The British Imperial Insurance Company repudiated liability for payment for the death of Mr. Leonard Dickinson as his policy had been in effect only eight months. Clause 4a clearly specified that death by suicide was excepted from coverage during the first year of the policy. Mr. Dickinson's wife, his son Stephen, and daughter Anne all considered suicide highly unlikely. The police investigation eliminated the possibility of accident. Stephen, Anne, and her fiance, Martin Johnson, undertake a private investigation to uncover evidence of murder.

The plot, setting, and characters in Suicide Excepted are well developed. Inspector Mallett of Scotland Yard, one of Cyril Hare's popular, recurring characters, plays a key role at various points, but does not dominate this story. The death occurs in a locked room at Pendlebury Old Hall, a manor house converted to a bed and breakfast hotel. By happenchance, Inspector Mallett was a guest at Pendlebury that weekend. Is it really murder? Who might be the suspects? What might be the motivation? The amateur investigations by the younger members of the Dickinson family more often than not lead to dead ends, but we do learn enough about the suspects to develop credible theories. The ending is likely to be a surprise.

Cyril Hare is a pseudonym of judge Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark. Having just read Suicide Excepted for a second time (October, 2006), I easily rate it as 4 stars, possibly higher. (For some unexplicable reason I originally rated this story a few years ago as only three stars.) Suicide Excepted was originally published in Great Britain in 1939. Macmillan published an American edition in 1954.