Martin Fone's Blog, page 138

The Gutenberg Murders

A review of The Gutenberg Murders by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning

Published originally in 1931, this is the second murder mystery that Bristow and Manning wrote and Dean Street Press, who kindly sent me a review copy, should be congratulated for rescuing it from obscurity. It struck me as a much more mature and confident piece of work, better written and with more rounded characterisation than is to be found in The Invisible Host.

It also has a great, if somewhat gruesome, method of dispatching the victim. This duo is not content with a common or garden shooting or stabbing or poisoning. Instead, they plumb the pages of Greek mythology and provide us with a modern take of the fate of Creusa of Corinth at the hands of Medea in Euripides’ tragedy. As someone who as both a schoolboy and student had grappled with the play in its original, I spotted the reference and had a feeling of smug satisfaction as the solution was revealed. When next I am asked what value there is in having a knowledge of the Classics, I can now say that it helped me solve the Gutenberg Murders.      

A mode of murder drawn from the depths of Greek mythology is appropriate for a story that is set in the world of academics who run the Sheldon Library in New Orleans and have a penchant for collecting and restoring antiquarian books. Pride of place in the collection, at least in the mind of the head librarian, Dr Prentiss, are the nine leaves from the Gutenberg bible that he has recently acquired. However, not everyone is convinced of their provenance, notably his arch-rival and head trustee of the library, Alfredo Gonzales.  

The story starts with the discovery that the pages from the bible have been stolen and that the body of the deputy librarian, Quentin Ulman, has been found charred almost beyond recognition, save for a cigarette case, on an island where he bound books. Later, Gonzales’ wife suffers a similar fate as she drives home from a party. Sculptor, Terry Sheldon, nephew of the library’s founder, also is burned to death. Who is behind the murders, why and how were they carried out?

District Attorney Farrell takes the unusual step of involving a journalist, Wade, in the investigations which hit a brick wall as the principal suspects either have cast-iron alibis or are murdered themselves. The investigations reveal a complex web of relationships between the principal characters, Wade himself allowing the charms of medical student, Marie Camillo, to cloud his judgment, and a will coupled with an untimely marriage which provides a clue to the deep seated rivalry between Prentiss and Gonzales.

Wade is on the verge of giving up in despair when he picks up a copy of the plays of Euripides for one more time and an obscure French investigation into how mythological and historical murders could have been pulled off. The scales fall from his eyes, and he sets a trap for the suspects, which they fall for, even though Wade almost suffers the same fate as the other victims. The mystery is resolved in a glowing finale, although the culprit evades the hangman’s noose by taking his own life, sadly in a rather conventional fashion.

The characters are believable, and the dialogue is crisp and realistic. Bristow and Manning, write with humour and there is a pace to the book which keeps the reader interested, even when the investigations appear to be going nowhere. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. One of life’s many mysteries is why it has fallen out of favour for so long.

Crossword Mystery

A review of Crossword Mystery by E R Punshon

You get value for your money in this, the third in E R Punshon’s Bobby Owen series, originally published in 1934 and now reissued by Dean Street Press. It also goes by the name of Crossword Murder. Not only do you have a riveting puzzle to digest but there is also a crossword puzzle, framework and clues around a third of the way through the book and the completed puzzle later on, and a gruesome ending that would not have been out of place in Game of Thrones.

One of the things I like about Punshon is that his socialist colours do peep out in his stories from time to time. Unusually for a British writer at the time he seems alive to the threat caused by the Fascist movement, particularly that which was emerging in Germany, and is sympathetic to the plight of those who stand up against or get in the way of a seemingly unstoppable machine. The German refugee, who to his horror discovers his Semitic ancestry and his attempts to escape with a semblance of his wealth and goods is sympathetically handled.

Although a Bobby Owen novel, this is as much an Inspector Mitchell story. Owen is still a junior making his way up the ranks. Mitchell is his father figure, his mentor and does his best to encourage Owen’s initiative and ability to understand problems that is rarely exhibited in officers of such junior rank. Owen’s mission is to go to a peaceful seaside village, Suffby Cove, to protect a retired businessman, George Winterton, who fears for his life and, having friends in high places, has asked for police protection. Winterton gives no clue as to why he feels he is in peril other than his insistence that his brother, Archibald, was murdered rather than drowning at sea in placid conditions, despite being a strong swimmer.

