Tag: Golden Age mysteries

Review 2757: The Hollow

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For the weekend, relatives are gathering at The Hollow, the home of Lord and Lady Angkatell. Midge Hardcastle is already there. She’s a pleasant girl who works an unpleasant job as a clerk in a dress shop rather than depend on or borrow from her relatives. As a child, she and her cousins spent their summers at Ainswick, Lucy Angkatell’s hereditary estate, but it was entailed and now belongs to another cousin, Edward Angkatell. Midge loves Edward and Ainswick, but Edward loves another cousin, Henrietta Savernake.

Henrietta has not left town for the Hollow yet, because she is working on a sculpture. Her cousin John Christow is finishing his work at his doctor’s practice before he leaves for The Hollow with his wife, Gerda. Gerda worships her husband but at the same time seems terrified of doing anything that displeases him. John is described as a person with good looks and charisma who is about to make a breakthrough on an important medical discovery. He is also having an affair with Henrietta. The other visitor that weekend is David Angkatell, a young man in the throes of university superiority.

Once they have all arrived, a neighbor thrusts her way into an evening gathering. She is Veronica Gray, a famous actress and an old fiancée of John Christow whom he hasn’t seen in 15 years. She has made the excuse of needing matches to interrupt their evening. John Christow has recently been dwelling on the time they spent together, so he sees her home and does not return until 3 AM.

In his absence, John finds that Veronica assumes he will drop everything and return with her to Hollywood, but he suddenly sees her for the grasping and selfish woman she is and refuses.

The next day, new neighbor Hercule Poirot comes over for lunch and finds what he first assumes is a tasteless tableau set up to greet him. John Christow is lying bleeding by the pool, and Gerda, who is regarded by everyone as slow, is holding a gun. At the same moment, Henrietta, Edward, and Lady Angkatell appear from different directions. John, dying, says Henrietta’s name. Henrietta attempts to take the gun from Gerda, and it is dropped into the pool.

Inspector Grange is inclined to believe that Gerda killed John, but Gerda says she found him and picked up the gun. Poirot thinks things are more complicated than they appear, and as it turns out, the gun Gerda found is not the one that killed her husband.

This is a situation with lots of undercurrents. Lucy Angkatell is outwardly warm and scatty but perhaps ruthless. Poirot begins to believe that the family knows who the murderer is.

The biggest problem I had with this novel isn’t to do with the mystery so much as the veneration everyone has for John Christow, who may have been a great doctor but was also completely selfish and oblivious to what others were feeling. Maybe Christie was drawing an accurate sketch of a particular type of person, but why are all these women in love with him?

However, the mystery was difficult. I had my eye on one character, but I was wrong. If a mystery writer can fool me, that’s all to the good. As usual, Christie’s characterization is excellent.

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Review 2752: They Came to Baghdad

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British officials are awaiting the arrival of their man Carmichael in Baghdad. He is being sought after everywhere as others try to capture him before he can pass on important information leading up to the summit meeting that includes the President of the United States and the Premier of the USSR.

But then we return to London and the activities of two women. The mysterious Anna Scheele is being followed, while Victoria Jones is being fired from her job as a stenographer/typist.

In Covent Garden Victoria meets a young man named Edward and is immediately smitten, but he says he is leaving for a job in Baghdad the next day. Victoria decides she must go to Baghdad, but she has no money. She ends up taking a job to help a woman on her way to Iraq who has broken her arm.

Once in Baghdad, Victoria realizes she doesn’t know how to find Edward. She doesn’t even know his last name. Then, in her hotel room at night, a bleeding man dressed as an Arab breaks in and asks her to hide him. She puts him behind her pillows in her bed while a policeman searches her room, but when she uncovers him, he is almost dead. He whispers some words and dies. This is Carmichael, who has made it all the way to Baghdad only to be ambushed.

Mr. Dakin, a British official, appears almost immediately but is dismayed when he learns Carmichael is dead. He is forced to explain a bit of what is going on. Since Victoria is going to a charity called The Olive Tree to find Edward, and this place seems to Dakin to be a focus of activity, he asks Victoria to keep her eyes open. He also asks her to look for evidence of Anna Scheele.

