What Me, Mr Mosley?

Ever since television’s “Antiques Road Show” passed by that way, the inhabitants of Mr Mosley’s patch—the hill country of the Yorkshire-Lancashire border—have become avid collectors of bric-a-brac. And Dickie Holgate, with a junk-cum-antique stall in the market-place of the little town of Bagshawe Broome, is doing very well as a result. That is, until Mosley spots one or two items of doubtful provenance among the chromium-plated teapots and bone-handled cutlery. Reducing his superiors—especially Detective-Superintendent Tom Grimshaw—to a state of nervous prostration, and accompanied by an admiring, if uncomprehending, Sergeant Beamish, Mosley, in his black homburg and overcoat, strolls through scenes of ever-increasing comic confusion to a final satisfying denouement. What, Me, Mr Mosley? is the sixth, and sadly, the last, of John Greenwood’s Inspector Mosley novels. In its humour, wit, and nicely judged North-of-England atmosphere, this is a fitting and worthy conclusion to the series. John Greenwood is the pseudonym of John Buxton Hilton, writer of both the Inspector Simon Kenworthy and Inspector Thomas Brunt series.