Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm

Written by Gil North

Narrated by Gordon Griffin

“He could feel it in the blackness, a difference in atmosphere, a sense of evil, of things hidden.” Amy Snowden, in middle age, has long since settled into a lonely life in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw, until—to her neighbours' surprise—she suddenly marries a much younger man. Months later, Amy is found dead—apparently by her own hand—and her husband, Wright, has disappeared. Sergeant Caleb Cluff—silent, watchful, a man at home in the bleak moorland landscape of Gunnarshaw—must find the truth about the couple's unlikely marriage, and solve the riddle of Amy's death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Soundings
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781407964836

Gil North

GIL NORTH was the pseudonym of Geoffrey Horne (1916-1988), a writer from Skipton who worked as a civil servant in colonial Africa for many years, before returning to his native Yorkshire. The best-known of his novels are the eleven detective stories featuring Sergeant Cluff.

Reviews for Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm

[Maria Jette · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great story, really idiosyncratic writing style (which I liked)...but every single woman was described breasts first, and if they were nice perky breasts, the woman was “good,” but big, floppy, saggy ones apparently denote “bad” women. It went from kind of weird to disturbing. The author seems to have had a fairly bitter attitude towards my gender, and I’m surprised that an editor didn’t do something about it. Yes, it’s from another era (mid 20th C); but this was beyond the kind of breast-talk of Spillane etc.

I wish that weren’t the case, as the protagonist was appealing, and I’d have liked to continue in the series, but won’t because the BREASTS won’t let me!

On the plus side: there’s a fantastic dog hero.

[Lynda Lumsden · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An amazing book. Not at all what I expected from a detective story from that era. Very atmosheric and conjurers up the mood of the bleak yorkshire lanscape in winter. Cluff is sure a crime has been commited when there is no proof and even the police accept the suicide verdict. He sets out to find the criminal. There are no fancy forensics and no evidence as such. Even at the end there is no proof but Cluffs pursuit of those responsible is masterly as is the descriptive powers of the author. Definately in the noir catagory by todays standards and different for the time it was written. I will look out for more books by this author. I listened on a bright spring day and was glad I had not come across this book in winter, it would have been very gloomy on a dark day. Altogether a good listen and very gripping.