Francis Pettigrew travels to Exmoor for a holiday with his wife - an area in which as a young boy he was traumatised by coming across a dead body on the moor. In an attempt to exorcise this trauma, Pettigrew walks across the moor to the place where the incident occurred - only to find another dead body. Moreover when he returns to the scene with the police, the body is gone. Did he really see a body - or is it a hallucination conjured up by his return to the scene of the crime that has haunted him since childhood? In "Untimely Death", Cyril Hare conjures up an intriguing puzzle whose twists and turns will keep the reader turning the pages until the final surprising resolution.