20240619
A Happy 10th Anniversary to Death in the High City
20230929
Thirteen Guests by J Jefferson Farjeon
An intriguing mystery told with humour and well-drawn characters
The British Library edition of Farjeon's Thirteen Guests |
The Queens of Crime, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L
Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, and Margery Allingham, are still famous for their Golden
Age novels and their books remain in print. However, many other good writers of
the detective novel from this period have now been forgotten.
One crime writer the novelist Dorothy L Sayers
particularly admired from the Golden Age was J Jefferson Farjeon, who she
praised for his ‘creepy skill.’
She may have read Thirteen Guests, when it was first published
in 1936, but few copies of the original book had remained in existence for the
modern reader to enjoy until 2015, when, happily, the novel was rescued and
republished by the British Library.
The story begins at a railway station where a young
man, John Foss, falls from a train when leaving it and injures his foot.
He is recued by an attractive widow, Nadine Leveridge,
who is on her way to a country house party. She takes the young man with her in
the car that has been sent to pick her up by her host, Lord Aveling, to try to
get medical help for him.
When they arrive at her destination, Bragley Court,
the hospitable Lord Aveling welcomes Foss and offers him the chance to stay for
the weekend while he recovers.
Lord Aveling is hosting a weekend house party for 12
people and therefore Foss is his 13th guest.
But because they arrive before two of the other
guests, Mr and Mrs Chater, it is Mr Chater who is the last to enter the house
and who becomes, technically, the 13th guest.
J Jefferson Farjeon worked for the Amalgamated Press before becoming a freelance writer |
During the weekend a serious of bizarre things happen.
A painting is damaged, a dog is killed, a stranger’s body is found in a quarry
on Lord Aveling’s land and then one of the guests is found dead.
Foss observes all the comings and goings during the
weekend and overhears snatches of people’s conversations as he lies, sometimes
forgotten, recuperating on a settee in a side room. He is visited from time to
time by Nadine and together they try to work out what is going on in the house,
as the relationship between them blossoms.
Farjeon does not write cardboard characters and therefore
the guests, who are also the suspects, are all interesting and depicted well.
In one scene, an artist, and a journalist, who are sharing a bedroom, give as
good as they get in an entertaining conversation with the investigating detective,
Inspector Kendall, who is by no means cast as a plodding policeman.
We learn that the Detective Inspector moves from place
to place when a district needs ‘gingering up.’ When he is introduced, he is
having some amusing exchanges with his new subordinates as they make their way
to Bragley Court to investigate.
The weekend guests include an MP, an actress, a cricketer,
and a writer of mystery novels. They all have their own secrets and
peculiarities, which Detective Inspector Kendall uncovers as he tries to get to
the truth about what has happened.
Farjeon was a crime and mystery novelist, playwright,
and screen writer. Born in 1883, he worked for ten years for Amalgamated Press
in London before going freelance. He went on to become the author of more than
60 crime and mystery novels, short story collections and plays.
He was named
after his maternal grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, who was an American actor.
His father, Benjamin Farjeon, was a successful novelist, one of his brothers
was a composer, another a drama critic and director, and his sister, Eleanor
Farjeon, wrote poems, including the words for the hymn, Morning Has Broken.
Although the plot of Thirteen Guests is far from
straight forward, Farjeon plays fair with the reader and a credible solution to
the mystery is unveiled at the end.
I enjoyed Thirteen Guests and would recommend it to
other fans of country house mysteries.
So far, not all of Farjeon’s many novels have
been republished, but I hope more of this author’s forgotten work will be rescued
and made available for contemporary crime fiction fans to relish.
20230316
Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L Sayers
Six people didn’t regret the death of the victim, one of them committed murder
Five Red Herrings was the sixth Lord Peter Wimsey novel |
The novel is
the sixth by Dorothy to feature her amateur sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, who is
holidaying in Scotland and amusing himself by living the simple life in a
cottage, although he is accompanied by his manservant, Bunter, who attends to
his every need.
Early in the
novel, Wimsey comes across the dead body of an artist in a stream and finds an
easel nearby with a half-finished painting that is still wet.
It is
assumed that the painter, Campbell, who is a heavy drinker and has quarrelled
with most of the other artists in the area, has fallen into the stream
accidentally and has fractured his skull, causing his death.
However,
Wimsey notices that there is an important item missing from the crime scene and
suspects Campbell has been murdered and that another artist has painted the
picture, skilfully faking Campbell’s distinctive style.
