The Beast Must Die

Rating:
Summary: ¿Nicholas Blake¿ is the pseudonym of C Day-Lewis
Review: The "Nigel Strangeways" books are a classic series of detective thrillers written under the "Nicholas Blake" pseudonym of Cecil Day-Lewis. "The Beast Must Die" is typical of the series, the 1938 melodramic tale of a man who decides to murder the hit-and-run killer of his only son. When someone else commits the evil deed first, Strangeways is called in to sort out the resulting mess.

Taken on one level, The Beast Must Die is an entertaining, if rather over-written, crime thriller. At another level, it's a much more entertaining spoof of the kind of mannered stories about the British middle class between the wars that were popular at the time. The book's opening sentence has become a classic: "I am going to kill a man... I have no idea what he looks like. But I am going to find him and kill him."

The title is taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes: The beast must die, the man dieth also, yea both must die.