The Devil at Saxon Wall

Mrs. Bradley #6

by Gladys Mitchell

The quaint, cozy village of Saxon Wall is hiding a dark, sinister reality. When fiction author Hannibal Jones retires to Saxon Wall in hopes of reinvigorating his writing career, he instead finds himself in the midst of an increasingly puzzling and dangerous situation. Eccentric villagers and stories of curses, demons, and blood sacrifices abound. A devastating drought and imposing vicar escalate the pervasive fear until Hannibal Jones feels compelled to call in his good friend and detective, Mrs. Beatrice Lestrange Bradley. An alarming tale of a missing baby and suspicious deaths comes to light. And soon Bradley and Jones are at the center of a mystery wrought with conspiracy, murder…and witchcraft.

This classic caper promises to entertain, frighten, and intrigue as you revel in the antics of the gloriously unorthodox sleuth Mrs. Bradley.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Ebooks, British Literature

298 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Aka Malcolm Torrie, Stephen Hockaby.

Born in Cowley, Oxford, in 1901, Gladys Maude Winifred Mitchell was the daughter of market gardener James Mitchell, and his wife, Annie.

She was educated at Rothschild School, Brentford and Green School, Isleworth, before attending Goldsmiths College and University College, London from 1919-1921.

She taught English, history and games at St Paul's School, Brentford, from 1921-26, and at St Anne's Senior Girls School, Ealing until 1939.

She earned an external diploma in European history from University College in 1926, beginning to write her novels at this point. Mitchell went on to teach at a number of other schools, including the Brentford Senior Girls School (1941-50), and the Matthew Arnold School, Staines (1953-61). She retired to Corfe Mullen, Dorset in 1961, where she lived until her death in 1983.

Although primarily remembered for her mystery novels, and for her detective creation, Mrs. Bradley, who featured in 66 of her novels, Mitchell also published ten children's books under her own name, historical fiction under the pseudonym Stephen Hockaby, and more detective fiction under the pseudonym Malcolm Torrie. She also wrote a great many short stories, all of which were first published in the Evening Standard.

She was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award in 1976.

Reviews

[Alex Hutchinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's wonderfully odd, and I like an odd murder mystery; the more eccentricity the better.

The problem here, though, was that I think Mitchell needed listen to her editor, who was no doubt trying to point out a variety of failings: that she was describing things so badly, and so chaotically that even the sharpest reader would struggle to keep up with what was going on; that she failed to create breathing characters and instead just had chess pieces that moved through the motions of her story; and that she used the word giggle too frequently and inappropriately so it made all kinds of serious situations seem trivial.

I was really absorbed by this weird tale, even though I felt nothing at all towards the flat characters and their situations. The puzzle was enough to keep me up at night reading for hours; but I don't know if it really deserves four stars. With a stronger edit and some careful proof reading, it could have done.

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5⭐️
I got up early to skim read this through to the bitter, boring end. Disappointing. There is so much dialogue and repetition. Ugh, onwards and upwards, as they say. I need an escapist fantasy fun read or a good creepy horror to get back on track as this sucked the reading life out of me.

[Christina Dongowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dysfunctional families straight out of Wuthering Heights, a baby supposed to be a changeling, a drought that lets all the wells run dry except two, one at the vicarage, one at the strange Neot Hose, the Long Thin Man buried in a Neolithic long barrow towering over the village Saxon Walls coming into the village and all hell breaks lose, villagers using a very Blakean English as a dialect, mistaken and changed or forgotten identities, cunning women casting spells or trying to undo them, half forgotten folktales and folk beliefs coming back with a vengeance, and at least three murders & two attempts at the lives of Hannibal Jones & Mrs. Bradley who are trying to sort out this strange mystery tale without getting more people killed than necessary - The Devil at Saxon Wall really is a wild ride: Mitchell takes the mystery in mystery novel back to its origins in religion and myths, but without getting metaphysical or religious. It’s more like using the ideas & methods of the Cambridge ritualist (Frazer is mentioned) to get at the true meaning of the strange things people do and how they use stories & symbols to create meaning and sense for the strange things they do. In a sense this is Mrs. Bradley at her most psycho-analyst so far, but using psychoanalysis as a form of social-anthropological method to get at the subconscious of a whole village. But fortunately for readers not getting into nietzschean cultural conservativism like Freud himself. I really liked to read it, it’s spooky, full of folk horror vibes prefiguring The Wickerman & also really funny.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

A veritable witches' cauldron of a book in which the Great Gladys has placed a heady brew of Cold Comfort Farm, Denis Wheatley, Freud, Gestalt, Daltonism, Christianity, African/West Indian voodoo and Medieval Mystery plays, and stirred it with the Golden Bough.

Unfortunately there is only the merest pinch of detection, as Mrs Bradley intuitively knows the answers to the mysteries of who exactly has been murdered and which child is which.

