Review: Brat Farrar (1949) – Josephine Tey

Brat Farrar is one of the two mysteries by Josephine Tey that does not feature detective Alan Grant. Written in 1949, it was among the post-war novels — the other two being Daughter of Time and The Franchise Affair — that helped cement Tey’s reputation as one of the best of the Golden Age mystery writers.

Tey first introduces us to the Ashby family having a lively lunch in their home, Latchetts, which has been in the family for generations. The eldest, Simon, is soon to be “of age” and inherit Latchetts, and he is joined at the table by Aunt Bee (who has raised the children since their parents died in a car crash eight years earlier) and his siblings, Eleanor, who teaches horseback riding to children at a nearby school, and the young twins, Ruth and Jane. The scene is a warm, happy one and draws the reader into the book.

But then we meet the orphan Brat Farrar, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Simon. Brat is persuaded by a “friend” of the Ashbys to pose as the long-lost Patrick Ashby, Simon’s twin, who disappeared shortly after his parents’ death and whose body has never been found. Brat quickly insinuates himself into the family, explaining that rather than killing himself, as everyone assumed, he ran away to sea and lived in America until recently. As the older twin, Brat/Patrick will inherit Latchetts, not Simon. One by one, he wins over the Ashby family, leaving only Simon believing he is a fraud.

Tey is such a talented writer that she makes it difficult for the reader to dislike Brat despite his dishonesty. By the time he begins to suspect that Patrick was a victim of murder and not a suicide, we find ourselves firmly on his side. Brat’s dilemma is that by proving that Patrick was murdered, he will expose his own crime and bring further sorrow to the family he has come to love.

Brat Farrar has typical Tey touches: a humorous spoof of overly permissive schools like Summerhill and an exciting horserace, as well as some of her most appealing characters in Aunt Bee and Brat himself. It’s a masterful book from start to finish.

Review: Looking for Rachel Wallace (1980) – Robert B. Parker

Most critics agree that the first five books in the Spenser series by Robert B. Parker are his best. Looking for Rachel Wallace is the sixth in the series, but it’s one of my favorite Spenser books, along with Early Autumn, which is number seven.

Rachel Wallace is a feminist, a lesbian, and an author whose publisher hires Spenser to act as her bodyguard after she receives a death threat. Rachel detests everything that Spenser stands for and eventually fires him. Yet when she is kidnapped, Spenser feels compelled to find her. Spenser follows a code of chivalry in which a damsel in distress must be rescued, even if she doesn’t want to be. (There are many references to Lancelot, Galahad and other Arthurian knights.) I enjoy the way Parker shows us Spenser’s discomfort with a woman who doesn’t find him or his macho ways attractive.

There is very little mystery here: it’s fairly obvious who has kidnapped Rachel. Nonetheless, it’s fun to follow Spenser on his quest. Spenser’s significant other, Susan Silverman is on hand to explain Rachel to Spenser and Spenser to Rachel, but Spenser’s sidekick Hawk is only mentioned once or twice and does not appear. (Hawk had only been introduced to the series two books earlier, so perhaps Parker had not yet figured out how valuable a character he was.)

For readers familiar with Boston, many of the place names will conjure up fondly remembered images, but a person who has never been to that city will find little sense of place here. There is, however, a witty rant about the new (in 1980) Boston Public Library facade, as well as a nice scene in which the city is shut down by a blizzard so that Spenser must go on foot for several miles to find Rachel.

There are also some painfully funny scenes with Rachel sitting impatiently through a poorly-attended booksigning and being interviewed by a talk show host who has obviously not read her book. Most authors will groan in sympathy with her even as they are forced to smile at Parker’s wit.

Looking for Rachel Wallace also reminds us how far both the feminist and the gay rights movements have come in the last thirty years. It’s a nice slice of the late 1970s as well as a good read.

Review: Clouds of Witness (1926) – Dorothy L. Sayers

A renowned detective whose own brother, a Duke, is on trial for murdering his sister’s fiancé — that’s the position in which Lord Peter Wimsey finds himself in Clouds of Witness. This was the second Lord Peter mystery and the one that brought Sayers to the attention of the British public, largely because of its famous trial of the Duke of Denver in the House of Lords. (A British lord could only be tried by his peers.)

