The Dark Garden (Bobby Owen #16) - SPOILER Thread - (Dec 22/Jan 23)

[Susan]

Welcome to our Dec/Jan buddy read of The Dark Garden The Dark Garden was first published in 1941. It is the sixteenth of the Bobby Owen mysteries, a series including thirty-five novels.

Late in the afternoon a man, unidentified, had been seen to throw a glove into the Midwych, Wychshire and Southern Canal…

Osman Ford said he would kill the lawyer Mr. Anderson. So when the latter is found dead, with a bullet in the back, the disagreeable Mr. Ford is top suspect. But the lawyer’s office was also a cauldron of repressed feelings, and not all the staff are sorry to see the lawyer’s demise. In particular, Inspector Bobby Owen fears the dark, brooding clerk Anne Earle. Will her quest for justice lead her to a terrible fate of her own, amid family secrets and lies? The novel combines a satisfying whodunit with elements of the fantastic and macabre, and contains some of Punshon’s best set-pieces.

Please feel free to post spoilers in this thread.

[Jill]

I liked this one a lot. In this Major Glynch (?) Bobby's superior, is being treated for pleurisy, leaving Bobby in charge. This being this set at the beginning of the war, means Bobby is caught up in the various arrangements that should be administered by the police. A local prosperous farmer goes to see Bobby about an embezzlement charge he would like to make against a local trustee of his wife's money. Bobby has to inform the farmer that the police can do nothing in this respect and the farmer should take it up with a lawyer, much to the farmer's annoyance. We are then taken through the investigation that ensues, which leads inevitably to a murder being committed. There are numerous suspects, mostly connected to the company of the trustee that the farmer has his trouble with. Bobby is literally taken down the garden path by the various suspects, and I admit I was also left doubting the word of all of them. The end of this is really quite dramatic, and was well worth the wait. I had my suspicions, just like Bobby did, but I really couldn't be definite.

[Pamela]

I really enjoyed this and admire Punshon’s clever way of putting a different twist on the standard mystery formula each time.

This was dark and melodramatic, but beneath the atmosphere of dread (Bobby feeling uneasy, old secrets and gossip, the Gothic figure of the brooding Anne Earle) there were the usual human failings, and a failure to communicate. Even the ending, which was over the top and like a horror movie scene, worked really well in its context.

Bobby stumbling around in the dark with someone out to get him has become a bit of a Punshon trope, but this was well written and exciting. He really captured that total all-enveloping darkness.

[Sandy]

I liked it as well even the melodramatic ending.

Bobby Owen recognized his subordinates 'yes sir' as the same reply he, Bobby, gave his superiors when he didn't agree with them.

[Judy]

I've finished this now and enjoyed it a lot overall although I got a bit bogged down in the middle. I agree the melodramatic ending was great, even though it involved Bobby being lost in the dark, again!

I did work out who Anne's parents were, but then I thought Osman Ford's wife would be the culprit!