But then I don't read these as detective novels. They are puzzles, and mildly puzzling, but what really keeps me guessing is just how GM will unravel it all and make some kind of sense out of the chaos which is her plotting.

To use another analogy, reading this is like eating a very rich Christmas pudding and occasionally and delightedly extracting a very shiny silver threepenny bit.

We all need Gladys and Beatrice in our GAD reading, if only to remind us what a wonderfully varied and fertile field it is.

3.75 stars. It was such fun!

[Yvette · Rating 3 out of 5]

what a weird twisty tale. enjoyed the creepy setting and the weird characters.

[Rebecca Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is incredibly bizarre, definitely the most eccentric Mitchell I’ve read yet. Not formulaic in the least. Does it make any sense? Perhaps not. But the atmosphere of oppressive drought and depraved villagers is super memorable, unsettling, and weird as hell.

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my least favourite of the Gladys Mitchells so far, but it's still fantastic. These books are not even a little bit like anything that could happen, so if realism in fiction is your thing you'll want to give them a miss. But they're frothy, fabulous confections where people can wrap a scarf around their face and instantly be accepted as someone else, and I adore them.

[Alex Sarll]

I swear each Mrs Bradley book I read is more bonkers than the one before. This spends the first 30 pages rattling through every folk horror/Cold Comfort Farm signifier of the rurally rum it can lay hands on, before abruptly switching gears to a little light satire on popular fiction. An unnamed - but cackling - analyst tells the author of the fiction to take a break in the country - and that's all we see of our detective until the book is almost halfway through. Instead, it's author Hannibal Jones taking an interest in the village rumours, many of which revolve around a possible baby-swap that might have been easier to follow sooner if we weren't always hearing variant versions of it from assorted sly, half-witted and/or terminally digressive rustics. That intersects with Mrs Fluke and Mrs Passion accusing each other of witchcraft and egg-theft (they're mother and daughter, incidentally, and if those names seem a lot, just be thankful Vilert Teezy didn't have a more prominent role). And then the drought sees the vicar come within a hair's breadth of getting himself Wicker Manned, and it turns out that actually, Mitchell has just had a new delivery of folk horror tropes, but the Best Before dates aren't what they might be, so she's just going to pour them all in. Sack of dead frogs, anyone? Here, take two! I did brace myself when the Japanese manservant Nao was introduced, but while you couldn't claim his portrayal was entirely free of stereotypes, he definitely comes off significantly better than the debased English peasantry. At the close of the book, helpful 'End Papers' clarify most of what remains puzzling; it's not a habit Mitchell will retain, as witness the comment of the admiring Philip Larkin that "it is not impossible for the reader to finish a book without grasping not only who the murderer is, but sometimes even who has been murdered."

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

#6 in the Mrs Adela Bradley mystery series. A fully qualified medical doctor and a psychoanalyst (Freudian), she is a consultant for the Home Office and an amateur detective who teams with her chauffeur George Cuddleup and her secretary Laura Menzies to solve mysteries who don't join the series until later.

The opening background chapters paints a weird picture of the people and village of Saxon Wall while setting the mood. Successful author Hannibal Jones becomes extremely stressed trying to write a different type of novel and comes to a near psychological collapse bringing him to Psychoanalyst Mrs Bradley for help. She advises him to seek out a quiet remote village and stay there to pull himself together. Saxon Wall seems the perfect rural retreat and he is quickly intrigued by the odd characters among the villagers, their pagan beliefs, and by the mystery surrounding Neot House, where a young couple died soon after the birth of their first child which is described in the introduction.
When a man is found bludgeoned to death, Jones calls in Mrs Bradley, who proceeds to root out the devil of Saxon Wall by her own unorthodox methods.

Core to the story are the issue of who actually was murdered and identities: 3 babies born at the time of the first two deaths 9 years ago and the identity of the heir to the estate.

[Geraldine Byrne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story from the Mrs. Bradley series is a mixture of very well achieved macabre backstory, some likeable and memorable characters, and a lot of very unlikely, very melodramatic episodes. Not the best offering in the series, but still worth a read.


