Review 2326: Fear Stalks the Village

Joan Brook has been working as companion for Lady D’Arcy, a woman suffering from dementia, when she is visited for the day by a friend from London. The village where Joan lives is so perfect that her friend begins making up stories about the villagers’ dirty secrets.

It’s not too much later when Miss Asprey, a respectable old lady who is a social leader of the village, admits to having received an anonymous letter alleging a past of improprieties. The Rector tries to keep her admission a secret, but the word gets out.

Things seem to settle down except that some people believe that the letter was sent by Miss Corner, a hearty writer of boys’ books. This belief is based on the way the envelope was addressed, using Miss Asprey’s middle initial, which only someone who knew her as a girl would know. Then Miss Corner receives a similar letter. Almost immediately after, she accidentally overdoses with sleep medicine.

The Rector calls his old friend Ignatius Brown for help. The once perfect village is under a shadow. Rumors are going about that Dr. Perry poisoned Miss Corner because of an inheritance, so some people change doctors. He actually did benefit from her will, but he hasn’t received anything yet and is having difficulties because of his wife’s spending and his loss of income. Moreover, he misses Miss Corner, who was his only friend after the Rector, whom he thinks has been indiscreet. Ignatius thinks that the relationship between Miss Asprey and her companion, Miss Mack, has something odd about it.

The novel slowly builds an atmosphere of fear and mutual distrust as more letters appear. Perhaps too slowly. Although White is skilled at building tension, it takes a long time before anything more sinister happens.

The character of Joan is about the only likable one in the novel except for poor Miss Corner. The Rector, Joan’s love interest, is a bit neurotic for me as are most of the villagers. But White does do an excellent job of portraying psychological pathology.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2311: Big Ben Strikes Eleven

Financial tycoon and former politician Sir Robert Boniface is found shot to death in his limousine in the Vale of Health on Hampstead Heath. At first, the police aren’t sure if the death is murder or suicide—only the lack of the gun tells them it is murder.

The body is discovered by a window washer, but Matt Caldwell, an artist, is present in a nearby pub. He is not only able to identify the victim and his car, having painted Sir Robert’s portrait, but he is happy Sir Robert is dead.

Enquiries by Inspector Beckett and Superintendent Mooney lead in the direction of Sir Robert’s nephew, Frank Littlewood, who was recently fired by Sir Robert. However, two office mates, Sir Robert’s confidential secretary Miss Pritt and the obsequious Mr. Fuller, seem too eager to drop him in it.

Then the police find the gun and establish that it belongs to Matt Caldwell. Unfortunately, he is nowhere to be found.

I haven’t paid much attention to this issue until other bloggers pointed it out about other novels, but I would say this novel is about 100 pages longer than it needs to be. First, the action is brought to a screeching halt while the author lays out the case against the original three suspects—as if readers haven’t been paying attention—then we follow Matt Caldwell’s progress in a completely unnecessary romance that coincidentally brings more clues to light. The information is important, but it seems as if it could have been introduced in a different way that didn’t take two or three chapters.

But my biggest problem was with the actual investigation. Early on, Miss Pritt tells the police that the murder had nothing to do with business and uses that reason to withhold information about Sir Robert’s appointments. And the police just go along! Later, the Superintendent just hands her her handkerchief, which he found at the scene of the crime! In other ways, the approach to evidence is just as casual.

Finally, an interview with the Earl of Rollesborough, on the board of the trust that Sir Robert works for, seems called for from the beginning but doesn’t take place until the end. And no wonder, because it pretty much makes everything obvious.

I was able to identify the murderer fairly early on, but that didn’t bother me as much as the sloppy police work, or possibly lack of knowledge about police work.

I received this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2301: Someone from the Past

I found Someone from the Past to be the best of the British Library Crime Classics I’ve read so far. It has a smart, feisty, occasionally indiscreet heroine, is fast moving, sometimes exciting, and presents an interesting, character-based mystery.

