Netherplash Cantorum in Dorset was the village John Waterson and his young wife chose to live in after retirement.
This idyllic spot had one severe but unforeseeable drawback: among its inhabitants was a practical joker whose fertile mind ran to the bizarre and grotesque. The village was no place for a quiet retirement, or for a gentle recuperation from the nervous breakdown that had afflicted Waterson's wife. In Netherplash Cantorum you couldn't tell what was going to happen next. Extraordinary events tripped over each other. Maybe it was just good fun - or fairly good fun, except that it became less and less funny, and eventually someone died hideously and painfully of it.
This is the second time I've read this which is unusual for a mystery but this is worth it.
The book is full of wonderfully snobby characters with our our hero qualifying to stick his nose in as the solver of all that ails the village due to the fact that he is been awarded a fellowship to his Oxford College. This is understandable as Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate and father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
A good mystery full of all the little weakness's that make us human.
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