Due to a Death

Hedley Nicholson #2

by Mary Kelly

A Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger award-winning addition to the British Library Crime Classics

Agnes—hands bloodied, numb with fear, her world turned upside down— is the passenger in a car as it speeds down a road between miles of marshes and estuary flats. It's been thirty minutes since she "ran away" but it's unclear what she was fleeing. Meanwhile, the news of a girl found dead on the marsh is spreading around the local area and Agnes is sure that the girl's death is related to her own troubles. With her memories of the past few days skewed, will Agnes be able to piece together the clues and find the truth? A masterpiece of suspense, Mary Kelly's 1962 novel follows Agnes as she casts her mind back through the past few days to find the links between her husband, his friends, a mysterious stranger new to the village, and a case of unexplained death.

Gripping, intelligent and affecting, Due to a Death was nominated for the Gold Dagger Award and showcases the author's versatility and willingness to push the boundaries of the mystery genre. This edition includes an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger Award-winning author Martin Edwards.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Mary Kelly was an English crime writer best known for the Inspector Brett Nightingale series. Writing in the 1950s and 1960s, Kelly was celebrated for the sense of refreshingly dark suspense in her mysteries. Her novel , published in 1961, won the Gold Dagger Award.

Reviews

[tortoise dreams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthony Berkeley asserted that the future of the detective story lay either in experimentation with the manner of telling the story or in an emphasis on character and atmosphere. Mary Kelly did both in this bleak offshoot of kitchen-sink realism from 1962. Unconventional, this is more novel than mystery. There's a body but it's an afterthought in a fitful summer flirtation between an unhappily married young woman and the mysterious older man who's come to her estuary village. Slow, dark, and unhappy, the plot such as it is moves glacially and subtly as we learn about three couples in a decaying town who don't really like each other, or their lives.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up as a holiday 'quick read'. As part of the British Crime Library series I was expecting a whodunnit with lots of characters, an early twentieth century setting, and a fairly formulaic, cosy, intention. How wrong I was! Set in the early sixties this tells the story of a run-down, fading estuary village, overtaken by industry, and the lives of a group of friends (three couples) who are at best ambivalent about each other, but bound together in a range of ways. There is a secret at the heart of it which accounts for the jittery, nervous style, and a doomed, half-hearted flirtation which is almost cruel as it plays out. The death feels incidental to the unravelling of this fragile collection of souls, an unravelling assisted by a private investigator, who is himself damaged by life. The central figure, Agnes, is lonely, disengaged, frustrated and there is a sense of there being no redemption anywhere for anyone. It sounds bleak, and it is bleak, but Mary Kelly has an interesting style that held my attention, the plot was unusual and it was anything but cosy. More of a thriller than a conventional crime novel, I'm a new fan and I shall certainly look for Kelly's other books.

[Fatima · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come - I am not exactly sure how I feel about this book yet

This was a shockingly depressing story. Initially, I was rather disengaged with the story especially due to the way men treated Agnes, the main character of this story. Perhaps, it was done intentionally to represent how little society thought of women but I felt the characters to be unnecessarily harsh, especially Headley and Tubby. However, I am glad I persevered on as the turnout of the mystery was chilling. I felt so heartbroken when the identity of the body found lying was revealed along with anger at those who had wronged the person.

If only some of the characters didn’t vex me or the pace of the story was faster, I would have rated this book 5 stars as this is truly one of the best written mystery crime books I have ever read!

[Jackdaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d never heard of Mary Kelly but my wife, who loves to experiment with new authors, picked up the British Library Crime Classics edition of Due to a Death from our local library. If she likes the writing she’ll read out the odd sentence or two to me: I got quite a few from Due to a Death.
I’m not principally a crime reader but what a discovery! This is in any case hardly a conventional crime story but it still manages to build up the tension expertly. Mary Kelly has a unique style – her sentences are often arresting because of their unexpected construction. Occasionally this makes her tricky to follow but mostly they’re just a delight. The character development is wonderful, gradually unpeeling the layers of what initially appear rather ordinary almost boring people to reveal them as much more complicated than we would have thought. While none of them is wholly sympathetic, the central character Agnes is a truly tragic heroine.
As someone who visited the area of the North Kent marshes (as a schoolboy bird watcher!) at about the time the book was written I thought she recreated the atmosphere of the place eerily well. Can’t wait to read some of her other titles.
I read somewhere that Mary Kelly was friendly with Patricia Highsmith (another brilliant writer and a favourite of mine). What wouldn’t I have given to have listened in on one of their conversations!

