Henrietta Who?

Inspector Sloan #2

by Catherine Aird

In this mystery by CWA Diamond Dagger winner Catherine Aird, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan must find a ruthless hit-and-run killer

Early one morning in the quiet English village of Larking, the body of a woman named Mrs. Jenkins is found in the road. Miles away, her daughter, Henrietta, receives the bad news while working in the university library. Poor Mrs. Jenkins appears to have been the victim of a horrible car accident.
 
When an autopsy proves not only that this was no accident but also that Mrs. Jenkins had never had a child, young Henrietta’s life is thrown upside down. If she’s not Mrs. Jenkins’s daughter, then who is she? It’s up to Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan of the Calleshire police force to bring the murderer to justice—and a sense of order back to Henrietta’s life.
 
Proclaimed by the New York Times in 1968 to be one of the year’s best books, Henrietta Who? is a first-order English whodunit that’ll keep you guessing until the end.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, British Literature, Cozy Mystery, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller

248 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Kinn Hamilton McIntosh, known professionally as Catherine Aird, was an English novelist. She was the author of more than twenty crime fiction novels and several collections of short stories. Her witty, literate, and deftly plotted novels straddle the "cozy" and "police procedural" genres and are somewhat similar in flavour to those of Martha Grimes, Caroline Graham, M.C. Beaton, Margaret Yorke, and Pauline Bell. Aird was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 1981, and is a recipient of the 2015 Cartier Diamond Dagger award.

Reviews

[Zain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just days after her mother dies, Henrietta Jenkins discovers that her mother is not her mother.

So, who is she? Who is her mother? Who is her father? Will she find out?

Five stars. ✨✨✨✨✨

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robin Bailey 4 Hours 37 Mins

Description: The village of Larking is one of those quiet small towns where everyone fancies they know everything about everyone else, especially quiet-living widows like Grace Jenkins, bringing up one daughter, now away at university. It's so small that Harry Ford the postman does his round on a bicycle - and he's grateful for it when he finds Mrs. Jenkins dead in the road not far from home, clearly a victim of a hit-and-run driver the previous night. But the formalities of a road traffic accident require a formal identification and an autopsy, so Henrietta is recalled from school to identify Grace Jenkins.

3* Religious Body
3* Henrietta Who? (Inspector Sloan #2)

[Jack Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Stars. Catherine Aird at her best. She grows on you. Her writing style is straightforward, not flowery, and she rarely digresses from the subject at hand. You can be sure that almost all, if not all of the narrative will, somehow, find resolution by the end of the novel. Aird is also a terrible tease. On more than one occasion, she has our central figure, the stoic Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan, hint to his pressuring but erratic boss, Superintendent Leeyes, or to his ambitious but young assistant, Detective Constable Crosby, that he can glimpse the outline of that resolution. I immediately said to myself, "You can? I can't!" The problem is that he offers no help to me, or to Leeyes and Crosby! Some will find Aird's style slow; it's an older type of murder mystery, but I enjoyed the read. It develops from what looks like a traffic accident. There's been a hit and run in the hamlet of Larking; the victim is the quiet Mrs. Grace Jenkins. She's a widow with a loving daughter, Henrietta, now almost 21. Problems develop when Dr. Dabbe, the pathologist at Berebury Hospital, questions the accident. And Henrietta's parentage too. Then who is she? I couldn't put it down. That's a five star novel. (March 2023)

[Susan in NC · Rating 4 out of 5]

March 2022 reread: Couldn’t remember whodunnit, so I listened to the audiobook, enjoyably narrated by Robin Bailey. He really brought Aird’s understated humor to life, and I was glad to remind myself of the intriguing plot of this second book in what is becoming a favorite traditional British police procedural series. Historical series now, I guess, as these first two books have taken place in the 1960s, but feel like very traditional, Golden Age mysteries. Reread for the upcoming Reading the Detectives group Buddy read.