He shares
this information with the police officers who arrive at the scene, but Dorothy
doesn’t reveal to the reader the identity of the important missing item, although
she puts all the information Wimsey had at the time at the disposal of the
reader so they can work it out for themselves.
And so, once
again, we’re off! The police know of Wimsey’s reputation and invite the English
Lord to join the investigation, giving him full access to all the information
they obtain during their enquiries, which Dorothy shares with the reader.
Ian Carmichael played Lord Peter Wimsey in the BBC TV adaptations of the stories |
It is complicated
for the reader to differentiate between the six artists and their various homes
and financial circumstances. Their alibis involve intricacies such as train
timetables, different bicycles, the technicalities of various ticket punchers at
stations and railway accounting procedure.
The reader
is not helped by Dorothy faithfully reproducing in her dialogue the different
Scottish accents and dialect words used by the characters, which sometimes makes
the novel a difficult read.
At the end
of the story, Wimsey carries out a
reconstruction of the events that take place during the 24 hours leading up to
the murder, to try to convince the police that his theory about the identity of
the murderer, which differs from their own, is the correct one.
It is a
complicated story, with perhaps too many suspects, but Dorothy plays fair with
the reader, as always, and makes it theoretically possible to work out the whodunit
element of the novel, if the reader is clever enough. She describes the Scottish
setting evocatively and convincingly, her knowledge of, and love for the area, shining
through.
Five Red
Herrings will particularly appeal to readers who enjoy the puzzle aspect of
detective novels.
20230220
Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay
A classic mystery novel set in and around the Northern Line
The British Library Crime Classics edition of Murder Underground |
Murder Underground, the first detective novel by Mavis Doriel Hay, is underpinned by a very clever plot. It has a satisfying ending and enjoyable resolution scenes that wrap up the individual stories of the characters and I found it to be a very good read.
First published in 1934, during the Golden Age of British crime fiction, the setting for this classic mystery novel is the Northern Line of the underground in London.
When Miss Pongleton, who is considered by others to be a tiresome old spinster, is found murdered on the stairs at Belsize Park Station, her fellow boarders at the Frampton Hotel are not exactly overwhelmed by grief, but they all have their theories about the identity of her murderer.
They help to unravel the mystery of who killed ‘Pongle’ with the help of Tuppy the terrier, the victim’s dog, and each play their part in the events that lead to the dramatic conclusion.
There is of course an official police investigation, led by Inspector Caird, but he is in the background for most of the story and it is the amateur sleuths at the Frampton Hotel who unearth the clues and finally make sense of the different pieces of the puzzle.
Hay was born in February 1894 in Potters Bar in Middlesex. She attended St Hilda’s College in Oxford from 1913 to 1916. She published three mystery novels within three years in the 1930s, Murder Underground, Death on the Cherwell and The Santa Klaus Murder. Her second novel, Death on the Cherwell, appeared during the same year as Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers and coincidentally both novels were set in women’s colleges in Oxford.
After Murder Underground was published, Dorothy L Sayers wrote a review in the Sunday Times in 1934, saying: ‘This detective novel is much more than interesting. The numerous characters are well differentiated, and include one of the most feckless, exasperating, and lifelike literary men that ever confused a trail.’
Like Dorothy L Sayers, Mavis attended Oxford before women were allowed to graduate. She was interested in the industries and handicrafts of rural Britain and, after leaving university, she was sponsored by the Agricultural Economics Research Institute of Oxford University to collaborate with Helen Fitzrandolph on a series of works surveying the rural industries. Mavis was also interested in quilting and published several books on crafts.
She married Helen Fitzrandolph’s brother, Archibald Menzies Fitzrandolph, in 1929. He was killed in a flying accident during World War II. Mavis Doriel Hay died in 1979 at the age of 85.
Eighty years after it was first published, Murder Underground was republished by British Library Crime Classics in 2014. In his introduction to the new edition of the novel, crime writer Stephen Booth said that Mavis Doriel Hay had been ‘unjustifiably overlooked.’ He also bemoaned the fact that her third detective novel, The Santa Klaus Murder, published in 1936, was sadly her last, and wondered whether the approach of World War II was the reason for this.
I am sure that lovers of classic crime novels will be glad to have the opportunity to get to know this author now. I have to admit that I found Murder Underground to be a slow starter, but I kept in mind the fact that it was Mavis’s first novel.
I thought she was better at portraying the female characters, such as Beryl, Betty and Cissie, than the leading males, such as the hapless Basil, who was referred to by Dorothy L Sayers in her review, or Beryl’s amiable, but ineffectual, fiancé, Gerry.
