Judy’s Comments (group member since Oct 01, 2015)

Judy’s comments from the Reading the Detectives group.

Wow, I thought there were a lot of names but didn't realise it was quite that many, Indeneri!

Oh just realised this is the spoiler thread, sorry! I think the relevance is that he wants to threaten people and show his power over them - I get the impression he's mainly interested in Bella and her friends hearing about the leaflet and being upset by it.

Susan, I think it does have some relevance but this becomes clearer when you finish the book, so I won't say more now.

Did anyone guess the killer in this book? I definitely didn't, although I did think quite early on that Laurence must be dead.

Good question, Frances. I believe she wrote the two 'final' books for her detectives both around the same time and held them both back, but I don't know any detail.

Yes, it's just struck me, I'm not sure if we actually find out where the missing prince is, and why he went missing?

Jackie, I like D.E. Stevenson and have been wondering about trying Molly Clavering, so am interested to hear that you like both of them.

Yes, I agree about the Africa part, Susan. I hadn't picked up on her father possibly being in danger, but that makes sense.

I also agree about the scene with the au pair and Crosby being weird. I was thinking he would have a romance and we would see another side of him, but no!

I've finished now and must say I found some elements of the plot rather far-fetched. Surely it would be too risky making the tunnel too narrow, as it is the type of thing someone would be extremely likely to notice somewhere along the line - I'd find it easier to believe if the contractors skimped on materials.

I also didn't really understand why Lucy stays silent - I thought there would be some big reveal about this but it seems to just be to avoid bothering her father, which I thought was a bit of an anti-climax after all the discussion of her silence. I quite liked her as a character though.

I've finished now and I think it improves in the second half, with the pace speeding up, but I still felt fairly distant from all the characters, as you say, Susan. Over to the spoiler thread while the plot is fresh in my mind!

Saba, thanks for describing your experience of those "non-existent nights" - something hard to imagine. I think in crime novels we probably hear more about the long dark nights of winter.

Another PS, sorry just remembered we also had some discussion about the publication date earlier in the non-spoiler thread.

PS I must say I find it amazing that Christie held on to a book of such quality without publishing it for so many years!

Frances, we're going by the chronological/writing order - it is a bit confusing but this book was written in the 1940s and is set then, although it wasn't published until 1976 . Agatha Christie.com has a Miss Marple reading list to download with a note about it. https://www.agathachristie.com/en/new...

I wondered what the 'white nights' in the Shetlands look like, and found some amazing photos on an official Shetland website:
https://www.shetland.org/blog/midsumm...

Jan C wrote: "Isn't Josephine Tey the one who was related to Catherine Aird?"

Interesting question - I've just Googled this and they did have similar surnames (real names Elizabeth MacKintosh and Kinn McIntosh), but I didn't find anything saying they were related. Aird was an admirer of Tey though and considered writing a biography of her, and her book A Most Contagious Game has been compared with The Daughter of Time. (We haven't read that one by Aird here as it's a standalone and out of print.)

I've finished reading that biography now and found it interesting but a bit rambling. I'm slightly disappointed overall but glad to have read it, and it has made me want to read some of Tey's non-mystery works.

Sandy wrote: "I got bogged down in the Buggins family tree ..."

So did I! I thought there were so many characters with strange names that I got confused, and it was also hard to care who did it as we didn't really get to know the characters.

I didn't really get the humour either - I thought the first book was very funny, but now, although I still like Peter, I'm finding the series a bit boring if I'm honest. This book was definitely much better than the peculiar time-travelling previous one, though!

Oh, that should be interesting, Susan, hope you enjoy it. Thank you for the link.

I've read more of the biography now and she also wrote a lot of plays under the Gordon Daviot pseudonym, not just her big success Richard of Bordeaux: A Play in Two Acts. During the war she had a lot of radio plays on the BBC, including some on Biblical themes, like Sayers.

I'm reading a biography I've been meaning to get to for years, Josephine Tey: a Life by Jennifer Morag Henderson. It's interesting but sometimes the information is rather sketchy.

Reading this is making me wonder, has anyone read any of the books Tey published under her other pseudonym, Gordon Daviot? I see that a couple of non-crime novels she wrote under that name are now available cheaply on Kindle in the UK, where I believe all her work is now in the public domain.

I'm halfway through and have been finding it rather slow and samey so far, I must admit. I also think a lot of it feels much earlier than the 1980s, although the anti-nuclear protestors would have been topical at the time.

I usually enjoy literary references but I feel Aird sometimes just includes too many of them, with nearly every comment reminding someone of a book, play, song etc. Most of these thoughts aren't really relevant as far as I can see, although possibly something important will be smuggled in.