2017 read: Very well-done traditional British mystery. I look forward to reading more of Aird's Inspector Sloan mysteries. Her style and even Sloan's character remind me of Georgette Heyer's clever and witty police procedurals.

This was a fascinating puzzle - a woman killed by a car in a small village, but the subsequent investigation reveals she's not who everyone - including her daughter of the title- thought she was; this of course leads the daughter to wonder who she herself is. Fascinating premise, especially in an age before computers and digital files and quick answers...

Very highly recommended to historical mystery fans.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early one morning in the quiet English village of Larking, the body of a woman named Mrs. Jenkins is found in the road. Miles away, her daughter, Henrietta, receives the bad news while working in the university library.

3* The Religious Body (Inspector Sloan #1)
3* Henrietta Who? (Inspector Sloan #2)
TR The Stately Home Murder (Inspector Sloan #3)
TR A Most Contagious Game

[Sid Nuncius · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed Henrietta Who? It’s a very well written and interesting mystery with entertaining characters and a decent slice of humour.

Henrietta Jenkins comes home from university shortly before her 21st birthday to identify the body of her mother who has been killed in a hit-and-run incident on a quiet village road. However, a post mortem reveals both that Mrs Jenkins has never had a child and that she was probably deliberately killed. This leaves Henrietta without an identity as she never met her father, and Inspector Sloan and Constable Crosby with the problem of why Mrs Jenkins (if indeed she was Mrs Jenkins) was murdered – and whether the two questions are related.

It’s a very readable and enjoyable tale. Catherine Aird creates excellent characters, with Sloan himself being a pleasure to spend time with, and a very good sense of place and the way English village life works. She has an often rather dry humour in her writing which I like very much and which gives the narrative a bit of extra sparkle. Gritty realism it certainly ain’t, but it’s none the less engrossing and enjoyable for that.

I’m delighted to have discovered this series and will certainly be reading on. Warmly recommended.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second in the Inspector Sloan series, first published in 1968. It begins with the discovery of a body in the village of Larking. Mrs Grace Jenkins, found in the road by the postman and seemingly the victim of a hit and run accident on a dangerous bend in the road. Her daughter, Henrietta is asked to return from college to identify the body. However, a post mortem reveals that Mrs Jenkins has never had a child and so Henrietta is not her daughter...

Henrietta's life, and identity, is thrown into question. A local farmer's son, Bill Thorpe, who had wanted to marry Henrietta, but been asked to wait by Mrs Jenkins, is not concerned by who Henrietta really is and is constant in his attentions, but Henrietta feels she cannot move on until she knows who she really is and that involves - before DNA - a painstaking investigation. Why, if Mrs Jenkins was killed, did she have to die now and who really knows the secrets of Henrietta's origins?

This is a gentle series, very character based, with lots of interesting characters, settings and clues to work out. I really enjoyed this and look forward to reading the next in the series.

[Wanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

10 DEC 2015 - recommendation through Bettie. Sounds super! Many thanks.

15 DEC 2015 - another good listen. I listened to this and the first one in my downtime at work, over lunch, and via bluetooth in the car. Thank you, Bettie.

[Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Your basic classic English police procedural.

Classic English as in great plot but rather wooden characters. Grace Jenkins is killed by a hit and run driver on a lonely country road. Her daughter Henrietta is upset when she hears the news and reacts with typical British emotional hyper-sensitivity, implying that the whole situation is just - well, damned unfortunate. (Literary licence applied.) However when the coroner finds that her mother has never borne children, well now she's really perplexed and distraught and annoyed. Especially when people repeatedly refer to the woman who lovingly raised her as her mother. Which leaves her continually repeating the phrase, 'But, who am I ...who am I really?'.

It's tough because Inspector Sloan is one of those extremely dry insensitive types. He is all work no play and has little time for emotional displays, aside from annoyances, of which he is a finely tuned and prickly instrument. Let me fill you in on what I know of Inspector Sloan's personal life after having read two books. He has or has had parents. He lives in either a flat or a house. Both of these of course are really assumptions on my part, gleamed by reading between the lines. However, I do feel a high level of confidence in both statements.