[Trevor · Rating 3 out of 5]

At just over 200 pages, this is a slender book by modern standards. Mary Kelly (1927-2017) is a new author to me, but I was intrigued to read that her novel The Spoilt Kill won the Crime Writers Association ‘Golden Dagger’ award in 1961.

Despite its brevity, I found it to be both a troubling and a depressing read. It is set in the depressing Kent marshes in the depressing fictional town of Gunfleet. The book is sloooow, glum and almost energy draining. All this builds a very strong atmosphere for the plot to unwind. The main character is Agnes, who I struggled to empathise with as I did almost all the other characters who almost without exception exude a deeply depressing small town mentality. That all said, much of the writing is good, just probably not for me – there is just too little to raise the spirits.

Agnes is sitting in a quiet, cool church when she hears news that a girl’s body has been discovered on the marshes. Much of the story is told in flashback, as Agnes picks over the events of the summer and tries to make sense of the news and preceding events.

Some readers will really enjoy this book I think, but it’s not really my cup of tea. I’m torn between giving it 2 or 3 stars. Somewhere between would probably be about right.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set on the Kent marshes in the depressed and depressing little town of Gunfleet in the 1960s, this is a wonderfully written and atmospheric novel about the death of a young girl. It’s told as a kind of flashback through the eyes of the main character, Agnes, as she sits in the peace of the church just after she’s learned of the discovery of the girl’s body on the marsh, thinking back over the summer and piecing together the events that have led to this moment. Kelly wrote one of my favourites from the BL series, The Spoilt Kill, and in terms of quality of writing I think this one may even surpass that one. However, I found this relentlessly bleak, especially when the underlying cause of the death is revealed.

[Adam Carson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well it’s not 2 star, but it’s probably not 3 either.

I can’t say I enjoyed, I found the pace slow, the dialogue verging on confusing and the climax, well, pretty anticlimactic. I didn’t really appreciate the dark and fairly uncomfortable tone either.

That said, there were some interesting characters and it was a very character based tale. I did care about the outcome, which makes the difference between a 2 star and 3 star for me.

[Farar Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whoa, this was much darker and more psychologically messy than I expected of a classic British mystery. But it was well written and made me think, in some strange way, of very early Margaret Drabble.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

British 60s noir. Excellent.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mary Kelly sets up the book with an account of narrator Agnes who has made a horrified discovery. Set in the tiny village of Gunfleet, Agnes narrates the events that led up to this discovery through the eyes of herself and her friends plus the mysterious Hedley (who is the private detective in The Spoilt Kill). By 1962, Mary Kelly had stop writing the traditional crime mystery instead she concentrates on characterisation and how their actions or lack off effect the outcome. Anybody looking for a cozy mystery will be sadly disappointed those who us who did read it are left wondering why Kelly didn't write another book after 1974 up to her death in 2017.

[Maura Heaphy Dutton · Rating 3 out of 5]

By 'eck, it's grim .... Grim characters, grim plot, grim denouement. I admired it, but did not love it.

Grim, but undoubtedly well written, and thoughtfully trying to twist the tropes of the murder mystery like so many limp rags. I can see why British Library Crime Classics editor in chief Martin Edwards thinks so highly of Kelly. (This is the third of her novels that he has rescued from the oblivion of changing times and tastes). In the two I've read (the other being The Spoilt Kill, set in the world of the Stoke-on-Trent pottery industry), it's clear that she was trying to do something different. Less about "whodunnit," and more about the effect of what's been done on those who remain.

