Patricia Wentworth

Poison in the Pen by Patricia Wentworth

/ Caron Allan

I always love to reread old favourites. Poison in the Pen by Patricia Wentworth is just that: everything I love in one volume.

  • elderly amateur detective – check
  • hint of romance – check – though not as much as usual for Wentworth
  • cosy mystery – yup
  • clues – oh yes
  • red herrings – check
  • a host of daft characters – check
  • poison pen letters – what’d not to love? Though I was sad the letters weren’t quoted – too offensive, maybe?
  • increasingly exasperated professional detective – I love a stroppy copper who just wants to get home
  • the killer speaks

Now obviously I can’t tell you whodunit, or there will be no point in you reading it. So with the help of mime I mean, carefully edited text, I can comment. So take a look at this:

As you can tell from the title, this is a poison pen letter mystery. It’s set in an English village in the mid-1950s, so quite late as Wentworth books go, she’d been a published author since 1910, and sadly passed away at the beginning of 1961.

(Note to self, If I’d started earlier, I might have got 50 years of writing under my belt too… So envious.)

The village setting means we can guess at many of the situations and some of the characters here.

There’s a retired military man in a big house, he may have been a brilliant army Colonel but he is rubbish at relationships. he really wanted a dolly-bird half his age to look good on his arm and to make sure the house was tidy. Sadly, his chosen love is mainly interested in having a good time, and is fed up with her elderly husband, who is clearly BORING. (If he’s so smart, why did he choose her? Conveniently we can nod to one another sagely and say, as they do in the book, ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’)

But – the fish-out-of-water over-dressed, colourful wife effortlessly puts everyone against her, not doing herself any favours by refusing to make herself pleasant or conventional. Wentworth describes her wearing of bright colours, making her literally the scarlet woman, giving her loads of make-up,  and making her determined to not give a damn. Here she is being interviewed by the police about her secrets.

But has she acted on these secrets, or the urge to get rid of her annoying husband and grabbing the money, to slope off into the bright lights with her boyfriend, who incidentally was about to be married to someone else… We need more information…

Almost the entirety of the rest of the cast are single ladies – widows and spinsters all – and all a bit bored with life in a village with insufficient scandal/bingo/internet facilities to keep them busy.

They knit. They sew. They garden. They care for children. They cook. They clean. And they are – let’s be honest – a bit too fond of a good gossip.

Cue the poison pen letters.

For me, the disappointing part of this story was that everyone was far too polite to let us know precisely what was written int hem. There are suggestions of infidelity, and immorality, and secret yearnings and guilty secrets, but no juicy details. Oh well, you can’t have it all, I guess. It’s enough for us to know that one poor girl has killed herself because of the letters, and two more deaths follow in quick succession, leading us to question the ‘suicide’ verdict of the first death.

Miss Silver, Wentworth’s elderly lady detective, comes to stay in the village under the guise of being a dotty but not very well off old woman in need of a change of scene. She knits her way through scenes and observes the inhabitants acutely. She dispenses kindness to those who need it, and has no truck with those who get a bit above themselves, especially overbearing men.

Miss Silver is a tricky character. She’s clearly not ‘elderly’ in our modern sense, I’d say she could be in her 60s in this book. She’s not frail, and her mind is a steel trap. She’s deeply religious, compassionate, and fierce about getting justice for those who can’t get it for themselves. She was in early life a governess, and she can kill an attitude with a single look. She has a couple of irritating quirks, but I think this is just the difference between early 20th century attitudes and now. I find her far warmer and more loving than Miss Marple, for example, and she is surrounded by people, many of them very much younger, who admire and love her. And with her understanding of human nature, she sees everything.

As I said before, I love a poison pen letter. Forgive me for plugging my own, here. In A Meeting With Murder, my character Dee Gascoigne is staying in a village where poison pen letters are doing the rounds. Dee doesn’t really see what the issue is with these letters. Her friend Cissie explains:

Dee still shook her head. ‘I just don’t see why people get upset. I mean, why can’t they just put the letters in the dustbin or on the fire and forget about them?’

Cissie smiled. ‘Think about it like this,’ she said. ‘Imagine you lived in a tiny little place like this, where you knew everyone. Then imagine one day you opened a letter, you didn’t know who it was from, for they never sign these poison pen letters. And when you looked at it, it said something like, ‘I know you killed your mother to get all her money’. Think how you’d feel, to get something like that. And you’d know that somewhere in the village was a person who really thought it was true, but you didn’t know who it was and you didn’t know how many others they’d tell. And suppose you were frightened everyone would believe them, and that they were all looking at you too. Suppose your friends began to hear rumours and believed them. Suppose they stopped speaking to you and began to avoid you…’

Dee stared at Cissie and her delicate colour faded from her face so quickly Cissie was afraid she had gone too far to make her point. She felt cruel. She reached out a hand to pat Dee’s arm. ‘There, there, dear, don’t let it upset you. I was just trying to explain…’

In a soft, distressed voice, Dee said, ‘But that’s horrible, I’ve never thought of it like that before.’