Anyway this emotionally wrought young lady and this old dry, doesn't care to share anything about himself, Inspector, run around trying to resolve what's important to them. Him ..the murder. Her ..her identity and surprisingly it makes for a pretty damned good little mystery.

And, damned fortunate at that.

[Jazz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 STARS | Catherine Aird has become one of my favorite mystery writers of the traditional mystery, even though this was not my favorite of her books that I've read so far. The hit and run murder of a middle-aged woman was superseded by the mystery of her daughter Henrietta's identity. So at times, I almost forgot what the crime was, in the search for Henrietta's origins. The solution seemed obvious once it was all wrapped up, yet I didn't figure it out. Aird's writing is excellent with touches of humor throughout the book.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. I love the main character, Inspector Sloan, and the other characters are well drawn and fit in perfectly with each other. I descriptions of the county side as well as the country houses create an ambience of the English country side. The plot was well done and this was one of the very few books where I had no idea of who-dunnit. Every thing was explained in the end and the entire thing was very satisfying.
I highly recommend this series.

[Cookie M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know when I have enjoyed a murder mystery more! "Henrietta Who?" starts off with the dead body of a widowed 40-something mother who turns out to be none of those things, except for the dead part.
It gets better. Each chapter ends with a surprising revelation, making this book one you truly cannot put down.

[Michaela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even better than the first in the series, with an intriguing idea.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally published in the late 60s, this is a traditional British village cozy that fans of Christie would enjoy. Solving the hit and run death of long time village resident Grace Jenkins suddenly becomes a much more involved case when Grace’s daughter discovers she can’t possibly be Grace’s daughter. Plenty of family secrets and twists and turns provide an interesting and entertaining read.

[Ahtims · Rating 3 out of 5]

A reasonably decent cozy mystery, moderately paced.
A widow dies by hit and run under questionable circumstances, and after autopsy her 20 year old daughter finds out that she's not her biological mother. Search for her lineage starts, and a few secrets emerge.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this makes five books for me from Catherine Aird featuring Inspector Sloan. This book was a very enjoyable read though delivering quite a complex and puzzling mystery that seems will never be untangled. The tone amongst those working with dedication to help the young woman Henrietta was heartwarming and liberally threaded with country humour.
This kindle was on sale when I purchased it. Lucky buy!

[Jan C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second in Catherine Aird's series involving Inspector Sloan. I enjoyed it. Not sure I've ever read a mystery quite like it.

A young lady's mother is involved in a hit and run as the victim. The daughter is called out of college to identify her. It turns out the woman is not her mother. Is her father her father? This youngster's entire identification is thrown into question. There is a burglary and more deaths. The question seems to hinge on her upcoming 21st birthday.

This kept me up late two nights in a row.

[Sandysbookaday (taking a step back for a while) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audio.

After Henrietta's mother is found dead on the road, possibly the victim of a hit and run, she discovers she is not who she thought she was.
If her mother wasn't her mother - who was?
And who was her father?
And is Henrietta, Henrietta?
The more questions are asked, the more people are killed.
Can Henrietta find out who she really is, before she too is killed?

This is a delightful book - with lots of red herrings and more dead ends than you will find on the floor of a hairdressing salon.

[WhatShouldIRead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good British procedural. While there is a murder at the beginning of the story, the interest shifts to one of the characters, Henrietta, in that she is not who everyone says she is. All this ties into the many branches of events which stem out from this murder.

Exciting chase at the end, some funny dialogue and a wonderful sense of village life and with citizens.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When a woman is found dead, it seems like a clear case of hit-and-run. But then the police learn that she wasn't Henrietta's mother. Which raises the question: Just who is Henrietta?

[Clare Snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a cleverly complicated dastardly killer. Found my new fav plodding detective. Poor Seedy, surrounded by stupidity.

