The Sullen Sky Mystery (1935)
My review:
Using small-town politics and business deals, real estate fraud, and police corruption as his ingredients, Bailey has written a particularly clever story, with a very complex and ambiguous situation, in which nothing is as it seems to be, not even at the end. This is, however, not too complex for Bailey's unique detective, the villainous Joshua Clunk, a fascinating and likeable hypocrite, whose principal vices are sweets and hymns—indeed, one character remarks that he "looks like a pious old deacon, but the gall of him, and his tricks and his bounce!"—and who makes a gloriously funny mockery of a magistrate's court. His detection is fine, as evident in the scene on the marsh where he uses tyre tracks to find both a missing girl (the scene in which she is lost on the marsh and pursued by the murderer is very skilfully done—tense without any H.I.B.K.) and a body. All of the clues are provided in this highly competent detective story, but Bailey's misdirection, his use of bluff, double bluff, triple and even quadruple bluff, ensure that the reader will be stunned at the end, in what is quite simply the best use of the gimmick involved.