‘Exactly, dearie. But that’s the kind of wickedness these letters contain. Now imagine getting three like that in a fortnight. And everyone you know, everyone you meet, you’d look at them and think, was it you what sent me that? You’d feel like you was being watched, my dear, and you wouldn’t know where to turn or who to go to, nor would you be able to sleep for fear of what the next day would bring, and you’d wonder if people knew and if they thought it was true. Even I’ve had one. Accused me of stealing money out of the birthday cards that were put in the post. And I’ve never stolen a thing in my life.’ Cissie pulled her shoulders back and lifted her head, the very model of moral rectitude.

For me, it’s the psychological aspect of the poison pen mystery that is most intriguing. I LOVE the ‘why’? In Wentworth’s book, we reach the final unmasking of the killer who is, of course, the writer of the letters. In a near-perfect summation of the ‘otherness’ of a murderer, Wentworth manages it beautifully: (Anon is because I didn’t want to say who it was – no spoilers here!)

So go on, read an old-school favourite this Christmas, and lose yourself in your most-loved tropes, busybodies, and village settings!

Happy Christmas!

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And now it’s over to you…

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

As you know, I write genre fiction – that is to say it fits neatlyish into a specific genre type of book – I write mysteries. My books are not, by any stretch of the imagination, literary, nor are they ‘general’ what ever that is. Some writers are quite apologetic and embarrassed that they don’t write something high-brow. Not me. I believe that genre fiction has huge benefits and there’s no need to feel that I ‘only’ write mysteries: ‘Oh it’s only a mystery’ or ‘I really only like romances, I’m afraid.’

You see, I believe that books are lifesavers. Books are companionship for the lonely, entertainment for those who are bored. It doesn’t matter if you can’t hear, or if you can’t walk, if you’re old or young, you can enjoy a book. And if you can’t see, you can listen to audiobooks. Books can be a comfort and a much-needed means of escape from what is sometimes an anxious, or difficult world. We all need a break – and a book is perfect for that.

I had cancer a few years back, and whilst I had tests, surgery, appointments, sat in busy, soulless waiting rooms, and anxiously waited for a prognosis, I read books. It was a relief to get out of myself and my thoughts and into a world where the only bad things that happened would be solved by a detective and the villain locked up. Bliss! A few hours free of my own troubles was just what the doctor ordered. I realised as never before just how wonderful it was to get lost in a good book. I was so grateful to the authors who offered me that respite.

I was lucky, and I am now free of cancer and healthy, but my love and respect for books and their authors will never die.

So a little while ago, I asked my mailing list subscribers some questions about what they love. Here are a few of the most popular responses I had:

Q1. I asked, What is the best thing about finding a new book you love?

You said:

  • Finding a new book can be tough, and it’s important to find relatable characters, an engrossing plot and a style that appeals.
  • Many people said they were drawn by the cover – which is exactly what they are designed to do – to lure you in!
  • For some, finding a new book or series is like meeting a new friend.
  • When readers find a new book or series, they love to tell their friends and family about it!
  • Readers like the idea that the book will be theirs to read again and again, and to refer to, a book that adds to their knowledge or understanding (mainly reference books)
  • People love the sense of starting out on a journey, of ‘meeting’ new people and having adventures along the way. A kind of vicarious holiday.

Q2. Do you always read the same genre, or do you like a lot of different types of book?

You were largely split over this, with many people saying they read anything and everything, and others stating that they only ever read the same kind of books. I’m largely that way myself. I do enjoy the odd history book and classics, and poetry, but almost always I turn to crime, figuratively, of course!

Q3. When do you read?

Again, responses were quite split between those who read during the day, usually with lunch or a coffee or cup of tea, and those who read almost entirely at night before going to sleep. Some people read during commuter journeys on trains and buses. Now that I’m at home during the day, I tend to read with coffee or lunch. When I was working in the big wide world, I used to read on the bus or when I had a lunch break. It’s so nice not to have to sit on a bus for hours on end anymore.

Q4. Actual book or eReader?

The odds were almost overwhelmingly stacked in favour of ‘actual’ paper, hold-in-your-hand-and-sniff-the-pages books. Most people who read on eReaders said they did so mainly for the convenience. I must admit I’m the same. My trusty eReader goes with me when I travel or am away from home, but when I’m at home and reading in comfort, it’s always a ‘real’ book. The great thing about eReaders of course, is your nearest and dearest have no idea just how many eBooks you’ve bought – that little secret is between you and your gadget. One person pointed out that the advantage of reading at night on an eReader is that you don’t need to have a light on in the room, so you don’t disturb your partner. A great point!

Q5. What are your other favourite past-times?

