Fallen into the Pit is a detective novel set just after World War II. The author is trying to portray the tensions in the changing society and the emotional aftermath of the war for the people who fought and came home, which is all quite interesting. However to modern readers what is most striking is the children regularly playing unsupervised for hours in an area full of mine shafts. This book gives the definite impression modern children are over-protected physically, though the parent's concerns about manners and obedience and bad influences seem timeless. As soon as the second person died I guessed who had done all the murders and why, usually I have no idea whodunnit. An interesting and recommended book on the whole, though a few too many coincidences.
The Horn of Roland is not recommended unless you are a romantic who can believe six impossible things before breakfast. Like a person who has taken on their mother's vendetta so completely they try to kill a person over something that happened when they themselves were a baby is not mentally ill, but an otherwise normal person. And that a musician/composer has a daughter who does not play a musical instrument. Again, the villain is fairly obvious.
Fallen into the Pit first published 1951, The Horn of Roland 1974
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