Owen, too, suspects there is more to Archibald’s death than meets the eye, a suspicion compounded when, objectively, he fails in his mission. George is murdered. There are two aspects about George’s character that hold the key to his and his brother’s demise, his fixation with gold as the only safe haven for one’s wealth and crossword puzzles. Crossword puzzles were a fairly new craze at the time that Punshon wrote this book, the first in the UK was published in Pearson’s Magazine in February 1922 and the first British newspaper to publish one was the Sunday Express on November 2, 1924.

George is a crossword addict and is engaged in compiling his own puzzle. It is odd in design and Owen quickly works out that solving it will assist enormously in unravelling the mystery. Readers can, if they so desire although it is difficult if you are reading the e-book version, and will soon discover, as Owen did, that it is more a cryptogram than a conventional puzzle.

Alongside the secrets of the puzzle there is a plan to turn Suffley Cove into a glorified theme park and casino complex. The Wintertons were resistant to the developers’ plans. Was this a factor in their demise. In a nod to Sherlock Holmes there is a dog that did not bark when the first crime was committed and which was done away with before George was murdered. What did this tell about the identity of the culprits? And what role did Warburton’s housekeeper play in it all? She seems to exert influence on all aspects of life at Suffley Cove, far more so than you would expect from a woman in her position.

As usual in a Punshon novel, he plays fair with his readers, and it is a relatively simple task to spot whodunit even if the why is a little more opaque. The story ends with one of Punshon’s famed set pieces, which is dramatic, perhaps a tad melodramatic, and certainly gory. It seems almost out of place in a genre that deals with murder and death but in a gentler, less vivid fashion.

I enjoyed the book immensely, but then I am a Punshon addict. For those wishing to dip their toes into his works, a trip to Suffley Cove makes an ideal starting point.

Dead Man’s Quarry

A review of Dead Man’s Quarry by Ianthe Jerrold

Dead Man’s Quarry is Ianthe Jerrold’s second murder mystery, published originally in 1930 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, and the second outing for her amateur sleuth, John Christmas. After the publication of this novel, she gave up on detective fiction to resume writing more conventional novels. It is easy to see why. That is not to say that there is anything in the least disappointing with another polished piece of work which raises the already impressive bar set by her The Studio Crime published a year earlier. It is more a reflection on the fact that the genre’s conventions and limitations constrained her writing talent.

Jerrold is a much-underrated writer, with a penchant for strong and vivid characterisations. She has an eye for detail, for the traits and characteristics that delineate one individual from another. Her characters are vibrant and memorable, and she is interested enough to explore what makes them tick rather than just using them as the media through which the plot evolves. Aligned to a strong narrative style and imaginative plotting this makes for an entertaining and rewarding read.

However, the dictats of a murder mystery are that all points lead to the resolution of the puzzle and this can be frustrating for a writer who demands a broader canvas upon which to practise her art and develop her skills. It can be read as a mild comedy of manners, poking gentle fun at the mores and predilections of the English upper middle class, as well as a tongue in cheek doff of the cap to some of her predecessors in the genre, most notably Conan Doyle.

In wrapping up her convoluted tale, though, she seems to have got bored. The ending is a tad melodramatic, a little unbelievable and takes the reader somewhat by surprise. It removes the shine somewhat from what had gone before. That may seem a little churlish but up until that point the book had been first rate and was streets ahead of much detective fiction that had preceded her or Jerrold’s immediate contemporaries were writing.

Charles Price has returned from Canada after a fifteen years’ absence to take over the estate he has inherited. He has not troubled to ingratiate himself with his relatives and in particular his uncle, Morris Price, who has been running affairs. On a cycling holiday with the Browning family and others Charles goes missing and his body is found at the bottom of a nearby quarry. He has been shot. The gun found nearby belongs to Morris and his intransigent and haughty attitude leads to his arrest.

Christmas is holidaying in the area with his friend, Sydenham Rampson, and takes an interest in the drama that unfolds as the cycling party search for Charles. He decides to stay on to investigate what really happened as he is certain that Morris is innocent. Rampson, who takes on a Watsonish role, is a scientist at heart, preferring the cold scientific analysis of Thorndyke to the intuitive brilliance of Holmes, is bemused by Christmas’ enthusiasm, satisfied that the cold hard facts point undeniably to Morris’ guilt.

