Tag: Golden Age mysteries

Day 227: At Bertram’s Hotel

~ whatmeread ~ 4 Comments

Cover for At Bertram's HotelMiss Marple’s nieces and nephews don’t have much luck sending her off for a rest. At her niece’s expense, she is spending a week at Bertram’s Hotel, a place she remembers from her childhood. Although at first the hotel seems exactly the same as it was when she was young, Edwardian in appearance and yet offering every comfort despite the intercession of the war, Miss Marple can’t help feeling something isn’t right.

Another guest at the hotel is the dashing Bess Sedgwick, who has lived a life of excitement and glamor. By coincidence, her daughter Elvira, whom she deserted at the age of two, also is staying there. Soon Miss Marple has spotted them meeting separately with the notorious race car driver Ladislaus Malinkowski.

Befuddled Canon Pennyfeather goes to the airport to fly to his conference in Switzerland on the wrong day. Returning unexpectedly to his room at Bertram’s, he opens the door to find–something–but is knocked out and disappears.

In the meantime Chief Inspector Davy is investigating a huge crime network responsible for a series of robberies. In two of the incidents a witness claimed to see a reputable citizen who was actually somewhere far away from the crime at the time, but both of these men were staying at Bertram’s Hotel.

And soon there is a murder to solve. As with much of Agatha Christie’s work, the plot is overcomplicated and somewhat silly. Still, At Bertram’s Hotel is a lot of fun.

Day 124: Whose Body?

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Cover for Whose BodyIt has been years since I read Whose Body? by the British writer from the Golden Age of Mysteries, Dorothy L. Sayers. Unfortunately, as soon as I saw the murderer’s name, I remembered who did it, so I was not able to judge how difficult it was to guess.

Mr. Thipps finds an unidentified body in his bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of pince-nez. The body bears a resemblance to a missing financier, but it is not him. Who is the dead man and how did the body get into the tub? Where is the missing financier? Is this one case or two? Of course, the police suspect Mr. Thipps. After Mr. Thipps’s mother asks him to help, Lord Peter Wimsey gets interested in the case and decides to find the answer to these questions in his inimitable way.

As always, Sayers is fine in characterization, much better than many of her Golden Age peers. Lord Peter is his usual apparently frivolous self. He and his man Bunter are fun. Lord Peter’s mother, the Dowager Duchess, is adorably ditzy. The plot is clever. However, as with many early mystery novels, it is overcomplicated and very unlikely. For people who haven’t read any Lord Peter books, I recommend Murder Must Advertise as a better starting place.

As a total side note, the cover I’m showing is not the one for the book I read, but is just one I found on Amazon. It occurs to me, why would they show the body of a woman when the victim is a man? This disconnect in publishing is always a mystery to me. One peek at the first few pages would have told the artist the sex of the body.