Passion In The Peak

Description

When Lord Furnival, a left-of-centre dilettante, tries to stage a musical version of the Oberammergau Passion Play in the High Peak of Derbyshire, he does not foresee what strife and tension he is setting in motion. Petty thefts, a peeping Tom, artistic jealousies, a vendetta against Mary Magdalene - the record of crime culminates in the murder of the hyped rock singer who is brought out of disgraced retirement to play the Christ part. Kenworthy is called in as a private consultant to `protect the interests of the management' and finds himself involved with a bewildering array of eccentrics: Jimmy Lindop, a sound technician with old scores to settle; Julian Harpur, a neurotic adolescent whose mother believes him a genius; Alfie Tandy, who has confessed to dozens of murders in his time, and who carries his worldly belongings about in an old banjo-case; Freddy Kershaw, a detective-constable who is suspended from duty for telling the truth; and Joan Culver, who is trying to straighten herself out about filial duty, sex and life. This is knotty a puzzle as Kenworthy and his reader have ever squared up to, as the case-work takes us out of Derbyshire into the squalid history of The Stalagmites, a failed rock group of London's swinging years. On the way we take a Hiltonian look at more than one level of contemporary society.

John Buxton Hilton was born in 1921 in Buxton, Derbyshire. After his war service in the army he became an Inspector of schools, before retiring in 1970 to take up full-time writing. He wrote two books on language teaching as well as being a prolific crime writer - his works include the Superintendent Simon Kenworthy series and the Inspector Thomas Brunt series, as well as the Inspector Mosley series under the pseudonym John Greenwood.