Cyril Hare Biography and List of Works

British mystery writer, lawyer and county court judge in Surrey, whose best known detective character is Francis Pettigrew. Among his most loved works is TRAGEDY AT LAW (1942), which is widely acclaimed as one of the great classics of detective fiction.

Hare was born in Mickleham, Surrey, as Alfred Gordon Clark. He studied at the New College, Oxford, and was called to the bar in 1924. In 1933 he married Mary Barbara Lawrence. At the bar Hare's practice was largely in the criminal courts. He worked in the firm of noted barrister Ronald Oliver, in Hare Court, Temple. From 1940 to 1945 he was Temporary Legal Assistant in the Director of Public Prosecutions Department, and from 1950 he was County Court Judge in Surrey. Hare's work then concerned civil disputes only.

After some occasional work for Punch and other journals, Hare published his first mystery novel, TENANT FOR DEATH, in 1937. It was followed by DEATH IS NO SPORTSMAN (1938), and SUICIDE EXPECTED (1939), which were good, solid mysteries, but did not drew to any great extent on his legal background. Later Hare deepened characterization and added more personal touches. Hare's great interest in music is seen in WHEN THE WIND BLOWS (1949).

In WITH A BARE BODKIN (1946) Hare returned to the atmosphere of WW II. The story is set in a remote part of Britain, where Francis Pettigrew and his civil service branch is sent to escape the Blitz. Hare keeps the pace slow and murder doesn't occur until halfway through the book. In AN ENGLISH MURDER (1951) Hare used the conventional setting - a country house - and characters - there is a butler - but managed to come out with an original and fresh tale. Hare's last Pettigrew story was HE SHOULD HAVE DIED HEREAFTER (1958), in which Pettigrew and his old friend Inspector Mallett solve the mystery of a disappeared body in Exmoor.

"It was all of fifty years since he had last seen a hunted deer and now the sight of it in some way dispelled the enchantment of reminiscence in which he had been living up to that moment. Willy-nilly, he found himself looking at the hapless beast through the eyes of the elderly, urban humanitarian who had somehow evolved from that small boy."

This sight leads Pettigrew to recall an experience of his childhood, which he had buried: he found a dead man in his childhood in Bolter's Tussock and left it there. The nightmare repeats itself when he again stumbles over a body on the moor. However, Pettigrew realizes that there must be a perfectly rational explanation to the whole thing and finds the answer from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Series characters: Inspector Mallet, and barrister Francis Pettigrew, whom the reader finds first in Tragedy at Law as an unhappy, near-defeated aging lawyer, but who meets Eleanor Brown, a young woman half his age in WITH A BARE BODKIN (1942), and later has peaceful retirement in HE SHOULD HAVE DIED HEREAFTER (1958).

Note: Hare's Tragedy at Law fell in the hands of Michael Gilbert while he was a prisoner of war during WW II, and the book inspired him later in his career as a mystery writer.Gilbert also edited the posthumous Best Detective Stories of Cyril Hare (1959).

TENANT FOR DEATH, (1937)