This features the protagonist of The Spoilt Kill, private detective Hedley Nicholson, lugubrious cynic, functioning alcoholic, a man looking for love in all the wrong places. But the narrator here is Agnes, unhappy wife, orphan whose present is overshadowed by the mystery/disgrace of her birth, unhappy resident of the unlovely Thames estuary village where Hedley has come to lick his wounds after the disappointments of the Stoke-on-Trent case. But Agnes knows nothing of Hedley's past: for her, he's just the "mysterious stranger" who has come to town and provides some distraction from her dreary, limited social life. (One example of how Kelly plays with the tropes is that we're encouraged by their flirty banter to think that there's more to the relationship between Agnes and Hedley, when the object of Agnes' affection is someone else entirely. And for entirely different reasons.)

Yet another novel that reminds me why I'm glad I was NOT a young woman in the 1950s/early 60s (published in 1962, before "the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP," if you recognize the quote ...) Narrator Agnes begins life with one strike against her, born out of wedlock (a fact that everyone in her social circle seems to know, and feel quite comfortable expressing an opinion about), something that, within a few short years wouldn't have made much more difference to anyone than if she'd been born left-handed or with red hair. She has married a man she doesn't really love, for security. Because that's what you do, get married, isn't it? She has been forced, for the sake of her husband's job, to give up her job teaching. (Because the trustees of the museum where he works don't approve of working wives.) And forced to spend most of her time socialising with the wives of his friends, busybody and killjoy Helen and neglectful earth-mother Carole*, two of the most annoying women I have have encountered in literature. One of the things that made this book hard to love is just what a misery Agnes is: pull yourself together, woman! Dump the dreary husband, move somewhere where no one knows you were born out of wedlock. I had to keep reminding myself that in 1962, it wouldn't have been that easy. Ten years later, I picture Agnes skipping down Carnaby Street. But not in this novel, alas.

*Although, if anyone ever suggests that Kelley didn't have a sense of humour, just remind them of the names of Carole's feral brood of neglected children: Fennel, Sorrel, Tansy .. and Chervil. And two of them are boys ....

[A W · Rating 5 out of 5]

A car races down a road through a barren landscape of marshes and estuary flats, in the passenger seat sits Agnes, a young woman reeling from a discovery that has turned her world upside down. Elsewhere a body has been found on the marsh and the air is charged with panic and looming accusations.
What follows is the story, told by Agnes through flashbacks, of the days leading up to these dramatic events.
From its brilliantly filmic opening scene to the final, deeply affecting conclusion this is a remarkable novel from an unjustly forgotten author. First published in 1962 and brought back to life by the ongoing republication of the vast stock of books held by the British Library Due To A Death has been deservedly acclaimed as a lost classic.
Mary Kelly makes brilliant use of one of the oldest plots in any genre of fiction, that involving a stranger coming into town. In this instance the stranger in question is Headley Nicholson an enigmatic some time private investigator who appeared in several of her other novels, and the town, or village to be exact, is Gunfleet. A sad little place overshadowed by a refinery where everyone knows too much about everyone else.
The imagery she uses evokes that of British B movies of the same era, strained marriages where convention requires trauma to be hidden, unspoken, but nonetheless obvious class tensions and the feeling that the ‘normality’ the characters are trying so hard to inhabit is a thing veneer covering chaos.
Kelly’s primary concern isn’t detecting who committed a crime so much as exploring the fragility and despair of her characters. Some elements, such as Agnes not working because the museum where her husband is employed doesn’t approve of working wives, and the ‘crime’ that drives the action from offstage, are very much of their time.
The sensitivity with which Kelly approaches her characters and their situation is every bit the equal of what might be expected from a contemporary writer raised in an, allegedly, more open and emotionally literate culture.
To think that this book was published when Christie, Marsh and Allingham, the three Queens of the Golden Age of British crime writing were, if not in their prime, then at least still producing creditable work, is astonishing to say the least. What Kelly is doing in this book transcends by miles their worn smooth by familiarity conventions and compares more than favourably with the work of later writers who would plough the same furrow in return for far more in the way of acclaim.
The British Library have once again done anyone who enjoys first rate fiction in any genre a huge favour by bringing this book back to public notice.