[Hilda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Slow

[Mike Finn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I whizzed through this second Inspector Sloan book in a single car journey and was so immersed in it that I didn't mind being in an almost immobile queue of traffic for large parts of the trip. 'Henrietta Who?' has the same police personnel as 'The Religious Body' and it depends upon a cunning trap at the end to get the villain but otherwise it has little in common in either content or tone.

I was propelled through the book partly by the novelty of the idea: that a violent death reveals that Henrietta, a young woman approaching her twenty-first birthday, is not who she has been raised to believe she was. The subsequent investigation is as much about finding out who Henrietta is and why she was given a different identity as it is about investigating the violent death.

The pieces of the puzzle are revealed one at a time and with great dexterity. I enjoyed the view that they gave me of rural England in 1968, when World War II was a childhood memory for the youngest character, while the oldest one served in the Boer War, and when 'murder by motor vehicle' was rare enough to feel novel.

I can see that Catherine Aird is going to become a go-to author for comfort reads. Her ideas are original. Her storytelling has a light touch that keeps the plot moving without making it feel forced. Her humour, which plays upon the many ways in which we misunderstand each other, is mostly kind. Her close observation of people and places grounds her stories, making them easy to relax in.

She has also contrived a clever way to prevent the exposition needed to solve a puzzle from becoming tedious by providing Inspector Sloan with two foils to discuss the case with: his not-stupid but sometimes slow to see inferences and consequences young DC, who needs coaching and his micro-managing, usually impatient boss who is always looking for the quick solution, even when the solutions contradict one another. It seems to me that when Sloan is talking to either of these two, he's the voice of the author tickling the reader to work things out for themselves. Aird softens the edge of this kind tickling by imbuing both relationships with an attitude of long-suffering humour from Sloan.

Aird's novels are bite-size things, almost novellas by modern standards, so, to me, they're like watching an episode of a clever police series where the detective solves a new mystery in a new setting every week.

I'm expecting to consume of alot of them over the coming months.

[Kathy Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hit-and-run accident uncovers a lot of secrets in the second in the Calleshire Chronicles. At first it looks like it could have been an accident, but the autopsy indicates that Mrs. Jenkins was run over twice. And the autopsy shows that Mrs. Jenkins never had a child, yet it is her daughter Henrietta, a nearly twenty-one-year-old university student, who identifies her mother's body.

Detective Inspector C. D. Sloane of the Calleshire police force is called in to investigate. He wants to know who murdered Mrs. Jenkins. Meanwhile, Henrietta is more concerned with finding out who she is since she now knows that Mrs. Jenkins wasn't her mother.

All Henrietta has to contribute to the investigation are stories her mother told her when she was growing up and she doesn't know how many of them were true. A break-in at their cottage indicates that someone is looking for something they are convinced Mrs. Jenkins had. All Henrietta knows is that her mother kept her papers in the locked bureau that the thieves broke into.

This was an engaging historical mystery. Attitudes about illegitimate children play a role in this one and highlight that it is a historical novel. I enjoyed all of the period detail. I also liked the various characters and have a bit of a soft spot for Sloane's young confederate who is being taught by Sloane but who is just a little dim.

Robin Bailey did a good job with the narration. I liked that he didn't even try to mimic women's voices but had quite a variety of men's voices at his disposal.

[Carolien · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The body of a woman is found on a lonely road early one morning, the victim of a hit-and-run accident. However, it soon turn out that the girl she has brought up as her daughter, Henrietta, is not her daughter. And so two mysteries are intertwined - who killed Mrs Jenkins and who is Henrietta? Complex plot and interesting characters.

[Ram Kaushik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very readable British cozy with gentle wit surfacing at unexpected moments.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fun read that has a very vintage Christie feel to it. I will definitely check out some more from this writer.

