A Place of Execution

⚖The case for it

A girl walks out of Scardale in the winter of 1963 and a young detective inspector gets his first major case in a hamlet where everyone is related to everyone. The insularity is the achievement, a closed valley of “steep valley sides and thin-soiled grimness” where outsiders get nothing and everyone is somebody’s cousin. The period procedure is credible rather than decorative, and readers say “the characterisation is so good that I felt I knew these people.” Details planted early only click much later. “Too good to put down even for a cup of tea.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

“600+ pages, people!” and readers say a hundred and fifty of them could go, with the first third repeating the same daily visits before it “really picks up after 200 pages.” The interrelated Scardale families defeat people, who go looking for “the map of the houses of all these interconnected families.” Bennett is competent and flat, with “no devil in him, no quirks or idiosyncrasies.” The present-day journalist is thin next to the 1963 material and her London chapters drop the momentum. And the smoking: “secondary smoking via a book?”

— the honest librarian

11h

honest hours

16

sittings