Nancy is at a restaurant about to receive a proposal from her boyfriend Donald when her estranged friend Sarah approaches the table. This approach creates some awkward moments, because Donald was the last in a string of Sarah’s lovers and didn’t take her departure well. Finally, he leaves the table so the women can talk.

Sarah tells Nancy she is about to marry a wealthy man, Charles. Then she says that someone has been writing her letters threatening her life. As Nancy is a reporter and knows all the suspects—Sarah’s discarded boyfriends—Sarah asks her to try to find out who is writing the letters. She says she’ll send her one of them in the morning.

Nancy’s evening ends poorly, with Donald stomping off. But the next morning, he arrives at her flat, confused and frightened. He tells her he went to see Sarah in the early hours of the morning and ended up falling asleep in the sitting room. When he awakened shortly after eight, he found Sarah murdered in her bed. He is sure the police will think he did it.

To protect Donald, Nancy lets herself into Sarah’s apartment and tries to remove all traces of his visit. In doing so, she notices some odd things about the scene. Unfortunately, when the cleaning lady arrives, Nancy puts the chain on the latch instead of hiding or going out another way so it was obvious someone was in the flat.

Shortly after she arrives home, the police are at her door. They think she killed Sarah, partly because she left her own fingerprint in the apartment and because the cleaning lady recognized her when Nancy met one of Sarah’s other lovers in a pub before going home. Nancy thinks the only way to clear herself and Donald is to figure out who did it herself. The list of suspects consists of Sarah’s last four lovers, including Donald.

Nancy finds she isn’t very good at lying to the police, keeping secrets, or fleeing the country, but she is good at figuring out clues. I’m not so sure she’s that good at picking future husbands, though.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2281: Who Killed Father Christmas?

British Library Crime Classics’ latest book is another of their holiday mystery collections. This one includes some clever puzzles, some ghost stories, and one truly exciting chase.

“The Christmas Thief” by Frank Howel Evans, published in 1911, features the adventures of two endearing young men, Tommy and Harry, two homeless boys who thwart a gang of thieves.

In “The Christmas Spirit” by Anthony Gilbert from 1952, Sedley busts the ghost of the Green Girl—or does he?

In Patricia Moyes’ “Who Killed Father Christmas?” from 1980, someone murders the substitute Father Christmas in the toy department of a store, and he turns out to have been an undercover policeman. The motive for the murder was fairly obvious, I thought, but not so much identity of the murderer.

In “Death at Christmas” by Glyn Daniel from 1959, a colleague dies of a heart attack after telling Dilwyn Rees he is being haunted by his dead wife. Although his boss thinks an overactive imagination killed him, Rees isn’t so sure.

Another crime in the toy department takes place in “Scotland Yard’s Christmas” by John Dickson Carr from 1957. Detective Inspector Robert Pollard is accompanied by his girlfriend and her nephew, and all I can say is, he’d better not marry her.

Will Scott’s “The Christmas Train” from 1933 features a Simon Templar-ish thief who intends to steal some jewels on the train, even though the owner is accompanied by the police.

“Herlock Sholmes’ Christmas Case” by Peter Todd from 1916 is a spoof of another mystery writer’s detective stories.

“A Present for Two” by Ellis Peters from 1958-9 features a quite exciting kidnapping and chase after someone steals a priceless manuscript from the village museum.

As usual, I enjoyed some of the stories more than others, but this is a fun seasonal read for mystery lovers.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2262: The Theft of the Iron Dogs

The Theft of the Iron Dogs is another novel by E. C. R. Lorac that is set in the beautiful Lune valley of Lancashire, along with Fell Murder and Crook O’Lune. In order, it comes after Fell Murder and before Crook O’Lune.

Giles Hoggett has been busy with the harvest for weeks, but it is over, and he decides to walk over to check a cottage he owns next to the river. After he notices that someone has disarranged his woodpile, he goes into the cottage and finds someone has stolen an old coat, hat, and glasses as well as a bag, rope, and the iron firedogs out of the fireplace. In speaking with neighbors, he finds that another cottage owner has had his waders stolen.