The big plot in this book is a silly one, but I found it otherwise a lot more entertaining than Christie’s other espionage-based novels. It includes exotic scenery, kidnapping, and murders, an engaging heroine, and some interesting descriptions of the area and of archaeological digs.

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Review 2746: The Jealous One

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Celia Fremlin does it again! This time, a puzzling, suspenseful story in which you’re never sure how much to like the main character.

Rosamund awakens from a feverish dream in which she pushes Lindy off a cliff. When she awakens, she is still ill with the flu but relieved to find it was a dream. Her husband Geoffrey bursts in, saying that Lindy is missing. Then the novel returns to the day they met Lindy.

Rosamund and Geoffrey are happily married. Maybe they’re not the nicest people in the world, because they enjoy making fun of their neighbors, but they share many tastes and like talking things over.

Rosamund’s first glimpse of their new neighbor is of a dowdy woman with ugly furniture and a Pekinese (they prefer cats). They both agree there’s plenty to amuse themselves there. Rosamund sends Geoffrey over to invite the neighbor to dinner, but instead she invites them.

When they arrive, the room looks lovely and Lindy is attractive, charismatic, and outgoing. But Rosamund can’t help noticing that there are hidden barbs in what Lindy says, especially toward her sister, Eileen.

Already by the end of the first evening, Rosamund realizes there will be none of the usual post-party discussions. Geoffrey is enchanted.

The friendship continues with Geoffrey spending time gardening for Lindy and Lindy popping into their house at all hours. She calls them Geoff and Rosie, which Rosamund hates. Suddenly, there’s nothing funny about owning a Pekinese or growing tulips (which the couple used to dislike). Geoffrey’s pride in not owning a car but enjoying walking or taking a train disappears because Lindy has a car. Geoffrey is either with Lindy or Lindy is with them. Even Rosamund’s particular pleasure in visiting her mother-in-law is disturbed by Lindy first offering them a ride and then by her being included in their visits.

Rosamund is determined to show no jealousy, but she can see her marriage eroding, while Geoffrey remains blind to any problems. One of Lindy’s favorite topics of conversation is to blame the wives for any problems with a marriage. Even working wives, she says, should have dinner on the table for their husbands and be sure to make housework look effortless so their husbands don’t feel bad about not helping!!!

Rosamund is back and forth on whether Lindy is trying to ruin her marriage or is just oblivious. No one else seems to notice anything amiss. Everyone loves Lindy, but Rosamund is starting to hate her.

Returning to the present, Lindy remains missing, and Rosamund realizes she can’t remember the events of Tuesday, the first day of her flu, past a morning party she attended at a friend’s house. She thinks she was in bed, but then why are her shoes muddy? And why did she find Lindy’s new purse with her own coat on the bedroom floor?

Rosamund begins to worry that her nasty dream might be real. Did she kill Lindy? Surely not.

The suspense builds as we sympathize more and more with Rosamund and begin to see Lindy as a malevolent force. But did Rosamund kill her?

As always, Fremlin takes her time building her characters and situations, but she’s really good at hooking our attention and reeling us in for the dramatic finish. I’m happy to see that Faber is apparently publishing three more books by her that I haven’t read yet.

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Review 2739: The Crime at Diana’s Pool

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Victor L. Whitechurch explains in the Foreword of this novel that he wrote it using an unusual technique. Instead of planning it out beforehand, he started it not knowing himself who the murderer would be. Now, I figured out who the murderer was at about page 50, and nothing made me doubt it, so I don’t know how that statement could be true.

Felix Nayland is relatively new to the neighborhood when he and his sister throw a big party. Part of the entertainment is the Green Albanian Band, all dressed in green jackets.

The observant young vicar, Harry Westerham, and Major Challow, the Chief Constable, are walking around the property where there’s a water feature when they spot a man in a green coat face down in the pool. They pull him out, thinking he’s a member of the band who went missing. Instead, it’s Felix Nayland stabbed in the back and wearing the performer’s green jacket.

The police think this is going to be easy—just find the performer, apparently a foreigner, and clearly the murderer. But figuring out who he is turns out to be more difficult than expected, because he was a substitute for a regular band member, and that man has no idea who he is. Also, how did Nayland end up wearing the other man’s jacket?

It seems clear that the mystery man stole a wooden box from the Nayland’s house because they find pieces of it at the crime scene. But there are other clues that make no sense.

