Maura (maura853) -
Enjoyable Macdonald mystery: a little too complicated and spun out for its own good, but a very passably good read.
It's been very interesting, putting together an overview of the life and career of Caroline Rivett (aka ECR Lorac) from her novels re-issued by British Library Crime Classics. She grew up in an upper-middle-class family in London, and, from the evidence of this novel, seemed to know the backstreets and neighbourhoods of the capital very well. She was lively and sociable, and enjoyed sports like ski-ing, at a time when that would have been somewhat unusual for a woman of her age and class. (See "Crossed Skis," her mystery set in a group ski-ing holiday to Austria, with a thinly disguised E.C. Rivett as the amateur sleuth ...) She fell in love with two areas of the country which, to a Londoner of her time would have seemed like the middle of nowhere-- rural Devonshire ("Fire in the Thatch") and the Lune Valley in Lancashire ("Fell Murder"), where she eventually retired, and lived out the final years of her life -- and wrote about them, and their people, with real insight and sympathy.
She was a very interesting lady, and even her less successful efforts offer some worthwhile insights into her, as a person and as a writer. My theory is that she struggled with the formulaic demands of her genre -- she was a keen observer of people and places, and circumstances, but she felt (or perhaps her publishers felt) that had to take second place to the Puzzle. Consequently, the "good bits" (the characters --warm and fallible, deluded and ripe for victimhood, or deviously murderous; the sense of place that means that the setting is almost a character in its own right) have to be woven into some mystery nonsense that doesn't always convince.
Published in 1937, this offers a glimpse into a London that was about to be swept away forever. A London in which even relatively modest households had live-in servants. Where people dined at their clubs, and treated senior police officers like the hired help. A world in which anyone foreign was dubious, and Fascist bands roamed the streets (and disrupted the traffic). I even wonder if, when you looked at a map of present-day London, do the streets and mews that she lists in some detail still exist, or were they swept away themselves by the bombs that would rain down on London in just a few short years?
It all feels like a time-capsule, in bad ways as well as good. The "jolly hockey sticks" dialogue, and Neanderthal attitudes of some of the characters really began to grate, and felt like padding to give some life to characters that Rivett herself didn't really like. If you are of a sensitive disposition, you might want to brace yourself for some flagrantly racist and anti-Semitic asides (although, to be fair to Rivett, the character who is revealed to be toxically anti-Semitic had already been established as a deeply unpleasant woman. And the Fascist demonstrations disrupt the traffic in Trafalgar Square, and make the busses late -- so there!)
The mystery seems a bit overcooked, and depends on a perp who is, at first, Fiendishly Cunning, but then must become irredeemably stupid.
But, it's a Good Read. And how can you not love something that has given my delighted husband a line that he's going to be quoting at me forever: when the long-suffering Macdonald is bullied into making a bracing cocktail for one of his suspects, and he sighs and says "Gin! That about puts the lid on it ..."
Chin chin!!
It's been very interesting, putting together an overview of the life and career of Caroline Rivett (aka ECR Lorac) from her novels re-issued by British Library Crime Classics. She grew up in an upper-middle-class family in London, and, from the evidence of this novel, seemed to know the backstreets and neighbourhoods of the capital very well. She was lively and sociable, and enjoyed sports like ski-ing, at a time when that would have been somewhat unusual for a woman of her age and class. (See "Crossed Skis," her mystery set in a group ski-ing holiday to Austria, with a thinly disguised E.C. Rivett as the amateur sleuth ...) She fell in love with two areas of the country which, to a Londoner of her time would have seemed like the middle of nowhere-- rural Devonshire ("Fire in the Thatch") and the Lune Valley in Lancashire ("Fell Murder"), where she eventually retired, and lived out the final years of her life -- and wrote about them, and their people, with real insight and sympathy.
She was a very interesting lady, and even her less successful efforts offer some worthwhile insights into her, as a person and as a writer. My theory is that she struggled with the formulaic demands of her genre -- she was a keen observer of people and places, and circumstances, but she felt (or perhaps her publishers felt) that had to take second place to the Puzzle. Consequently, the "good bits" (the characters --warm and fallible, deluded and ripe for victimhood, or deviously murderous; the sense of place that means that the setting is almost a character in its own right) have to be woven into some mystery nonsense that doesn't always convince.
Published in 1937, this offers a glimpse into a London that was about to be swept away forever. A London in which even relatively modest households had live-in servants. Where people dined at their clubs, and treated senior police officers like the hired help. A world in which anyone foreign was dubious, and Fascist bands roamed the streets (and disrupted the traffic). I even wonder if, when you looked at a map of present-day London, do the streets and mews that she lists in some detail still exist, or were they swept away themselves by the bombs that would rain down on London in just a few short years?
It all feels like a time-capsule, in bad ways as well as good. The "jolly hockey sticks" dialogue, and Neanderthal attitudes of some of the characters really began to grate, and felt like padding to give some life to characters that Rivett herself didn't really like. If you are of a sensitive disposition, you might want to brace yourself for some flagrantly racist and anti-Semitic asides (although, to be fair to Rivett, the character who is revealed to be toxically anti-Semitic had already been established as a deeply unpleasant woman. And the Fascist demonstrations disrupt the traffic in Trafalgar Square, and make the busses late -- so there!)
The mystery seems a bit overcooked, and depends on a perp who is, at first, Fiendishly Cunning, but then must become irredeemably stupid.
But, it's a Good Read. And how can you not love something that has given my delighted husband a line that he's going to be quoting at me forever: when the long-suffering Macdonald is bullied into making a bracing cocktail for one of his suspects, and he sighs and says "Gin! That about puts the lid on it ..."
Chin chin!!