Not everything is as it seems, though, and along the way Christmas discovers Morris’ estranged wife, an ingenious deception and a conspiracy which would have seen the estate fall out of the control of the family. Of course, the day is saved, romanticism and faith triumphs over hard facts, but the explanation of what happened on that fateful day and more importantly the motivation behind the events is both startling and surprising.

A great read.

A Slice Of Turkey

The wild turkey was indigenous to the Americas and was first domesticated around two thousand years ago in central Mesoamerica. All the modern varieties of turkey originate from the turkeys found in Mexico.

The man credited with introducing the turkey to England is William Strickland. On an early voyage to America in 1526 he acquired six birds from Native Americans and upon his arrival at Bristol promptly sold them at tuppence each. Quickly realising that there was a ready market for this exotic delicacy, he began importing turkeys in earnest, earning enough money to build himself a stately home in Boynton, near Bridlington.

Whether he was really the first is far from clear, but Strickland certainly made a big thing about his association with the bird. In 1550 he incorporated the turkey into his coat-of-arms, the drawing of which, held at the College of Arms in London, may be the earliest depiction of the bird in Europe. The village church at which he is buried is a homage to the turkey, the bird appearing in stone sculptures on the walls, stained glass windows and even replacing the traditional eagle on the lectern.

Thanks in no small part to the Tudor equivalent of Bernard Matthews, the English developed a taste for the turkey. While the Venetian patricians passed sumptuary laws in 1557 restricting consumption of turkey flesh to the nobility, it was cash rather than class that defined who could eat turkey meat in England, their price set by law in London’s markets from 1555. So widespread were turkeys that in 1560 a law was passed banning birds bred for slaughter from roaming the streets of London.

By 1573 the turkey had found its place on the festive menu, Thomas Tusser noting that the perfect host at Christmas would offer “good bread and good drinke…brawn pudding and souse and good mustarde withal. Biefe, mutton and porke, shred pyes of the best, pig, veal, goose and capon, and turkey well drest”. Farming manuals of the time included instructions on rearing turkeys, which were smaller than the wild indigenous birds of the Americas, a point noted by William Wood in his New England’s Prospect (1634).

Cookery books from the late 16th century began to include recipes for turkeys. A Booke of Cookrye from 1584 instructed its readers to “cleve your Turkye foule on the back, and bruse al the bones. Season it with pepper groce beaten and salt, and put into good store of Butter, he must have five houres baking”. Gervase Markham, writing in 1623, recommended roasting with the pinions still attached.

Two major problems inhibited the universal adoption of the turkey as festive fare: cost and transportation. While, by 1720, 250,000 turkeys were being reared in Norfolk, getting them to consumers involved walking them from the farms to the markets, journeys that could take weeks and involved the farmers setting up impromptu camps each night by the side of the roads. Mrs Beeton wrote of turkeys being driven all the way from Norfolk to London, with their feet dipped in tar to prevent them getting sore.

The cost of transportation meant that turkeys were out of the reach of all but the well-to-do, a meat to aspire to, while ordinary folk made do with beef, a strong favourite in the North, capons, or goose. The arrival of the railways, improvements in refrigeration, and the sentimentalisation of Christmas saw a rise in the turkey’s stock in the mid-19th century.

Scrooge’s gift of a turkey to Bob Cratchit in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843), Queen Victoria sitting down to her first roast turkey on Christmas Day 1851, and the realisation that the fowl provided more meat for the large families seated around the dining table may have cooked the goose, but it took another century for the turkey to become truly affordable.

Even in the 1930s, a turkey cost the equivalent of a week’s wages, and the thriftier amongst the population would subscribe to savings clubs to ensure that when the time came, they had enough to pay for their festive bird. It was not until after the Second World War that improvements in farming efficiency brought the price down to a level that was affordable to most. Since then, the turkey has not looked back.

If you enjoyed this, check out More Curious Questions, available now.

Error Of The Week (13)

There is an implicit assumption, when you place yourself in the hands of a surgeon, that they know what they are doing. There will be occasions when circumstances will present an unexpected and unanticipated outcome, but you would hope that the clinicians would know their left from their right.

An elderly patient went to a clinic in Freistadt in Austria in May this year to have his left leg amputated. A court in Linz heard last week that the surgeon marked up the wrong leg, which she successfully removed. The error was only discovered during a routine change of dressings. Following an investigation into the incident, a spokesperson for the hospital said it was a “result of a sequence of unfortunate circumstances” and the surgeon could not explain why she had made the mix-up.