It takes a while to adjust to the style of the Mrs. Bradley series; certainly I find them unlike most of the other golden era offerings. The writing is superb, the settings range from melodramatic to classic (country house, quiet village etc.) but there are elements of gothic fiction not just in the plotting but in the characters. Mrs. Bradley is a grotesque if likeable figure. Her infuriating habit of explaining the crime away one way, only to renounce that explanation and explain it another way, coupled with her rather ungenerous habit of holding the cards too close to her chest for even the reader to see, can be irritating but the compensation of the witty, and atmospheric writing helps.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gladys Mitchell's early books regularly feature isolated villages seemingly satanic cults. Writer Hannibal Jones comes to Saxon Wall to investigate and discovers the bizarre case, a decade before, of Hanley and Constance Middleton who's young child died and is replaced by a substitute who will inherit the Middleton money. By 1930, Constance is dead but Jones remains unconvinced that Hanley as suffered the same fate which brings in Mrs Bradley to help solve this unsavory affair. "The Devil at Saxon Wall" is overly complicated which a large number of characters who may or may not give the correct answers. This book is not for the casual crime reader but for those who understand that Gladys Mitchell will give you something different.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Almost Lovecraftian and so so wrong with its primal villagers and mad goings on and Mrs Bradley wandering around in her reptilian way, not at all averse to violence and mayhem and frightening even the local witch though not the inscrutable Japanese servant. The cliches are rich in the race, class and gender problematics of its time but it is so bonkers it to some extent outstrips them and, well. I enjoyed it. In a guilty pleasure kind of way.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been generally enjoying the Mrs. Bradley series, despite their obvious flaws - but this one was practically incomprehensible. I had no idea what was going on at all for most of the book. Mrs. Bradley's explanation at the end helped some, and the author's notes afterward helped a bit - but really, I had no idea who was even murdered for a long time. Although it was clear someone was.

[S Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has always been one of my favourite Mitchell’s. Not only is the story bizarre,and a little jumbled up, but is to me, very funny. I don’t think that those who read slowly and like to lay out each thread to peer at will enjoy this much, they might get their wool all ravelled ! I love this thing !

[Lawrence FitzGerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eclectic in style, replete with miasma of false clues, red herrings, and misleading theories (almost all the preceding provided by Mrs. Bradley herself), and possessing a completely ridiculous resolution. Not to mention the wanton send up of country life. What Mrs. Bradley is to detection, Gladys Mitchell is to detective fiction.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bizarre book. The whole thing was just weird. If you haven't read Mrs Bradley before, please don't start with this one. An author has a nervous breakdown and moves to a small town. The residents are superstitious and just off. The whole town needs psychoanalyzing, unfortunately there is only Mrs Bradley. Yes, its a weird tale.

[Gypsi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bizarre, hard to explain, impossible to put down, and incredibly entertaining -- another Mrs. Bradley story that I finished in less than 24 hours.

Note: The publisher's blurb does it a disservice.

[Thistledown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Atmospheric. But attitudes towards people from other cultures and mental health issues haven't aged well.

[Steven Heywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bizzare, oblique murder mystery set in a remarkably awful village with excellent beer.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: Mrs. Bradley advises the highly-strung Hannibal Jones to retreat to quiet Saxon Wall. When a man is killed there, he asks her to visit.

[Faith Fielder · Rating 1 out of 5]

Confusing.

This is the most confusing crime novel I have ever read. I will never read another book by this writer.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had a hard time following this one . . . very few / no sympathetic characters . . . very confusing. And weirdly dark.

[Jessi · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot going on in this book and some of it was hard for me to follow. In the main, there is an author, Hannibal Jones, who stumbles onto the mystery of three infants who may or may not have been switched at birth. He brings in Mrs. Bradley to help him solve the mystery.
Like most of the Mrs. Bradley mysteries the ending was fairly confusing to me and more than a little convoluted but I do like the series and will keep reading.

[Gurnoor Walia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Surreal, Sinister, and Wickedly Entertaining Village Mystery

Another brilliantly surreal village mystery, The Devil at Saxon Wall outdoes even The Saltmarsh Murders and The Mystery of a Butcher’s Shop in sheer absurdity. In those novels, some characters were peculiar or spooky—but in Saxon Wall, there isn’t a single sane resident. The only rational minds belong to those merely passing through, such as Mrs. Bradley and her nephew, our narrator.

For someone like me, who enjoys this surrealist/ dark comedic sub-genre of Golden Age detective fiction—perfected by the likes of Anthony Berkeley, Edmund Crispin, and of course, Gladys Mitchell—this was an absolute delight. But beyond its eccentric, off-the-rails village, there’s a genuine sense of menace woven into the prose. The murderer here is one of the coldest and most deranged killers Mrs. Bradley has ever unmasked, making for a chilling contrast to the novel’s self-aware absurdity. Kudos to Mitchell for keeping this balancing act intact, blending her mastery of English folklore with dark comedy—a signature touch in all her village mysteries.

The novel opens with a compelling hook, recounting events from a decade earlier: a simple-minded girl, shunned by her family as unmarriageable, prevents the enigmatic squire of Saxon Wall from committing suicide in Pompeii. He rewards her by asking her to marry him and bringing her back to his village. But upon her arrival, the seemingly devoted husband all but imprisons her, forbidding her from leaving the house while he indulges in midnight escapades—ostensibly for witchcraft and extramarital dalliances. A flood of pregnancies and mysterious deaths follows, including those of the ill-fated couple.

