Salt Is Leaving (A Novel)

A disillusioned doctor investigates the disappearance of one of his patients—a young woman caught up in a local scandal—in this classic cozy mystery by one of the twentieth century’s great, underappreciated masters.

Dr. Salt has sold his medical practice and is eager to finally leave Birkden, a small, gray, rainy city in the English Midlands that has only grown more dreary since the opening of the United Fabrics plant on the outskirts of town. Industry may be lining the pockets of Sir Arnold Donnington, the local bigwig, but otherwise it seems to be sucking the life out of the place.

But something is nagging at Salt, a loose end that he needs to tie up before he departs. A patient of his, a young woman named Noreen Wilks, has gone missing. The local police won’t take the case seriously—she’s one of those modern girls, after all, flighty and unreliable—but Salt has a feeling that she’s landed in real trouble. When a strange letter connects Salt with another young woman, Maggie Culworth, whose father has also disappeared, they decide to team up. The amateur sleuths soon find themselves untangling a web of deception and corruption—and at its center, a crime that may change the city of Birkden for good.

First published in 1966, Salt Is Leaving is J. B. Priestley’s only proper detective novel—a classic of the cozy crime genre that probes the perils of an industrializing world, and the exploitation of young women, with Priestley’s signature warmth and wit.