The poor patient may have taken a different view of the tragedy, especially as he was told that the right leg ie his left – confusing isn’t it? – would have to come off as well.

The surgeon has been transferred to another clinic and was found guilty of gross negligence by the Linz court and fined €2,700, half of which – was it the right or left? – has been suspended. The widow of the man, who had subsequently died before the case had come to court, was awarded compensation of €5,000.

That seems a bit paltry, but perhaps the court thought he did not have a leg to stand on.

Survey Of The Week

The consumer magazine, Which?, as usual has its finger on the nation’s pulse and answered that most burning of questions; which tin of chocolates should I buy to ensure that I will get my favourite chocolate after it has been passed around family and friends? The answer, of course, depends entirely on the type of chocolate you prefer.

If you like nutty chocolates, then a tin of Celebrations should satisfy you, with on average twelve Snickers per tin, 12 Milky Ways, and 11 Mars bars. The reason fans of Galaxy Caramel and Galaxy are often disappointed is that there are only six of them each in a tin while Twix fans have to make do with seven, and Bounty and Malteser fans will have to fight over just eight each.

Fans of dairy milk, caramel and fruit crème should make a bee line for Cadbury Roses, which have twice as many of them as they do fudge and truffles. Éclair and fudge fans should settle for a tub of Cadbury Heroes, which contain almost twice as many of those varieties as they do Twirls or Wispas. Heroes are more niggardly with the variety of sweets they offer, just eight, compared with the box offering the most diverse selection of varieties, Quality Street with eleven.

Even with a box of Quality Street there is a bias in the distribution of varieties, with nine Pink Fudges compared to four Green Triangles and four Orange Crunches. They make up for this imbalance with caramels, toffees, and fruit cremes.

The answer id depending upon your taste and the box you are presented with, get in first to avoid disappointment.

Eight Of The Gang

We have all been a bit preoccupied with the vicissitudes of the weather and disease over the last couple of years.

In the Fens of England from the 17th century, locals used to fear a visit from the Bailiff of Bedford and the Bailiff of Marsham. Samuel Smiles, writing in his Lives of the Engineers (1861), noted that “when the outfalls of the Ouse became choked, the surrounding districts were subject to severe inundations; and after a heavy fall of rain, or after a thaw in winter, when the river swelled, suddenly the alarm spread abroad – the Bailiff of Bedford is coming – the Ouse passing through that town”.

“But there was an even more terrible than he of Bedford, for when a man was stricken down by the ague, it was said of him, he is arrested by the Bailiff of Marsham, this disease extensively prevailing all over the district when the poisoned air of the marshes began to work”. The draining of the Fens did much to eliminate the ague, but the Bailiff of Marsham still came, this time used as a metaphor for impending death.

I know a balaclava as a piece of knitted headgear, so called because they were worn by British troops serving out in the Crimea. However, it was also the name given to a full beard, “first seen on the faces of the English army upon their return to England from the Crimea” and so named after the battle. “Britons upon the principle of reaction of always going the whole hog, grew all the hair they could, and the mere moustache of Frenchmen was nowhere in the fight”. Indeed, Frenchmen who on visiting the Great Exhibition of 1851 had noted with shock nary a facial hair on the visage of their military allies were surprised by how complete a transformation there had been in military fashion inside six years.

It was also known as The Terror but the bushy, unkempt beard’s days soon waned, to be replaced by more elegantly sculpted beards.

Death At The Opera

A review of Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell

Also known as Death in the Wet, this is fifth outing (out of sixty-six) for Mitchell’s amateur sleuth, Mrs Bradley. I have read enough of her works to realise that you never quite know what you are getting yourself into when you turn the first page. Some things stay the same; Mrs Bradley, a psychoanalyst by trade, will continue with her eccentric dress sense, her waspish interrogative style, and put everyone she meets on edge, the plot will be barmy, and the ending will be both surprising and leave some questions unanswered. Death at the Opera fits the bill and gives us more besides.

The novel is set in a school which is gearing up to put on a performance of The Mikado, the opera. Throughout the book we are told that Calma Ferris is an inoffensive teacher. However, she has the unhappy knack of upsetting some of her colleagues, particularly Miss Camden, by refusing to release her star netball player for a tilt at a trophy Camden had set her heart on winning, and Mr Smith, the art teacher, whose commissioned piece entitled Psyche she accidentally dropped and destroyed. Her biggest offence is against art itself.