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second in the Inspector C. D. Sloan police procedural series and, as with the first--The Religious Body, Sloan finds himself looking to the past to find answers to some very present murders. He and DC Crosby are called to investigate a traffic fatality. What looked at first to be a simple hit-and-run, soon gives evidence of having been a carefully planned murder. But who would want to kill Grace Jenkins, a widow who has always kept herself to herself and had no real friends--let alone enemies. But there are even greater questions ahead. When Grace's daughter Henrietta comes home from university to identify the body, she finds that someone has broken into her mother's desk...but apparently they had a key to the cottage because there's no sign of forced entry.

The next shock in store is when the pathologist discovers that the woman Henrietta has identified as her mother had never borne a child and most likely was never married at all. If Henriett isn't Grace Jenkins's daughter, then who is she? Further investigation by Sloan reveals oddities about the man whose picture has held pride of place in the cottage. A picture of a man whom Grace claimed as her husband--killed in the war and decorated for service. But the medals on the man in the picture and the medals kept in a drawer don't match. Henrietta begins to wonder if anything she she's believed about herself is really true.

The hunt for a murderer by motor vehicle soon turns into a hunt for identity as well--Grace's, Henrietta's, and the man in the photo. If they can just find some proof indicating who any one of these really is, then they'll have something to work with and perhaps be able to find the motive. The man in the photo is eventually traced, but he's killed before Sloan can question him. It isn't until Sloan and Crosby tap into the correct memories from twenty years ago that they find the clue to the modern mysteries.

Sloan is a very low-key detective--no great flights of inspiration, no colorful habits or peculiarities. He just does the day-to-day work of a Detective Inspector (and delegates the more tedious tasks to Crosby--such as searching through the records of past cases and hunting up all the Holly Tree Farms in the area). He has a wry, not quite sarcastic wit that shows itself particularly in interactions with Crosby and his superior, Superintendent Leeyes, but is very humane when dealing with Henrietta, showing great concern for the girl's plight.

The mystery itself is a very interesting one with both victim and murderer as unknown quantities--and even the relations of the victim having their identities questioned. It's rare to not only have a "whodunnit" but a "who had it done to them" as well. It seems for a while that the identity question has taken over the book, but the reader should never lose sight of the fact that once the identities are sorted, the motive for the murder and the identity of the murderer will become clear. Overall, a highly enjoyable mystery.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks.

[Anne Patkau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mrs. G. E. Jenkins, walking home from bus stop, was run down Tuesday evening by a big heavy car. Her daughter Henrietta Eleanor Leslie from college, 21 soon "in April" p76, identifies her and notes bureau of important papers broken into, but not Boundary Cottage. Larking Inspector Sloane and Sgt Crosby from murder squad take over when pathologist Dr Dabbe reveals body "certainly never had any children and had very probably never been married either" p 26, and was run over twice, coming and going.

Did Grace Edith Wright marry "Cyril Edgar Jenkins" p 70? Three suspects are primary. Bill Thorpe wants to marry his fiancée, whatever her name. Village landlord James Augustus Heber Hibbs and wife from The Manor contributed to girl's college fund secretly. Lawyer Arbican doesn't remember the lady in question.

But Arbican calls her Grace. I missed that. I did question the accidental death only six months earlier of the typist Miss Winifred Landry, "she'd have remembered all right" p 59. He ran over Winifred and Grace, stole fortune due Henrietta on 21st birthday.

Medals do not match photo of supposed father. Henrietta sees Cyril, Grace's brother who knew the whole story, in nearby Calleford where he works. Believing he was dead, she never would have looked before. She tells Arbican. Lawyer kills Cyril, puts gun in hand but suicide ruled out by forensics not available 20 years ago.

Girl's birth mother Eleanor Leslie was heiress. Husband Captain Hugo Mantriot on leave thought to have gone mad, shot her then himself, exactly same method as Cyril. "Unless he confesses" p 187, Arbican cannot be convicted of her parents' murders.

I like the bits of humor. One is not intentional "resistance become more meaningless" p 158, about "deliberate destruction of personality" in concentration camps.

[Iris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to this read beautifully by Robin Bailey. Very enjoyable.