Wow we have a lot of pastimes! Here are just a few:

Writing! Reading, obviously. Walking the dog, taking pics of your cats, gardening, flower-arranging, cooking, various arts and crafts including model-making, embroidery, card-making, painting in oils, painting in acrylics, crochet, knitting, drawing, sewing, photography. Then we had the DIYers, the mad exercise buffs, the tennis-players, the golfers, the swimmers, the dancers, the joggers, the cyclists. You like playing board games and card games, going to the pub, spending time with family and friends, eating out, sport, sport and more sport. You love travel. You love learning new things at evening classes. Some of you like to help others in the community, or volunteer in charity shops or care homes. You play musical instruments, you babysit your grandkids, and all kinds of other amazing stuff. You guys are seriously impressive! No wonder you sometimes need to sit down with a book and just chill.

And lastly…

Q6. What are your favourite TV shows, if you watch TV?

Again, a huge range of results here: people gave general responses such as drama, crime, reality shows, documentaries, comedy etc. but we also got some very specific shows mentioned: Peaky Blinders, Line of Duty, Gogglebox, Brooklyn 99, Poirot, Family Guy, Outlander, Once Upon A Time, Bridgerton (I know why you like that!), The Bay, QI, Mock The Week (RIP – and yes I did sign the petition…), Would I Lie To You, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, The Great British Bake Off, Strictly Come Dancing, Made In Chelsea, Any Star Trek, Star Wars, or Marvel thing, Famalam (not for those who don’t like very, VERY naughty words… but truly hilarious), Unforgotten, any football, all cricket and rugby, True Crime documentaries, and so many more…

I hope you find this as fascinating as I did. Some of the responses were so similar to my own, I feel we could easily be best buds.

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And I think we all know why Jane Austen adaptations are so popular these days…

Reading a mystery

/ Caron Allan / 4 Comments

As you know, I mainly write cozy mysteries, some set in the 1930s or 1960s, some in the ‘now’, and one even set in both the present and the past. Cozy mysteries or cozy crime is the genre where I feel most at home, and those are the kind of books I love to read. I have been reading this genre since I was about 9 or 10 years old, when I began first with the Famous Five, then the Secret Seven, then on to Patricia Wentworth and Agatha Christie. I have always loved the idea of detecting along with the ‘official’ sleuth, trying to get to the clues and figure out ‘whodunit’ before the book’s detective.

If you ever get stuck for books to read, maybe cast your eye over this list and see if there are any names that are new to you. These are the mystery authors whose books I enjoy the most, some are old and some are modern. When you find an author you really like, do you read their books over and over again, or do you remember the too well to do that?

I love to revisit old favourites, but I have a pretty good memory for characters and plots, so I often remember a book too well to enjoy it unless a lot of years have gone by. There are some books where I just reread the beginning – I love a good beginning that sets up the story perfectly and for the reader, there is that delicious sense of anticipation. But I do reread books that I know really well, sometimes I enjoy watching something unfold on the page even though I know exactly what to expect and when.

So then, my favourite mystery authors, here we go, and in no particular order:

Agatha Christie: obvs you’ve all read her books! But have you tried Death Comes As The End – set in ancient Egypt, it’s an interesting variation on the classic murder mystery genre. My personal favourites are Evil Under the Sun, Death Comes As the End, and Death on The Nile.

Patricia Wentworth: if you like ‘em traditional with plenty of romance, these are for you! Often overlooked these days though her books have been enjoying a new lease of life through reprinting. My favourites are: The Girl In The Cellar, The Listening Eye and The Chinese Shawl.

Mary Stewart: not a cozy as such, her books fall into the category of romantic suspense along with authors like Phyllis Whitney. Of Mary’s books, I really enjoy: The Gabriel Hounds, Madam, Will You Talk? and Nine Coaches Waiting. She does that thing where she uses a quote from scripture or Shakespeare as a chapter subtitle. I love that!

Phyllis Whitney: this lady wrote zillions of books before she passed away just a few years ago. My favourites are The Red Carnelian, Columbella and The Turquoise Mask.

Another romantic suspense author is M M Kaye. Look for her ‘Death in…’ short series of 6 books. For me, the best ones are Death in Zanzibar, Death in the Andamans, and Death in Berlin. Try them and let me know if you have a different favourite!

Coming back to modern cozies, how about trying Helena Dixon? I am a big fan of her Miss Underhay series, which like my own books, are set in Britain in the 1930s. Book 1 is called Murder at The Dolphin Hotel, and although you can read them in any order, reading from the beginning will enhance your pleasure as there are continuing storylines that carry on from one book to the next.

Don’t forget to give Sara Rosett a go – she has a couple of series of mysteries, and of course you mustn’t forget Frances Brody, Vaseem Khan and Julia Chapman. Or Julie Wassmer’s Whitstable Pearl series, now wonderfully adapted for TV and starring Kerry Godliman as Pearl.

