Death of a Bovver Boy: Carolus Deene Series

Leo Bruce' s Death of a Bovver Boy, in which the redoubtable schoolmaster-­turned-­detective is involved in yet another mystery murder---this time among teenage outcasts and skinheads in rural 1970s England---is billed as "the ugliest case that Carolus Deene ever chose to investigate." When Carolus's housekeeper, stoic Mrs. Stick, announces one evening that her husband has seen the naked body of a youth lying in 'a peculiar hunched-­up position' in a ditch beside the road, his hair shorn and his wrists slashed, Carolus knows that he has, at last, met the supreme challenge to test his powers of deduc­tion. This is just the beginning: from this point on the detective is involved in a lively series of adventures infiltrating England's provincial cockney "underworld" and gaining insight into the dead boy's unhappy background and surroundings. A rude collection of thugs and punks become involved in the search for the murderer; all are equally dangerous and each might be to blame, but, interestingly, the answer lies nowhere around there. Carolus realizes that it is too easy to blame the Skinheads and Greasers and it is only through his ingenuity and determination to persevere, despite all the forces urging him to the contrary, that the mystery is finally solved. This is one of Leo Bruce's most exciting novels, giving the reader an insight into the milieu of rebellious 1970s England, a world where prejudice is the order of the day and hostility and violence are the only means of survival.