Nevertheless, I would recommend Murder Underground to other readers as an excellent example of a whodunit.
20230210
Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh
Alleyn falls in love but he still has to be professional and solve the murder
Artists in Crime was Marsh's sixth novel featuring Roderick Alleyn |
The detective first meets Troy when he is returning from a long holiday in New Zealand and boards a ship to Vancouver. As the ship leaves the port of Suva after calling at the Pacific island of Fiji, he sees Troy up on the deck painting the wharf before it fades into the distance.
Alleyn already knows and admires Troy’s work and he has an awkward conversation with her about it. He finds himself drawn to her at once, but she seems unimpressed with him and is offhand.
They next meet when Alleyn is sent to investigate a murder that has occurred at the country house in England she has inherited from her father. He is staying with his mother, who has a house near Troy’s home, before he returns to work after his long absence. His superior officer at Scotland Yard telephones to ask him to start work early to investigate a murder near where he is staying.
When he goes to the house, he again sees Troy, who is still shocked after a woman has been killed in her home in a macabre way. She does not welcome Alleyn and his officers searching the rooms of her guests or keeping them under supervision in her dining room while they embark on their investigation.
Alleyn tries to maintain a professional detachment but finds himself apologising to Troy for the things he must do to investigate the murder. It is only at the end of the novel, when the case has been solved and the murderer arrested, that we see a softening in Troy’s attitude towards him, which gives Alleyn hope for the future
Patrick Malahide (left) played Chief Inspector Alleyn in the 1990 BBC TV adaptation of Artists in Crime |
Troy inherited the house from her father, but he did not leave her much money so she has to earn her own living. However, she is shown living comfortably in the world of the 1930s upper classes in England. She has a well-staffed country home and enjoys living in the Bohemian art world of London, where she stays at a club and has many society friends.
Artists in Crime was televised in 1968 and 1990. It is a well-plotted mystery with a surprising ending and it is interesting for the reader to see Alleyn’s character developing from the way he is portrayed in the earlier books. He is once again ably assisted by his subordinates, Fox and Bailey, and his friend, the journalist Nigel Bathgate.
I did not find the details about methods of painting and artists’ equipment very interesting, but I realise Ngaio would have found it fascinating because she enjoyed painting herself and studied art before becoming an actress and then a crime writer.
First published in 1938, Artists in Crime is the sixth Roderick Alleyn mystery and is well worth reading for the whodunit element of the novel alone. The love interest between Alleyn and Troy is well set up and has immediately made me want to read the next novel in the series, Death in a White Tie, in which Troy appears again.
20230205
Miss Silver Intervenes by Patricia Wentworth
A blend of blackmail, murder and romance makes for an intriguing mystery
Miss Silver Intervenes is the sixth Miss Silver mystery |
She is no
longer just a little old lady sitting in the background knitting, but is shown to
be well respected by the police, who treat her as an equal and give her full
access to their investigation in this story.
The mystery
involves residents who live in eight flats in Vandeleur House, an old converted
mansion in Putney. The characters are beautifully drawn by Patricia Wentworth and
I found myself enticed into their world and wanting to keep turning the pages of
the novel to find out more about them.
Miss Silver comes
into the story when one of the residents, Mrs Underwood, who she has met once
through mutual friends, calls on her unexpectedly at her flat. Although Mrs
Underwood is reluctant to admit why she has come to see Miss Silver, she
eventually reveals that she is being blackmailed and needs help.
Mrs
Underwood can't bring herself to tell Miss Silver the full details of what has been
happening to her, but later, when Miss Silver reads that another resident living
in the same block of flats has been murdered, she decides to take matters into
her own hands and manages to get herself invited to stay at Vandeleur House.
Mrs Underwood
is living there with her niece by marriage, Meade, who is recovering from the
shock of being in a shipwreck in which her fiancé, Giles, was drowned. Then
one day while she is out shopping, Meade encounters Giles, who was rescued
from the sea but has now lost his memory.
Patricia Wentworth (above) again spins an intriguing mystery |
There is a middle
aged couple whose marriage has been put under strain by the husband’s obsession
with the attractive young woman who lives in the flat above them. A pleasant
young woman is clearly being bullied by the domineering mother she lives with.
An elderly spinster is struggling to survive financially because of her income
being affected by the wartime economy. An elderly woman is being cared for by
her maid and a companion, and there is a single man who keeps himself to
himself so that no one knows what his occupation is.