Or you might try something a little less cozy – perhaps try Ann Cleeves, Abir Mukherjee, Robert Galbraith or Val McDermid to name some of my personal favourite authors.

Let me know how you get on! Who are your favourite mystery authors? Happy reading!

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The world of the murder mystery

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

Not sure this guy is really a detective, or just a businessman who is late for a meeting.

As you may know, I love traditional detective fiction aka murder mysteries. You can get mysteries where there’s no murder, but if the stakes aren’t high, my attention isn’t grabbed. And if you’re here, reading this, the chances are, you probably like them too!

In the old Golden Age of detective fiction, there is generally a Countess clutching her pearls, casting disapproving looks at the corpse leaking blood onto her Aubusson carpet, and declaring that surely the perpetrator is some stranger, some tramp or wandering vagabond. ‘It can’t possibly be one of us.’

For me, the thrill of these books is the certain knowledge that, yes, it is most definitely one of ‘us’. One of these characters, outwardly so genteel, so polite, offering around the drinks decanter, or standing when a lady comes into the room, or smiling pleasantly and asking after the vicar’s marrows, it’s one of them. Most of them have known each other for years and see each other almost every day out walking the dog or playing tennis, or at drinks parties or dinner parties, at bridge evenings and coffee mornings. (Because this is the life of villagers of that era, we feel.)

An old lady with glasses can be the rich countess, or the village spinster/busybody. She doesn’t mind whose role she plays so long as she’s busy and well paid in scones and tea.

Like the suspects now before us, we too would like to believe that those around us are just like us, and thereby comes the assumption that no one ‘like us’ could possibly do something so sordid as to kill another person. Because such an action implies loss of self-control, unacceptable levels of emotion, and of course, a denial of the never-say-die attitude that instils us with hope for a better tomorrow. Or if not better, then at least no worse.

So when someone—let’s call him Major Wainwright—is found underneath the billiard table with his head bashed in or a hat pin piercing his eye to skewer his brain, we automatically think, no one I know could possibly commit such an act. Therefore, it could only have been done by someone ‘not from here’. Here endeth the first act of our little fiction.

Sorry about that graphic image, by the way, that fictional situation got really bad, really fast, didn’t it? I’ve been reading Agatha Christie this week, in case you’re wondering. And while I’ve got you here, I’ve no idea why it’s always a major. I can only assume that a warrant officer or a corporal just doesn’t have the same ring?

But when we look at those cast members or story characters around us, we suddenly think, how well do we really know them? This is what writers sometimes call the second act world of the ‘unknown’ or the ‘new world’, where we suddenly see everyone as different and unknowable.

Let’s look at this bunch of weirdos and oddballs.

Take the major’s wife, for example. She’s known for her knitting circles and good works. As is the vicar’s wife, busily visiting the elderly and infirm, taking care of the vulnerable.

The major enjoys civil war reenactments, often heard to say ‘That’s not how I would have done it.’

Then there’s the vicar himself. Does he really need to spend so much time shut away in his office muttering scriptures or Latin phrases to himself? What’s he really doing in there?

What about Miss Simmons, the village busybody, who knows everyone and everyone’s history. They say she has a heart of gold, but is she really over that old romance? After all, she’s never married, does she still carry a torch for that certain someone? these country villages seem to always have a nosy old woman. (Often that’s me.)

What about the village doctor—I bet he knows a secret or two.

Then there are the rest who can change from story to story, as required: there might be a visiting artist, or an aunt from another village, or perhaps a daughter just returned from university to care for an elderly father who once threatened the organist with his walking stick. And of course we have the organist himself. But don’t stop there, there’s the butler, the maid… oh all sorts of people. Maybe a weekending couple, he is ‘something in the city’ and she is a famous model, renowned for her torrid affairs before she settled down to marry a man twenty years older than herself. then there might be a gay couple, known locally as ‘artistic’, (that was euphemism my mum used for a couple of gay men we knew when I was a child in the early 60s) in those unenlightened days, they may have been viewed with suspicion.

But in spite of all these people with their secret backgrounds, their secrets thoughts, ideas and attitudes, we still keep coming back to the same thing: surely no one I know would commit such a vicious crime?

But how well do I really know them? As I watch them gathered around the corpse, their various emotions—triumph, relief, satisfaction, fear, horror, dismay, anger, sorrow—fleetingly appearing on their faces, I’m forced to admit it feels as though I am in a room filled with strangers.

It’s the job of acts 2 and 3 to unmask all their carefully concealed pains and plans and desires to arrive at the truth. Any one of them could be the killer…

And for readers of mysteries, that’s the beauty of it!

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Patricia Wentworth’s The Chinese Shawl – a recent reread

/ Caron Allan / 4 Comments

I’ve always loved reading, and mysteries have always been my ‘thing’. Of all the authors in all the bookshops and libraries in all the world, Agatha Christie and Patricia Wentworth remain my favourites by a very long chalk, with Patricia a wee bit out in front.

