‘Pagan Rite’ by Leslie Scase

Published by Vendetta,
1^st March 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-91921910-3 (PB)

‘Pagan Rite’ is the fifth novel in Scase’s Inspector Chard series. Set in and about Pontypridd in 1897, around the celebrations of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, we are plunged into a world of psychics, druids and Celtic mysteries ...... 

...... and murders, of course. The story starts when sweethearts Sian Jones and John Webster are making a clandestine visit to the site of Arthur’s Stone to receive God’s blessing on their relationship. There they stumble across the mutilated and eviscerated corpse of a young woman. Its condition induces fears that it may be the work of Jack the Ripper, and the police are keen to keep these details suppressed to prevent local panic. Inspector Thomas Chard, a man of the people more than most detectives of the time (he frequents local pubs willingly, for instance) is given the case, then taken off it (events occurring in Swansea tips it in that direction) but finally put back in charge. 

The first problem Chard faces is to identify the murdered woman. South Wales at the time is hosting a series of ‘festivals of the unknown’, gatherings of sundry fortune tellers, Celtic mystics and others of that persuasion, as well as other sorts of chancers who will take every opportunity at such events to make money from the general (and in many cases, gullible) public. More criminal activity concerns a series of burglaries, the perpetrator of which a young constable, Idris Morgan, is failing to identify. This strand adds another important layer to the plot. 

More murders take place, and they are clearly connected with the festivals. Evelyn Forster, a glamorous reporter for ‘Borderlands’, a magazine dealing with metaphysical matters, helps Chard to discover the identity of the first body. Chard tries to find out more from a visiting druid and comes off worse when he eats a sandwich which he is unaware is full of magic mushrooms. Morgan and then Chard take part in two of Isadora Black’s séances and the pace hots up. Chard comes to the conclusion that dates in the pagan calendar are significant and thinks he knows when the killer is likely to strike again. A misjudgement is pointed out in the nick of time. At one point the reader is led firmly up the garden path. The final solution is neat. 

Scase is an enthusiastic historian who has done his research (there are some informative notes at the end of the book), and location, period detail and indeed prevailing attitudes are convincing without the reader feeling bombarded unnecessarily. I confess to not having read any of this novel’s predecessors. There are clearly back stories to one or two characters (Chard being the main one, needless to say), but there are enough references for readers new to the series to feel that they have sufficient awareness of previous lives if not a complete grasp of them. There are a number of very well-drawn and memorable characters. A thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying novel.
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Reviewer: David Whittle 

Leslie Scase is the Shropshire-based author of the Inspector Chard Mystery series. A keen fly fisherman and real ale enthusiast, he is a former civil servant, born and educated in South Wales but living now in Shropshire. He is a member of the Crime Cymru writers’ collective, and of the Crime Writers Association and West Midlands Readers Network. He has given talks on crime and punishment in the late Victorian period, appeared at literary festivals across the UK and been interviewed on radio. 

Leslie Scase – Crime Cymru  

David Whittle is firstly a musician (he is an organist and was Director of Music at Leicester Grammar School for over 30 years) but has always enjoyed crime fiction. This led him to write a biography of the composer Bruce Montgomery who is better known to lovers of crime fiction as Edmund Crispin, about whom he gives talks now and then.