The High Sheriff

Robert D'Arcy, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, was a proud and vain man haunted by fear. And, sitting on the Bench, at the right hand of the Judge, during the long drawn-out days of the Autumn Assize, he knew that — in one way at least — he was no better than any of the criminals being hauled before him. This was his guilty secret. What happened when a blackmailer threatened that his secret would be a secret no more is the subject of this immensely readable novel. When it was first published in 1937, the Sunday Times said of this book 'A sincere and penetrating study of a proud, perhaps a vain man, first haunted by a fear that he will be revealed as a coward and then haunted by the murder of the man who threatened to make the revelation'.