Death of a Fool

The village of South Mardian likes the old ways. The very old ways. This may be 1957, but South M. still features a blacksmith, a village idiot, and an elaborate fertility ritual performed at the winter solstice. There’s squabbling, of course, and things come to a head (nyuck, nyuck, nyuck) when one of the ritual’s main players is found beheaded, everything north of his neck having been neatly lopped off by a ritual sword. Inspector Alleyn does have to contain a certain incredulous amusement at South M.’s fetishistic embrace of the 18th century—he does not, for example, have what one might call a real passion for morris dancing—but he contains the giggles long enough to name the baddie and return all to the warm embrace of pre-Industrial Britain. Death of a Fool has also been previously published under the title Off with His Head.