Giles is inclined to blame small thefts on a tinker couple, referred to as potters in the North. No one has seen the potter’s wife, Sarah Gold, for some time, and it’s not lost on Giles and his brother George that the missing items could point to the disposal of a body. Hoggett knows that Chief Inspector Macdonald was in the area earlier investigating the fell murder, so he writes a letter to Macdonald expressing his concern.

Macdonald is investigating the theft of clothing coupons that he thinks might involve a criminal named Gordon Ginner, and he takes a weekend off after a trip up to Manchester on this case to check out the situation in the fells. While he is there, he finds a body hidden under tree roots in a deep pool of the river. It is Gordon Ginner.

I especially like these mysteries set in the fells, because they are so atmospheric. It is clear Lorac loved that area of the country. And incidentally, from this one I learned what a fell is. I just had a vague idea that it was a valley.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2250: The Wheel Spins

The Wheel Spins is the novel upon which the many versions of the movie The Lady Vanishes are based. Although I am familiar with the story in all its incarnations, I still found the book exciting.

Iris Carr is on holiday with a group of her friends in a Balkan country, possibly Romania. Rich and spoiled, the friends have been cheerfully disrupting their small hotel, leading the other English guests to dislike them. The last day, she finds she is tired of them herself, so she decides to stay a day longer than the others. When she does leave, she has a touch of sunstroke and has to be helped. The train is crowded, so the porter crams her into a compartment for six as the seventh person.

In the compartment are a commanding woman in black who turns out to be a baroness, a family of three, a cold blonde lady, and a nondescript middle-aged woman in tweeds. Iris isn’t feeling well because of her sunstroke, but the nondescript woman turns out to be English, Miss Froy, and takes her to the dining car for lunch. There she prattles about returning to England to her elderly parents and dog, her job as governess for the baroness, and her next job for the baron’s political opponent.

Back in the train compartment, Iris falls asleep. When she wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. When she doesn’t appear, Iris searches the train for her, but she doesn’t seem to be on it. In growing alarm, she finds her compartment companions denying that Miss Froy ever was there. On her way to the dining room, Miss Froy met some of the English people from the hotel, but when Iris speaks to them, some have not seen her and others lie for their own reasons. So, even though a young man named Hare and the professor with him try to help her, Hare believes she has hallucinated because of her sun stroke, and the professor thinks she is hysterical.

As the train nears Trieste, Iris begins to fear Miss Froy is in danger, but what can she do about it? This all makes an thrilling novel.

Missing from the movie adaptations are passages that visit Miss Froy’s elderly parents and dog as they await her coming. In a way, they are unnecessary, but they make the ending much more touching, especially the dog.

I received this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2241: Suddenly at His Residence

The grandchildren of Sir Richard March gather together in London to drive down to Swanswater Manor for an annual remembrance of Serafita, Sir Richard’s first wife. They are driving down with Philip and his wife Ellen, but before others arrive, his cousin Claire forces an admission from Philip about his relationship with her. Philip tells his wife he wants to be with Claire. Ellen seems to take this lightly, but she is upset.

It’s clear that the young people behave brashly with each other and tease their grandfather. He, however, becomes offended and vows to disinherit them all and make his second wife, Bella, his sole heir. Peta is currently the principal heir, but Philip, Claire, and Edward are due to get some money.

That afternoon, Sir Richard insists on spending the night by himself in a lodge after summoning Stephen Garde, his solicitor, to change his will. During the afternoon, Bella and Peta go there to try to convince him to sleep in the house or accept company, and Ellen takes him his green pen. In the evening the gardener rakes and sands all the paths around the lodge.

In the morning, Claire goes to the lodge and finds Sir Richard dead. Her tracks are clearly the only ones on the path. The family assumes he died from his heart condition, but he turns out to be poisoned with his medication.

The family tries not to think the murderer may be 17-year-old Edward, whose mother’s fascination with psychiatry has lead him to fancy himself with problems and who allegedly goes into fugue states. Although Edward knows that some of his problems are feigned, sometimes he’s not sure what he has done.