[Charles Sheard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Closer to 2.5. I find the early chapters, and the end chapters, to be over-stylized with short clipped phrases piled upon phrases, as if attempting to force a breathless, tough noir atmosphere. It doesn't work for me, but rather renders the narrative itself opaque and unnecessarily confusing. After a while, as if Kelly was less effortful in her attempt, the flow becomes much smoother, which is more befitting the marsh setting and more effective as storytelling here. Unfortunately, that story itself is not that engaging, and all of the criminal aspects of it are mostly background to the exploration of Aggie's feelings and relationships. That focus is much less interesting to me, and also centered around a lot of difficult, unbelievable flirtatious dialogue with Hedley, again as if painfully trying to capture the repartee of classic film noir. Ultimately, the final chapters of reveal seem more obligatory to the author than heartfelt, as if she really preferred only writing about Aggie, and they are neither convincing nor credible. It is an especially odd and dubious choice to have the repentant and sorrowful Ian take not just his own life but that of his son. The only thing that saves this from a two star rating is a decent evocation of decay and torpor, not just of the marsh waters, but of those living at their edges in small sickly industry-polluted backwater villages.

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be the darkest, dreariest Mary Kelly novel I have read...but by the end - and I spent pages uncomfortable on a snarky fence - I think this could be her best.

It took the finale, of course including revelations, to get me to do a bit of a swingaround in attitude. I was enjoying it, to some degree, but feeling that a somewhat unlikable narrator and a slow-burn plot fueled by scalding Ramsey Campbellesque face-slapping dialogue was going down the wrong way. As the last third emerged, it began to weave the whole book together, and I felt that the book was leaping higher than The Spoilt Kill, or Dead Corse. It also gets very depressing and disturbing, but I want and expect that from Mary Kelly. Do I want to get so very rocked, as well as pissed off at characters? Yes, once in a blue mood, and if there is at least some sunny in the sunrise at the end.

First I came to appreciate it, and then finally to sort of love it. It sure made me wary of 1962, though I was never there. Now I feel I was in one dark corner for a while.

[Mark Higginbottom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow.....this is so so different from the majority of the other novels in the British Library Crime Classics series.I have just finished it literally two minutes ago and all I am left with is an overwhelming feeling of depression!This book is so sad,so low,so miserable,so glum.Yes,the story wasn't too bad really,it flows quite well I guess but the main character of Agnes is so depressing I felt low each time I'd read a few chapters.I am not even sure if this should have been included in the BLCC series.It wasn't written in the golden age of crime novels and I really can't see how on earth it could be deemed a classic.I wonder if the author had problems of her own with depression or anxiety etc because to write a novel like this you can't help but feel she knew exactly what she was talking about.I definitely need to read something to cheer me up hugely now....and a large glass of 🍷!!!

[sally davidson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was going to be two stars until about the last quarter. Still not sure it's quite worth three. A dull woman lives in a small dull town on a dull marshy estuary, with her dull husband, and spends time with his dull stepbrother and their dull friend. Stories about dull people can be engaging, but this one wasn't very much. The main character spends way too much time being overly introspective, while still revealing all her angsts to a man she barely knows AND indulging into some rather foolhardy private detecting. Perhaps if I'd read it at the time it was written (early 60s, just before I was born, so unlikely) I'd've been more invested in the main character, but meh.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This just about scraped a three star rating from me. It’s a sound plot, a credible setting and an important theme. While I have a general sense of the characters and their relationships, this took a long time to become even vaguely clear in my mind - just a lot of blokey mates knocking around a town taking little responsibility. It was very hard to see where it was heading until the last few chapters, when it unfolded, and, admittedly, did make sense.
Was it worth the wait? While it packed a punch, and I will not forget it, I think it could have been developed more clearly and succinctly. I persevered by skimming. I doubt everyone would. And that’s a pity.