Why do I love them so much when a) there are thousands—literally–of modern authors out there, and b) these traditional mysteries seem rather tired and old-fashioned by today’s standards?

Obviously I don’t believe they are tired and old-fashioned. I mean, yes, the author styles are out of touch with our era, and the roles and attitudes of characters are sometimes really horrifying. But for me, it’s the irresistible lure of the era: a time of long frocks, a time of afternoon tea, dinner parties, bridge evenings (I can’t even play bridge) and so forth. Yes, the plots can seem tame, contrived and are often insular, but as Christie’s Miss Marple often comments, ‘you see every aspect of life in a small village.’ And what we need to remember is that these stories were written, some of them, almost hundred years ago, and were fresh, new and very exciting at that time—the plots weren’t overdone or overused – they were more or less brand new, and I’m sure at the time, many of the plots would have seemed innovative.

Patricia Wentworth’s works are a wee bit tamer and even more moralistic than Agatha Christie’s, but we need to remember that there is a little over twenty years between their dates of birth, so I would definitely place Wentworth squarely in the previous generation of mid-Victorian Britain. Like many of Christie’s settings, Wentworth’s stories often revolve around a country house, and a small village, and her sleuth, Miss Silver is in many respects quite similar to Miss Marple. I like a village or country house setting; for me it’s like viewing a sample of the whole of society under a microscope. I love to see how ordinary (kind of, if rather posher than me!) people react in an apparently ‘safe’ setting when something goes horribly wrong.

I often reread these books. I have read all of Christie’s works at least twice, often many more times than that, and the majority of Wentworth’s many more times than that, although I’m still working my way through her non-series books. I have five or six different copies of some of Wentworth’s books, all with different covers, from different eras, and one of them is quite valuable. I won’t tell you which in case you nick it. (Clue 1: It cost nearly as much as my wedding dress. Clue 2: I got married in 1981 and my wedding dress didn’t cost nearly as much as it would have done today, but even so my mother gasped…)

I recently decided to reread The Chinese Shawl by Patricia Wentworth. As you can see, I used quite a few sticky notes as I read it and made notes for my own fun/blog writing at the same time. I wish I could say there was a special coded reason for using pink then yellow sticky notes, but it’s simply that I ran out of pink!

The Chinese Shawl was published in 1943, placing it in the latter third of Wentworth’s writing career. Her first novel, a romance, was published in 1910. She died at the beginning of 1961.

There’s something a bit different about reading a book if you are a writer, and also, if you’ve read it several times before. As well as an enjoyable read, it’s been an interesting, and useful experience. Different things struck me this time. Here are a few of them: (btw – contains spoilers!)

Point 1. Wentworth is a great one for setting the scene. Her murders seldom happen as quickly as, for example, Christie’s. We get a lot of background—sometimes I feel maybe there’s too much, but it does mean that by the time the reader reaches the murder scene, they know the main characters quite well, and are deeply immersed in the story. The murder quite often doesn’t take place until almost halfway through the book, and sometimes we don’t meet the sleuth, Miss Silver, until that point, and often even later, although in this one, she is already there, in situ as a house guest, from chapter ten.

I also feel quite often in Wentworth’s books, that you can see the murder coming. But it’s not in an annoying, ‘Der—I knew that was going to happen’ kind of way. It’s more like watching a car crash in slow motion: you can see the inevitable outcome and are powerless to stop it. You can only watch it happen in a kind of fascinated horror. (Not that they are gory or horrifying in that sense.)

Point 2. The ‘sleuth’ is Miss Maud Silver. Like Christie’s Miss Marple, Miss Silver is an elderly lady, a retired former governess who primly knits her way through interviews and afternoon teas and picks up all sorts of gossip, clues and insights as she does so. She is an acute observer of human life, and a highly moral, highly principled person. In fact sometimes she’s a bit annoying in her manner which can seem outmoded by today’s standards. But she is a treasure, too. Her main advantage is that she is often ignored, overlooked or just plain underestimated. Miss Silver often makes remarks that I find hilarious, such as this one from Lonesome Road (pub. 1939) ‘In their own way, men can be quite useful.’ Men as a breed are for Miss Silver largely a closed book. She remarks somewhere that the chief difference between men and women is that men require two eggs for breakfast instead of one. 

Point 3. In this book, the victim is not a very nice person, and so it’s hard to mourn her fate. But Wentworth never condones murder or violence, and even in the death of a nasty piece of work, there is a righteous indignation and a determination to get to the bottom of things. For Wentworth and her detectives, nothing ever justifies murder, and that’s a position I thoroughly applaud.