Inspector Cockrill is not sure who committed the murder, but the inquest finds a verdict of murder against Ellen because of a silly theory that she could have injected the poison using his pen, but also because she is the only “foreigner.”

Aside from the ridiculous belief that looking up suddenly could bring on a fugue state, which I assume was a belief of the time, I liked the characterization in this novel, which is accomplished mostly by dialogue. I thought that one aspect of the solution was unlikely and that the motive was thin. However, generally I enjoyed this one.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2224: Excellent Intentions

Of the Golden Age mysteries I’ve been reading lately, Richardl Hull’s The Murder of My Aunt was one of my favorites. So, I looked for another by him and found Excellent Intentions. Like The Murder of My Aunt, it has a gimmick—that it begins with the trial but doesn’t tell who the defendant is until the end. However, with its time tables and finicky details, it is the kind of mystery that makes my head spin.

No one is at all upset when Henry Cargate dies of an apparent heart attack on the train. He was a wealthy man who bragged about how much he paid for things, refused to help the local economy by buying from them or employing locals, insulted servants and guests equally, forged stamps and then accused others of doing so, and liked to accuse people of stealing items he planted on them. But when it turns out a passenger saw him take snuff and immediately die, and there is a poison in the snuff box, well then.

So far so good. Inspector Fenby manages to narrow the time that the poison got into the snuffbox to a few hours the day before. But then we get into details like what time the poison bottle was on the windowsill versus the desk, where was the snuffbox, what color were the roses in the next room. Sigh.

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Review 2212: Crimes of Cymru: Classic Mystery Tales of Wales

This latest British Library Crime Classics collection features mystery and crime short stories written by Welsh authors or located in Wales. The stories were written from 1908 to the mid-1980s, and some of them are quite eerie in nature.

For example, in the 1936 story “Change” by Arthur Macken, holiday makers scoff when Vincent Rimmer tells them lights are on all night in the cottages of Tremant to keep the fairies away. Yet later a child is apparently exchanged by the fairies. Or is he?

In “The Way Up to Heaven,” Roald Dahl (born in Wales) tells the story of Mrs. Foster, whose husband purposefully torments her by being late even on the way to her flight to Paris to see her grandchildren for the first time. She figures out a way to take care of that problem.

In “No More A-Maying” by Christina Stead, the lies of two children with a guilty secret create an injustice in rural Wales.

Although most of the earlier stores are more traditional, “Water Running Out” by Ethel Lina White explains how Harvey deals with his aunt, who has been preventing his marriage to Annie for years by blackmail.

And another attempt to prevent marriage is perpetrated in “The Chosen One” by Rhys Davies. Rufus, whose family has occupied his cottage for hundreds of years, gets a note from his eccentric landlady, Audrey P. Vines, telling him his lease is up and she’s throwing him out.

This was one of the more entertaining and atmospheric of these collections that I have read. I usually like them, but prefer getting into a longer work.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2202: Twice Round the Clock

Young Helen Manning is astonished when Anthony Fane asks her father for her hand and he agrees. Not only does he agree, but he invites the Fanes and their friends over to celebrate.

The reason Helen is astonished is because she has always been terrified of her father. But her friends, Sir Anthony and his wife, daughter Kay, friends Doctor Henderson, Teddy Fraser, and Bill Brent, accompany Tony to the Mannings for dinner.

All the guests find Manning disturbing, especially when the famous scientist shows them an experiment where he brutally poisons a kitten belonging to the cook, Mrs. Geraint. Unfortunately, a tremendous storm strands them all there for the night.

Bill Brent is awakened at four by a noise downstairs in Manning’s office. When he goes down, he finds Manning dead at his desk with a carving knife between his shoulder blades. The French doors behind him are broken, and the room is in chaos.

This is a lively novel that goes some surprising places, including espionage and hidden family relationships. It has some unlikely plot points, and why everyone’s tires are slashed is never explained. But it’s a quick, fun read.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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