When the
police investigating the murder find out that Miss Silver is staying with her
friend, Mrs Underwood, they invite her to join forces with them but the relationship
becomes somewhat strained when they opt for a simpler explanation for the murder
than the theory Miss Silver has put forward.
However, they
eventually have to admit they were wrong when the old lady, with a fondness for
the poetry of Tennyson, manages to unravel what has been going on at Vandeleur
House while simultaneously knitting a pair of socks for her relative in the air
force.
During the
story, Miss Silver also makes a new friend in one of the investigating officers,
Sergeant Frank Abbott, who is invited to
the celebratory tea party in her flat at the end of the novel.
I would say
the only weak point in the plot is that Miss Silver uses her knowledge of a
previous blackmailing case to help her identify the murderer, which gives her
an advantage over the police and the reader. But nevertheless, I found Miss
Silver Intervenes, first published in 1944, to be extremely well written and
enjoyable.
Buy Miss Silver Intervenes from or
20230119
The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L Sayers
Novel's fascinating format makes for a compelling and ingenious murder mystery
The Documents in the Case is notable for its experimental format |
However, when the author of the novel happens to be Dorothy L Sayers, I think most readers would probably be prepared to make the effort.
In The Documents in the Case, the sixth detective novel by the author, which was published in 1930, there will be a murder to be solved eventually, and two men will join forces to play detective. But that is about all this story has in common with Dorothy’s other detective novels featuring her aristocratic sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, who doesn’t appear in this book at all.
The murder victim is not discovered until page 135. By then Dorothy has introduced us to the main protagonists in the story by presenting us with a succession of letters that they have written to other people, which will eventually become part of a bundle of evidence presented to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
We read the letters written by a young writer, John Munting, to his fiancée, Elizabeth Drake, letters written by a middle-aged spinster, Agatha Milsom, to her sister, Olive, and letters from an older man, George Harrison, to his son, Paul. In theory, if we are astute enough, we should have all the information we need to solve the crime when it finally takes place.
We learn a lot from all the letters about the relationship between an older man and his young wife, information that is destined to be sent to Sir Gilbert Pugh, Director of Public Prosecutions, which will ultimately lead to a murder conviction and a hanging.
Robert Eustace, the pen name for Eustace Robert Burton, a doctor and a writer of crime and mystery novels himself, was credited by Dorothy with supplying her with the plot idea for The Documents in the Case and with also giving her the supporting medical and scientific details to use.
The concept for the book was based on the ingenious idea of giving the reader all the evidence that the DPP will trawl through before deciding whether there is a case to answer.
I think Dorothy makes a success of this because she is a superb writer. Some of the letters written by the spinster, Agatha Milsom, who is working as housekeeper to the married couple, Mr and Mrs Harrison, that she sent regularly to her sister, Olive, reminded me of the letters in Jane Austen’s novels, written by characters to each other that help to move the plot forward without every scene having to be played out. Using the multiple viewpoints of the letter writers not only establishes their own characters with the reader, but also reveals their real opinions of the other characters.
My only, very slight criticism of the book is that the scientific evidence put before the reader at the end of the story was lengthy and hard for a non-scientist, such as myself, to understand completely. But I mention this as just the faintest of criticisms because I still persevered and read through it all and I think I just about understood it.
Sayers was given the idea for The Documents in the Case by a doctor friend |
Pulling out the essential truth about the case from each character’s version of events is a task that falls to the victim’s son, Paul, with the reader going along for the ride. I found The Documents in the Case to be a compelling story and a real page turner and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
It transpires that the victim died as a result of being poisoned by a substance that could either have been administered deliberately, or that they could have consumed it accidentally. It falls to scientific analysis of the poison to prove whether it was administered to the victim deliberately, or whether it could have been present in food naturally, and it is not easy for the pathologist to find out the truth.
Sadly, Dorothy is said to have been disappointed with the way The Documents in the Case turned out and she confessed to wishing she had done better with the brilliant plot she had been given by her doctor and writer friend, Eustace.
In my opinion she did extremely well with it, but it is up to other readers to pronounce their own, final judgments.
Buy The Documents in the Case from or
20230112
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
An award winning masterpiece by the Queen of Crime
The latest HarperCollins reprint of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd |
Published in
1926, the book remains Agatha’s best known and most controversial novel because
of its ingenious final twist, which had a significant impact on the detective
fiction genre and has been imitated by many other writers since.
Agatha, who
died on 12 January, 1976 - 47 years ago today - has become famous for being the supreme
exponent of the old-fashioned English crime novel. Her skill in constructing
complex and puzzling plots and her ability to deceive readers until the very
last page, or paragraph, are unequalled.