It gradually becomes clear that the murder has something to do with an obscure South American country and its politics, but when they find Garcia, the substitute, he claims to have only come for the box, to have been caught by Nayland, and to have explained what he was doing. Then Nayland helped him leave the grounds, because Garcia saw someone he was afraid of.

Although the plot becomes complicated very quickly, I figured out the murderer almost immediately. There were some other issues with the book as well. Characterization wasn’t a big consideration, except a little bit with the vicar, who is in love with a girl who is clearly hiding something—something obvious, I thought, but he can’t figure out what it is.

And a murder has been committed at a party, but the police think it’s not necessary to question the guests—just the servants. There are a couple of instances of this, where suspects are clearly divided by class.

Altogether, I found this mystery easy to predict and a little hard to pay attention to.

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Review 2737: Author Unknown

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Horrie Pedlar is the first and only woman publisher in 1930s London, and this novel opens with the announcement of a party she’s giving for the re-emergence from exile of the writer Marmion Poole. His romantic peccadillos years before resulted in his leaving London, but Horrie thinks it’s about time he returned. At the party, he announces he has written his memoirs, always an issue with a mystery novel.

Horrie is pretty much beloved. Although a good businesswoman, she is generous and kind and has collected a lot of grateful and sincere friends and employees. But at the very beginning of the novel, she has a conversation with Gilda Bedenham, a recent employee, to tell her she’s not doing well at her job and she wants to reassign her. Gilda already feels an obligation to her and is prickly about it, so she quits, in fact walks off the job. Horrie then sends her young, bright PR man, Koko Fry, to check on her and maybe get her to come back.

Marmion Poole is attractive and dramatic. He is full of charisma and full of himself. The reaction to his announcement of a memoir upsets a lot of people, especially the husbands of the many women with whom he’s had affairs.

Horrie is thinking of retiring, going out while she’s still doing well. She wants to leave the company to be led by her right-hand man, James Savory, Koko, and Marmion Poole, a fact she tells Savory but not the others.

However, there are problems with Marmion. The office is receiving calls from society people who want to read the manuscript. Horrie has read it, though, and tells Marmion she won’t publish it. She thinks it’s vengeful and says he should take the high road or rewrite it as fiction.

This is an unusual mystery novel. No one is actually killed until almost 200 pages in, for one thing, and then it is Horrie, whom we have come to like. She is found in the courtyard below her apartment, and the inquest decides that she fell from the fire escape late at night coming in through the unlocked door there because she forgot her house key.

Another oddity is the presence of Sir John Saumarez, who solved the previous mystery by Dane and Simpson. He’s at the party and is around at the denoument, but does nothing to solve the crime, if there was one.

So, what is the novel doing in the first 200 pages? It’s taking its time introducing the characters and portraying the London literary scene and doing it masterfully. Dane and Simpson’s characters are complex and believable, and we like almost all of them.

Well, of course, Horrie was murdered, but who killed her? Was it someone who wanted her out of the company immediately? Was it someone she caught destroying Marmion Poole’s manuscript, the ashes of which were found nearby? Was it Gilda, who lost her job and is now engaged in a romance with Koko? Marmion sets a trap to find out.

I am really enjoying these books by Dane and Simpson. They are good writers with a flair for characterization and dialogue. It’s too bad there’s only one more. I hope I can find a copy. (Update: right now, the cheapest copy I can find of the third book is priced at more than $400. Yikes!)

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Review 2732: Tea on Sunday

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Alberta Mansbridge is having a tea party. She’s an elderly woman of fortune who controls a family business and is philanthropic to many causes and people in need. However, she doesn’t suffer fools and abandons anyone who tries to cheat her.

When the guests arrive on this snowy Sunday afternoon, no one answers the door. The guests become alarmed, but the house is secure, so they call the police. Inside, they find Alberta dead, strangled. No one has broken in, so Inspector Corby guesses that one of the guests arrived early and killed her, and we know this is true from the Preface.

What quickly becomes obvious is that none of the guests seem likely to have killed Alberta, and none of them have alibis except the wife of Alberta’s nephew, Anthony Seldon (a most unlikable wife, by the way). Anthony seems to be the one with the biggest motive, since he is likely to inherit much, but he claims not to know that. The two most suspicious characters, Barry Slater, a young ex-con, and Marcello Bartolozzi, an Italian conman, are not likely to have cut off their own income streams, although Barry disappears before the police arrive and remains missing for some time.