With almost too many clues, this book starts as a routine detective story, as Lord Peter and his friend Inspector Charles Parker spend their time tracing footprints and motorcycle tracks. But when Parker follows a clue to Paris and Peter begins to search the moors near the Duke’s hunting lodge, the mystery gains momentum and races to its climax in the House of Lords.

There is a lot of charm in Sayers’s writing. The friendship between Wimsey and Parker is nicely developed as is Parker’s growing attraction to Peter’s sister, Lady Mary. Sayers also depicts, with much humor, British attitudes of the times towards French manners and customs, as well as the upper class’s flirtation with Socialism (Lady Mary is member of the London Socialist Club). Some of the characters’ names are outright Dickensian, especially Mr. Grimethorpe of Griders Hole, and the trial lawyers Wrinching and Glibbery. And, as in many mysteries of the Golden Age, the echoes of World War I still reverberate. (The fiancé, Denis Cathcart, lost his fortune as a result of investments in France and Russia that disappeared during the war.)

Not the best of the Lord Peter mysteries, but a good introduction to Wimsey, his family (notably Lady Mary and the Dowager Duchess), and the usual cast of Sayers’s characters, with the unusual addition of two femme fatales.

Review: A Shilling for Candles (1936) – Josephine Tey

A Shilling For Candles is the second of Josephine Tey’s mysteries about Alan Grant. Tey was not yet the great writer that she would become in the years after World War II, when she published Daughter of Time, Brat Farrar, and The Franchise Affair, among others, but there are some wonderful scenes and an intriguing mystery nonetheless.

The body of a famous actress, Christine Clay, is found on the beach near the cottage she has borrowed for a time from a friend. Her nobleman-husband is out of the country at the time, but she has been sharing the cottage with Robert Tisdall, a young man who has recently squandered a fortune. When Clay’s will names Tisdall as the beneficiary of her ranch in California, he becomes Grant’s number one suspect and then a fugitive from the law. The middle part of the book, which follows the sixteen year old Erica Burgoyne as she tries to prove Tisdall’s innocence, has the quirky charm that Tey’s admirers have come to expect; Erica is indeed an engaging heroine. It’s worth noting that when Alfred Hitchcock adapted A Shilling for Candles for the screen (as the film Young and Innocent in 1937), he chose to dramatize the Erica/Tisdall story and pretty much left out the rest of the book (including Alan Grant).

Grant’s solving of the mystery of Clay’s death is a bit more routine, with an ending that seems to come too abruptly. The actress Marta Hallard, who figures in so many of the Grant mysteries, appears for the first time in this book, and is, as usual, Grant’s entree to the world of the theatre; it’s interesting to see her introduced with little fanfare, as if Tey did not yet realize that Marta would become Grant’s longtime (but platonic) friend.

Readers who love Tey’s later books will find this early installment in the Grant series an interesting step on the author’s path to greatness.

Review: Strong Poison (1930) – Dorothy L. Sayers

Rereading Strong Poison always makes me feel like I’m visiting with long-lost friends. Here they are again, the Sayers repertory company: Lord Peter, his valet, the ever-efficient Bunter, Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, the Dowager Duchess of Denver, the somewhat ridiculous but useful Freddy Arbuthnot, the masterful barrister, Impey Biggs, and the bibulous reporter, Salcombe Hardy. And, of course, the gentle humor and not-so-gentle erudition of the author.

This is the first book in the four part sequence that features Lord Peter Wimsey’s romance with Harriet Vane. But the romance doesn’t overshadow the mystery, which is an intriguing one. Who poisoned Harriet’s former lover, Philip Boyes? And how was the poison administered? Although Harriet does seem to know altogether too much about arsenic, Peter is sure she isn’t guilty, and he has thirty days to discover who is.

The real heroines of this story are the “superfluous” females, Miss Climpson and Miss Murchison. (In 1920’s England there were over a million women who would never marry because of the great numbers of men who were killed or maimed in World War One – they were thus “superfluous.”) Lord Peter, recognizing their intelligence and ingenuity, staffs a “typing bureau” with these women, and employs them to investigate matters where their talents are most useful. In Strong Poison, Miss Murchison finds employment as a typist for a suspicious lawyer (who is Boyes’s cousin) and Miss Climpson befriends the nurse of a wealthy, aged actress (who is Boyes’s great-aunt). Between them, they uncover the facts that point to the murderer. Then it is Lord Peter’s job to figure out how the murder was carried out.