But this
third Poirot novel, narrated by the local physician, Doctor Sheppard, in the
absence of Captain Hastings, who has gone to start a new life in the Argentine,
is considered by many readers and critics to be her masterpiece.
Wealthy
businessman turned country squire Roger Ackroyd lives in a charming English
country village, where dark secrets and dangerous emotions lurk beneath the
apparently calm surface.
When Ackroyd
is murdered, stabbed in the neck while sitting in his study after a dinner
party at his home, there are, as usual, plenty of suspects.
Poirot, who
has just come to live in the village, after retiring to grow marrows,
lives next door to Dr Sheppard. He is asked by a member of Ackroyd’s family to
investigate the murder because they are worried the police will get it wrong. Suspicion
has fallen on Ackroyd’s stepson, Ralph, who is a popular young man locally.
Agatha Christie died 47 years ago today at the age of 85 |
According to
The Home of Agatha Christie, the author’s own website, The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd was ‘the book that changed Agatha Christie’s career’. It was the first
of her novels to be published by William Collins, which later became part of
HarperCollins, who remain Agatha’s publishers today and attracted enormous
attention in the media at the time.
Following her death, Agatha Christie's body was buried four days later after a service at St
Mary’s Church in the village of Cholsey in Oxfordshire.
The
inscription on her tombstone is a quotation from Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie
Queen:
‘Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after
war, death after life, does greatly please.’
20230103
Persons or Things Unknown by Carter Dickson
Solving a seemingly impossible murder
Dickson's story appears in the collection A Surprise for Christmas |
Persons or
Things Unknown was written by one of only two American writers admitted to the
prestigious British Detection Club, Carter Dickson, who was much admired by his
fellow Golden Age writers for his locked room mysteries.
Carter
Dickson was one of the pen names for John Dickson Carr, who lived in England and
wrote most of his novels and short stories with English settings. He wrote
Persons or Things Unknown for The Sketch, a weekly illustrated journal, for
their Christmas edition in 1938.
Dickson
served up a locked room mystery in a spooky setting with a historical
background, which is perfect entertainment for whiling away an afternoon in
December or January in front of a fire as a guest in someone’s unfamiliar, and
not particularly comfortable, house.
Persons or
Things Unknown has the reign of King Charles II as its background. When it was
written, it was far less common to combine mystery with history, particularly
in short story form, than it is now.
John Dickson Carr wrote under a number of pseudonyms |
One of the
guests, who narrates the story, tells us that the smell of the past was in the
house and that you could not get over the idea that ‘someone was following you
about.’
The host alarms
the group of guests by saying he wants to know if it is safe for anyone to
sleep in the little room at the top of the stairs. He says he has ‘a bundle of
evidence’ about ‘something queer’ that once happened in the room.
He then
tells them he has been given a diary in which the writer says he once saw a man
hacked to death in the little room at the top of the stairs. The man’s body is
alleged to have had 13 stab wounds caused by ‘a weapon that wasn’t there, which
was wielded by a hand that wasn’t there’.
The diary tells
the story of the beautiful young daughter of the house, who was once engaged to
a local landowner. Then along came a fashionably dressed young man from the
court of the newly restored King Charles II, who fell for her and was determined to win her hand
in marriage. The subsequent dramatic events led to a seemingly impossible
murder in the little room at the top of the stairs, which used to be called The
Ladies’ Withdrawing Room. It was a mystery that no one had ever been able to
solve.
The host
then puts all the facts he has been able to discover before his guests, who
include a policeman and an historian, and invites them to come up with a
solution.
The Hollow Man is regarded as Dickson Carr's masterpiece |
Most of his
novels had English settings and English characters and his two best-known
fictional detectives, Dr Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, were both
English. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers of Golden Age mysteries.
He was influenced by his enthusiasm for the stories of Gaston Leroux and became
a master of the locked room detective story in which a seemingly impossible
crime is solved. His 1935 Dr Fell mystery, The Hollow Man, is considered his
masterpiece and was selected as the best locked room mystery of all time in
1981 by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers.
Persons or
Things Unknown was republished by the British Library in 2020 in A Surprise For
Christmas, a collection of seasonal mysteries selected by the crime writer Martin
Edwards.
In his
introduction to Persons or Things Unknown, Edwards says the author ‘blends
historical atmosphere with a pleasing locked room mystery in the form of an
inverted detective story of the kind first popularised by R. Austin Freeman.’
