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World Under Snow
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1935
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About the author
D.K. Broster
66 books15 followersDorothy Kathleen Broster (1877 - 1950) produced 15 popular historical novels between 1911 and 1947.
The Yellow Poppy (1920) about the adventures of an aristocratic couple during the French Revolution, was later adapted by Broster and W. Edward Stirling for the London stage in 1922. She produced her bestseller Scottish historical novel, The Flight of the Heron, in 1925. Broster stated she had consulted eighty reference books before beginning the novel. She followed it up with two successful sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile. She wrote several other historical novels, successful and much reprinted in their day, although this Jacobite trilogy (inspired by a five-week visit to friends in Scotland), featuring the dashing hero Ewen Cameron, remains the best known.
The Flight of the Heron was adapted for BBC Radio twice, in 1944, starring Gordon Jackson as Ewen Cameron, and again in 1959, starring Bryden Murdoch as Cameron. Murdoch also starred in radio adaptations of the book's sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile.
The Yellow Poppy (1920) about the adventures of an aristocratic couple during the French Revolution, was later adapted by Broster and W. Edward Stirling for the London stage in 1922. She produced her bestseller Scottish historical novel, The Flight of the Heron, in 1925. Broster stated she had consulted eighty reference books before beginning the novel. She followed it up with two successful sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile. She wrote several other historical novels, successful and much reprinted in their day, although this Jacobite trilogy (inspired by a five-week visit to friends in Scotland), featuring the dashing hero Ewen Cameron, remains the best known.
The Flight of the Heron was adapted for BBC Radio twice, in 1944, starring Gordon Jackson as Ewen Cameron, and again in 1959, starring Bryden Murdoch as Cameron. Murdoch also starred in radio adaptations of the book's sequels, The Gleam in the North and The Dark Mile.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 17, 2021
I remember being absolutely gripped by this book and overjoyed by its resolution as a child when I first read it, and being very disappointed to find that it didn't work nearly so well when I reread it later on; reading it again now, I have to concur with the second verdict. I think part of the problem is that once you know whodunnit and are no longer gripped by Hilary's painful progress of suspicions and need to discover the truth, the solution to the plot feels fairly forced. The section that still really resonated with me was the impossible situation that Hilary finds himself in when he starts conducting clandestine investigations and then having to lie about them; there I found myself gripped by all the old tension. But I no longer find it particularly easy to identify with Denzil or to worry all that much about his fate; I'm afraid he rather lost my sympathy early on by driving like a road-hog in Chapter One in order to vent his feelings, and while he is supposed to be the more obviously gifted and attractive character in comparison to whom Hilary always underestimates himself, I don't feel that he was all that successfully established, or the existing friendship between the two of them built up to a degree that could justify Hilary's desperation for his sake.
Hilary basically stops caring about Jenner's death as soon as Denzil turns out to be in potential trouble, which doesn't seem all that admirable. Milburn, the love-rival, simply fades out of the picture having had a convenient change of heart and failed to go through with his blackmail, and is always a bit of a cardboard character. The entire truth gets hushed up, and Mrs Jenner - who ends up makimg increasingly wild accusations that are provably false - never learns what really did happen to her husband. And the whole supposed motive, that Denzil is trying to keep his fiancée Chloe from learning that he had an affair with a Frenchwoman years before ever he met her, doesn't seem all that dreadful; surely, however "beautifully unlike modern girls" Chloe may be, she can't expect a man in his thirties to have been completely abstinent -- "like a hermit in the Alexandrian desert", as Denzil himself puts it -- his entire life? I suppose there is something sordid about the fact that the lady was quite happy to use him for her sexual satisfaction but had no intention of inconveniencing herself by marrying him, but as unforgivable offences go it seems a bit of a slender one. Having your criminal to save your protagonist from having to prove anything to the police (and admittting to his own conduct), always feels like a bit of a cheat, as well.
I don't know to what degree this book (published under the 'Heinemann Crime' list along with Margery Allingham) was a collaboration with Broster's fellow author, but style-wise it is lacking in the vivid descriptions, both of places and people and of emotional states, which I associate with her historical novels. The opening reminded me rather of Dorothy L. Sayers, but Sayers in her rather superficial short stories of the era rather than in her best writing; most of the characters are the fairly two-dimensional inhabitants of the average 1930s detective mystery (Hilary's widowed sister, for example, is pleasant enough but has very little personality), and, as I said, I found Hilary's acute embarrassment at his own officious amateur detective work to be more convincing than his more melodramatic concerns about .
