Hit or miss (mystery edition) – JEAN EDMISTON, JOSEPHINE TEY, MAVIS DORIEL HAY, FRANCES & RICHARD LOCKRIDGE

I'm getting very nearly caught up in writing about the reading I've done in the past few months, but I thought I'd do a brief catch-up post about some of the mysteries that are either directly relevant to the blog or possibly of peripheral interest. I'm afraid it's a rather drab post, as I really only wholeheartedly enjoyed one of the four books I'm mentioning. Am I just being bitchy or what? But which one was the one I loved?

JEAN EDMISTON (writing as HELEN ROBERTSON), The Chinese Goose (aka Swan Song) (1960)

Well, the first is undoubtedly the most obscure of the five. Helen Jean Mary Edmiston published four mysteries 1955-1960 under the pseudonym Helen Robertson, of which The Chinese Goose (aka Swan Song) is the most famous. "Most famous" can, however, be taken with a grain of salt, since the book has been out of print since its 1983 reprinting as part of a "50 Classics of Crime Fiction, 1950-1975" series, edited by Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor. Edmiston also wrote one non-mystery under her own name, called The Shake-Up (1962). She remains a fairly mysterious figure apart from some general information here and there, and although she lived until 2008, she does not seem to have published any additional books (though there's a bit of confusion with another Jean Edmiston who seems to have begun publishing in the 1990s).

In The Chinese Goose, 18-year-old Lucy Cluff has been sent to a small town somewhere in the Thames estuary to help care for the young son of her cousin Nancy, who has recently drowned after apparently being attacked by swans. She has also been sent to keep her at a distance from the young man her parents consider undesirable (though little do they know what the result will be!).

We meet Nancy's widower, Roy Portham, who owns the local pub, the Swan with Two Necks (a distortion of meaning from the days when swans were marked with nicks according to their ownership), Martin Rimmer, local sleaze and womanizer (more on him below), his mother, who works at the local post office, and several other locals. It also happens that Jack Benwick, a local man now working with the CID in London, has brought Chief Detective Inspector Lathom Dynes to the area for a holiday.

In the first chapter, Lucy sits in Roy's bar and turns the conversation to Nancy's bizarre death. She begins to wonder if the marks found on Nancy's body couldn't have been from a mantrap rather than a swan attack, and the mystery develops from there in its somewhat moseying way.

So is this the book in this post that I loved? Well, since it was chosen by Barzun and Taylor as a crime "classic," and has been praised by others who know more about mystery writing in general than I do, I can hardly make any definitive assertion about it. But I can say that it quite definitely wasn't up my alley. Drab, morose characters, a drab grey setting, and a plodding, drab plot. I even found the puzzle and the solution rather drab, nothing like so clever or surprising as one might have expected from a "classic".

Did I mention that I found it drab?

Worst of all was that Lucy, the main character, is a drab, lifeless little waif who makes one want to shake her. The aforementioned charmer Martin (I told you I'd mention him again) asks her to go for a drive with him, comes very close to raping her, and thereby of course inspires her to fall head over heels in love with him. Clearly, Lucy has never heard of the "Me Too" movement. Or feminism. Or basic self-respect.

I will say that Edmiston has an excellent sense of place. The reader can certainly feel that they're seeing and smelling and experiencing what it's like in this small town. For my own part, I just wish she'd put this talent to use with more interesting characters and a more interesting plot.

JOSEPHINE TEY, Brat Farrar (1949)

I'm going to keep this one short, because I know this will be a shocking thing for many of you. As a rule, I absolutely love Josephine Tey. The Daughter of Time is quite possibly my favorite mystery of all time, Miss Pym Disposes is among my top 10, and To Love and Be Wise and The Franchise Affair are right up there as well.

Why, then, did I find this other much-loved and much-recommended Tey so utterly dull? I was terribly disappointed, as this was the last of the really well-known Tey novels that I hadn't yet read, and I approached it with great enthusiasm, only to know within the first couple of chapters exactly how it would play out. And I never guess the ends of mysteries and thrillers, so I can't help feeling that this one was terribly obvious.

Enough said. But on a brighter note, it was only when I was searching online for some tidbit about the book that I discovered the bio of Tey published a couple of years ago. Have any of you read it? I don't read a lot of author bios, but I am definitely tempted by this one as Tey seems to have had an unusual life.

MAVIS DORIEL HAY, Murder Underground (1935)

Ah yes, finally! Now here was a mystery I could sink my teeth into! I can't say that it's my all-time favorite or anything like that, but it was thoroughly enjoyable, with entertaining characters and an intriguing puzzle.

