Spinsters in Jeopardy tells the story of the time Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn chose to take his wife and six year old son on holiday to provincial France to visit a family connection and combine it with his work, required by Scotland Yard, to assist the Sûreté in investigations of a notorious gang dealing in and manufacturing drugs in the region. This slightly improbable plot device certainly calls into question the mental stability of said DCI and results, not unsurprisingly, in the perilous predicament he falls into when the two purposes of his visit intertwine disastrously.
The story is quite fantastic and has both the hallucinatory and psychedelic qualities of the avant garde paintings, produced by one of the characters and the effects of smoking marijuana, as favoured by central members of the bizarre religious cult, whose characters people the fantastic, castle-fortress, mountain setting. More of a spy thriller than the more usual detective procedural, Spinsters in Jeopardy was not my favourite of Ngaio Marsh's works. There were some shining moments, however, in the midst of the gritty unreality.
I really enjoyed the family interactions between Alleyn and his wife Troy and their precocious son, Ricky (comically Ricketts to his French police acquaintances). Troy really shone as the one point of honest realism in this story and it was a pleasure to get to know her better. Ricky was too good to be true, however there were some moments of pure pleasure in his artless childish narratives. I laughed when he told his Dad that he was "Fizzily and motionly sauceted" ...I might have to steal that one.... and I loved his reaction to the reconciliation between Teresa and her swain, Raoul: 'Teresa wound her arm around Raoul's neck. "Je t'adore," she crooned. "Oh gosh!" said Ricky and shut his eyes.'
The comedy duo of Raoul and Teresa were also lovely to read and were a breath of fresh air in the midst of all of the other murky descriptions of obscene cult diversions, which Alleyn (and therefore we) are forced to explore, in order to get to the bottom (pun intended) of a very complex who done it.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Spinsters in Jeopardy tells the story of the time Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn chose to take his wife and six year old son on holiday to provincial France to visit a family connection and combine it with his work, required by Scotland Yard, to assist the Sûreté in investigations of a notorious gang dealing in and manufacturing drugs in the region. This slightly improbable plot device certainly calls into question the mental stability of said DCI and results, not unsurprisingly, in the perilous predicament he falls into when the two purposes of his visit intertwine disastrously.
The story is quite fantastic and has both the hallucinatory and psychedelic qualities of the avant garde paintings, produced by one of the characters and the effects of smoking marijuana, as favoured by central members of the bizarre religious cult, whose characters people the fantastic, castle-fortress, mountain setting. More of a spy thriller than the more usual detective procedural, Spinsters in Jeopardy was not my favourite of Ngaio Marsh's works. There were some shining moments, however, in the midst of the gritty unreality.
I really enjoyed the family interactions between Alleyn and his wife Troy and their precocious son, Ricky (comically Ricketts to his French police acquaintances). Troy really shone as the one point of honest realism in this story and it was a pleasure to get to know her better. Ricky was too good to be true, however there were some moments of pure pleasure in his artless childish narratives. I laughed when he told his Dad that he was
"Fizzily and motionly sauceted"
...I might have to steal that one.... and I loved his reaction to the reconciliation between Teresa and her swain, Raoul:
'Teresa wound her arm around Raoul's neck. "Je t'adore," she crooned.
"Oh gosh!" said Ricky and shut his eyes.'
The comedy duo of Raoul and Teresa were also lovely to read and were a breath of fresh air in the midst of all of the other murky descriptions of obscene cult diversions, which Alleyn (and therefore we) are forced to explore, in order to get to the bottom (pun intended) of a very complex who done it.
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