Murder by Nail

by Jeffery Farnol Book 5 in the Jasper Shrig Mysteries series.

First published 1942

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3.0(5)

Edward Brandonleigh discovers a human skull pierced by a rusted nail, evidence of a killing committed about seventy years earlier. The old murder reaches into questions of inheritance and family memory, and Jasper Shrig is called upon to reconstruct a crime whose witnesses are long dead. Cornwall’s wreckers, smugglers and dangerous coast add present threats to a mystery rooted in the eighteenth century.

Set in the early nineteenth century, the novel makes historical investigation part of the plot itself: Shrig must read material traces, local stories and inherited interests to understand what happened in 1748. Farnol balances the cold case with romance and coastal adventure, using the long gap between murder and discovery to show how property and guilt can pass from one generation to another.