The Complete Steel is a cozy British mystery that was published in 1969. The book was originally published under the title, “The Stately Home Murder”. It opens with a young boy finding a dead body stuffed into a suit of armour in a stately home that is open to the public. Inspector Sloan and his assistant, the slightly bumbling Constable Crosby, are called to the scene and are expected to solve the case as quickly and as quietly as possible.

The police find that they have to deal with the resident Earl, his wife and a goodly number of family members as well as a full compliment of retainers. The dead man turns out to have been the librarian and archivist and the best way of finding his killer is to discover why this meek and mild librarian needed to be murdered. Along the way to finding the information that they need, another murder occurs but the police doggedly follow the clues and eventually arrive at the correct answer.

This was a fun read as the author played upon the humor of the situation. There aren’t any great surprises but the clues are laid out and are fairly easy for the reader to follow. The author’s dry wit and tongue-in-cheek delivery keep this old-fashioned mystery light and readable. ( )

Saw the answer coming, but laugh-out-loud funny. Can't wait to delve into the rest of the series. ( )

A relatively early Sloan and Crosby story - as usual, the characters that show up only for this story are oddly and vividly drawn. Sloan and Crosby aren't quite as cardboard as they get later, though Happy Harry and the rest of the police are. Good story with some interesting weird angles, but not worth rereading. ( )

'The Complete Steel' is a very lighthearted piece, almost cartoonish in its depiction of the English aristocracy. In terms of tone, the word 'droll' comes to mind. No grief, angst or terror here. Just a clever puzzle, and lots of dry, sardonic humour, mostly generated by the vast difference in the lives of aristocrats and just about everyone else.

The opening, which has a coach party visiting a reluctantly open-to-paying-peasants Stately Home, beautifully sets the stage for the gap between normality and life at a stately home. Having the coach party find the fresh corpse of a member of the household inside a suit of armour on display in the dungeon was a stroke of brilliance.

'The Complete Steel' is only 200 pages long and the case is solved within forty-eight hours which makes it a quick light read that I found very relaxing.

The plot has more twists than I expected and successfully mislead me about what was going on for most of the book and then delivered an ending that was both completely plausible and worthy of Scooby-Doo.

I think Catherine Aird's tongue was firmly in her cheek as she wrote this but she still delivered a good mystery. She also educated me on who churls are and what is kept in a muniments room.
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Not my cup of tea. ( )