Safe Return Doubtful

A few years ago, a young woman was found dead at the foot of some cliffs, her death ruled as suicide. Dilys is suspicious that there was foul play and still will not walk that same road from where the woman, her friend, first disappeared. Dilys has also fallen for a man named Nick Brent and she manages to get his attention when he offers her a lift home from a dance one foggy night. Nick’s car hits a body that is on the road but already dead. He sends Dilys back on foot, and goes to a local house to call the police, but he is banged on the head by a mystery man in the dark.

Edith Caroline Rivett (Lorac is a pen name)’s usual detective, Macdonald, is not present here, this is a rare stand-alone novel. A local inspector does the delving, but his investigations go round in circles, and it is left to Brent, his friend MacBane and a housekeeper, Alice Ridley, to solve the mystery.

The plot and its denouement are not the strength here, there is too much reliance on minor detail for a satisfactory conclusion. Rather, it is the set of characters, who each have some social defect, that carry the story.

My GoodReads score 3 / 5