Point 4. Obviously, we have a sidekick. Usually a sidekick is a ‘Watson’ type character. In this case, it’s the official investigator – Randal March. He is not my favourite sidekick for Miss Silver—he is arrogant, pompous and (usually) far too self-satisfied. But then, maybe that’s more realistic for the era? All I can say is, thank goodness for Miss Silver, his former governess, as she usually takes him down a peg of two. In this book he has risen to the rank of Superintendent. When it comes to a supporting cast for Miss Silver, I prefer her other sidekick, Sergeant Frank Abbott, and if absolutely necessary, I can even put up with Abbott’s boss, Inspector Ernest Lamb, who is devoted to his three daughters. It’s a refreshing change to have a detective who is a family man with no massive issues.

Point 5. There is a wealth of period detail in this book, from fashion and etiquette to black-out regulations of WW2. I love this stuff, we get a really strong sense of the era and feel so deeply entrenched in the book. There is always a strong romantic, (quite an old-fashioned, polite romance,) thread running through the mystery. What I particularly like is the contrast between the dutiful ‘war work’ of bitter Miss Agnes Fane and that of Miss Silver:

Miss Fane surveyed it (Miss Silver’s knitting) with disfavour.

‘You should be knitting comforts for the troops.’

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

‘Babies must have vests,’ she remarked in a mild but stubborn tone.

For me this sums up perfectly the difference between Miss Silver and Agnes Fane, the alpha female of the story. Agnes Fane is all about being seen to be right and perfect in every way, and above reproach. She craves status, yet her heart is in many ways cold though obsessive. Miss Silver, dowdy, slightly irritating, definitely overly moralistic and governessy, nevertheless does everything she does from a place of love, which is why, for me, she is the best sleuth. She is devoted to her former charges, their loved ones and their growing families.

And lest we forget, she’s a working girl, a gentlewoman come down in the world due the premature death of her parents and the very real need to earn her own living. Unlike, for example, Miss Marple, she is not an amateur detective who does it because she’s nosy or in the right place at the right time, she hires herself out at a decent rate as a ‘private enquiry agent’. This has given her the means to afford a nice flat in London and a maid to take care of her. Girl power! She don’t need no man!

Point 6. As in any good mystery, there are a number of suspects. The murdered woman leaves behind her a slew of cast aside lovers, a divorced husband, the wife of a cast aside lover and another chap’s girlfriend, not to mention other possibilities. It seems as though almost anyone could have carried out the dastardly deed. And then of course, comes the twist—maybe she was killed by mistake? That leaves the already wide door thrown even wider. Who killed her, and why?

Point 7. Actually, when I said sidekick, I should have said sidekicks, because front and centre in this story is our heroine, Laura Fane, and her new beau, a former lover of the murder victim, all-round war hero, Carey Desborough. Actually the romance between these two flourishes within the space of a day or two—it is love at first sight, and it’s essential for the lovebirds that they help Miss Silver get to the bottom of the crime so everyone can live happily ever after. Well, almost everyone. And a rather unbelievable attempt to set up first one of these as the baddie then the other fails to convince the reader, and so we know we can rest happily in the fact of their happiness.

Point 8. Really my only criticism of Wentworth’s books generally, and this one in particular is her frequent use of that hateful tool ‘the had I but known/little did they know’. I hate this ploy with a passion. And it crops up here several times. On top of that, we almost always have a phrase along the lines of ‘little did they know but the events of that evening were to be sifted and gone over with the utmost care, and everything they did and said would be held up to the light and examined.’ *sigh* Moving on…

Point 9. Wentworth loves a dramatic ending. And so do I. Although I knew ‘whodunnit’ because I’ve read this book loads of times, I still savoured the outcome. There is too, generally a nice ‘wrap-up’ scene where the good guys take tea with Miss Silver at the end and she expounds and moralises, a good egg teaching her pupils. This one is slightly different as the wrap-up is with Randal March, but it’s still good to get insight into their thoughts about the crime and its resolution. And of course, the two lovebirds go off together into the sunset, but it’s a slightly scaled back happiness—after all, there’s still a war on. A very satisfying ending.

As a review, I know this isn’t much cop. I’m hopeless at reviewing, but if it’s made you think, ‘I might read that’, then my work here is done. Enjoy!

Other of Wentworth’s best works include:

Lonesome Road

The Listening Eye

The Alington Inheritance

The Clock Strikes Twelve

And there are loads more, both series, and non-series.

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My Mystery Author Heroes: Patricia Wentworth

/ Caron Allan / 4 Comments

At the end of last year, I made a little foray into the world of Golden Age mystery writers, looking briefly at the work of several well-known exponents of the genre, and in more depth at Agatha Christie, her life and her work.

This week I want to tell you a little bit about my favourite detective story writer, Patricia Wentworth, known mainly for her mysteries, but who also wrote romances.

Patricia Wentworth was her pen name. She was born as Dora Amy Elles in 1878 in India, and was educated at Blackheath School for Girls, now Blackheath High School, London.