The obvious parallel is to Broster's historical novel The Wounded Name, which uses the same device of the protagonist dealing with reluctant suspicions of a friend. The big difference in this case, of course, . But in "The Wounded Name", the big 'reveal' is grippingly convincing and the actions which lead to disaster pretty much entirely defensible, whereas here the whole thing revolves around coincidence, timing and inadequate motives; it's a contrived plot rather than a story, and a much thinner one. And Laurent de Courtomer as protagonist barely knows Aymar - other than as a popular hero - at the start, whereas Hilary Severn and Denzil are supposed to have been friends for years, so the relationship between them is established more or less by fiat rather than shown developing along the way.
I can see what the book was trying to do, and it worked for me (and took me completely by surprise; I was expecting a very different explanation) once at least. But I don't think it's a very satisfactory detective story in the mechanics of its solution, and the emotional dilemma doesn't grip me any more. (Hilary's discovery that he is falling in love with Chloe himself I found to be quite subtly done, and affecting. But even in that respect the end just feels too slick and facile; this is plot by the numbers rather than character-driven events.)
Hilary basically stops caring about Jenner's death as soon as Denzil turns out to be in potential trouble, which doesn't seem all that admirable. Milburn, the love-rival, simply fades out of the picture having had a convenient change of heart and failed to go through with his blackmail, and is always a bit of a cardboard character. The entire truth gets hushed up, and Mrs Jenner - who ends up makimg increasingly wild accusations that are provably false - never learns what really did happen to her husband. And the whole supposed motive, that Denzil is trying to keep his fiancée Chloe from learning that he had an affair with a Frenchwoman years before ever he met her, doesn't seem all that dreadful; surely, however "beautifully unlike modern girls" Chloe may be, she can't expect a man in his thirties to have been completely abstinent -- "like a hermit in the Alexandrian desert", as Denzil himself puts it -- his entire life? I suppose there is something sordid about the fact that the lady was quite happy to use him for her sexual satisfaction but had no intention of inconveniencing herself by marrying him, but as unforgivable offences go it seems a bit of a slender one. Having your criminal to save your protagonist from having to prove anything to the police (and admittting to his own conduct), always feels like a bit of a cheat, as well.
I don't know to what degree this book (published under the 'Heinemann Crime' list along with Margery Allingham) was a collaboration with Broster's fellow author, but style-wise it is lacking in the vivid descriptions, both of places and people and of emotional states, which I associate with her historical novels. The opening reminded me rather of Dorothy L. Sayers, but Sayers in her rather superficial short stories of the era rather than in her best writing; most of the characters are the fairly two-dimensional inhabitants of the average 1930s detective mystery (Hilary's widowed sister, for example, is pleasant enough but has very little personality), and, as I said, I found Hilary's acute embarrassment at his own officious amateur detective work to be more convincing than his more melodramatic concerns about .
The obvious parallel is to Broster's historical novel The Wounded Name, which uses the same device of the protagonist dealing with reluctant suspicions of a friend. The big difference in this case, of course, . But in "The Wounded Name", the big 'reveal' is grippingly convincing and the actions which lead to disaster pretty much entirely defensible, whereas here the whole thing revolves around coincidence, timing and inadequate motives; it's a contrived plot rather than a story, and a much thinner one. And Laurent de Courtomer as protagonist barely knows Aymar - other than as a popular hero - at the start, whereas Hilary Severn and Denzil are supposed to have been friends for years, so the relationship between them is established more or less by fiat rather than shown developing along the way.
I can see what the book was trying to do, and it worked for me (and took me completely by surprise; I was expecting a very different explanation) once at least. But I don't think it's a very satisfactory detective story in the mechanics of its solution, and the emotional dilemma doesn't grip me any more. (Hilary's discovery that he is falling in love with Chloe himself I found to be quite subtly done, and affecting. But even in that respect the end just feels too slick and facile; this is plot by the numbers rather than character-driven events.)
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