Calma has funded the production of the Mikado and has been given the part of Katisha, putting Miss Camden’s nose out of joint. She makes a mess of the role at a rehearsal and when it comes to the performance itself, she cannot be found. Mrs Boyle, a former actress, steps into the breach. Ferris is found in dead, face down in a washbasin full of water with the downpipe bunged up with clay. At the inquest the verdict is suicide but the Headmaster, unconvinced that this is the case, calls in Mrs Bradley to investigate. She does so in her own inimitable fashion.

One of the book’s main strengths is Mitchell’s characterisations. The characters are memorable, distinctive, lively and believable. What also helps is that as a teacher, she understands the dynamics of the staffroom and the relationships between pupil and teacher and uses this knowledge to great effect. There is an undercurrent of mild satire running through the book.

As the investigations progress, it emerges that Miss Ferris has the dirt on several of her colleagues and senior pupils, giving each of them motivation and opportunity to have done away with the unfortunate woman. However, there are holes in the case against each of them. Then there is Ferris’ aunt and the mysterious Mr Helm, who may or may not have been the strange electrician seen behind the scenes when the lights had gone out.

Ferris’ demise moves off centre stage when Mrs Bradley’s interest is piqued by an epidemic of drownings. Each involved the victim being held down in a bath or in a pool in the case of poor Mrs Hampstead, whose demise frees up her husband to legitimise his affair with Mrs Doyle. Murderers, though, do not veer off from their chosen method of killing and there is a difference between a bath and a wash basin. This whole section, in which both Mrs Bradley and her nephew nearly meet their maker, is little more than an enormous red herring, which takes up much of the book.

The resolution, when it comes, is swift and to the point, the culprit revealed in the final few words of the book, ignoring Mrs Bradley’s case notes. The murderer is someone who has barely featured in the narrative, but there are enough clues sprinkled in the book to satisfy the armchair sleuth, even though why they murdered stretches credulity.

Mrs Bradley’s world has a strange moral compass. The implication is that she does nothing more than tell the murderer that she knows who they are, leaving the reader to wonder whether an eminent psychoanalyst would really let someone who killed for such a slight reason remain at liberty. Mrs Bradley does not let Mrs Boyle know the truth about what happened to Mrs Hampstead, leaving her to suspect her lover and thereby killing the affair stone dead and allowing someone with a part to play in arranging an assassination to continue to teach at the school. And, inevitably, it was Mrs Bradley’s barrister son who had got Helm off the hook first time around, leaving him to lure several more of his victims into a watery end.

Despite all that, as a piece of entertainment it is a first-rate book and is thoroughly recommended.

Death On The Cherwell

A review of Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay

Death is to Oxford as espionage is to Cambridge. The detective fiction writers’ fixation with Oxford and its environs as murder capital central is well established, but one of the earliest to make the association is this rather curious novel, written by Mavis Doriel Hay, originally published in 1935 and now reissued as part of the excellent British Library Crime Classics series.

This is Hay’s second crime novel, following on from Murder Underground, and there are links between the two books. Betty, who played a starring role in sleuthing the solution to the murder of her fiancé’s aunt, Euphemia Pongleton, has now married him and visits her sister, Sally, who is up at Persephone College, an all-girls’ college in Oxford. Sally, too, has pretensions to amateur sleuthing and takes the lead in the unofficial investigation into the suspicious death of the college bursar, Miss Denning. Betty plays a part, albeit low key.

I did not enjoy this book as much as Hay’s earlier novel and part of my problem is down to the fact that the book is rather rudderless, without a clear sense of direction and left to drift on the current going wherever the fancy takes it. At the outset I thought I had picked up a copy of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, with four undergrads setting up a secret society to put a curse on the unpopular college bursar. Implausibly, they meet on the roof of the boathouse in early January, notwithstanding the summery picture of punting on the cover, to swear their oath of allegiance and place their curse on the unfortunate woman.

Imagine their surprise then when they see Denning’s canoe floating down the Cherwell – she is an enthusiastic canoeist who goes out in all weathers and all times of the year – with the body of the unfortunate woman inside it. When they get the boat to the bank, they find that Denning’s body was put back into the canoe and left to drift off, after she had sustained a severe blow to the back of the head. It appears it was neither an unfortunate accident nor suicide but murder.

