Sara Woods, Error of the Moon

Sara Woods, Error of the Moon
© 1963 Sara Woods
Out of print, but available from used booksellers

The fifth book featuring London barrister Antony Maitland; the title again is drawn from Shakespeare, although I cannot see any real connection to the story.

It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more near the earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.
 Othello, Act V, Secne II

Set apparently in the early 1960s, and Maitland’s legal practice is a sufficiently fallow period that he almost willingly accepts a commission from (presumably) from the Ministry of War (and based on his wartime service in military intelligence to investigate what appears to be an effort to obtain the plans for a new breed of missiles.  By the time the request comes, two men have died under suspicious circumstances.  The research/factory site is in the west of England. 

Maitland’s inquiries go quite slowly, and it was, for me, somewhat difficult to keep track of the quite large cast of character, all of them are referred to interchangeably by their first and last names.  Eventually, and based on at least one piece of information that (if my memory serves) we do not have, Maitland identifies the guilty party (who also seems to end the book in a state of mental disarray). 

As usual, Woods writes well, and there is one passage (near the end of the book) that will remind any reader of “golden age” British mysteries of a book by Dorothy L. Sayers.  But I found it sort of a slog.  This was the second book (out of five) that hearkens back to Maitland’s military intelligence work, so there was little f what (for me) makes the series work as well as it does—his uncle’s looming presence, the solicitor who works closely with Maitland quite frequently, and, above all, the presence of the institutions and customs of English law. 

And it seems to affect how Woods depicts Maitland as well.  He is more diffident than usual. His investigation seems to me to be almost perfunctory.  With all that, though, the book is adequate, and, if you are a fan of the Maitland series and have not yet read it, probably worth your time.