Poor Euphemia Pongleton is strangled on the steps of the Belsize Park Tube station, with her own dog's leash. There's no shortage of suspects, as she was a thoroughly distasteful woman, and no shortage of opportunity, since as it turns out practically everyone she knew just happened to be hanging about in or around that particularly station that very morning (and for the most part without having come in contact with one another), and her penchant for taking the stairs due to her fear of elevators was also widely known.

Rather ridiculous, for sure—if strict realism is your thing, this one may not be for you (perhaps see above for the drab realism of The Chinese Goose?)—and yet it's so charmingly told that I couldn't resist it. And even though to some extent there is a fair amount of rehashing and chewing over theories about the crime, something that often makes me very cranky, here it's all done in the context of one very silly character's efforts to extricate himself from his own suspicious behavior and his untruths about it to police. So rather than making me cranky, I found it all quite clever and fun.

I wrote briefly about another Mavis Doriel Hay mystery, Death on the Cherwell, here, which I loved as a novel but found "no great shakes" as a mystery. I don't recall the details of that book now, but I can only say that Murder Underground's puzzle, though far-fetched, seemed quite good to me.

I found Cherwell for dirt cheap during my orgy of Oxfam shopping in England, and Murder Underground for dirt cheap at the Friends of the Oakland Public Library shop. So perhaps I have a good enough excuse for splurging on a copy of Hay's third and final mystery, The Santa Klaus Murder? What a shame she didn't write a dozen or two more…

FRANCES & RICHARD LOCKRIDGE, The Norths Meet Murder (1940)

The first of more than two dozen mysteries featuring Pam and Jerry North, a sophisticated married couple in New York City, this one proved irresistible to me when I came across it as a $1.99 e-book. In this first volume of the series, the Norths, a rather boozy couple who might evoke the William Powell-Myrna Loy Thin Man films, are planning to hold a party in the vacant apartment upstairs from theirs, but on scouting out the location find a dead body in the bathtub instead. Enter clever New York police inspector Bill Weigand and Sergeant Mullins, his perpetually bewildered sergeant, for whom this case is particularly "screwy".

It all sounds completely delightful, and for the most part it was. At least the scenes involving the Norths themselves, particularly Pam, whose random (sometimes tipsy) ramblings often lead her to work out connections no one else sees. But the problem is that they appeared far too little, and for a mystery fan who cares not a snip about "procedural" elements, there was a bit too much of Weigand and Mullins chewing everything over. Having discovered that a film was made starring George Burns and Gracie Allen as the Norths, I am now thinking that a film version might be just up my street—presuming that, as Burns and Allen were big stars, the Norths' roles were probably expanded and the poor supporting actors who played Weigand and Mullins were probably relegated to background scenery. Hmmmm…

In the unintentionally humorous
cover blurb category...

However, I'm certainly willing to give the Norths another try. Have any of you read enough of this series to recommend favorites?

By the way, with the exception of the first of these novels (did I mention it was drab?), all of these are readily available in both e-book and paperback—rather shocking for this blog…

What I read on holiday (a book report, of sorts)

Well, sort of.

Really, it's just another rather short and scattered (possibly scatterbrained) Italy-related post before I get back to the real purpose of this blog.  Wrapping one's head around real life again after bopping around Tuscany in a cool Fiat convertible isn't as easy as it might at first appear...

One final, completely superfluous holiday pic of Venice, just because

A couple of you were nice enough to be curious about how all of my agonizing—for weeks before the trip—about reading material finally turned out, and since it turned out quite well I figured I might as well tell about it and share some thoughts on a few novels I wouldn't otherwise review in any depth (except perhaps the last, which not many people read and which was quite interesting, but alas, since I didn't have time to take good notes while engaged in the aforementioned bopping around Italy, this will have to do).

I started off, in all of my anxiety about a) flying in general, and b) flying for endless hours at a time, with what I figured would be a perfect comfort read.  From among my many unread Girls Gone By books, DORITA FAIRLIE BRUCE's The Serendipity Shop had jumped out at me. I have an odd weakness for stories about young women starting businesses of their own, and when they're set in a lovely village in Scotland, they're even better.  Bruce's novel was no disappointment, and saw me through the waking hours of the flight to Venice with great charm and good fun (a dose of Ambien happily saw to it that I had a few non-waking hours as well).

