
(Click to enlarge.)
A Taste For Honey (1941) is a murder mystery novel by H. F. Heard, also known as Gerald Heard, whose works I've covered a number of times now.
[Spoiler Alert] Sidney Silchester, a man with a taste for honey, moves to the rural English village of Ashton Clearwater for some peace and quiet. Mysteriously, no one in the district is able to raise bees except for one secretive man, Mr. Heregrove.
A true honey fancier, Silchester won't buy the stuff sold in shops, so he makes arrangements with Heregrove's wife to secure a regular supply of real honey, until one day she turns up dead, stung to death by her husband's bees.
With his honey reserves dwindling and hearing that the coroner had ordered Heregrove to destroy his hives, Silchester is forced by his mellivorous appetite to go inquiring about an alternate honey source. He is drawn by a curious sign to the home of a new arrival in Ashton Clearwater, one Mr. Mycroft, who is interested in beekeeping, but only for studying bee psychology, not producing honey.
Mycroft tells Silchester that he was recently attacked by a particularly venomous breed of bees and that Heregrove is responsible. Mycroft has deduced that Heregrove has bred his bees to attack other hives to eliminate the competition. Little did Silchester realize he's embroiled himself in a deadly plot to corner the honey market of Ashton Clearwater!
Read more...