Book description
When a crowd of ten thousand - all men, not a female in sight -
assembled on the common land known as Monkenheath in memory of Loy
Tanner's raggle-taggle 'army' of 1549, Detective Inspector Ben Jurnet
and the aldermen of Angleby were apprehensive. Would the vigil of the
sober crowd - no hash, no alcohol - end in the same rape and carnage as
that of the bellicose throng of four and a half centuries ago? Was this
contemporary phenomenon a disaster waiting to happen? The tenuous peace
of the vast gathering was shattered when Charlie Appleyard, the mob's
Messiah in Levis, spiritual heir to Loy Tanner, was found dead at the
house of the town's nicest nymphomaniac, Jenny Nunn. Not until the
untidy rabble was pouring into Angleby, as Tanner's 'army' had done all
those centuries ago, did the forces of law and order spring into action.
Death of a Hero is the eighth and last of S. T. Haymon's Ben Jurnet
crime novels. Sylvia Theresa Haymon was born in Norwich, and is best
known for her eight crime fiction novels featuring the character
Inspector Ben Jurnet. Haymon also wrote two non-fiction books for
children, as well as two memoirs of her childhood in East Anglia. The
Ben Jurnet series enjoyed success in both the UK and the US during
Haymon's lifetime: Ritual Murder (1982) won the prestigious CWA Silver
Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association. Stately Homicide
(1984), a skilful variation on the country house mystery, was praised by
the New York Times as a 'brilliantly crafted novel of
detection...stylish serious fiction', and favourably compared to the
work of Dorothy L. Sayers.
