A Fine and Private Place(1971)

Ellery Queen

An ordinary day in Gloucestershire holds a half century of secrets and lies in this crafty and well-crafted mystery, when a skeleton turns up in a field outside the old village of Tolland. A dogtag beside it in the earth bears the name Ben Gordheimer, a young American soldier who disappeared—and was dishonorably discharged for desertion—during the war fifty years before. To complicate matters for the police team of Keith Tyrell, the adept and ambitious Detective Inspector sent to Tolland, the investigation into the G.I.'s death unearths a second, much more recent corpse whose identity and identification as a blackmailer sets the entire village even more on edge. While Tyrell discovers the killer, long dead, of the G.I. quickly enough, the village of Tolland itself proves to be a harder case to crack. The repercussions of the old murder continue to haunt the memories and disturb the souls of Tolland's inhabitants, while the fact that another killer is dwelling in their midst troubles the placidity of their closely knit daily lives. Their distrust of Tyrell's inquiry and of the avid press only reinforces their tight-lipped secrecy. Tyrell has problems of his own as well, with the envy and betrayals of internal politics among the members of his police team increasingly impeding the progress of the investigation. Neither the village nor Tyrell realizes, though, just how quickly time is running out for them in this case. Then a third dead body further rouses once-sleepy Tolland and confronts the beleaguered Tyrell with another nasty case of murder.