The Hanging Woman, first published in 1931, is a relatively elusive John Rhode title, and I'm lucky to have tracked down and acquired the Detection Club's own signed copy (the US edition, the cover of which is shown above). And this obscurity is unfortunate, because I found it was one of the most engrossing Rhodes that I've encountered. This is partly because Dr Priestley plays a more active and significant role in the story than is often the case, especially in Rhode's later books. It's also partly because there is some interesting discussion of the importance of scientific experiment, a subject on which Priestley holds characteristically strong views.
The story begins in an interesting way, with an inquest into the death, in a plane crash, of a Belgian pilot who worked for a scientist called Dr Partington. It seems like a clear case of accident, albeit an inexplicable one, but shortly afterwards a woman is found dead in a deserted country house not far away and it emerges that there was some kind of connection between her and the pilot.
The woman was found hanging in circumstances similar to those in which, ten years earlier, a servant girl killed herself in the house. It seems that history may have repeated itself, and that the deceased took her own life, but Hanslet of the Yard becomes involved with the case, and he soon forms a theory of his own. With almost charming naivete, he is keen to run it past Dr Priestley, who - as usual - is not convinced.
John Rhode rarely offers a wide choice of murder suspects in his books. With him, the focus is often on the 'how', at least as much as on the 'who'. Here, though, despite the paucity of suspects, I felt he juggled the different possibilities more effectively than in some of Dr Priestley's other cases. There is a bit of stuff about alibis and train times that is a bit routine, but overall I'd say this is a superior example of John Rhode's writing.
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