Ten years later, Mrs. Bradley’s nephew, recovering from overwork in this off-grid part of the country, finds himself surrounded by local gossip and supernatural hysteria. The village, suffering through a drought (which they in their full ancient heathen stupor naturally blame on the vicar), is further shaken by the news that the long-lost brother of the deceased squire is returning to reclaim the abandoned Hall. With tensions escalating, it’s only fitting that Mrs. Bradley arrives to untangle whether the devil is truly at work in Saxon Wall—or if the truth is even more sinister.

Mitchell tackles bold themes, particularly in her frank depictions of promiscuity and sex, both of which are central to the plot. Superstition also plays a crucial role, handled with equal parts menace and dark humor. The mystery’s resolution, while convoluted, is satisfyingly logical—unlike in some of Mitchell’s earlier works, where solutions occasionally feel pulled from thin air. That said, the final reveal isn’t particularly shocking, as most readers will likely see the general direction it’s heading and would be able to identify the real culprit. One could nitpick certain aspects of the crime’s execution—it requires an implausibly pliant set of unsuspecting accomplices and, let’s say, easily distracted individuals. But if you’re looking for such people, Saxon Wall’s very thirsty inhabitants are just the right candidates.

The only real drawback is the sheer number of superfluous characters, each with their own quirks—keeping pet goats, smuggling newborns, torching vicarages, looting stained glass, and hurling statues of saints into dew ponds on Saxon mounds, to name a few. While these bizarre subplots are entertaining, they eventually become too much of a good thing, causing the story to ramble in the second half. A bit more narrative tightness would have elevated this to one of Mitchell’s very best.

Overall, The Devil at Saxon Wall is a wonderfully unhinged, eerie, and wickedly amusing mystery—a must-read for those who enjoy detective fiction at its most surreal.

[Whistler's Mom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't finish this book, but the part I read ranged from boring to awful.

I am a HUGE fan of Gladys Mitchell. I've loved most of her books and I admire her personally. But I had to give up on this one at about the 20% mark. This was apparently Mitchell's strongest foray into the world of witchcraft, so I suppose it's of historical interest, but I read for enjoyment.

Most of the first (incredibly long) chapter tells the story of a hapless woman who marries a strange man and goes to live with him in a backward village called Saxon's Wall. Although he's abusive, she refuses to stay away from him. She dies shortly after the birth of her child and then the husband dies. There are mother-and-daughter witches and two babies that may have been switched.

Then it jumps forward ten years when a writer named Hannibal Jones comes to live in the village to get away from the pressure of grinding out his popular books. I'll admit it gets better after this point, but by that time I was worn out and disgusted. Don't know when Mrs. Bradley comes on the scene, but it's not in the first three chapters.

Maybe it turns into a good book, but if you're new to this series, I wouldn't start with this one. On the other hand, it's well-written and if you're ga-ga for witch stories, you may like it.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

The reader needs to pay careful attention to detail in the early stages of this book as later it turns into a very complicated story and I found it quite easy to lose the thread.

Gladys's fondness for folklore and witchcraft is again very evident as is the use of a lot of quite annoying " Ooh Arr " type yokel speak dialogue. We also have to suspend our disbelief that villages of this type, populated by superstitious morons and with no law enforcement could exist in 20th century England.

Despite all this, it is a good yarn complete with murder, blackmail, country estate inheritance, changeling children, plenty of red herrings and, in my copy anyway, a useful set of notes at the end explaining some of the plot.

As always, Mrs Bradley remains a brilliant and engaging character. It's a pity that she doesn't really appear till quite late in the story.

Three and a half stars would have been fairer.

[William Bibliomane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and atmospheric excursion through murder, folklore, madness, and superstition in the inter-War years, The Devil at Saxon Wall is also somewhat maddening. The cases of mistaken identity, or identity concealed, leave one wondering more than once "who was it that was murdered, again?" But for writing this interesting, the reader should be prepared to forgive a few cryptic passages here and there, and the End Notes (a substitution for the "Mrs. Bradley's Notebook" convention of the earlier books) do help to set things in comprehensible order. It's a good romp, and worth reading, especially for fans of the divine Dame Beatrice.

Full review to follow.

[Gillian Kevern · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much as I adore Gladys Mitchell, I found the complexity of the case detracted from my enjoyment of it. I am pleased that I worked out the vicar before anyone else did, but was a little disappointed in the ending. This is another book that didn't age well -- Gladys Mitchell's depiction of the Vicar's Japanese servant was simply baffling.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Copy problems

This story takes some concentration. Problems following the story aren't helped by obvious and not obvious mistakes in the electronic copy of this book.

[Michele bookloverforever · Rating 2 out of 5]

madness, babies switched, evil , superstition....