She married quite young and had her first daughter. Her husband had two sons from a former relationship, one (or possibly both) of whom died in WWI. Her husband died in 1906, when she was still only in her late twenties. Wentworth moved to Camberley, Surrey, England, where she would live until her death in 1961. Wentworth met her second husband and married in 1920, and had another daughter. It was in Camberley Wentworth wrote most of her novels, with her second husband George writing down what she dictated.

Today she is mostly remembered for her 32 murder mysteries featuring private inquiry agent Miss Maud Silver, a former governess, keen observer of human nature and quoter of Tennyson and the Bible. But there are more than 40 other books which don’t feature detective Miss Silver, mostly mysteries, but there are some historical romances, and some poetry and stories for children.

For many years, I found it very difficult to obtain Wentworth’s books. But with the recent rise of small print runs and small presses, and the resurgence in interest in Golden Age and traditional mysteries, her work is enjoying a new popularity and reaching new audiences. Hodder have reissued the majority of the Miss Silver books over the last ten years, with Open Road Media and Dean Street Press publishing virtually all of the other books between them. Readers are often frustrated to find that the books have different titles in the UK and the USA, so please check carefully that you’re not buying the same book twice under different titles. There is an excellent bibliography on the Patricia Wentworth page in Wikipedia, along with publication dates.

Her work has often dismissed as being ‘old-fashioned’, ‘middle-class’, ‘tame’ and dated, but nevertheless I would say these books should not be so easily set aside.

To begin with, some of these books first appeared more than a hundred years ago, and are still popular. A Marriage Under The Terror won the Andrew Melrose prize in 1910, which earned her the handsome reward of two hundred and fifty guineas, quite a sum in those days. There was much speculation about her use of a pseudonym, claiming that it was impossible to keep her real identity a secret.

So we need to see them within their own era. I would agree with critics that some of the novels are not as strong, or as innovative, as others, that several plot devices reoccur (notably the indoor, uncovered well), and that from time to time, ‘the butler did it’. They are strongly romantic, which for me is a good thing, so they don’t fit comfortably into traditional generic categories, but again that is something that current trends are more flexible about. I know some readers find them too sweet, too and that there is not enough guts and gore—but hey, they’re cosies, get used to it.

The strengths of the books lies in the portrayal of the era, and in the way many of the characters are forced to find their way through unfamiliar and difficult circumstances. They are not all wealthy, they are not all high-born, artistic, celebrities or otherwise fortunate. The mysteries are pleasing, often very clever, and the reader can detect along with the protagonist. The writing is intelligent, clear, and lacking in long flowery descriptions, which I personally detest.

I recommend them for students of creative writing who want to improve their dialogue and character writing skills, their plotting skills or anyone who wants to write novels set in the recent past, or for readers who love a traditional mystery without body parts being lopped off, or strong language, or who prefers romance without sex scenes, or who likes something with a strong sense of morality and a satisfying mystery.

If you want to give them a go, below are a couple of my favourite titles:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/caronallan/patricia-wentworth-books/

 

 

 

 

 

 

What was the ‘Golden Age’ of British mystery writing?

/ Caron Allan / 2 Comments

We sometimes hear or read this term, ‘so-and-so was a Golden Age author’ or ‘in the Golden Age style’. But what was the Golden Age? When was it, what did it mean, who were the exponents of the Golden Age, and is it still relevant today? Here is a (necessarily VERY brief) overview of the term and its legacy.

When was it? Well, according to some sources I’ve studied, (Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William DeAndrea, Google and Wikipedia, obviously 🙂 Twentieth Century Crime Fiction by Lee Horsley and The Oxford Companion to English Literature edited by Margaret Drabble) there is a general consensus that The Golden Age of mystery/detective fiction began in 1920 and ended in 1939 at the outbreak of World War ll.

What was it, and why was it new or different? Although there had been notable forays into detective fiction in the nineteenth century eg Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins to name just a couple, a lot of fiction had been in the form of short stories, usually with an ‘improving’ moral or message, or as novella-length, often rather highbrow, works. Essays and poetry, philosophy and criticism had been popular for decades. But the growth of a literate public, the rise of libraries and more disposable income, led to a desire for lighter, more accessible works of a purely entertaining nature. Mysteries became socially acceptable too, and were enjoyed by the well-to-do and well-educated, as well as by working class men and women.

Mass market fiction or pulp fiction was no longer a thing to be scorned, but became more generously regarded. The detective element of the story transformed it into an intellectual exercise. I would perhaps suggest that, following the trauma of World War l, detective stories provided a means of sanitising violence and putting danger at arm’s length, and keeping it under control. The genre required that good would triumph and order be restored at the end of the story.

Detective fiction of this time became all about the puzzle. Readers were very sophisticated and demanding, requiring more and more complex riddles to entertain them. This cerebral pastime acquired a kind of moral kudos, described by Phillip Guedalla, a well-known British writer and barrister of the time, as ‘the natural recreation of the noble mind’. Others said that it had become ‘feminised’, doing away with the macho, aggressive ‘male’ approach of might and power, with both readers and writers exhibiting the traditionally female qualities of intuition, insight, and I might add, craftiness. Perhaps that is why so many of the most successful authors of the era were women.