After that, though, as I hinted in my last post, my Kindle started really paying for itself.  Although I also had in my bag a couple of Agatha Christies and a Stella Gibbons I've been meaning to read for ages, I made the switch to e-books and didn't look back for the rest of the trip.

I had loaded my Kindle down with ample choices, mostly titles I had been meaning to read for ages but somehow never had, particularly some mysteries I was and am embarrassed never to have gotten around to. First and foremost, how hard is it to believe that I had never read DOROTHY L. SAYERS' Gaudy Night? Shocking, eh? I recall starting it once, getting distracted, and then just never quite coming back around to it. But as it turned out (not entirely to my surprise), it was a riveting read and handily took me all the way to Tuscany.

I might still have to say, at risk of appalling some of you, that I still like The Nine Tailors just a bit better, for its haunting setting and meditations on life and death, but Sayers' insider's view of Oxford, the various types of women who went there, and the moral and ethical challenges of academic life, was endlessly fascinating. I broke in the highlighting function of my Kindle to the point where some sections of the novel were more yellow than white. If I had more time, I could share so many quotes here that I'd be accused of infringing copyright. But perhaps I won't.

Sayers left me with a hankering for more mystery, and I've been meaning to get back to JOSEPHINE TEY ever since The Daughter of Time became one of my five favorite mysteries of all time. Daughter was also on my Kindle, just in case I needed another ultra-comforting and absorbing re-read, but instead I turned to To Love and Be Wise, which has now become a favorite as well.

Tey, as many of you undoubtedly already know, is wonderfully elegant and sophisticated in her detective novels—much like the stage actress friend of Alan Grant who features prominently in To Love and Be Wise and whose instincts about character help him to solve the mystery. I sank right in to the book, progressing seamlessly from casually checking out the first few paragraphs to decide if it was really what I wanted to read, to having blissfully read the first fifty pages and finding it hard to tear myself away even for alluring sightseeing or a good night's sleep before another day of exploration.

The novel is concerned with the disappearance of a strikingly attractive and charismatic young man who has inserted himself into an artistic community before vanishing from a riverside, casting suspicions on all and sundry. If the solution to the puzzle was not entirely plausible or satisfying, it made little difference to my enjoyment overall.

There was, though, one little turn of phrase that had me scratching my head.  At one point, a character, telling what they had been doing at the time of the young man's disappearance, describes "watching a radio play." The turn of phrase is even used a second time, and it really jarred me. I wondered if it was a misprint (or mistranscription in my e-book, perhaps). Or did people actually watch their radios in these days? It seemed initially like an odd slip in verbiage that someone from the age of television and movies—in which we are indeed accustomed to watching our entertainment—might make anachronistically when writing about radio days. But then, as I thought more about it, I wondered if the key wasn't the word "play." People would certainly have been accustomed to watching stage plays, right? So perhaps the terminology just carried over to radio plays? In the end, I feel capable of convincing myself of either explanation. Anyone have any illumination to offer?

At any rate, the novel was riveting, and when I finished, I was yearning for the only other late Alan Grant mystery I hadn't previously read, The Singing Sands, but alas I didn't have it on my Kindle and had no Wi-Fi at the hotel where we were staying. Bummer.

So I took the opportunity to finally plunge into ETHEL LINA WHITE's The Wheel Spins, upon which Hitchcock based his classic film The Lady Vanishes (the book has sometimes been reprinted with the film's title), and which set the perfect tone for our train ride from Rome to Naples. No governesses disappeared on our train—or else I was merely too wrapped up in my novel to notice their plight (hmmm, now I wonder...)—but actually being on a European train while reading it (especially the rather old-fashioned train on which that particular trip was made) undoubtedly lent it an extra kick.

Our train looked just a bit
more modern than this one

Unlike Sayers and Tey, whose style makes their books feel like dishing with fascinating old friends, White felt a bit standoffish. Her style is more terse, a bit chilly at first, and so she took some warming up to. I notice that several Amazon customer reviews of the novel are ambivalent about it too. Ultimately, I thought White's style was appropriate for her story, which is about a young woman who is unquestionably terse and chilly at first, and who only gradually becomes more human and sympathetic as the story unfolds, but it still makes the book a bit hard to engage with at first.

Indeed, when he adapted the novel for his film, Hitchcock seems to have felt the need to revise the character of Iris, a spoiled, selfish rich girl, to make her more likeable (though even in the film I've always found her a bit irritating, truth be told). But in most ways, Hitch seems to have held true to the spirit of the novel, if not always to the letter. There is no dramatic tea bag revelation here, and the romantic interest—such as it is—is one of the two Brits that Hitch turned into comic relief. The charming musicologist character played by Michael Redgrave in the film is fully a Hitchcock creation, and in that area I have to say that I think Hitchcock improved on White, as the musicologist at least provides an instantly likable, if eccentric, character to play off of Iris' chilliness.