The others are Myra Heseltine, an old friend with whom Alberta had fallen out; Ewan Musgrave, her doctor; John Armistead, manager of her company in Yorkshire; and her lawyer, Russell Holdeworth.

This novel spends a lot of time up front with the interviews of the guests. I’ll say up to one third of the book. It’s definitely not an action mystery, but it doesn’t lag, either. I found it interesting that the murderer seemed obvious a good 80 pages before the end, but the evidence was needed. Overall, I found this novel interesting of approach and entertaining.

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Review 2725: The Long Shadow

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I clearly liked Celia Fremlin’s Uncle Paul, but her books get better and better. I bought this book to schedule it around Christmas, because it is a seasonal novel; however, somehow that didn’t happen. It’s marketed as a mystery, but it’s more of thriller that builds slowly but doesn’t seem slow when you read it.

Imogen has been a widow for two months after her scholar husband was killed unexpectedly in an automobile accident. Although the charismatic Ivor was revered by many, she knew him for an attention-seeking egotist who treated his family badly. She feels that she would be all right if she could just be left alone, but instead people are giving her the attention they think she needs in her bereavement.

When finally the last person has left, Imogen isn’t alone for more than a few minutes when her stepson Robin arrives planning to stay for a while. Imogen is fond of him, but he is also selfish and hasn’t been able to hold down a job.

Imogen has just had a disturbing experience. Her friend Myrtle talked her into attending a party where she met a student named Teri. Teri accused her of murdering Ivor and said he has proof, even though Imogen was at home when the accident happened 200 miles away. Imogen knows the accusation is nonsense, but she is unnerved.

Could things get worse? They could! Imogen’s stepdaughter Dot arrives with her husband and two boys for the holidays, uninvited, as is Ivor’s second wife Cynthia, who arrives from Bermuda. Imogen hasn’t even met Cynthia, who is clearly hoping for some kind of financial settlement from Ivor’s estate. Finally, Robin brings home a surly girl, a student named Piggy.

Once all these people are assembled in the house, strange things begin happening. First, on Christmas Day one of the boys claims to have seen grandfather dressed as Father Christmas in Ivor’s study. Then one of the boys dreams of a face hovering over his. Papers are disturbed, messages appear from the grave, and Teri is hanging around trying to blackmail Imogen. Imogen never seriously considers a haunting, but something is clearly going on.

I could have wished for Imogen to be a little less polite and passive, but if she hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have such a good story. She is too empathetic, feeling sorry for people who are taking advantage of her.

There’s no way for the reader to figure out what’s going on, but getting to the solution is lots of fun. The writing is witty, especially the observations Imogen makes to herself about other characters’ behavior.

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Review 2721: Beggar’s Choice

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I had difficulty reading this book after the first few pages, because it was so obvious that someone was trying to frame the main character, without him realizing it, that it was painful to read.

Car Fairfax is down and almost out. First, his father lost the family fortune, and then Car took a job with a man who mishandled other people’s money. Since then, every time he’s landed a job, he’s been let go.

He is out walking after losing his latest job when someone puts a leaflet in his hand about an opportunity to earn £500. He notices right away that the boy is handing out leaflets for something entirely different, so he figures he was purposefully given the one he got. Shortly afterward, he gets two requests for £500. His friend Peter’s wife Fay asks him for it and his cousin Anne, whom he distrusts, tells him she has forged a check for that amount and wants him to go to jail for her. He says no to both women but responds to the job. He has also run into Isobel, with whom he is hopelessly in love.

The writer of the ad, calling himself Z10, sets an assignation, which Car keeps. He is driven out to his uncle’s neighborhood, where someone shines a light in his face just as the doctor drives past to see his uncle, and later Anna shows the doctor apparent evidence that there’s been a break-in at her house.

Car hasn’t met Z10 on the rendezvous, but he thinks he has until he actually meets him and Z10 apologizes for missing the meeting. Z10 puts him on retainer and gives him money to buy new clothes and socialize.