Some of the scenes in this book are pure comedy: when the Bible-quoting Bill Rumm teaches Miss Murchison to how to pick locks, when Miss Climpson finds the great-aunt’s will by means of a seance, and when Peter’s family gathers at the ancestral home for Christmas dinner, Sayers is at her wittiest. The scenes among London’s bohemian set, which Sayers knew well, are wonderful social satire.

With ingenious plotting, clever dialogue, social commentary, and a little romance, Strong Poison is one of the tastiest of the Golden Age mysteries.

Review: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) – Agatha Christie

Before 1926, Agatha Christie had published several books about her detective, Hercule Poirot, but they weren’t selling spectacularly. Then came the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In the same year, Christie went missing for 10 days, finally turning up at a hotel in Harrogate, an apparent victim of amnesia. These two events coming so close upon each other made her famous. Since then, she’s been a household name.

It’s difficult to review Roger Ackroyd without giving the ending away. It’s a classic “country house murder” with a small circle of suspects, lots of red herrings, and a few well-placed clues. The ending will leave the reader either in awe of Christie’s ingenuity or absolutely furious at her.

Christie’s sense of humor is apparent in some very funny scenes between Dr. Sheppard and his spinster sister Caroline (who may have been the prototype for Miss Marple) and in a riotous Mah Jongg game. A few other colorful figures inhabit the book too: Colonel Blunt, who appears always to be looking at something far away (and who makes the book occasionally sound like a game of Clue), and a willful housemaid named Ursula Bourne.

Hercule Poirot is, of course, brought in to solve the murder mystery and notices the things that no one else does, but he is not quite as annoyingly smug here as he is in some of Christie’s books. Poirot’s mishandling of the English language and Sheppard’s mistaking him for a hairdresser add some amusing moments.

Ackroyd is perhaps not the best mystery Christie ever wrote, but it is a “must read” for any lover of classic mysteries.

BEWARE: Though I have avoided any spoilers, some of the comments that follow do give away the murderer.

Review: Sparkling Cyanide (1945) – Agatha Christie

Of the Golden Age grand dames, Agatha Christie has always been my least favorite. Though her plots are ingenious, I’ve often felt that Christie’s characters were two-dimensional stereotypes, chessmen to be moved around as the plot twists dictated. Her detective Poirot has frequently irritated me too, with his smug hints as to how much more he knows than I do. (I enjoy David Suchet’s portrayal of Poirot nonetheless.)
But I was really drawn into Sparkling Cyanide (also published as Remembered Death), the story of the murder of Rosemary Barton and the memories of each of the people present at her death, and I found it difficult to put down. I ended up really liking the characters of Iris and Sandra, and was taken by surprise by more than one of the plot twists.
The parallel structure of all the different characters’ narratives was nicely done. And as the detective, Colonel Race was a pleasant low-key alternative to Poirot. Though the final explanation of how the murder was accomplished was far-fetched and the actual modus operandi not clearly explained, the identity of the villain was convincing. I suspected him/her all along!
Christie’s books have sold billions of copies; for many, hers is a brand name synonymous with mystery. Published near the end of the second World War, Sparkling Cyanide has no allusions to the war or the deprivations it caused the British people, and was undoubtedly a welcome escape for the readers of that time. It still works that way for me.

Review: To Love and Be Wise (1950) – Josephine Tey

There are some mysteries that are actually more enjoyable upon rereading. To Love and Be Wise is one of those books. Once the reader knows the solution to the mystery, it’s a treat to go back and look for the clues that Tey provides. They’re all there, seeming to call out to the reader, “If only you had paid attention, it would have been so easy!”

Tey’s detective, Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, is called in find out what has become of a young American photographer, Leslie Searle, who disappeared while on a boat trip with a British radio commentator, Walter Whitmore. Has Whitmore killed Searle and disposed of his body in the river? Or did Searle simply walk away one night, leaving Whitmore behind to be blamed for his death? All that Grant knows for sure is that they were seen quarreling and that Searle has spent a lot of time recently with Whitmore’s fiancée. Perhaps someone else has killed the enigmatic American? There are certainly many possible suspects in the little artist colony of Salcott St. Mary.