[Eule Luftschloss]

dnf on page 55

trigger warning
fatphobia, jokes about suicide, jokes about cruelty towards animals, mention of torture

I must have had exceptional luck with my first british library crime classics because all the recent onces I've touched I didn't like. There is a distance between the people and me, and some stuff just didn't age well.
I'd have to force myself to read on, and I didn't even get to the plot yet.

Dear reader, go and look for different reviews because this one has nothing to say.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

[Beth Foster · Rating 2 out of 5]

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t connect with this story. As some other reviewers have said, the treatment of Agnes by other characters (mostly the men), is hard to stomach; although this was probably an accurate reflection of the time, there were many parts that just felt needlessly bitter and cruel. I was waiting for Agnes to be vindicated right until the end…poor orphan Agnes. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be pretty :(

The last few chapters were genuinely quite gripping, and hey I was surprised by the twist, so I guess that counts for something?

[Nicole Grimm]

I don’t know how to rate this book. Beautifully written about morose characters and bleak topics woven into a plot that is subtle to the point of tediousness. I think it’s a good novel, but extremely not to my taste.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

not so much a mystery as a novel about post-war social mores. The narrator is completely unreliable, as she doesn't see what's happening around her due to her infatuation with a newcomer. I found the ending rushed and disappointing, after enjoying the first three-quarters.

[Lynnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Kelly has an interesting style of writing and I am so glad that the British Library has republished a few of her books. This story is bleak and dark and intense and not a traditional whodunnit and I couldn't put it down. I was swept up in the story and the characters and the place.

[Thebookanaconda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Kelly deserves far more critical attention. Her writing style and skill with language continues to fascinate. This text shines a light on the quiet brutality of the everyday - it is incredibly bleak but gestures to what could be.

[Andréa]

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss.

[Mehva · Rating 4 out of 5]

his was an unusual book, which I appreciated about it, though in some ways it made it harder to read, more a character study but it starts with a mystery and continues on in that vein 3.75

[Tony Skipper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am still lost as why a novel set in Kent has a Norfolk lighthouse on the cover !

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

The pace was so laborious and not sure what the point was at the end.

[Avigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Due to a Death by Mary Kelly is a dark, literary mystery set in a decaying estuary village in 1960s England. The discovery of a body on the marsh acts as the catalyst for a narrative that is far more concerned with atmosphere, psychology, and social tension than with procedural investigation. The story is told through the first-person perspective of Agnes, whose reflective and often fragmented narration weaves together present events and memories of the past.

Rather than following a conventional whodunnit structure, the novel unfolds slowly, emphasizing inner lives, unspoken resentments, and the quiet cruelty embedded in everyday interactions. The setting plays a crucial role: the bleak landscape mirrors the emotional desolation of the characters and reinforces themes of stagnation, class divisions, and moral decay. Kelly’s prose is restrained and deliberate, allowing meaning to emerge through implication rather than explicit explanation.

The mystery itself remains understated, functioning as a framework through which the novel explores guilt, complicity, and the weight of long-buried truths. The focus remains firmly on character psychology and social observation, creating a somber, introspective work that blends crime fiction with literary realism. Due to a Death ultimately presents a study of human isolation and moral ambiguity, using the presence of death as a lens rather than a destination.

[Éowyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved many of the reissued British Library Crime Classics, but wasn't so taken with this one. I think as it wasn't really a murder mystery at all - they was a body, but that seemed peripheral to everything else. I also didn't feel that engaged with any of the characters.

[Hugh Dunnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't work out if this is a five or three star book. I absolutely loved The Spoilt Kill and this is a sort of follow up to it. And 'Due to a Death' is far from an 'average' book - the writing is excellent and as an historical/sociological character study it is very accomplished. However, it doesn't really fit into the 'classic crime' genre (yes, there is the discovery of a body and a final denouement scene but these are the only concessions to expected crime tropes) but to be honest, the biggest problem is that it just did not keep me gripped.
So yes, it probably does warrant better than three stars but it wasn't what I was expecting and I didn't particularly enjoy it.