Although it was clear to me that Anna is trying to set Car up and Fay seems to be in on it, I wasn’t sure of Z10. I was still dreading what was coming until a new character appears—an American friend of Peter’s named Corinna. She is a breath of fresh air. She immediately begins wondering why Car keeps losing jobs. The only problem with Corinna is that she is a much more interesting character than Car’s love interest, Isobel.

This novel becomes a complex adventure story as someone is clearly out to get Car and he remains mostly oblivious for a while. Once I got over my initial dread, I enjoyed it a lot.

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Review 2717: Death in Ambush

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I think I intended to review this book at Christmastime, but somehow it got lost in the pile.

Death in Ambush is particularly enjoyable, because it is narrated by Lee Crauford with a particularly light touch. She has apparently been a major character in at least one other mystery by Gilruth at the start of this novel.

Lee’s friend Betty Sandys invites her and her husband Bob for Christmas, but Bob can’t leave work until Christmas Eve, so Lee goes on ahead. On her first evening at Staple Green, Lee meets several people at a cocktail party. They are Betty’s good friend Lady Metcalfe, Diana, whom everyone likes, and her much older husband Judge Metcalfe, whom everyone dislikes for his general rudeness and cruelty to Diana. There is Judge Metcalfe’s son Michael, who wants to be an actor against his father’s will, and his fiancée, Ann Quathough, who is an actress and has an unguarded and sometimes nasty tongue. Ann’s father Lewis Quathough, an eccentric art dealer, is there, as well as John Wickham, the Metcalfe’s agent, whom everyone knows adores Diana. Finally, Sonia Phillips, a new arrival in town and a quite glamorous woman, appears late and comes in through the surgery, as Howard Sandys is a doctor. There is a lot of wandering around that evening, and sure enough, Judge Metcalfe becomes ill of an apparent stroke and dies a few days later. But Howard has his doubts, and it turns out Metcalfe was poisoned with morphine, apparently at the party.

Soon Lee’s friend Detective-Inspector Hugh Gordon is on the case. Things begin looking bad for Diana even though everyone who knows her insists she couldn’t have done it.

I was fairly sure I knew who did, although I couldn’t puzzle out the alibi issue, and I was right. But I think it was more of an instinctual than reasoning guess, and once one character was ruled out, I knew I was right. But this is a mystery with a really light touch and mostly likeable characters. I enjoyed it very much. Interestingly, Lee’s husband Bob doesn’t even appear in the book, and there are some hints that the detective is in love with her. I would quite like to see where this goes, if anywhere, but I understand that Gilruth’s books are hard to find. And indeed, Abebooks only has this edition.

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Review 2703: The Chuckling Fingers

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Ann Gay’s cousin Jacqueline is a young widow with a child when she marries Bill Heaton, a well-off and respected older businessman. They have not been married long when Ann receives a note from Jean Nobbelin, Bill’s business partner, saying it might be best if Ann comes for a visit.

When Ann arrives, she finds the atmosphere strained and Jacqui unwilling to talk to her. Eventually, she learns that some destructive tricks are being played that make it look as if Jacqui is responsible. The incidents began with ruined shoes and a coat burned by acid while they were on their honeymoon with no one else from the household there. Bill has begun to worry about Jacqui’s sanity.

Most of the large Heaton household on the north bank of Lake Superior is distrustful of Jacqui. Some of the family and friends are even offensive, especially Bill’s sulky son Freddie and Phillips Heaton, who has been leeching off the family for years.

The tricks continue, still pointing toward Jacqui, but then Freddie’s body is found out by the Fingers, an outcrop of rocks that looks like a hand, underneath which an underground river creates a perpetual chuckling sound. Freddie has been shot to death with a gun, and Bill’s gun is missing. Soon, someone tries to kill Bill.

With Sheriff Aakonen being forced to suspect Jacqui, Ann begins trying to investigate the crimes herself. She is soon being helped by Jean Hobbelin.

This is a fairly mystifying situation, and Seeley does a good job of laying false trails. A fair amount of action is salted with an unstressed romance. Although I guessed the murderer, it was mostly by instinct. I didn’t figure out the motive before it was revealed. I found this to be a fairly entertaining mystery, published in 1941, and hope to find more by Seeley. I also found it struck some chords with me because I lived for a year in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, not far from Lake Superior, and some of the aspects of the Minnesota setting on the lake remind me of that life.

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