In my
opinion, this pleasing locked room mystery by Carter Dickson, which takes up
just 20 pages of the book, would be the perfect post lunch, or post dinner, winter
diversion.
Buy A Surprise for Christmas from or
20221230
Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon
A ‘creepy’ Christmas story with all the classic festive ingredients
John Jefferson Farjeon was a journalist who went on to be a successful novelist |
No one answers the bell at the first house they find, but
when they try the door handle it turns and they stumble inside with relief. The
fires are lit, the table is set for tea, but surprisingly there is nobody at
home.
It is obvious the occupants would not have ventured out in
such extreme weather conditions unless there had been an emergency and the
house has clearly been prepared for guests, so despite uncomfortable feelings
of guilt, the train travellers warm themselves by the fire, eat the tea that
has been prepared and set out to solve the mystery.
The main sleuthing brain belongs to an elderly gentleman, Mr
Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society, who uses a mixture of reasoned
logic and psychic intuition to try to work out what has happened to the
occupants of the house.
He is ably assisted by a bright young man, David Carrington
and his cheerful sister, Lydia, who has practical skills. A chorus girl, Jessie,
who has fallen in the snow and sprained her ankle, a young clerk called Thomson
who succumbs to ‘flu, Hopkins, an elderly bore, and Smith, a rough man who
turns out to be a criminal, complete the Christmas house party.
Mystery in White is published as a British Library Crime Classic |
He was a major figure during the Golden Age of murder
mysteries between the two world wars and Dorothy L Sayers praised him for being
‘quite unsurpassed for creepy skill in mysterious adventures.’
Farjeon was named after his maternal grandfather, Joseph
Jefferson, who was an American actor. His father, Benjamin Farjeon, was a
successful novelist, one of his brothers was a composer, another a drama critic
and director, and his sister, Eleanor Farjeon, wrote poems, including the words
for the hymn, Morning Has Broken.
Originally published in 1937, Mystery in White was
republished as a British Library Crime Classic in 2014. Like most Golden Age
mysteries, it has a satisfying, logical conclusion, brought about by the deductive
powers of Mr Maltby and the heroics of David.
At the end of the story, the police inspector, who manages to
reach the house on Christmas Day, remarks to his sergeant: “Four murders in a
dozen hours! I reckon I’ve earned my bit of turkey.”
When the owners of the house return they are happy to forgive the intrusion by the party from the train. As Lydia had said earlier to the chorus girl, Jessie: “Suppose this house belonged to you and you returned to it after the world’s worst snowstorm, would you rather find your larder empty or seven skeletons?"
20221123
Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer
An author famous for Regency romances has a stab at a country house mystery
The Cornerstone edition of Footsteps in the Dark |
Georgette is
probably less well known for her detective fiction, which she began writing in
1932 when she produced a country house mystery, Footsteps in the Dark.
She wrote
the novel while awaiting the birth of her son, Richard George Rougier, and
afterwards said dismissively that she did not claim it as ‘a major work’.
For the next
few years, Georgette published one romance novel and one detective novel every
year. The romances always outsold the detective novels, which may be why Georgette
is chiefly remembered for them.
Her son,
Richard, once said that Georgette regarded the writing of a detective story as
similar to tackling a crossword puzzle, an intellectual diversion before harder
tasks had to be faced.
It has been
claimed that Georgette’s husband, George Rougier, a mining engineer who later
became a barrister, often provided her with the plots and that she created the
characters and the relationships and brought the plot points to life.
Georgette’s detective
novels have been praised mostly for their humour. The New York Times wrote: ‘Rarely
have we seen humour and mystery so perfectly blended.’ The Daily Mail once
referred to Georgette as: ‘The wittiest of detective story writers.’
The novels
were all set in the period in which they were written and the humour comes from
the characters and the dialogue that takes place between them.
I was keen to read her first detective novel, Footsteps in the Dark, and I was not disappointed.
Georgette Heyer wrote her debut detective novel while pregnant |
When they
hear peculiar noses and a skeleton falls out of a secret cupboard, they try to
find out more from the other residents in the village. Then a murder is
committed and they feel they have to stay in the house and solve the mystery. I
thought it was a carefully plotted story, with believable characters and a
satisfying solution at the end.
Georgette
produced 12 detective novels in total, between 1932 and 1953 when her final novel, Detection Unlimited was published.
She believed that publicity was not necessary for good sales and, wishing to maintain her privacy, refused to grant interviews, which is perhaps another reason her detective stories have been overlooked.
Buy Footsteps in the Dark from or