The Case of the Famished Parson — George Bellairs

Dr. James Macintosh, the Bishop of Greyle, was a mysterious man; for a long time, nobody even knew his last name. But things take a turn for the bizarre when his body is found emaciated and battered having being pushed face-first off the edge of a cliff… Inspector Littlejohn faces an incredibly peculiar case. How to explain the savage murder of a gentle Bishop? Did he know too much about the secretive citizens of Cape Marvin, the seaside resort of his murder? Or did the reason have something to do with the strange family he had left behind in Medhope? Above all, why was the Bishop's body so undernourished that death by violence won out by only a few days over death by starvation?