So in these works, the emphasis was on cerebral/intellectual puzzle rather than physical action and strength. Gore and violence was contained, and mainly ‘off-stage’; there was a defined resolution; and the reader expected to read a story peppered with clues and red herrings that she or he could solve alongside the detective. The emphasis was on the pursuit of Justice and Truth, and doing what was Right. There was a moral high-ground to be held. As Dorothy L Sayers detective, Lord Peter Wimsey says, ‘…in detective stories, virtue is always triumphant, they’re the purest form of literature we have.’ (quoted, 20th century crime, p52)

Who were these Golden Age authors? Many of them came, flourished briefly and went again, but some of the biggest sellers in crime fiction today are authors from that era. Here are just a few:

Agatha Christie – often considered the foremost leader of the genre, she both established and contravened the definition of the classic mystery. She was often accused of ‘not playing fair’ with the reader, never more so than in the (grudgingly admiring) outcry following the release of her book The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1926. She famously began writing detective fiction as a bet with her sister. The Mysterious Affair At Styles was her first published novel in 1920, and featured Hercule Poirot who became arguably the most recognisable sleuth in detective fiction, on paper, and on the TV and film screen.

Ngaio Marsh – New Zealand born, she famously wrote her first murder mystery out of boredom. In 1934 the release of A Man Lay Dead led to 30+ other novels, all featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn. The books were turned into a popular TV series. Marsh was also renowned for her work in the theatre. She was a grand master of the Mystery Writers of America, and new books continued to be published until the 1980s.

Nicholas Blake – pen name of Cecil Day Lewis; wrote poetry, criticism and essays, as well as twenty detective mysteries towards the end of the Golden Age era, 16 of which feature Nigel Strangeways, a consulting detective who helps both police and government as required. First of these A Question of Proof 1935.

Anthony Berkley – a writer and the founder of the Detection Club in 1928 whose aim was to preserve and promote the classic detective story. Wrote as A B Cox, Anthony Berkley and Francis Iles. As Francis Iles he wrote some of his best known works, Malice Aforethought in 1931, and in 1932 Before The Fact which was filmed as Suspicion with Alfred Hitchcock as the director.

Freeman Willis Crofts – born and raised in Ireland, author of The Cask 1920 which was a huge success, selling 100,000 copies. He was one of the first authors to focus on police procedure and not merely the enthusiastic amateur detective. This was the same year as AC’s Mysterious Affair Styles and is taken as the landmark year to commence the era. He wrote other books, collaborating with the authors of the detection club and also a book of short stories.

Other well-known authors of the era included: G K Chesterton, Gladys Mitchell, Dorothy L Sayers, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Michael Innes, and many more. In the United States, there were also authors writing in the genre, although here the ‘hard-boiled’ mystery quickly became popular. Here are just a few of those authors:

S S Van Dine – he is mainly remembered for his detective Philo Vance, but there were other works. Van Dine was embarrassed by his authorship of popular fiction as he had higher aspirations, and he used his pen name to conceal his identity for a number of years. The first mystery novel to feature Philo Vance was The Benson Murder Case in 1926, followed by more works within a year or two, making him one of the USA’s top selling authors at that time, and his works were turned into films.

John Dickson Carr famously termed detective fiction as “the grandest game in the world”.

In 1935 his novel The Hollow Man (The Three Coffins in the US) was published and it is still considered his finest work. He was a master of the locked room puzzle. he often used English settings and even characters, for example his best known detectives were Brits named Dr Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, but there are others, and books set in other nations. He also wrote stand-alone novels:  such as The Burning Court which appeared in 1937, in all he produced over sixty mystery and historic novels, in addition to short stories and plays under the name John Dickson Carr and as Carter Dickson.

Ellery Queen – Was actually two men, writing under the pseudonyms of Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee. Their first book was The Roman Hat Mystery published in 1929; subsequent books shared the title style, being all ‘The something something mystery’, which in many ways is still the standard form of title today. There were over thirty books in all, plus other series eg Drury Lane series etc, and other pen names. And notably, the hugely successful TV series, and the magazine.

What is the legacy of the Golden Age of detective fiction? Currently Crime, Thrillers and Mystery makes up one of the largest categories in fiction, apart from possibly romance. You can see endless variations on the detective theme from crime noir to cosy, with subgenres in legal, hard-boiled, gay and lesbian, spy, medical, political, police procedural, and even paranormal mystery. If the parameters have changed in regard to content and character types, if attitudes have changed, and settings have become exotic, or even practically a character in itself, we are still as in love with the puzzles presented by murder mysteries as those readers of the 1920s and 30s. We love to curl up in an armchair and lose ourselves in a mystery where the Reader is in fact the main detective.

 

 

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