-wrote two entertaining mystery novels, Tidy Death (1940) and Murder’s a Swine (1943).

Editorial Reviews

10/11/2021

Gordon Neil Stewart (1912–1999) and Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912–1981) make good use of their experiences as WWII air raid wardens in this light whodunit written under the Lombard pseudonym, first published in 1943. To escape the rain, Clem Poplett, an unprepossessing London junior warden with “the face of an adored pet rabbit,” pops into a shelter, where he and Agnes Kinghof, a resident of the building above the shelter, notice a stench emanating from a sandbag. It proves to contain a body “with a long dead face, phosphorescent, greenish-brown in the torch light, hideously blotched.” The corpse is eventually identified as Reg Coppenstall, the brother of another building resident, Adelaide Sibley, who’d not seen Reg in 30 years. Agnes and her husband, a Royal Artillery captain, investigate. The puzzle deepens after Adelaide is frightened by a blue pig’s head that appears outside her window, and she receives an ominous note: “Greasy fellow aren’t I? The Pig-Sticker.” The Kinghofs’ banter and humor will remind many of Nick and Nora Charles. This exemplifies the raison d’être of the British Library Crime Classics series. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"Zany period antics for those who’ve had enough of the present day." — Kirkus Reviews

"Lighthearted romp" — Booklist

From the Publisher

2021-09-01
Nestled beneath the playful title and byline, a pseudonym for then-married Gordon Neil Stewart and Pamela Hansford Johnson, is an equally madcap case of murder during the London “sitzkrieg” originally published in 1943.

Featherstone Mews air warden Clem Poplett and Stewarts Court resident Agnes Clunkershill Kinghof, nee Sidebotham, find the first victim buried among the sandbags inside the No. 2 shelter for Stewarts Court. Agnes’ neighbor Adelaide Foster Sibley, who’s already been properly spooked by the vision of a blue pig’s head outside her window, tearfully identifies the dead man as Reginald Coppenstall, the brother she hasn’t seen in nearly 30 years, and the most likely killer as Reg’s son, actor Maclagan Steer, who’s the heir of her significant family estate. The only problem is that the other neighbors who had access to the shelter—deaf, retired French cafe owner Jeanne-Louise Charnet, government bureaucrat George Warrender, medical student Felix Lang, Mrs. Sibley’s flatmate Phyllada Rowse, aka Phyllada Rounders, the creator of deathless young fictional heroine Fernia Prideaux, and Agnes’ husband, Capt. Andrew Kinghof—don’t include Steer. The campaign of improbable terror launched by someone calling himself “THE PIG-STICKER” continues until Mrs. Sibley is dead and her will reveals that she hasn’t left a penny to Steer after all. The bigwig Scotland Yard sends to investigate turns out to be Agnes’ cousin Lord Herbert Whitestone, better known as Pig, and it’s no surprise when Agnes and Andrew run sleuthing rings around him, though their detection is upstaged by several broadly comic set pieces: a Punch and Judy show, a production by the Milmanscroft Guides, and a meeting of the Free British Mussolites.

Zany period antics for those who’ve had enough of the present day.

Kirkus Reviews