Hitch also made Miss Froy an international spy, while White's governess is merely the victim of circumstance.  In strange and troubled ways, Hitchcock was a kind of feminist, I've always thought (though such a statement requires a lot of qualification), often giving his female characters strong personalities and the ability to take the initiative (often from ineffectual men). His revision of Miss Froy was perhaps an example of that, and an improvement on White's governess.

But that's not to say the novel isn't well worth checking out on its own merits. While Hitchcock's Miss Froy (especially as portrayed by the incomparable Dame May Whitty) is far more likeable and enjoyable, White's governess is a fascinating misfit. White consistently presents her as a sort of stunted, middle-aged schoolgirl, who has refused to grow up and who perhaps uses her travels all over Europe as a means of avoiding mature relationships and responsibilities (of course the same could be said of James Bond and of many, many other male characters who are portrayed as heroic and admirable...):

As she listened to the gush of words behind her, Iris was again perplexed by the discrepancy between Miss Froy's personality and her appearance. It was as though a dryad were imprisoned within the tree-trunk of a withered spinster.

Later, when (slight spoiler alert, if you haven't seen the film version) Iris discovers Miss Froy's signature written in the window's steam, this odd childishness is stressed even more:

Iris stared at the name, hardly able to believe that her eyes were not playing her a trick. The tiny neat handwriting was round and unformed as that of a schoolgirl, and suggested the character of the little governess—half-prim adult, and half-arrested youth.

White certainly had an interest in psychology and perhaps psychoanalysis as well, and if one wanted to, I'll bet one could make a complicated—and probably tedious—analysis of Iris and her relationships with Miss Froy and the Baroness (who is retained in Hitchcock's movie as an imperious, vaguely threatening figure, but without as much detail as in the novel). Good mother figure and bad mother figure, perhaps? But never mind, one doesn't in fact want to make such an analysis.

I do think too that White's portrayal of Iris, the heroine (to use that term loosely), troubled as she is, is deeper and more realistic than Hitchcock's spunky-bad-girl-tamed-by-love. A shallow, utterly self-centered rich girl at the novel's beginning, Iris begins to open up after a frightening experience of getting lost on a mountainside makes her feel the vulnerability of her go-it-alone, screw-everyone-else attitude. When she meets Miss Froy, she actually finds her irritating, and when the governess first vanishes, Iris is pleased to be rid of her. It is only her resentment against the officious figure of the Baroness, and her need to assert her own sanity, that make her begin to resist the united front of other characters asserting that Miss Froy has never existed.

As much as anything, then, it's Iris' ego and pigheadedness, always put to selfish and frivolous use in the past, that saves Miss Froy's life, and this creates an interesting tension in her character. The trouble is, even after her change of heart, Iris is still not a particularly likeable character. I found her interesting, and the novel was a page-turner, but I have no trouble seeing why White has never really been wholeheartedly embraced by fans of the Golden Age of mysteries.

Of course, that's only my perspective, and when I got home and did a Google search, I discovered that Book Snob wrote about The Wheel Spins just last year, and felt a bit more enthusiastic overall than I did. Check out her review for a different perspective.

I'm also still interested in trying out While She Sleeps, a novel White wrote three years after Wheel, in which a young woman unlucky enough to be selected as the victim of a crime has a series of strokes of luck which protect her, though she perceives each stroke of luck as an exasperating annoyance. I'm game.

Well, that's my book report, and I didn't even have to resort to the fleshing out its length with phrases like "The book was very, very, very interesting and exciting and fun and enjoyable," as I sometimes had to do with such reports in my school years.

Oh! And in answer to a couple of you who asked: Believe it or not, I purchased nary a book while on my trip. In fact, there were only two occasions when I even looked at books for sale—once at a little street stand in Lucca which had a single shelf of well-worn English language books (alas, hopes of a gleeful discovery of some wonderful lost treasure were not fulfilled), and once at the large international bookstore at Termini station in Rome (with my tastes, new books are rarely exciting, so I spent most of my time examining the fun international covers of various Agatha Christie mysteries). Sad but true, not a single new acquisition on my trip.

Now (or soon, at least), back to work on my next Overwhelming List update and my next genre list.  Coming soon!