Death at the White Hart

by Chris Chibnall ★★★★☆

It's the middle of the night in West Dorset on the southern coast of England. A man is driving home when he nearly hits an object in the middle of the road. He initially thinks it was a deer, but after swerving to a stop, he realizes it's much worse.

"Not a deer.

A dead body.

A dead man. A dead adult man.

Sitting upright on a high-backed wooden chair. Trussed to it. Seemingly naked, his lower half placed inside an old sack, tied at the waist.

...But the arrangement of the corpse on the chair was not the most startling thing.

Attached to his head was a huge crown of antlers."

We quickly come to learn the victim is Jim Tiernan, a local publican who ran the White Hart, one of two pubs in the small town of Bredy. Detective Sergeant Nicola Bridge is assigned the case. Nicola grew up in West Dorset, and she's recently returned from an extended stint in Liverpool hoping for a slower and more manageable case load. Isn't it just her luck that she pulled a murder in her first months back, rare for this part of the country. She's joined by Detective Constable Harry Ward, fresh out of the academy and eager to make a good impression.

As Nicola and Harry begin to unravel the case, author Chris Chibnall introduces a host of locals who all could have had some role in Tiernan's murder. There are plausible connections with nearly every character to some aspect of the murder, and as Chibnall sprinkles in reveals and the occasional misdirection, the reader is kept guessing for most of the novel. Bridge's backstory and the connection it creates with some of the events surrounding the murder adds an interesting layer. But this is mostly police procedural, with enough layers to keep one captivated for the duration.

Death at the White Hart is a better-than-average murder mystery, and it's even a bit better than that, especially considering it's Chibnall's debut novel. He's not new to creating a well-crafted story, though; he's made his bones as a Peabody award-winning screenwriter and playwright, and is most well-known for creating the hit show Broadchurch. There weren't many things that I would have changed about Death at the White Hart, but it didn't have me on the edge of my seat in quite the same way as something like Dead Money did this year. Nevertheless, this was a high 4-star read for me, and I'd happily read another from Chris Chibnall if he continues down the path of writing novels.