One of the joys of most of Tey’s writing is her sense of humor — not the laugh-out-loud kind, but rather the gentle wit that makes the reader chuckle with recognition. Her description of Salcott St. Mary’s evolution from sleepy little village to “occupied territory” as the writers and actors from London moved in, for example, reminded me of the fate of several Connecticut towns I know. And when the very successful author Lavinia Fitch, dictating her umpteenth romance novel, discovers that she has had her heroine wear high heels to play tennis, I recalled some of the authorial blunders I’ve seen in books, and even some I’ve made myself. Lavinia’s reaction to her own heroine (“Who cares what the silly moron does!”) is perfect.

This book was published the year before The Daughter of Time and includes some of the same characters; both Grant’s sidekick Williams and the glamorous Marta Hallard make important contributions to the solution of the mystery. Daughter of Time fans will also be amused to see that the authors whose books sit unread on Grant’s bedside table in Daughter of Time appear as characters in To Love and Be Wise.

The wonderful twist at the end of the story is just one more reason to treasure this book. One of the members of my mystery readers group called To Love and Be Wise “elegant.” It is: there is elegance in its construction and elegance in the writing.

Review: The Maltese Falcon (1930) – Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon was published in 1930, first in The Black Mask magazine and later in book form, but it still holds up fairly well for the contemporary reader. The true mystery in the book is not what or where the Falcon is; the mystery is Sam Spade, its principal character. What kind of man is he? Is he as amoral as he would lead his acquaintances to believe? Does he follow some personal code of honor? Hammett never lets the reader into Sam’s head, so not until the end do we know what Sam is thinking or why he decides to join the chase for the “black bird.”

One of the problems with reading The Maltese Falcon today is how familiar it seems. Many of us have seen John Huston’s classic film version of the novel, so it difficult not to hear Humphrey Bogart or Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet speaking the dialogue as one reads. (Huston used most of Hammett’s dialogue verbatim.) But more than that, so many of the private eye novels that came after the Falcon were influenced by it, so it seems less special to us than it did to its original audience. Hammett’s lean prose and use of slang, in fact, helped initiate the “hard-boiled” detective genre.

The depiction of women in the book may also cause some readers to groan. There are three major female characters; Brigid, the femme fatale who gets Spade involved in the case: Effie, the Girl Friday who helps and encourages Spade; and Iva, the unfaithful wife of Spade’s partner. Spade doesn’t treat any of them very well; it’s likely that his actions toward the likeable Effie would today be grounds for a sexual harassment suit. But again, one has to keep a historical perspective: Not till the 1980s would writers like Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky turn the hard-boiled version of women on its head.

Nevertheless, Sam Spade and company lead us on a merry chase as they bargain and scheme (and murder) to get their hands on the priceless treasure that is the Maltese Falcon. And this reader still enjoys that chase.

Review: The Daughter of Time (1951)- Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey, along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh, was one of the grandes dames of the Golden Age of British Mystery. The Daughter of Time is considered her greatest masterpiece by some critics, while others have deemed it highly overrated.

Written in 1951, this is the fifth book that Tey wrote about Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Alan Grant. No ordinary policeman, Grant is the darling of maitre d’s and sophisticated theatre people. In the hospital with a broken leg, he grows bored with reading and staring at the ceiling, until actress and friend, Marta Hallard, brings him a pile of portraits with which to amuse himself. Grant, who is an expert at reading faces, becomes obsessed with one portrait, which turns out to be that of Richard the Third, the villain of the Shakespeare play, supposedly responsible for the murder of his two nephews. Grant is sure that the face cannot belong to a man capable of such evil, and, with an American graduate student to do his legwork, he sets out to find who really murdered the two young princes five hundred years earlier.

There is a great deal of conversation, most of it witty, and an almost total lack of action in this book. For the contemporary American reader, there is also the daunting challenge of following the events of the War of the Roses that Tey assumed her British readers would have learned in school; keeping all the Edwards and Henrys straight is no easy task, despite the family trees included in the book.

Many question the accuracy of Tey’s history, but members of the Richard the Third Society, with chapters in both Great Britain and the United States, applaud her work in redeeming Richard’s good name. The Daughter of Time has so much charm, with its perceptive observations of the tedium of hospital life and its vivid (and funny) characterizations of even the most minor characters, that it hardly matters to the reader whether the book is historically accurate. My experience with mystery groups is that readers either love this book or find it unbearably tedious. (And while people say they enjoy Christie and Sayers, “love” is the word that I hear most often about Tey.) I count myself among those who love it.