Frequent Hearses - SPOILER Thread - (Gervase Fen #7) (Sept/Oct 23)

[Susan]

Welcome to our Sept/Oct 23 buddy read of Frequent Hearses aka Sudden Vengeance. This is the seventh book in the Gervase Fen series, first published in 1950.

When young actress Gloria Scott throws herself from Waterloo Bridge, the news sends shockwaves through her film studio. Luckily Gervase Fen is serving as a literary advisor on a film, and becomes involved with the death of the actress.

But when someone acts fast to cover up any evidence – removing all signs of Ms Scott’s identity from her apartment – the truth is hard to find…

Please feel free topost spoilers in this thread.

[Abigail]

I enjoyed it but it was a mixed bag for me. The targeted family was interesting, with their tangled relationships. And I thought the premise of a suicide leading to murders was a nice idea. But the whole chase scene was silly—I hate it when suspense depends on someone, especially a female character, behaving stupidly—and the identity of the killer came out of left field for me, I felt he should have been more prominent in the story. That was a bit lazy on the part of the author.

[Frances]

I very much agree with your take, Abigail-a weirdly convoluted plot which didn't quite work in the end.

I particularly enjoyed his take on composers-I presume Napier was modelled on himself, and liked this ?self-referential passage:

Upon the screen in front of her two lovers, bereft of their soundtrack, mouthed preposterously at each other; in the sound engineer's glass-fronted control-room behind her, the composer sat complacently imbibing through a substantial loudspeaker the noises he had contrived. The ticker on the wall spelled out the seconds; Griswold, with headphones adjusted and a cigarette in his mouth, glanced rapidly and continuously from the players to the score to the ticker to the screen;...Not a bad score, Judy conceded; in his concert works Napier was a somewhat acrid modernist, but like most such composers he unbuttoned, becoming romantic and sentimental, when he was writing for films.

[Abigail]

Great quote! I didn’t learn that the author composed for the movies till after I had finished reading, and I wished I’d known it before. It struck me as I was reading that the studio scenes in general felt very authentic. Wondering if “Crispin” had a crush on some young woman in the music department of the studio he worked for: the description of the heroine was so far from generic.

[Jill]

I knew a maze would be included in the story, as it was on the cover of my book, but thought they had got the maze wrong when the beginning of the book goes on for ages about the maze of the film studios. I liked the plot and thought that it did highlight what people of the time thought about the film industry.

[Judy]

I really enjoyed listening to this one on Audible, which probably added a star on for me, but I do agree about the chase scene being rather silly - why on earth would Judy chase him herself instead of going to the house and raising the alarm? And I also thought the killer was a bit of a minor character, which is always disappointing - I'd forgotten all about him! Great humour and great characters, though. I was slightly surprised that we didn't get a happy ending for David and Judy, as it seemed as if he wasn't as "dim" as everyone thought.

[Sandy]

I agree with most of the comments. I was glad the denouement explained the murderer was the one who took Gloria home, otherwise I didn't remember him at all. It made sense that he was the only one who would know about the broken contract before the letter was published.