The girls set out to investigate what happened. Cue a series of jolly japes, nocturnal adventures, climbing in and out of windows and frustrating the investigations of the police by, inadvertently in their enthusiasm, destroying what would have been vital evidence. Inspector Wythe has the unenviable job of trying to establish what has gone on, mainly through the testing of alibis. Any threat of straying into Wills Crofts territory is averted as the plot and puzzle is so light that it is easy to see through.      

Whilst Hay gives some interesting and gently satirical insights into varsity life at the time, her characterisations are weak. The four undergrad girls are almost interchangeable, with little attempt to develop their character beyond that which is necessary for the storyline to progress. This part of the book has the feel of a light satire of varsity life, full of the rituals, the slang, and the unworldly concerns of university life. Draga, the Yugoslav student, stands out in this section, but mainly because she is the butt of the little Englander attitudes that prevailed at the time.

The tone of the book changes once more with the arrival of Inspector Braydon from Scotland Yard, settling down to become a more conventional police investigation. Blackmail, illegitimacy, a change of clothes and an altercation are at the heart of the mystery. Introducing a character called Mort into such a book is likely to give the game away, but to give Hay her due she manages to introduce a twist in the tale.

It was a good enough read, but had Hay decided quite what tone and style she wanted to strike and stuck with it, it might have moved up from a solid second class to a first.  

The Condamine Case

A review of The Condamine Case by Moray Dalton

This is a case of Gothic meets murder mystery meets the film industry. Into this heady mix wanders Dalton’s go-to police detective, Inspector Hugh Collier, in this his twelfth outing in a fifteen book series, originally published in 1947 and reissued by Dean Street Press. It is a scenario that plays to Dalton’s undoubted strengths as a writer.

The book is a bit of a slow burner and that is because Dalton invests her time in setting the scene and painting her characters. The set up is a little complex and involves the Condamine family who have lived for centuries in the Somerset village of Little Baring. Around three hundred years ago the then Mrs Condamine denounced two women of the village, one of whom, Vashti, just happened to have been Hugh Condamine’s bit on the side, as witches and they were ducked and drowned. However, Vashti gets her revenge as Mrs Condamine is driven mad and ultimately to her death as she is stalked by her victim’s ghost.

The present Mrs Condamine, Ida, told the story of the family curse to an up-and-coming film director, Stephen Latimer, and seeing the cinematographic possibilities of the story, goes down to Little Baring with his sidekick, Evan Hughes, to see for himself, to obtain cash-strapped George Condamine’s agreement to use their land and buildings for the shoot, and then to commence filming.

There are then two murders. Firstly, George Condamine is poisoned, probably as a result of eating some sandwiches prepared by his cousin for a picnic. Then Ida is killed, hit on the back of the head with a rock near the Witches’ House. Are the murders linked and who committed them? Midway through the book, the diligent Inspector Collier is called in to solve the mysteries.

In truth there are precious few plausible suspects and whilst Dalton does her best to crank up the tension as the book moves towards its conclusion, for those who like to play armchair detective she does withhold some vital clues that would have made the identification of the culprit easier than it was. Oddly, her interest in George’s death also wanes well before the end, making a less complete solution.

It is easy to see why the death of George falls off the radar screen. Ida offers much more dramatic and thematic possibilities. She is someone who sees herself as Vashti, indeed she was badgering Latimer to give her the role in the film, but at the time that Vashti was meeting her end she was reliving the fate of her ancestor. Dalton is thus able to cleverly interweave the ancient family curse with the modern tragedy that befalls the family.

It does pose the question whether the death of George was necessary, serving little more than a distraction to the artistic integrity of the book’s structure and allowing a few hares to run to muddy Collier’s investigations, and whether its inclusion weakens the book as a whole.

On the plus side, Dalton’s writing is as vivid and engaging as ever. She has the happy knack of being able to create vivid and believable characters who rise above the genre’s stereotypes and with whom the reader can connect even if they have been absent for a few chapters. Dalton also has a strong sense of place and history and her descriptions of the Gothic features of the buildings and church of Little Baring are marvellous.

This does not reach the heights of some of her books, but Dalton never disappoints, delivering an entertaining read. My only regret is that I have all her books that have been reissued. If only more could be reissued, what a wonderful 2022 that would promise to be!